Interactions and oscillations of coherent flavor eigenstates in beta decay

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the Blasone-Vitiello theory affects neutron beta decay spectra, finding agreement with the Standard Model for relativistic neutrinos but predicting measurable discrepancies near the endpoint energy.

Contribution

It extends the Blasone-Vitiello theory to neutron beta decay and analyzes potential experimental signatures of neutrino flavor coherence effects.

Findings

Spectrum matches Standard Model for relativistic neutrinos

Discrepancies appear near the electron energy endpoint

Potential for future experimental detection of effects

Abstract

The theory pioneered by Blasone and Vitiello describes massive neutrinos as generalized coherent flavor eigenstates within the extended Standard Model. In this paper, we compute the neutron beta decay spectrum for the Blasone-Vitiello theory in a model with two neutrinos. For relativistic neutrinos, the obtained spectrum is in agreement with the Standard Model. However, there are discrepancies when the kinetic energy of the electron is close to the end point energy. The possibility of measuring the discrepancies in future experiments is discussed.