Neutrino Mixing and Oscillations in Quantum Field Theory: A Comprehensive Introduction

Abstract

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 giving 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 illustrates 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 exists 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 impose 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.

Snowmass white paper: beyond the standard model effects on neutrino flavor

“…A class of models with nonzero decoherence is especially interesting because that could be used to explain neutrino data anomalies [444][445][446][447], or be a source of CPT violation [448], or for certain models, it would give us a hint of the existence of nonzero CP-Majorana phase [449]. Neutrino coherent oscillation data are also used to test alternative quantum mechanics models [450,451].…”

Snowmass White Paper: Beyond the Standard Model effects on Neutrino Flavor

“…A class of models with nonzero decoherence is especially interesting because that could be used to explain neutrino data anomalies [442][443][444][445], or be a source of CPT violation [446], or for certain models, it would give us a hint of the existence of non-zero CP-Majorana phase [447]. Neutrino coherent oscillation data are also used to test alternative quantum mechanics models [448,449].…”

Microscopic and Macroscopic Effects in the Decoherence of Neutrino Oscillations

“…However, since the energy range of interest is much larger than the central value of D p which is suppressed by the neutrino mass, in Eq. (33) we consider the second layer weighting function H E (E; E 0 ) for the energy uncertainty. Hence, the contour lines in Fig.…”