Neutrinos

In the Standard Model, neutrinos are strange anomalies. They are massless in the original formulation, interact weakly, and undergo flavour oscillation. Later modifications gave them small masses via mechanisms like the seesaw model—but these are retrofits.

In modal dynamics, neutrinos are not anomalies. They are natural consequences of minimally anchored modes—coherent structures that resist decoherence but couple only faintly to the surrounding field.

Structure of a Neutrino

A neutrino is a mode with:

• Minimal coherence amplitude $\rho (x)$
• Smooth, low-gradient phase $\varphi (x)$
• Weak or no topological asymmetry (i.e., neutral winding)
• Partial anchoring—enough to persist, but not enough to strongly shape $B(x)$

Such a mode:

• Moves near light speed, but not exactly at it
• Responds weakly to coherence gradients
• Persists across long distances with minimal decay
• Rarely anchors into dense coherence fields

These are not features—they are the definition of a neutrino in the coherence framework.

Coherence Drift and Mass

Because neutrinos are not fully latent (like photons), they have a small anchoring cost. This causes their phase structure to drift over time, slightly lagging behind the coherence envelope. This structural lag appears as mass.

No scalar field or symmetry breaking is needed:

Mass is a measure of anchoring resistance.
Neutrinos anchor just enough to accumulate it slowly.

Oscillation Without Flavour

In modal dynamics, there is no need to assign flavour states or mixing matrices. Neutrino oscillation arises from:

• Phase structure evolution along the propagation path
• Rotational degrees of freedom in minimally anchored topologies
• Sensitivity to the coherence field $B(x)$ they move through

What appears as “oscillation” is actually a slow structural rotation of the internal phase, not a switch between quantum states.

Why Neutrinos Are So Hard to See

They don’t interact via force.
They don’t decay via coupling.
They simply fail to anchor in most coherence environments.

Detection occurs only when:

• Coherence gradients are sharp enough to trigger a structural reaction
• The neutrino enters a saturated region and decoheres into anchored modes

This explains both:

• Their near-invisibility
• Their occasional conversion into measurable products

(See Appendix N — Neutrino Mass from Coherence Anchoring Deficit).

Neutrinos are not particles.
They are coherence drifters—modes that carry phase with minimal cost, tracing the long tail of modal persistence.