Flavor mixing in a Lee-type model

TL;DR

This paper presents an exactly solvable quantum field theory model to analyze neutrino flavor creation and localization, revealing how flavor states emerge and the limitations in defining flavor for charged leptons.

Contribution

It introduces a novel exactly solvable Lee-type QFT model to study neutrino flavor mixing and creation probabilities.

Findings

Neutrino flavor states are coherently created with negligible mass effects.

Charged lepton states cannot be assigned a definite flavor.

Exact calculations of two-particle states and creation probabilities.

Abstract

An exactly solvable Quantum Field Theory (QFT) model of Lee-type is constructed to study how neutrino flavor eigenstates are created through interactions and how the localization properties of neutrinos follows from the parent particle that decays. The two-particle states formed by the neutrino and the accompanying charged lepton can be calculated exactly as well as their creation probabilities. We can show that the coherent creation of neutrino flavor eigenstates follows from the common negligible contribution of neutrino masses to their creation probabilities. On the other hand, it is shown that it is not possible to associate a well defined "flavor" to mixed states of charged leptons.