Group velocity of neutrino waves

Abstract

We follow up on the analysis of Mecozzi and Bellini where they showed, in principle, the possibility of superluminal propagation of neutrinos, as indicated by the recent OPERA result. We refine the analysis by introducing wave packets for the superposition of energy eigenstates and discuss the implications of their results with realistic values for the mixing and mass parameters in a full three neutrino mixing scenario. Our analysis shows the possibility of superluminal propagation of neutrino flavour in a very narrow range of neutrino parameter space. Simultaneously this reduces the number of observable events drastically. Therefore, the OPERA result cannot be explained in this frame-work.