Neutrino flavor oscillations in a curved space-time

TL;DR

This paper derives a general expression for neutrino flavor oscillation phase shifts in curved spacetime using WKB approximation, and applies it to black hole and cosmological models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to calculate neutrino phase shifts in arbitrary gravitational fields, extending previous flat spacetime analyses.

Findings

Derived a general phase shift formula for neutrinos in curved spacetime

Applied the formula to Kerr-Newman black hole and FRW cosmology

Provided insights into neutrino oscillations influenced by gravity

Abstract

Using a WKB approximation of the Dirac equation in a curved spacetime, we obtain the expression for the phase shift between two neutrino mass eigenstates in a generic gravitational field. We apply this expression to two specific space-time geometries, namely the Kerr-Newman metric describing a rotating and charged black hole, and the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric.