We bring attention to the fact that in order to understand existing data on neutrino oscillations, and to design future experiments, it is imperative to appreciate the role of quantum entanglement. Once this is accounted for, the resulting energy-momentum conserving phenomenology requires a single new parameter related to disentanglement of a neutrino from its partners. This parameter may not be CP symmetric. We illustrate the new ideas, with potentially measurable effects, in the context of a novel experiment recently proposed by Gavrin, Gorbachev, Veretenkin, and Cleveland. The strongest impact of our ideas is on the resolution of various anomalies in neutrino oscillations and on neutrino propagation in astrophysical environments.
For neutrino oscillations to take place the entangled quantum state of a neutrino and a charged lepton produced via charged current interactions must be disentangled. Implementing a non-perturbative Wigner-Weisskopf method we obtain the correct \emph{entangled} quantum state of neutrinos and charged leptons from the (two-body) decay of a parent particle. The source lifetime and disentanglement length scale lead to a suppression of the oscillation probabilities in short-baseline experiments. The suppression is determined by $π\, L_s/L_{osc}$ where $L_s$ is the \emph{smallest} of the decay lengt…
In charged current weak interaction processes, neutrinos are produced in an entangled state with the charged lepton. This correlated state is disentangled by the measurement of the charged lepton in a detector at the production site. We study the dynamical aspects of disentanglement, propagation and detection, in particular the conditions under which the disentangled state is a coherent superposition of mass eigenstates. The appearance and disappearance far-detection processes are described from the time evolution of this disentangled "collapsed" state. The familiar quantum mechanical interpre…
An improved treatment of neutrino oscillations follows when neutrino mass eigenstates and their associated recoiling particle states are entangled. When the neutrino and its recoil partner are treated as a single entangled quantum state the conservation of energy and momentum in neutrino oscillations can be assured, even in a plane-wave treatment. The oscillation wavelength between the neutrino and its associated recoil partner emerges as the fundamental periodicity in this analysis. However, the experimentally determined oscillation wavelength for neutrinos detected at some distance from a kn…
We show that, despite appearances, a theoretical approach to neutrino oscillation in which the neutrino and its interaction partners are entangled yields the standard result for the neutrino oscillation wavelength. We also shed some light on the question of why plane-wave approaches to the neutrino oscillation problem can yield the correct oscillation wavelength even though they do not explicitly account for the localization of the neutrino source and the detector.
Mirror models lead to the possibility that neutron ($n$) can oscillate into its mirror partner ($n'$) inspiring several experimental searches for this phenomenon. The condition for observability of this oscillation is a high degree of degeneracy between the $n$ and $n'$ masses, which can be guaranteed if there is exact parity symmetry taking all particles to their mirror partners. However consistency of these models with big bang nucleosynthesis requires that this parity symmetry be broken in the early universe in a scenario called asymmetric inflation. In this paper we study the consistency o…
A consistent description of neutrino oscillations requires either the quantum-mechanical (QM) wave packet approach or a quantum field theoretic (QFT) treatment. We compare these two approaches to neutrino oscillations and discuss the correspondence between them. In particular, we derive expressions for the QM neutrino wave packets from QFT and relate the free parameters of the QM framework, in particular the effective momentum uncertainty of the neutrino state, to the more fundamental parameters of the QFT approach. We include in our discussion the possibilities that some of the neutrino's int…
We consider several subtle aspects of the theory of neutrino oscillations which have been under discussion recently. We show that the $S$-matrix formalism of quantum field theory can adequately describe neutrino oscillations if correct physics conditions are imposed. This includes space-time localization of the neutrino production and detection processes. Space-time diagrams are introduced, which characterize this localization and illustrate the coherence issues of neutrino oscillations. We discuss two approaches to calculations of the transition amplitudes, which allow different physics inter…
Of late, a number of instances of neutrino flux anomalies observed at short-baselines have given traction to the hypothesis of adding new neutrino flavours to our Standard Model set, albeit ones not associated with a partnered lepton. Anomalies observed at LSND, MiniBooNE and at short distances from nuclear reactors have suggested the existence of sterile mass states with masses on the scale of $\sim1\text{eV}$, prompting further investigations. Subsequently, Fermilab is set to host a Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) oscillation program which will cross-check each of these anomalies by deploying …
Observables of neutrino oscillations in matter have, in general, contributions from the effective matter potential. It contaminates the CP violation asymmetry adding a fake effect that has been recently disentangled from the genuine one by their different behavior under T and CPT. Is the genuine T-odd CPT-invariant component of the CP asymmetry coincident with the T asymmetry? Contrary to CP, matter effects in uniform matter cannot induce by themselves a non-vanishing T asymmetry; however, the question of the title remained open. We demonstrate that, in the presence of genuine CP violation, th…
These results represent the solution for the historical problem of the contamination by matter effects on the CPV Asymmetry for neutrino oscillations. Vacuum is CPT-symmetric and matter is T-symmetric, the goal is accomplished by using this guiding principle. Independent of the theoretical framework for the dynamics of the active neutrino flavors, we prove the Disentanglement Theorem A(CP)=A(CP, T)+A(CP, CPT) for the experimental CPV Asymmetry, with A(CP, T) genuine T-odd and A(CP, CPT) fake CPT-odd. For the effective Hamiltonian written as the sum of free mass propagation plus the matter pote…
Standard model of particle physics fails to explain neutrino oscillations, dark matter and baryon asymmetry of the Universe. All these problems can be solved with three sterile neutrinos added to the model. Quite remarkably, if sterile neutrino masses are well below the electroweak scale, this modification --- Neutrino Minimal Standard Model (nuMSM) --- can be tested experimentally. We discuss a new experiment on search for decays of GeV-scale sterile neutrinos, which in the framework of the nuMSM are responsible for the matter-antimatter asymmetry generation and for the active neutrino masses…
We explore parameter space in the Zee Model to resolve the long-standing tension of the electron and muon anomalous magnetic moment (AMM). The model comprises a second Higgs doublet and a charged singlet at electroweak scale and generates Majorana neutrino masses at one-loop level; the neutral partner of the $SU(2)_L$ doublet contributes to the AMM of electron and muon via one loop and two-loop corrections. We propose two minimal flavor structures that can explain these anomalies while fitting the neutrino oscillation data. We find that the neutral Higgs resides in the mass range of roughly 10…
A MINOS result seemed to hint a different anti-neutrino mass splitting and mixing angle with respect to the neutrino ones, offering a hint for a CPT violation in lepton sector. However more recent MINOS data reduced the neutrino-antineutrino differences leading to a narrow discrepancy almost compatible with no CPT violation, hard to be disentangled. Moreover last a few years of OPERA activity on tau appearance is still un-probed (one unique event). Both flavor muon-tau mixing, tau appearance and eventual CPT violation disentanglement need more tools to be enhanced. Atmospheric muon neutrino sp…
