Neutrino oscillation with flavor non-eigenstates and CP-violating Majorana phases

TL;DR

This paper investigates how neutrino oscillation probabilities are affected by initial states that are not pure flavor eigenstates, revealing that CP-violating Majorana phases influence detection probabilities even with realistic energy spectra.

Contribution

It demonstrates that initial neutrino states not in flavor eigenstates can reveal CP-violating Majorana phases through oscillation probabilities, a novel insight in neutrino physics.

Findings

Detection probabilities depend on Majorana phases.

Dependence persists with realistic energy spectra.

Implications for neutrino oscillation experiments.

Abstract

We analyze neutrino oscillation for the general case when the initial neutrino is not in a pure flavor state. We show that, after such a neutrino beam propagates for a while, the probability of detecting any pure flavor state depends even on the CP-violating Majorana phases in the mixing matrix. The dependence remains even when energy spectrum of the initial beam is taken into account. We discuss various implications of this dependence.