Do Small-Mass Neutrinos Participate in Gauge Transformations?

Abstract

Neutrino oscillation experiments presently suggest that neutrinos have a small but finite mass. If neutrinos have mass, there should be a Lorentz frame in which they can be brought to rest. This paper discusses how Wigner’s little groups can be used to distinguish between massive and massless particles. We derive a representation of the SL(2,c) group which separates out the two sets of spinors: one set is gauge dependent and the other set is gauge invariant and represents polarized neutrinos. We show that a similar calculation can be done for the Dirac equation. In the large-momentum/zero-mass limit, the Dirac spinors can be separated into large and small components. The large components are gauge invariant, while the small components are not. These small components represent spin-1/2 non-zero-mass particles. If we renormalize the large components, these gauge invariant spinors represent the polarization of neutrinos. Massive neutrinos cannot be invariant under gauge transformations.