Exploring supernova neutrino mass ordering at DUNE via quantum entanglement

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quantum entanglement can be used to analyze supernova neutrino oscillations at DUNE, aiming to determine the neutrino mass ordering with high confidence.

Contribution

It introduces an entanglement-based framework for studying supernova neutrino flavor conversion and mass ordering sensitivity at DUNE, combining quantum information measures with detector simulations.

Findings

DUNE can determine neutrino mass ordering at 5σ for supernovae within ~20 kpc.

Entanglement measures correlate with flavor transition probabilities, providing new analysis tools.

The approach enhances robustness and complements traditional methods in supernova neutrino studies.

Abstract

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) offers strong sensitivity to neutrinos from a Galactic core collapse supernova, providing a powerful probe of neutrino flavor conversion and the neutrino mass ordering. In this work, we study supernova neutrino oscillations at DUNE using quantum entanglement as an organizing framework. Treating the three flavor neutrino system as an effective multipartite quantum state, we quantify flavor correlations through the entanglement of formation, concurrence, and negativity, expressed directly in terms of flavor survival and transition probabilities. Benchmark scenarios defined by representative variations of the electron neutrino survival probability are constructed for each entanglement measure. Event rates and fluences are computed for a supernova at 10 kpc, and the mass ordering sensitivity is evaluated using detector-level simulations performed with the \texttt{SNOwGLoBES} framework, employing the Garching supernova flux model and including the dominant detection channels in liquid argon: $\nu_e$ and $\bar{\nu}_e$ charged-current interactions on argon and elastic scattering on electrons. We analyze both individual and combined detection channels and incorporate $5\%$ normalization and energy calibration systematic uncertainties. Our results show that DUNE achieves a $5\sigma$ determination of the neutrino mass ordering for a supernova at distances of $\sim 20$~kpc for the $\nu_e$ charged current channel and $\sim 2$~kpc for the $\bar{\nu}_e$ channel, with the reach depending on the entanglement scenario considered. These results demonstrate that entanglement based observables provide a complementary and robust framework for probing supernova neutrino oscillations and the neutrino mass ordering.