https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-11090-6
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Where neutrino decoherence lies
1
Institute of Modern Physics, NanChangLu 509, 730000, Lanzhou, China
2
University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, YuQuanLu 19A, 100049, Beijing, China
Received:
28
June
2022
Accepted:
30
November
2022
Published online:
6
December
2022
Recently, several studies of neutrino oscillations in the vacuum have not found the decoherence long expected from the separation of wave packets of neutrinos in different mass eigenstates. We show that such decoherence will, on the other hand, be present in a treatment including any mechanism which leads to a dependence of the final state on both the neutrino’s emission and absorption time. Using a simplified model in 
d, we show that if the positions of the final state particles are measured, or equivalently entangled with the environment, then decoherence will damp neutrino oscillations. We also show that wave packet spreading can cause the decoherence to eventually saturate, without completely suppressing the oscillations. These results are not an artifact of the approximation used: we show that, considering the 
model in 
d, the difference would be simply a total multiplicative factor that would not affect the oscillation probability nor the decoherence.
© The Author(s) 2022
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