What are the neutrino oscillations that are talked about here in the neutrino question D.01 ?
http://sciastro.astronomy.net/sci.astro.4.FAQ


How does a particle become a different particle via oscillation ?
What is the operating mechanism ?

Warning; my understanding of QM is very limited

I have just started a project on this:the solar neutrino anomaly.OK,here oscillations means oscillations between neutrino flavours.Do not try to visualise this as one type of neutrino changes to other while mechanically oscillating.Try to understand that it CAN change its way of interaction by virtue of quantum mechanics.You may refer to Los Alamos>Wick Haxton>neutrino oscollations for undergraduates

It may also help to think of it in terms of probabilities. Suppose you have some magic ball which oscillates randomly between three colors---red, green, and blue. Initially you look at the ball and it is blue. Then you hit the start button and close your eyes. The ball is oscillating between the three colors without you looking. Then, you hit the stop button and open your eyes---the ball is now red.

The point is, it doesn't matter what color the ball was initially---once you hit the button and close your eyes, you know that when you open them there will be a 1/3 probability of any particular outcome.

This is like neutrinos---we have three flavors, electron, muon, and tau. When the neutrinos leave the sun, they are electron neutrinos. But as soon as they leave, they start oscillating, so that by the time they reach the Earth, they are more or evenly spread among the three flavors. That is, we see 1/3 electron neutrinos, 1/3 muon neutrinos, and 1/3 tau neutrinos.

If you'd like more math or a better explanation, let me know.

Well neutrinos have no mass to speak of so how do you know which neutrino you have detected ?

You don't. That's the problem. You can measure the rate at which they change flavors, and so you can measure the mass differences between the neutrinos. You can measure electron neutrinos, which is how they know that there's only a thrid as many as there's supposed to be.

Also, there are astrophysical bounds on the sum of all of the masses of the neutrinos---all three neutrinos together weigh something like 3 eV, which is something like 10^-5 times the mass of an electron.

OK,neutrino dpes not have mass in standard model,which is a bit backdated. So the more modern theories take neutrino mass in consideration.In fact,the theory of neutrino oscillation considers the non-zero neutrino mass.
Thanks BenTheMan for a fantastic idea

OK,neutrino dpes not have mass in standard model,which is a bit backdated. So the more modern theories take neutrino mass in consideration.In fact,the theory of neutrino oscillation considers the non-zero neutrino mass.

Well, neutrino masses can be put into the SM, the problem is that they don't get mass the way everything else does, and you introduce new scales into the problem. Physicists would say a mass term for the neutrino is not natural, and you have to treat it somewhat differently.

As far as I know there is Higgs boson to do something with these things.Could you please be elaborate to explain the function of Higgs boson?

Well the Higgs boson doesn't give mass to the neutrinos. Hmmm. I don't know if I can condense this at all...

I did write something here about higgses before. http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1290189&postcount=8

Basically, you can think of the higgs as coupling to chiral fermions, or, to a fermion anti-fermion pair. It's kind of a technical argument, but only in words. The math is easy.

Read the above link and I'll write something here later (I'm busy right now...). I'll give you some math to go with the words too.