Stochastic Neutrino Mixing Mechanism

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic neutrino mixing mechanism with variable admixtures of mass eigenstates, offering a potential explanation for short-baseline neutrino anomalies and fitting diverse experimental data.

Contribution

It proposes a novel stochastic mixing model with Gaussian-distributed angles, extending beyond traditional neutrino oscillation theories to explain anomalies and experimental results.

Findings

Explains Gallium and reactor anomalies with stochastic mixing.

Fits high-energy experiment data with energy-dependent width.

Provides a unified framework for diverse neutrino experiments.

Abstract

We propose a mechanism which provides an explanation of the Gallium and antineutrino reactor anomalies. Differently from original Pontecorvo's hypothesis, this mechanism is based on the phenomenological assumption in which the admixture of neutrino mass eigenstates in the moments of neutrino creation and detection can assume different configurations around the admixture parametrized by the usual values of the mixing angles $\theta_{12}$, $\theta_{23}$ and $\theta_{13}$. For simplicity, we assume a Gaussian distribution for the mixing angles in such a way that the average value of this distribution is given by the usual values of the mixing angles and the width of the Gaussian is denoted by $\alpha$. We show that the proposed mechanism provides a possible explanation for very short-baseline neutrino disappearance, necessary to accommodate Gallium and antineutrino reactor anomalies, which is not allowed in usual neutrino oscillations based on Pontecorvo's original hypotheses. We also can describe high-energy oscillation experiments, like LSND, Fermi and NuTeV, assuming a weakly energy dependent width parameter, $\alpha(E)$, that nicely fits all experimental results.