Gallium radioactive source experiments have reported a neutrino-induced event rate about 20\% lower than expected with a high statistical significance. We present an explanation of this observation assuming quantum decoherence of the neutrinos in the gallium detectors at a scale of 2~m. This explanation is consistent with global data on neutrino oscillations, including solar neutrinos, if decoherence effects decrease quickly with energy, for instance with a power law Eν−r with r≃12. Our proposal does not require the presence of sterile neutrinos but implies a modification of the standard quantum mechanical evolution equations for active neutrinos.
@article{arxiv.2306.09422,
title = {A decoherence explanation of the gallium neutrino anomaly},
author = {Yasaman Farzan and Thomas Schwetz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.09422},
year = {2023}
}