Neutrino diffraction induced by many body interaction

TL;DR

This paper discusses a novel neutrino diffraction phenomenon caused by many-body interactions during pion decay, leading to a finite-size correction in detection probability that depends on neutrino mass and energy, and proposes a new method for measuring neutrino mass.

Contribution

It introduces a new diffraction effect in neutrino production due to many-body interactions and suggests a method to determine the absolute neutrino mass.

Findings

Neutrino diffraction arises from many-body interactions during pion decay.

Detection probability includes a finite-size correction dependent on neutrino mass and energy.

The correction is significant at macroscopic distances in ground experiments.

Abstract

The neutrino produced in the pion decay reveals a new diffraction phenomenon due to many-body interactions in an intermediate time region when wave functions of the parent and daughters overlap. Because of diffraction, the probability to detect the neutrino involves a large finite-size correction that depends on the neutrino mass, $m_{\nu}$ and energy, $E_{\nu}$, the speed of light, $c$, and the distance $L$ between the positions of the initial pion and final neutrino, ${m_{\nu}^2c^4 L}/{(2E_{\nu}\hbar)}$. The correction vanishes for the charged leptons and is finite for the neutrino at a macroscopic distance, $L$, of near-detector regions in ground experiments. A new method for determining the absolute neutrino mass is proposed.