Quantum Gravitational Decoherence in the 3 Neutrino Flavor Scheme

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quantum gravitational effects could cause decoherence in high-energy astrophysical neutrinos within a three-flavor framework, potentially revealing dark matter properties and affecting neutrino flux observations.

Contribution

It introduces a model of quantum gravitational decoherence in a three-neutrino scheme considering dark sectors, linking symmetry violations to dark matter fermion count and predicting observable neutrino flux ratios.

Findings

Decoherence effects depend on dark matter fermion number.

Predicted neutrino flux and flavor ratios vary with source composition.

Quantum gravity may violate global symmetries, affecting neutrino behavior.

Abstract

In many theories of quantum gravity quantum fluctuations of spacetime may serve as an environment for decoherence. Here we study quantum-gravitational decoherence of high energy astrophysical neutrinos in the presence of fermionic dark sectors and for a realistic three neutrino scenario. We show how violation of global symmetries expected to arise in quantum gravitational interactions provides a possibility to pin down the number of dark matter fermions in the universe. Furthermore, we predict the expected total neutrino flux and flavor ratios at experiments depending on the flavor composition at the source.