Disentangling Neutrino Oscillations

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the importance of entanglement in neutrino oscillation theory, providing a rigorous proof of the standard oscillation formulas' validity and clarifying misconceptions about decay and experimental proposals.

Contribution

It introduces an entanglement-based analysis of neutrino oscillations, confirming the universal applicability of standard formulas and addressing experimental interpretations.

Findings

Entanglement is essential in neutrino oscillation descriptions.

Standard oscillation formulas are universally valid when entanglement is considered.

Departures from exponential decay are not due to neutrino mixing.

Abstract

The theory underlying neutrino oscillations has been described at length in the literature. The neutrino state produced by a weak decay is usually portrayed as a linear superposition of mass eigenstates with, variously, equal energies or equal momenta. We point out that such a description is incomplete, that in fact, the neutrino is entangled with the other particle or particles emerging from the decay. We offer an analysis of oscillation phenomena involving neutrinos (applying equally well to neutral mesons) that takes entanglement into account. Thereby we present a theoretically sound proof of the universal validity of the oscillation formulae ordinarily used. In so doing, we show that the departures from exponential decay reported by the GSI experiment cannot be attributed to neutrino mixing. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the `Mossbauer' neutrino oscillation experiment proposed by Raghavan, while technically challenging, is correctly and unambiguously describable by means of the usual oscillation formalae.