Quantum Coherence of Relic Neutrinos

Abstract

We argue that in at least a portion of the history of the universe the relic background neutrinos are spatially-extended, coherent superpositions of mass states. We show that an appropriate quantum mechanical treatment affects the neutrino mass values derived from cosmological data. The coherence scale of these neutrino flavor wavepackets can be an appreciable fraction of the causal horizon size, raising the possibility of spacetime curvature-induced decoherence.

4 pages, 4 figures; matches publication in PRL

References in corpus (5)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Three-flavour neutrino oscillation update
• Lepton Number-Driven Sterile Neutrino Production in the Early Universe
• Testing Gravity-Driven Collapse of the Wavefunction via Cosmogenic Neutrinos
• Cosmological Neutrino Entanglement and Quantum Pressure

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Collective Neutrino Oscillations
• Neutrino Quantum Kinetics
• Decoherence and thermalization of a pure quantum state in quantum field theory
• Probing neutrino physics with a self-consistent treatment of the weak decoupling, nucleosynthesis, and photon decoupling epochs
• Using Big Bang Nucleosynthesis to Extend CMB Probes of Neutrino Physics
• Cosmic Neutrino Last Scattering Surface
• Nuclear weak interaction rates in primordial nucleosynthesis
• The C$\nu$B energy density through the quantum measurement theory
• Ultra High Energy Neutrinos: Absorption, Thermal Effects and Signatures
• Effect of neutrino rest mass on ionization equilibrium freeze-out
• Cosmological neutrino entropy changes due to flavor statistical mixing
• Quantum measurement schemes related to flavor-weighted energies
• Nonperturbative Quantum Field Theory in Astrophysics