2003/04/30 by Alexander Friedland, Cecilia Lunardini · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Measurements of neutrino speed #Neutrino #Neutrino Physics Research #Neutrino oscillation #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Scattering #Solar neutrino #Sterile neutrino #Supernova #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.68.013007
published as Phys.Rev. D68 (2003) 013007 · 12 pages, 3 figures, minor typos corrected
openalex publication_date 2003/07/16 · arxiv created 2003/07/22 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In the early Universe, or near a supernova core, neutrino flavor evolution may be affected by coherent neutrino-neutrino scattering. We develop a microscopic picture of this phenomenon. We show that coherent scattering does not lead to the formation of entangled states in the neutrino ensemble and therefore the evolution of the system can always be described by a set of one-particle equations. We also show that the previously accepted formalism overcounts the neutrino interaction energy; the correct one-particle evolution equations for both active-active and active-sterile oscillations contain additional terms. These additional terms modify the index of refraction of the neutrino medium, but have no effect on oscillation physics.