Yes.Incnis Mrsi said:Do three mass eigenstates of the charged lepton define the flavor eigenstates e−, μ−, τ− ?
Ī̲’m no expert, but this may be related to decay of W and Z, for example.Vanadium 50 said:But why would you want to?
Yes, I believe it is a choice: you can either have the electron 'flavours' defined as mass eigenstates or the neutrino flavours as mass eigenstates, but not both.Vanadium 50 said:Sure, you could define them as orthogonal; linear combinations. But why would you want to?
The situation is completely analogous to the quark sector, where we indeed define the quark flavours as the mass eigenstates. With these definitions the W couplings become off diagonal. The reason we usually work with neutrino states that give flavour diagonal W couplings and call them ”flavour eigenstates” is the low neutrino mass leading to approximate flavour conservation in experiments with short enough baselines not to be affected by neutrino oscillations (and the fact that neutrino masses are so small that we typically cannot tell them apart based on kinematics alone).Michael Price said:Yes, I believe it is a choice: you can either have the electron 'flavours' defined as mass eigenstates or the neutrino flavours as mass eigenstates, but not both.
This looks exactly the thing I was interested in. The W boson governs interconversion between charged lepton and neutrino. Quantitatively, it defines an operator, but which namely are its eigenvalues and eigenvectors (in terms of e, μ, τ)? It seems to be related to so named ”Yukawa couplings/interaction/matrix”, but it’s hard to me to understand these things as explained in flavor-physics papers.Orodruin said:The reason we usually work with neutrino states that give flavour diagonal W couplings and call them ”flavour eigenstates”…
Lepton flavors are different types of fundamental particles that make up matter. The most well-known lepton flavors are the electron, muon, and tau particles.
Currently, there are six known lepton flavors: the electron, electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tau, and tau neutrino. However, scientists are still exploring the possibility of additional lepton flavors beyond these six.
Studying lepton flavors can help us understand the fundamental building blocks of the universe and the interactions between them. It can also provide insights into the nature of dark matter and the origins of the universe.
Lepton flavors and quark flavors are both types of fundamental particles, but they have different properties and behave differently. Leptons are not affected by the strong nuclear force, while quarks are. Additionally, lepton flavors can change, or "oscillate," between different flavors, while quark flavors cannot.
Scientists are currently studying lepton flavors through experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider and the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector. They are also exploring the possibility of new lepton flavors and searching for evidence of lepton flavor oscillations. Additionally, researchers are investigating the role of lepton flavors in the early universe and their connection to dark matter.