Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: kenhikage on 21/07/2012 18:57:08
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I recently read an article from last year stating that Fermilab had experimental confirmation that muon neutrinos freely convert into tau and electron neutrinos. What is the mechanism that allows this? What is the cause of said conversion? And what is the role of Higgs boson/field in this activity?
Perhaps I've misunderstood the whole thing. Either way, let me know.
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Ken - unfortunately I am not sure you have misunderstood it; but even worse it is way beyond my capabilities to explain.
For many years the neutrino was thought to be massless and travel at the speed of light. Both MINOS and CERN were investigating the oscillation of neutrino flavours (electron, mu, and tau - corresponding to the heavier charged leptons) - but I think this oscillation anomaly was discovered due to the fact that too many solar neutrinos were being detected as mu or tau rather than elextron.
The solutions to the quantum mechanical equations for neutrinos before this had mass=0; but in order to get the standard model to work for a particle which oscillated flavours then a non-zero mass was necessary. The SM implies a non-zero difference between the three flavours masses - which cannot be the case if they are all mass=0. If yo want to read more you need to get into the idea of superposition - each flavour is actually a state (out of many possible) in which the weak interaction can take place (ie we can measure them being there) and represents a superposition of three neutrino states of fixed and definite mass. Complicated and counterintuitive
how this connects with the higgs field I do not know - other than the simple idea that all massive elementary particles gain mass through interaction with the higgs field.
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Could it be that these three flavors actually are one particle with fluctuating interaction in the Higgs field? That is to say, the Higgs can't "decide" what wieght to give the neutrino?
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As I've understood it it opens for other interactions than the Higgs. It questions the standard model as well.
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Ken - we all had a bash at explaining neutrino oscillation here -
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=45595.0