Reply to : Comment on: Geometric phase of neutrinos: Differences between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos [Phys. Lett. B 780 (2018) 216] [Phys. Lett. B 818, 136376 (2021)]


Abstract in English

In this paper we reply to the comment presented in [1]. In that work the author raises several points about the geometric phase for neutrinos discussed in [2]. He affirms that the calculation is flawed due to incorrect application of the definition of noncyclic geometric phase and the omission of one term in Wolfenstein effective Hamiltonian. He claims that the results are neither gauge invariant nor lepton field rephasing invariant and presents an alternative calculation, solely in order to demonstrate that the Majorana CP-violating phase enters the geometric phase essentially by lepton field rephasing transformation. Finally he claims that the nontrivial dependence of geometric phase on Majorana CP-violating phase presented in [2] is unphysical and thus unmeasurable. We discuss each of the points raised in [1] and show that they are incorrect. In particular, we introduce geometric invariants which are gauge and reparametrization invariants and show that the omitted term in the Wolfenstein effective Hamiltonian has no effect on them. We prove that the appearance of the Majorana phase cannot be ascribed to a lepton field rephasing transformation and thus the incorrectness of the claim of unphysicality and unmeasurability of the geometric phase. In the end we show that the calculation presented in [1] is inconsistent and based on the erroneous assumption and implementation of the wavefunction collapse. We remark that the geometric invariants defined in the present paper show a difference between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos, since they depend on the CP-violating Majorana phase.

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