The violation of equivalence principle and four neutrino oscillations for long baseline neutrinos

Violation of equivalence principle predicts that neutrinos of different flavor couple differently with gravity. Such a scenario can give rise to gravity induced flavor oscillations in addition to the usual mass flavor neutrino oscillations during the neutrino propagation. Even if the equivalence principle is indeed violated, their measure will be extremely small. We explore the possibility to probe the violation of equivalence principle (VEP) for the case of long baseline (LBL) neutrinos in a 4-flavor neutrino framework (3 active + 1 sterile) where both mass and gravity induced oscillations are considered. To this end, we have explicitly calculated the oscillation probability in 4-flavor framework that includes in addition to the mass-flavor mixing in matter, the gravity-flavor mixing also. The energy eigenvalues are then obtained by diagonalizing such a 4-flavor mixing matrix. The formalism is then employed to estimate the wrong and right sign muon yields at a far detector for neutrinos produced in a neutrino factory and travel through the Earth matter. These results are compared with the similar estimations when the usual three active neutrinos are considered.

The Future of Solar Neutrinos

In this article we review the current state of the field of solar neutrinos, including flavor oscillations, nonstandard effects, solar models, cross section measurements, and the broad experimental program thus motivated and enabled. We describe the historical discoveries that contributed to current knowledge, and define critical open questions to be addressed in the next decade. We discuss standard solar models, including uncertainties and problems related to the solar composition, and review experimental and model solar neutrino fluxes, including future prospects. We review the state of the art of the nuclear reaction data relevant for solar fusion in the proton–proton chain and carbon–nitrogen–oxygen cycle. Finally, we review the current and future experimental programs that can address outstanding questions in this field. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science, Volume 71 is September 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Chiral oscillations in the non-relativistic regime

Massive Dirac particles are a superposition of left and right chiral components. Since chirality is not a conserved quantity, the free Dirac Hamiltonian evolution induces chiral quantum oscillations, a phenomenon related to the Zitterbewegung, the trembling motion of free propagating particles. While not observable for particles in relativistic dynamical regimes, chiral oscillations become relevant when the particle’s rest energy is comparable to its momentum. In this paper, we quantify the effect of chiral oscillations on the non-relativistic evolution of a particle state described as a Dirac bispinor and specialize our results to describe the interplay between chiral and flavor oscillations of non-relativistic neutrinos: we compute the time-averaged survival probability and observe an energy-dependent depletion of the quantity when compared to the standard oscillation formula. In the non-relativistic regime, this depletion due to chiral oscillations can be as large as 40$$\%$$ % . Finally, we discuss the relevance of chiral oscillations in upcoming experiments which will probe the cosmic neutrino background.

Theory of neutrino detection: flavor oscillations and weak values

We revisit the theory of neutrino oscillations and describe it through the formalism of weak measurements with postselection. It is well understood that due to the large momentum uncertainty in detection, there is no collapse of the neutrino wavefunction in the momentum or energy basis, and the mass eigenstates are detected coherently. Here we show that postselection, which projects the system to a final flavor state, deforms the system wavefunction in such a way that the momentum detected is not the expectation value of the neutrino mass eigenstates momenta, but the corresponding weak value. We use the weak values to describe the intermediate state in the oscillation process, avoiding problems in defining probability currents for particle states with mass superposition.

Neutrino Oscillations in Neutrino-Dominated Accretion Around Rotating Black Holes

In the binary-driven hypernova model of long gamma-ray bursts, a carbon–oxygen star explodes as a supernova in the presence of a neutron star binary companion in close orbit. Hypercritical (i.e., highly super-Eddington) accretion of the ejecta matter onto the neutron star sets in, making it reach the critical mass with consequent formation of a Kerr black hole. We have recently shown that, during the accretion process onto the neutron star, fast neutrino flavor oscillations occur. Numerical simulations of the above system show that a part of the ejecta stays bound to the newborn Kerr black hole, leading to a new process of hypercritical accretion. We address herein, also for this phase of the binary-driven hypernova, the occurrence of neutrino flavor oscillations given the extreme conditions of high density (up to 1012 g cm−3) and temperatures (up to tens of MeV) inside this disk. We estimate the behavior of the electronic and non-electronic neutrino content within the two-flavor formalism (νeνx) under the action of neutrino collective effects by neutrino self-interactions. We find that in the case of inverted mass hierarchy, neutrino oscillations inside the disk have frequencies between ∼(105–109) s−1, leading the disk to achieve flavor equipartition. This implies that the energy deposition rate by neutrino annihilation (ν+ν¯→e−+e+) in the vicinity of the Kerr black hole is smaller than previous estimates in the literature not accounting for flavor oscillations inside the disk. The exact value of the reduction factor depends on the νe and νx optical depths but it can be as high as ∼5. The results of this work are a first step toward the analysis of neutrino oscillations in a novel astrophysical context, and as such, deserve further attention.