Decoherence effect in neutrinos produced in micro-quasar jets

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quantum decoherence affects neutrino spectra emitted from micro-quasar jets, considering different neutrino mixing scenarios and the influence of neutrino-neutrino interactions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of neutrino decoherence effects in astrophysical jets, including conditions under which decoherence becomes significant in active-sterile neutrino mixing.

Findings

Decoherence is not evident with two active neutrinos at high neutrino-neutrino interaction strengths.

Decoherence manifests in active-sterile mixing when the interaction strength exceeds a threshold related to mass-squared differences.

The study offers criteria for when neutrino decoherence effects are relevant in astrophysical environments.

Abstract

We study the effect of decoherence upon the neutrino spectra produced in micro-quasar jets. In order to analyse the precession of the polarization vector of neutrinos we have calculated its time evolution by solving the corresponding equations of motion, and by assuming two different scenarios, namely: (i) the mixing between two active neutrinos, and (ii) the mixing between one active and one sterile neutrino. We have found that for the case with two active neutrinos and large values of the neutrino-neutrino interactions the onset of decoherence is not manifest. For the active-sterile scheme decoherence becomes manifest if the strength of the neutrino-neutrino interactions ($\mu$) and the ratio between the square-mass difference and the energy ($\omega=\frac{\delta m^2}{2 E}$) satisfy the relation $\frac{\mu}{w_{E=E_{\rm min}}}>0.1$.