Disentangling Neutrino Oscillations

Understand

The theory underlying neutrino oscillations has been described at length in the literature.

• The neutrino state produced by a weak decay is usually portrayed as a linear superposition of mass eigenstates with, variously, equal energies or equal momenta.
• We point out that such a description is incomplete, that in fact, the neutrino is entangled with the other particle or particles emerging from the decay.
• We offer an analysis of oscillation phenomena involving neutrinos (applying equally well to neutral mesons) that takes entanglement into account.