Implications of CHOOZ results for the decoupling of solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillations

We have considered the results of solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillation experiments in the scheme of mixing of three neutrinos with a mass hierarchy. It is shown that the recent results of the CHOOZ experiment imply that |U_{e3}|^2<<1 (U is the neutrino mixing matrix), that the oscillations of solar neutrinos are described by the two-generation formalism and that the oscillations of solar and atmospheric neutrinos decouple. It is also shown that if not only |U_{e3}|^2<<1 but also |U_{e3}|<<1, then the oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos do not depend on matter effects and are described by the two-generation formalism. In this case, with an appropriate identification of the mixing parameters, the two-generation analyses of solar and atmospheric neutrino data provide direct information on the mixing parameters of three neutrinos. We discuss the possibility to get information on |U_{e3}|^2 in long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments.Comment: 12 pages, no figure

Possible tests for sterile neutrinos

It is shown that the future SNO and Super-Kamiokande experiments, in which high energy $^8\mathrm{B}$ neutrinos will be detected through the observation of CC, NC and $\nu$--$e$ elastic scattering processes, could allow to reveal in a model independent way the presence of sterile neutrinos in the flux of solar neutrinos on the earth.Comment: Latex file, 6 pages including 1 figure. The postscript file of text and figures is available at http://www.to.infn.it/teorici/giunti/papers.html or ftp://ftp.to.infn.it/pub/giunti/1995/dftt-84-95/dftt-84-95.p

Neutrino Mixing and Future Solar Neutrino Experiments

Possibilities of a model independent treatment of the data from future real-time solar neutrino experiments (SNO, Super-Kamiokande and others) are discussed. It is shown that in the general case of transitions of the initial solar $\nu_e$'s into $\nu_\mu$ and/or $\nu_\tau$ the total flux of initial 8B neutrinos and the $\nu_e$ survival probability can be determined directly from the experimental data. Lower bounds for the probability of transition of solar $\nu_e$'s into all possible sterile states are derived and expressed through measurable quantities.Comment: 3 pages. Compressed postscript file. If you prefer the uncompressed postscript file or a hardcopy of the paper, please write to [email protected]. Talk presented by S.M. Bilenky at TAUP93. DFTT 66/9

Bruno Pontecorvo and modern neutrino physics

In this review, dedicated to the centenary of the birth of the great neutrino physicists Bruno Pontecorvo, I am discussing proposed by him radiochemical method of neutrino detection, his idea of the μ-e universality of the weak interaction and proposal of the accelerator neutrino experiment which allowed to proof that νe and νμ are different particles. In some details I discuss Pontecorvo’s pioneer idea of neutrino masses, mixing and oscillations and the development of this idea by Pontecorvo and Gribov and Pontecorvo and myself

Bruno Pontecorvo — pioneer of neutrino oscillations

In this brief review, dedicated to the centenary of the birth of the great neutrino physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, I am discussing his major contribution to neutrino physics, mainly to the physics of neutrino oscillations

Neutrinoless double-beta decay with three or four neutrino mixing

Considering the scheme with mixing of three neutrinos and a mass hierarchy that can accommodate the results of solar and atmospheric neutrino experiments, it is shown that the results of solar neutrino experiments imply a lower bound for the effective Majorana mass in neutrinoless double-beta decay, under the natural assumptions that massive neutrinos are Majorana particles and there are no unlikely fine-tuned cancellations among the contributions of the different neutrino masses. Considering the four-neutrino schemes that can accommodate also the results of the LSND experiment, it is shown that only one of them is compatible with the results of neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments and with the measurement of the abundances of primordial elements produced in Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis. It is shown that in this scheme, under the assumptions that massive neutrinos are Majorana particles and there are no cancellations among the contributions of the different neutrino masses, the results of the LSND experiment imply a lower bound for the effective Majorana mass in neutrinoless double-beta decay.Comment: 18 pages including 2 figures, RevTe

Mossbauer neutrinos in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory

We demonstrate the correspondence between quantum mechanical and quantum field theoretical descriptions of Mossbauer neutrino oscillations. First, we compute the combined rate $\Gamma$ of Mossbauer neutrino emission, propagation, and detection in quantum field theory, treating the neutrino as an internal line of a tree level Feynman diagram. We include explicitly the effect of homogeneous line broadening due to fluctuating electromagnetic fields in the source and detector crystals and show that the resulting formula for $\Gamma$ is identical to the one obtained previously (Akhmedov et al., arXiv:0802.2513) for the case of inhomogeneous line broadening. We then proceed to a quantum mechanical treatment of Mossbauer neutrinos and show that the oscillation, coherence, and resonance terms from the field theoretical result can be reproduced if the neutrino is described as a superposition of Lorentz-shaped wave packet with appropriately chosen energies and widths. On the other hand, the emission rate and the detection cross section, including localization and Lamb-Mossbauer terms, cannot be predicted in quantum mechanics and have to be put in by hand.Comment: LaTeX, 16 pages, 1 figure; v2: typos corrected; matches published versio

Constraints on long-baseline neutrino oscillations from the results of neutrino oscillation experiments

It is shown that in the two schemes with four massive neutrinos which are compatible with the results of all neutrino oscillation experiments, the probabilities of nu_e disappearance and nu_mu->nu_e appearance in long-baseline experiments are severely constrained.Comment: 7 pages, including 2 figures. Talk presented by C. Giunti at TAUP97, September 7-11, 1997, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Ital

Neutrino oscillations and the effect of the finite lifetime of the neutrino source

We consider a neutrino source at rest and discuss a condition for the existence of neutrino oscillations which derives from the finite lifetime $\tau_S$ of the neutrino source particle. This condition is present if the neutrino source is a free particle such that its wave function is non-stationary. For a Gaussian wave function and with some simplifying assumptions, we study the modification of the usual oscillation probability stemming from $\tau_S$. In the present accelerator experiments the effect of $\tau_S$ can be neglected. We discuss some experimental situations where the source lifetime becomes relevant in the oscillation formula.Comment: 13 pages latex file with 2 figure

Precision Neutrino Oscillation Physics with an Intermediate Baseline Reactor Neutrino Experiment

We discuss the physics potential of intermediate $L \sim 20 \div 30$ km baseline experiments at reactor facilities, assuming that the solar neutrino oscillation parameters $\Delta m^2_{\odot}$ and $\theta_{\odot}$ lie in the high-LMA solution region. We show that such an intermediate baseline reactor experiment can determine both $\Delta m^2_{\odot}$ and $\theta_{\odot}$ with a remarkably high precision. We perform also a detailed study of the sensitivity of the indicated experiment to $\Delta m^2_{\rm atm}$, which drives the dominant atmospheric $\nu_{\mu}$ ($\bar{\nu}_{\mu}$) oscillations, and to $\theta$ - the neutrino mixing angle limited by the data from the CHOOZ and Palo Verde experiments. We find that this experiment can improve the bounds on $\sin^2\theta$. If the value of $\sin^2\theta$ is large enough, \sin^2\theta \gtap 0.02, the energy resolution of the detector is sufficiently good and if the statistics is relatively high, it can determine with extremely high precision the value of $\Delta m^2_{\rm atm}$. We also explore the potential of the intermediate baseline reactor neutrino experiment for determining the type of the neutrino mass spectrum, which can be with normal or inverted hierarchy. We show that the conditions under which the type of neutrino mass hierarchy can be determined are quite challenging, but are within the reach of the experiment under discussion.Comment: 25 page