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Register a new userNeutrino decoherence in presence of strong gravitational fields
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Added by
Am\\'elie Chatelain
Publication date
2019
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We explore the impact of strong gravitational fields on neutrino decoherence. To this aim, we employ the density matrix formalism to describe the propagation of neutrino wave packets in curved spacetime. By considering Gaussian wave packets, we determine the coherence proper time, neglecting the effect of matter outside the compact object. We show that strong gravitational fields nearby compact objects significantly influence neutrino coherence.
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We study decoherence effects in neutrino flavor oscillations in curved spacetime with particular emphasis on the lensing in a Schwarzschild geometry. Assuming Gaussian wave packets for neutrinos, we argue that the decoherence length derived from the exponential suppression of the flavor transition probability depends on the proper time of the geodesic connecting the events of the production and detection in general gravitational setting. In the weak gravity limit, the proper time between two events of given proper distance is smaller than that in the flat spacetime. Therefore, in presence of a Schwarzschild object, the neutrino wave packets have to travel relatively more physical distance in space to lapse the same amount of proper time before they decoher. For non-radial propagation applicable to the lensing phenomena, we show that the decoherence, in general, is sensitive to the absolute values of neutrino masses as well as the classical trajectories taken by neutrinos between the source and detector along with the spatial widths of neutrino wave packets. At distances beyond the decoherence length, the probability of neutrino flavor transition due to lensing attains a value which depends only on the leptonic mixing parameters. Hence, the observability of neutrino lensing significantly depends on these parameters and in-turn the lensing can provide useful information about the latter.
Inspired in the work of Erich Joos which appreciated the role played by matter in making the decoherence of the gravitational field, we developed an alternative way of treating the former problem. Besides this, we used the alternative approach to examine the decoherence of the electric field performed by the conduction electrons in metals. As a counterpoint, we studied the coherence of the electric color field inside nucleons, which renders the strong field a totally quantum character.
In flat spacetime, the vacuum neutrino flavour 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 flavour transition probabilities computed in the presence of such interference depend on the individual masses of neutrinos whenever there is a non-zero 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 flavour case, we show that the oscillation probability in the presence of lensing is sensitive to the sign of $Delta m^2 = m_2^2 -m_1^2$, for non-maximal 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 flavour case and discuss various implications of gravitationally modified neutrino oscillations and means of observing them.
We simulate neutrino-antineutrino oscillations caused by strong magnetic fields in dense matter. With the strong magnetic fields and large neutrino magnetic moments, Majorana neutrinos can reach flavor equilibrium. We find that the flavor equilibration of neutrino-antineutrino oscillations is sensitive to the values of the baryon density and the electron fraction inside the matter. The neutrino-antineutrino oscillations are suppressed in the case of the large baryon density in neutron (proton)-rich matter. On the other hand, the flavor equilibration occurs when the electron fraction is close to $0.5$ even in the large baryon density. From the simulations, we propose a necessary condition for the equilibration of neutrino-antineutrino oscillations in dense matter. We also study whether such necessary condition is satisfied near the proto-neutron star by using results of neutrino hydrodynamic simulations of core-collapse supernovae. In our explosion model, the flavor equilibration would be possible if the magnetic field on the surface of the proto-neutron star is larger than $10^{14}$ G which is the typical value of the magnetic fields of magnetars.
A new theoretical framework, based on the quantum field theory of open systems applied to neutrinos, has been developed to describe the neutrino evolution in external environments accounting for the effect of the neutrino quantum decoherence. The developed new approach enables one to obtain the explicit expressions of the decoherence and relaxation parameters that account for a particular process, in which the neutrino participates, and also for the characteristics of an external environment and of the neutrino itself, including the neutrino energy. We have used this approach to consider a new mechanism of the neutrino quantum decoherence engendered by the neutrino radiative decay to photons and dark photons in an astrophysical environment. The importance of the performed studies is highlighted by the prospects of the forthcoming new large volume neutrino detectors that will provide new frontier in high-statistics measurements of neutrino fluxes from supernovae.
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