I think you are answering the question "How can a v oscillate", which makes sense as that's a very common question for you to get.
My understanding of the answer is that when a pion decays into a muon and a neutrino, it is in state |m> when looking at the flavor eigenstates, but the flavor eigenstates aren't eigenstates of the Hamiltonian (the "time passes operator", if I understand it). The mass eigenstates are. The |m> state is |1+2+3> (for some weights on the three mass states), so after it propagates it's still in state |1+2+3>, but now in a different mix of |e+m+t>, a mix which varies with time. When a flavor state is observed, it picks a flavor eigenstate as per standard wave function collapse rules.
Is that about right?
What I don't understand is what it means to propagate through space in state |1+2+3>. Which is what I was trying to ask, but not sure I got an answer to.
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Date: 2011-06-15 08:30 pm (UTC)My understanding of the answer is that when a pion decays into a muon and a neutrino, it is in state |m> when looking at the flavor eigenstates, but the flavor eigenstates aren't eigenstates of the Hamiltonian (the "time passes operator", if I understand it). The mass eigenstates are. The |m> state is |1+2+3> (for some weights on the three mass states), so after it propagates it's still in state |1+2+3>, but now in a different mix of |e+m+t>, a mix which varies with time. When a flavor state is observed, it picks a flavor eigenstate as per standard wave function collapse rules.
Is that about right?
What I don't understand is what it means to propagate through space in state |1+2+3>. Which is what I was trying to ask, but not sure I got an answer to.