de Sitter symmetry and neutrino oscillations

Abstract

Although the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations is confirmed in many experiments, the theoretical explanation of this phenomenon in the literature is essentially model dependent and is not based on rigorous physical principles. We propose an approach where the neutrino is treated as a massless elementary particle in anti-de Sitter (AdS) invariant quantum theory. In contrast to standard Poincare invariant quantum theory, an AdS analog of the mass squared changes over time even for elementary particles. Our approach naturally explains why, in contrast to the neutrino, the electron, muon and tau lepton do not have flavors changing over time and why the number of solar neutrinos reaching the Earth is around a third of the number predicted by the standard solar model.