Quantum Coherence of Relic Neutrinos
Astrophysics
2010-04-30 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Abstract
We argue that in at least a portion of the history of the universe the relic background neutrinos are spatially-extended, coherent superpositions of mass states. We show that an appropriate quantum mechanical treatment affects the neutrino mass values derived from cosmological data. The coherence scale of these neutrino flavor wavepackets can be an appreciable fraction of the causal horizon size, raising the possibility of spacetime curvature-induced decoherence.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0811.4370,
title = {Quantum Coherence of Relic Neutrinos},
author = {George M. Fuller and Chad T. Kishimoto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0811.4370},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
4 pages, 4 figures; matches publication in PRL