Chiral and flavor oscillations in a hyperentangled neutrino state

Abstract

In addition to flavor oscillations, Dirac neutrinos also undergo the so-called chiral oscillations, a consequence of the free-particle dynamics under the Dirac equation. Such a transition between different chiralities affect the flavor transitions, but also can generate non-trivial correlations between the internal degrees of freedom of the particle. In this paper, we show that the state of a massive oscillating neutrino produced by weak interaction process, is an hyperentangled state, in which flavor, chirality, and spin exhibit non-trivial correlations. Using complete complementarity relations, we show that both chiral and flavor oscillations redistribute correlations and coherence in time among different partitions of the system. In a similar way, we consider a spin entangled lepton-antineutrino pair and show that there is a dynamical redistribution of spin-spin entanglement into correlations and coherence between the other degrees-of-freedom. Our analysis provides a complete characterization of the quantum correlations involved in lepton-antineutrino pairs and in single particle neutrino evolution, and provides a further insight on possible routes to interpret and measure chiral oscillations.