Dynamical pion collapse and the coherence of conventional neutrino beams
Name
PhysRevD.91.053002.pdf
Size
2.45 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
e562d65de100b221b778ec434231c76e
Author(s)
Jones, Benjamin James Poyner
Date Issued
March 2015
Journal
Physical Review D
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Jones, B. J. P. “Dynamical Pion Collapse and the Coherence of Conventional Neutrino Beams.” Physical Review D 91.5 (2015). © 2015 American Physical Society.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
In this paper we consider the coherence properties of neutrinos produced by the decays of pions in conventional neutrino beams. Using a multiparticle density matrix formalism we derive the oscillation probability for neutrinos emitted by a decaying pion in an arbitrary quantum state. Then, using methods from decoherence theory, we calculate the pion state which evolves through interaction with decay-pipe gases in a typical accelerator neutrino experiment. These two ingredients are used to obtain the distance scales for neutrino beam coherence loss. We find that for the known neutrino mass splittings, no nonstandard oscillation effects are expected on terrestrial baselines. Heavy sterile neutrinos may experience terrestrial loss of coherence, and we calculate both the distance over which this occurs and the energy resolution required to observe the effect. By treating the pion-muon-neutrino-environment system quantum mechanically, neutrino beam coherence properties are obtained without assuming arbitrary spatial or temporal scales at the neutrino production vertex.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.91.053002
