If I fire a proton at a target (using, say, the device at T in T2K), I get a pion which decays into a muon and a muon anti-neutrino, which combined carry the momentum and energy of the pion.
If I were to ask you "where's the muon?" you'd be able to say "it's wave function says about *there*, plus or minus delta-x" where "there" is a location which is moving, and delta-x is probably increasing over time.
If I were to ask you "where's the neutrino?", would the wave function say "a superposition of here, here, and here", with one "here" for each mass eigenstate? Or does the neutrino, despite being a mixture of mass eigenstates, propagate with a single position (well, as single a position as Heisenberg will allow, anyway)? Or is it "here, here, and here, but the three here's are so close that uncertainty prevents them from being distinguished"?
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Date: 2011-06-15 02:24 pm (UTC)If I fire a proton at a target (using, say, the device at T in T2K), I get a pion which decays into a muon and a muon anti-neutrino, which combined carry the momentum and energy of the pion.
If I were to ask you "where's the muon?" you'd be able to say "it's wave function says about *there*, plus or minus delta-x" where "there" is a location which is moving, and delta-x is probably increasing over time.
If I were to ask you "where's the neutrino?", would the wave function say "a superposition of here, here, and here", with one "here" for each mass eigenstate? Or does the neutrino, despite being a mixture of mass eigenstates, propagate with a single position (well, as single a position as Heisenberg will allow, anyway)? Or is it "here, here, and here, but the three here's are so close that uncertainty prevents them from being distinguished"?
Or am I barking up the wrong tree?