Coherence of oscillations in matter and supernova neutrinos

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Publication:5028752

DOI10.1088/1475-7516/2021/06/029zbMATH Open1485.85015arXiv2103.10149OpenAlexW3167553137MaRDI QIDQ5028752FDOQ5028752

Alexei Yu. Smirnov, Yago P. Porto-Silva

Publication date: 10 February 2022

Published in: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We study the propagation coherence for neutrino oscillations in media with different density profiles. For each profile, we find the dependence of the coherence length, Lcoh, on neutrino energy and address the issue of correspondence of results in the distance and energy-momentum representations. The key new feature in matter is existence of energy ranges with enhanced coherence around the energies E0 of "infinite coherence" at which Lcohightarrowinfty. In the configuration space, the infinite coherence corresponds to equality of the (effective) group velocities of the eigenstates. In constant density medium, there is a unique E0, which coincides with the MSW resonance energy of oscillations of mass states and is close to the MSW resonance energy of flavor states. In the case of massless neutrinos or negligible masses in a very dense medium the coherence persists continuously. In the adiabatic case, the infinite coherence is realized for periodic density change. Adiabaticity violation changes the shape factors of the wave packets (WPs) and leads to their spread. In a medium with sharp density changes (jumps), splitting of the eigenstates occurs at crossing of each jump. We study the increase of the coherence length in a single jump and periodic density jumps - castle-wall (CW) profiles. For the CW profile, there are several E0 corresponding to parametric resonances. We outlined applications of the results for supernova neutrinos. In particular, we show that coherence between two shock wave fronts leads to observable oscillation effects, and our analysis suggests that the decoherence can be irrelevant for flavor transformations in the central parts of collapsing stars.


Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.10149




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