Neutrino decoherence in presence of strong gravitational fields

Chatelain, Amélie; Volpe, Maria Cristina

doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2019.135150

Cited by 34 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Here, σ xS represents the position space width of the neutrino wave packet produced at the source while σ xD denotes the same for the neutrino at the detector [32]. The same expression of coherence length continues to hold in the case of Schwarzschild geometry but with the flat spacetime distance L coh replaced by coordinate distance [33].…”

Section: Three Flavor Case: Numerical Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Signature of neutrino mass hierarchy in gravitational lensing

2020

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In flat spacetime, the vacuum neutrino flavor oscillations are known to be sensitive only to the difference between the squared masses, and not to the individual masses, of neutrinos. In this work, we show that the lensing of neutrinos induced by a gravitational source substantially modifies this standard picture and it gives rise to a novel contribution through which the oscillation probabilities also depend on the individual neutrino masses. A gravitating mass located between a source and a detector deflects the neutrinos in their journey, and at a detection point, neutrinos arriving through different paths can lead to the phenomenon of interference. The flavor transition probabilities computed in the presence of such interference depend on the individual masses of neutrinos whenever there is a nonzero path difference between the interfering neutrinos. We demonstrate this explicitly by considering an example of weak lensing induced by a Schwarzschild mass. Through the simplest two flavor case, we show that the oscillation probability in the presence of lensing is sensitive to the sign of Δm 2 ¼ m 2 2 − m 2 1 , for nonmaximal mixing between two neutrinos, unlike in the case of standard vacuum oscillation in flat spacetime. Further, the probability itself oscillates with respect to the path difference and the frequency of such oscillations depends on the absolute mass scale m 1 or m 2. We also give results for realistic three flavor case and discuss various implications of gravitationally modified neutrino oscillations and means of observing them.

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Section: Three Flavor Case: Numerical Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Signature of neutrino mass hierarchy in gravitational lensing

2020

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“…The study of neutrino mixing and oscillations has attracted much attention in the past decades and at present days in the theoretical [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and experimental [21][22][23][24][25] research activity. Apart from the interest in the specific phenomenon, it is clear that the understanding of the neutrino mixing and oscillations opens the doors to the physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) [26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neutrino mixing and oscillations in quantum field theory: a comprehensive introduction

Smaldone¹,

Vitiello²

2021

Preprint

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We review some of the main results of the quantum field theoretical approach to neutrino mixing and oscillations. We show that the quantum field theoretical framework, where flavor vacuum is defined, permits to give a precise definition of flavor states as eigenstates of (non-conserved) lepton charges. We obtain the exact oscillation formula which in the relativistic limit reproduces the Pontecorvo oscillation formula and illustrate some of the contradictions arising in the quantum mechanics approximation. We show that the gauge theory structure underlies the neutrino mixing phenomenon and that there exist entanglement between mixed neutrinos. The flavor vacuum is found to be an entangled generalized coherent state of SU (2). We also discuss flavor energy uncertainty relations, which imposes a lower bound on the precision of neutrino energy measurements and we show that the flavor vacuum inescapably emerges in certain classes of models with dynamical symmetry breaking.

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“…All of the above investigations have been performed in flat spacetime. Gravity effects on neutrino decoherence were addressed in [31] considering a static and spherically symmetric field described by the Schwarzschild metric. By adopting the density matrix formalism [29] with Gaussian WPs and exploiting previous achievements of [32][33][34], neutrino decoherence was quantified by a coherence coordinate distance and a proper time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this work we take a further step forward by studying neutrino decoherence in the gravitational field of a spinning spherical body of constant density and in the weak-field regime (Lense-Thirring metric) [35]. Following [31], we resort to the density matrix approach and evaluate the coherence length in terms of the neutrino local energy, which is the energy actually measured by a inertial observer at rest at finite radius in the gravitational field. In this sense, our calculation differs from that of [31], where the final result is exhibited as a function of the asymptotic energy of neutrinos.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following [31], we resort to the density matrix approach and evaluate the coherence length in terms of the neutrino local energy, which is the energy actually measured by a inertial observer at rest at finite radius in the gravitational field. In this sense, our calculation differs from that of [31], where the final result is exhibited as a function of the asymptotic energy of neutrinos. We show that it is possible to extract a separate gravitational contribution depending on the mass and angular velocity of the source.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gravitational effects on neutrino decoherence in Lense-Thirring metric

Luciano¹,

Blasone²

2021

Preprint

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We analyze gravity effects on neutrino wave packet decoherence. As a specific example, we consider the gravitational field of a spinning spherical body described by the Lense-Thirring metric. By working in the weak-field limit and employing Gaussian wave packets, we show that the characteristic coherence length of neutrino oscillation processes is nontrivially affected, the corrections being dependent on the mass and angular velocity of the gravity source. Possible experimental implications are finally discussed.

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Neutrino decoherence in presence of strong gravitational fields

Cited by 34 publications

References 33 publications

Signature of neutrino mass hierarchy in gravitational lensing

Signature of neutrino mass hierarchy in gravitational lensing

Neutrino mixing and oscillations in quantum field theory: a comprehensive introduction

Gravitational effects on neutrino decoherence in Lense-Thirring metric

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