Entangled Neutrino States in a Toy Model QFT

TL;DR

This paper presents a simplified quantum field theory model demonstrating how neutrino entanglement and environmental interactions influence neutrino oscillations and decoherence, challenging some existing conjectures.

Contribution

It introduces a toy model that explicitly calculates neutrino wave functions, including entanglement and environmental effects, to test conjectures about neutrino oscillation behavior.

Findings

Neutrino oscillations are reduced by environmental decoherence.

Only the difference in environmental interactions before and after emission affects oscillation amplitude.

The model provides explicit calculations supporting the study of decoherence effects.

Abstract

It has been claimed that wave packets must be covariant and also that decohered neutrino oscillations are always revived during measurement. These conjectures are supported by general arguments which are not specific to the electroweak theory, and so if they are true for neutrinos they will also be true for simplified models. In this paper we produce such a simplified model in which the neutrino wave function, including its entanglement with the source particle and the environment, can be calculated explicitly in quantum field theory. It exhibits neutrino oscillation, which is reduced at late times by decoherence due to interactions of the source with the environment. One simple lesson from this model is that only the difference between the environmental interactions before and after neutrino emission can reduce the amplitude of neutrino oscillations. The model will be used to test the conjectures in a companion paper.