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Dirac spinors and flavor oscillations

  • theoretical physics
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Abstract.

In the standard treatment of particle oscillations the mass eigenstates are implicitly assumed to be scalars and, consequently, the spinorial form of the neutrino wave functions is not included in the calculations. To analyze this additional effect, we discuss the oscillation probability formula obtained by using the Dirac equation as evolution equation for the neutrino mass eigenstates. The initial localization of the spinor state also implies an interference between positive and negative energy components of mass eigenstate wave packets which modifies the standard oscillation probability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cosmic Rays and Chronology, State University of Campinas, P.O. Box 6165, SP, 13083-970, Campinas, Brazil

    A. E. Bernardini

  2. Department of Applied Mathematics, State University of Campinas, P.O. Box 6065, SP, 13083-970, Campinas, Brazil

    S. De Leo

Authors
  1. A. E. Bernardini
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  2. S. De Leo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. E. Bernardini.

Additional information

Received: 8 April 2004, Revised: 12 July 2004, Published online: 20 October 2004

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Bernardini, A.E., De Leo, S. Dirac spinors and flavor oscillations. Eur. Phys. J. C 37, 471–480 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2004-02019-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2004-02019-8

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