Practical Dirac Majorana confusion theorem: issues and applicability

Abstract

Abstract We inspect the model-independent study of practical Dirac Majorana confusion theorem (pDMCT) – a wide spread belief that the difference between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos via any kinematical observable would be practically impossible to determine because of the difference only being proportional to the square of neutrino mass – in context of processes that have at least a neutrino antineutrino pair in their final state. We scrutinize the domain of applicability of pDMCT and also highlight those aspects that are often misunderstood. We try to clarify some of the frequently used concepts that are used to assert pDMCT as a generic feature irrespective of the process, or observable, such as the existence of any analytic continuity between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos in the limit $$m_{\nu } \rightarrow 0.$$ m ν → 0 . In summary, we illustrate that pDMCT is not any fundamental property of neutrinos, instead, it is a phenomenological feature of neutrino non-observation, depending on models and processes.