Oscillations of neutrino velocity

TL;DR

This paper investigates the quantum measurement of neutrino velocity, revealing that neutrino flavor oscillations cause velocity oscillations, including periodic superluminal speeds, while maintaining consistency with relativity and explaining experimental limitations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that neutrino flavor oscillations induce velocity oscillations, including superluminal speeds, and clarifies energy conservation without violating relativity.

Findings

Neutrino velocity oscillates with flavor changes.

Superluminal neutrino speeds are theoretically possible but too small to detect.

Energy is approximately conserved during neutrino travel.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the problem of quantum measurement of neutrino velocity. We show, that the well known neutrino flavor oscillations are always accompanied by the oscillations of neutrino velocity. In particular, the velocity of a freely moving neutrino is demonstrated to periodically exceed the speed of light. Unfortunately, the superluminal effect turns out to be too small to be experimentally detected. It is also shown that neutrino velocity significantly depends on the energy, size and shape of the neutrino wave packet. Owing to the big experimental error of the recent experiments, these dependences remained unnoticeable. Finally, we have shown that the recent claims that superluminal neutrinos should loose energy during their flight is not true. Instead, our formula suggests the approximate conservation of energy along neutrino trajectory. All these results have been obtained without violation of special theory of relativity.