https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-7840-y
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Quantification of quantumness in neutrino oscillations
1
School of Physics and Material Science, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, People’s Republic of China
2
School of Physics, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China
3
CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, People’s Republic of China
* e-mail: dwang@ahu.edu.cn
Received:
2
January
2020
Accepted:
13
March
2020
Published online:
26
March
2020
Neutrino oscillation is an important physical phenomenon in elementary particle physics, and its nonclassical features can be revealed by the Leggett–Garg inequality. It shows that its quantum coherence can be sustained over astrophysical length scales. In this work, we investigate the measure of quantumness in experimentally observed neutrino oscillations via the nonlocal advantage of quantum coherence (NAQC), quantum steering, and Bell nonlocality. From various neutrino sources, ensembles of reactor and accelerator neutrinos are analyzed at distinct energies, such as Daya Bay (0.5 km and 1.6 km) and MINOS (735 km) collaborations. The NAQC of two-flavor neutrino oscillation is characterized experimentally compared to the theoretical prediction. It exhibits non-monotonously evolutive phenomenon with the increase of energy. Furthermore, it is found that the NAQC is a stronger quantum correlation than quantum steering and Bell nonlocality even in the order of km. Hence, for an arbitrary bipartite neutrino-flavor state with achieving a NAQC, it must be also a steerable and Bell nonlocal state. The results might offer an insight into the neutrino oscillation for the further applications on quantum information processing.
© The Author(s), 2020