Majorana neutrino oscillations in vacuum

TL;DR

This paper derives probability densities for Majorana neutrino oscillations in vacuum within a type I seesaw framework, highlighting differences between light and heavy neutrino oscillations and their phenomenological implications.

Contribution

It provides a quantum field theory-based derivation of Majorana neutrino oscillation probabilities, including both light and heavy neutrinos, extending standard results to non-relativistic regimes.

Findings

Standard oscillation formulas recovered for light neutrinos in ultra-relativistic limit.

Heavy neutrino oscillation expressions differ in non-relativistic limit.

Phenomenological restrictions on heavy neutrino oscillations are discussed.

Abstract

In the context of a type I seesaw scenario which leads to get light left-handed and heavy right-handed Majorana neutrinos, we obtain expressions for the transition probability densities between two flavor neutrinos in the cases of left-handed and right-handed neutrinos. We obtain these expressions in the context of an approach developed in the canonical formalism of Quantum Field Theory for neutrinos which are considered as superpositions of mass-eigenstate plane waves with specific momenta. The expressions obtained for the left-handed neutrino case after the ultra-relativistic limit is taking lead to the standard probability densities which describe light neutrino oscillations. For the right-handed neutrino case, the expressions describing heavy neutrino oscillations in the non-relativistic limit are different respect to the ones of the standard neutrino oscillations. However, the right-handed neutrino oscillations are phenomenologically restricted as is shown when the propagation of heavy neutrinos is considered as superpositions of mass-eigenstate wave packets.