Can neutrinos change chirality by oscillating?

Question

Active neutrinos are left-handed while sterile neutrinos are right-handed. There are speculations that active neutrinos can oscillate into sterile neutrinos. Can neutrinos change chirality by oscillating?

The right handed partners of active neutrinos are also sterile, in this sense. Related question. — Cosmas Zachos, Feb 10 '19 at 01:25

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 05 '20 at 19:21

4

If right handed neutrinos exist the neutrino dirac mass term $$-\mathcal{L}_D = m_D\overline{\nu}_L\nu_R +h.c.$$ couples left-handed to right-handed neutrinos and will therefore lead to left handed neutrinos "oscillating" into right handed ones and vice versa.

So yes there would be such oscillations. There are hints towards the existence of such oscillations induced by $\sim1$ eV sterile neutrinos in the current oscillation data. The STEREO experiment for example is searching for such oscillations. I already commented on this experiment and oscillation data within this post

edited Jul 05 '20 at 19:21

Zeick

1,223

answered Jan 06 '19 at 15:29

Katermickie

755

1

Actually on one of my current exercise sheets I am supposed to calculate the oscillation probability explicitly so if you are interested I will post the solution when I finished that calculation :-) – Katermickie Jan 06 '19 at 15:32

Can neutrinos change chirality by oscillating?

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