Not precisely. I used that as an imperfect description intended to be accessible to a wide lay audience. Since you have a PhD in physics, I can get more technical with you.
There are three flavour eigenstate and three mass eigenstates. The different types of eigenstates are related to each other by a U(3) unitary transformation known as the PMNS (Pontecorvo, Maki, Nakagawa, Sakata) matrix.
Thus, each flavour eigenstate is a superposition of the three mass eigenstates, and vice versa. Weak interactions, such as the example I gave above of a beta decay, produce neutrinos in their flavour eigenstates (e.g., an electron neutrino). However, they propagate via their mass eigenstates. Due to the difference in masses between these eigenstates, they propagate with wave functions of different wavelengths. This means that, when re-observed via a flavour interaction, those three wavelengths will be out of phase and, when recombined to a total flavour state, the new superposition of these out-of-phase wave functions may give you a different flavour than the one you started with.
That is a more accurate explanation, though more difficult to present to anyone who is not terribly familiar with the intricacies of quantum mechanics. Hopefully it clears things up for you? (If not, feel free to ask again!)
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Date: 2011-06-15 01:39 pm (UTC)There are three flavour eigenstate and three mass eigenstates. The different types of eigenstates are related to each other by a U(3) unitary transformation known as the PMNS (Pontecorvo, Maki, Nakagawa, Sakata) matrix.
Thus, each flavour eigenstate is a superposition of the three mass eigenstates, and vice versa. Weak interactions, such as the example I gave above of a beta decay, produce neutrinos in their flavour eigenstates (e.g., an electron neutrino). However, they propagate via their mass eigenstates. Due to the difference in masses between these eigenstates, they propagate with wave functions of different wavelengths. This means that, when re-observed via a flavour interaction, those three wavelengths will be out of phase and, when recombined to a total flavour state, the new superposition of these out-of-phase wave functions may give you a different flavour than the one you started with.
That is a more accurate explanation, though more difficult to present to anyone who is not terribly familiar with the intricacies of quantum mechanics. Hopefully it clears things up for you? (If not, feel free to ask again!)