Charged lepton mixing and oscillations from neutrino mixing in the early Universe

Abstract

Charged lepton mixing as a consequence of neutrino mixing is studied for two generations $e,\mu$ in the temperature regime $m_{\mu }\ll T\ll M_W$ in the early Universe. We state the general criteria for charged lepton mixing, critically reexamine aspects of neutrino equilibration and provide arguments to suggest that neutrinos may equilibrate as mass eigenstates in the temperature regime \emph{prior} to flavor equalization. We assume this to be the case, and that neutrino mass eigenstates are in equilibrium with different chemical potentials. Charged lepton self-energies are obtained to leading order in the electromagnetic and weak interactions. The upper bounds on the neutrino asymmetry parameters from CMB and BBN without oscillations, combined with the fit to the solar and KamLAND data for the neutrino mixing angle, suggest that for the two generation case there is resonant \emph{charged lepton} mixing in the temperature range $T\sim 5\mathrm{GeV}$. In this range the charged lepton oscillation frequency is of the same order as the electromagnetic damping rate.

arXiv comment17 pages, 2 figs, same results with more discussions on quantum Zeno effect. To appear in Astroparticle Physics

References in corpus (8)

• First Results from KamLAND: Evidence for Reactor Anti-Neutrino Disappearance
• QUANTUM FIELD THEORY OF FERMION MIXING
• Non-Abelian Boltzmann Equation for Mixing and Decoherence
• Lifetime of quasiparticles in hot QED plasmas
• The Bloch-Nordsieck propagator at finite temperature
• Cosmological Implications of Neutrinos
• Neutrino Masses in Astroparticle Physics
• Time-to-space conversion in quantum field theory of flavor mixing

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Flavoured quantum Boltzmann equations from cQPA
• Sterile neutrino production via active-sterile oscillations: the quantum Zeno effect
• Flavour-coherent propagators and Feynman rules: Covariant cQPA formulation
• Sterile neutrinos produced near the EW scale I: mixing angles, MSW resonances and production rates
• Production of a sterile species via active-sterile mixing: an exactly solvable model
• Non equilibrium dynamics of mixing, oscillations and equilibration: a model study
• Charged lepton mixing via heavy sterile neutrinos
• Production of a sterile species: quantum kinetics