Speaker
Description
In the context of neutrino oscillations, the wave packet representation of propagating neutrinos has emerged as an indispensable tool for deriving the transition probabilities. Conventionally in these analyses, the neutrino wave packet is assumed to be a Gaussian profile. However, it remains unclear to what extent results depend on the assumption of Gaussianity, since (i) the assumption ignores higher-order effects and (ii) there exist profiles that cannot be approximated by a Gaussian wave packet.
We study the impact of the wave packet profile on neutrino oscillations; specifically, we consider Gaussian, Lorentzian and relativistic minimum uncertainty wave packets. Of these possibilities, the relativistic minimum uncertainty wave packets are of particular interest, as they belong to a novel class of wave packets that describe semiclassical trajectories in spacetime, minimising uncertainty in velocity rather than in phase space.
