Discerning the Nature of Neutrinos: Decoherence and Geometric Phases

We present new approaches to distinguish between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos. The first is based on the analysis of the geometric phases associated to neutrinos in matter, the second on the effects of decoherence on neutrino oscillations. In the former we compute the total and geometric phase for n...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Antonio Capolupo, Salvatore Marco Giampaolo, Gaetano Lambiase, Aniello Quaranta
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2020-11-01
Series:Universe
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1997/6/11/207
Description
Summary:We present new approaches to distinguish between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos. The first is based on the analysis of the geometric phases associated to neutrinos in matter, the second on the effects of decoherence on neutrino oscillations. In the former we compute the total and geometric phase for neutrinos, and find that they depend on the Majorana phase and on the parametrization of the mixing matrix. In the latter, we show that Majorana neutrinos might violate <inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mi>C</mi><mi>P</mi><mi>T</mi></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula> symmetry, whereas Dirac neutrinos preserve <inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mi>C</mi><mi>P</mi><mi>T</mi></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula>. A phenomenological analysis is also reported showing the possibility to highlight the distinctions between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos.
ISSN:2218-1997