Undergrad Can Oscillations Explain Neutrino Anomalies?

[A Majeski]

No, I just tried to keep it simple

 

[Vanadium 50]

So, you don't do a calculation but guess at an answer. and when your guess doesn't match reality, it's not that your guess is wrong, it's that neutrino oscillations are a bad theory.

I am unconvinced.

 

[A Majeski]

Not at all, I am just trying to understand the concept, I did not mean to ruffle your feathers

 

[Orodruin]

I would expect the Solar deficit to be closer to 1/2 or something other than 2/3. This value indicates that the dispersion of three neutrino flavors is basically flat regardless of the detectors proximity to a large neutrino source, like the Sun.

This is wrong. The mechanism at work here is the Mikheev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein effect and adiabatic flavor transitions. The MSW matter effect on oscillations imply that neutrinos exit the Sun almost entirely in the second mass eigenstate (provided that they are energetic enough to be produced above resonance). This in turn means that the nu_e survival probability is based almost exclusively on the nu_e content of that mass eigenstate.

It is also wrong that only two flavors are involved. Theory predicts almost equal numbers of mu and tau neutrinos.

It is not the case that oscillations equilibrate the flavors. The oscillation probabilities depend on several things, including the mixing parameters.

also, it seems to me that the neutrino mass change should progress from lightest to heaviest with an accompanied decrease in speed. It should not progress from heaviest to lightest as this would require the speed to increase, I cannot see any example where this occurs in other phenomenon.

This is well known (assuming fixed momentum) and it does not really affect oscillations until wave packets of different mass eigenstates separate which would just average out the oscillations. This does happen for solar neutrinos but as mentioned they effectively only consist of one mass eigenstate anyway so it is not super relevant.

Note: Neutrinos will not change their speed during propagation. They are in a quantum mechanical superposition of their mass states and it is the mass states that move at different velocities.

Not at all, I am just trying to understand the concept, I did not mean to ruffle your feathers

You’re not though. You are making assumptions of how things behave and try to draw conclusions based on those (faulty) assumptions. That will never end well and you will not really learn anything. What you should be doing if you wish to understand is to pick up some reference literature on the subject. For example, section III.G of this review.