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Neutrino oscillation arises from mixing between the flavor and mass eigenstates of neutrinos. That is, the three neutrino states that interact with the charged leptons in weak interactions are each a different superposition of the three (propagating) neutrino states of definite mass.
More formally, neutrino flavor eigenstates (creation and annihilation combinations) are not the same as the neutrino mass eigenstates (simply labeled "1", "2", and "3"). As of 2024, it is not known which of these three is the heaviest. The neutrino mass hierarchy consists of two possible configurations. In analogy with the mass hierarchy of the ...
The problem of neutrino mass hierarchy is related to the fact that present experimental data on neutrino oscillations allow two possible classes of solutions. [1] In the first class, called Normal Hierarchy (NH) or Normal Ordering (NO), the two lightest mass eigenstates have a small mass difference, of the order of 10 meV, while the third ...
A distinction can thus be made between, for example, the mass and interaction eigenstates of the neutrino. The former is the state that propagates in free space, whereas the latter is the different state that participates in interactions. Which is the "fundamental" particle? For the neutrino, it is conventional to define the "flavor" (ν e, ν ...
Thus, a coupling between the energy (mass) eigenstates produces the phenomenon of oscillation between the flavor eigenstates. One important inference is that neutrinos have a finite mass, although very small. Hence, their speed is not exactly the same as that of light but slightly lower.
Observations of neutrino oscillation established experimentally that for neutrinos, as for quarks, these two eigenbases are different – they are 'rotated' relative to each other. Consequently, each flavor eigenstate can be written as a combination of mass eigenstates, called a "superposition", and vice versa.
Correspondingly, the mass eigenstates and eigenvalues of change, which means that the neutrinos in matter now have a different effective mass than they did in vacuum: ,,. Since neutrino oscillations depend upon the squared mass difference of the neutrinos, neutrino oscillations experience different dynamics than they did in vacuum.
Neutrinos are known to oscillate, so that neutrinos of definite flavor do not have definite mass: Instead, they exist in a superposition of mass eigenstates. The hypothetical heavy right-handed neutrino, called a "sterile neutrino", has been omitted.