Chiral oscillations in quantum field theory
Massive fermions produced with definite chirality undergo chiral oscillations. So far, this phenomenon has been mainly described in the framework of single particle relativistic quantum mechanics. In this paper, we present a quantum field theory approach to chiral oscillations in analogy with the one used to describe flavor mixing and oscillations. By taking the expectation value of chiral charges, we obtain the same chiral oscillation formula derived via standard relativistic quantum mechanics. We find that chiral charges are diagonalized by a Bogoliubov transformation: this implies that the vacuum for particles with definite chirality is orthogonal to the one for those with definite energy. In the case of neutrinos, our results can be further extended to include also flavor oscillations.
Authors
- Massimo Blasone (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7790-4428)
- Victor A. S. V. Bittencourt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0701-7142)
- Gennaro Zanfardino (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4202-6498)
Institutions
- University of Salerno (IT)
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Napoli (IT)
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Gruppo Collegato di Salerno
- Université de Strasbourg (FR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physics Letters B
- Published
- 2025-03-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139399
- Citations
- 7
- Primary Topic
- Black Holes and Theoretical Physics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 13.09