Neutrino oscillations as a "which-path" experiment

Abstract

The role of simple quantum mechanics in understanding neutrino oscillation experiments is pointed out by comparison with two-slit and Bragg scattering experiments. The importance of considering the beam and the detector as a correlated quantum system is emphasized. Quantum mechanics alone shows that the difference observed in the same neutrino detector at Super-Kamiokande between upward and downward going neutrinos requires the existence of a neutrino mass difference. The localization of the source and detector in space in the laboratory system for long times leads to an uncertainty in the momentum but not of the energy of the neutrino and to coherence between states having different momenta and the same energy and not between states with different energies.