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Radioactive toothpaste and reversed helicity

APR 01, 2012
Alfred Scharff Goldhaber

Goldhaber replies to Esterling: As Bob Esterling implies, the challenge here is not producing reversed helicity but observing it: Reaction rates are tiny because of low neutrino density and small cross sections. Absent an independent calibration of neutrino density, there would be no characteristic signal of helicity reversal for Dirac neutrinos. If production of relic Majorana neutrinos were associated mostly with matter rather than antimatter, neutrino helicity equipartition still could lead to nearly equal production of electrons and positrons—a striking signal if it could be seen.

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Alfred Scharff Goldhaber , (goldhab@max2.physics.sunysb.edu) Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 65, Number 4

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