Phenomenology of Neutrino Oscillations

Abstract

So far a number of different neutrino experiments have convincingly observed the phenomena of neutrino oscillations, indicating that neutrinos have rest masses and lepton flavors are mixed. This is the first compelling experimental evidence for new physics beyond the standard model (SM) of elementary particle physics. In this chapter we shall first describe the basic properties of neutrino oscillations in vacuum and then explain the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein (MSW) mechanism for neutrino flavor conversions in matter. Section 5.2 is devoted to an analysis of quantum coherence in neutrino oscillations. We shall reformulate neutrino oscillations by means of the language of the density matrix and flavor polarization vector in Section 5.3. Some ongoing and future accelerator- and reactor-based neutrino oscillation experiments will be briefly introduced in Section 5.4.