Do many-particle neutrino interactions cause a novel coherent effect?

Alexander Friedland, Cecilia Lunardini

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

50 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate whether coherent flavor conversion of neutrinos in a neutrino background is substantially modified by many-body effects, with respect to the conventional one-particle effective description. We study the evolution of a system of interacting neutrino plane waves in a box. Using its equivalence to a system of spins, we determine the character of its behavior completely analytically. We find that, if the neutrinos are initially in flavor eigenstates, no coherent flavor conversion is realized, in agreement with the effective one-particle description. This result does not depend on the size of the neutrino wavepackets and therefore has a general character. The validity of the several important applications of the one-particle formalism is thus confirmed.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1079-1100
Number of pages22
JournalJournal of High Energy Physics
Volume7
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 1 2003
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Neutrino Physics
  • Neutrino and Gamma Astronomy

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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