https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-4143-4
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Wave-packet treatment of reactor neutrino oscillation experiments and its implications on determining the neutrino mass hierarchy
1
Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong
2
RCCN, ICRR, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa-no-ha, Kashiwa, Chiba, Japan
3
Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China
* e-mail: wongchf@mail.sysu.edu.cn
Received:
1
March
2016
Accepted:
16
May
2016
Published online:
3
June
2016
We derive the neutrino flavor transition probabilities with the neutrino treated as a wave packet. The decoherence and dispersion effects from the wave-packet treatment show up as damping and phase-shifting of the plane-wave neutrino oscillation patterns. If the energy uncertainty in the initial neutrino wave packet is larger than around 0.01 of the neutrino energy, the decoherence and dispersion effects would degrade the sensitivity of reactor neutrino experiments to mass hierarchy measurement to lower than 3 
confidence level.
© The Author(s), 2016
