Nonequilibrium Neutrino Oscillations in the Early Universe with an Inverted Neutrino-Mass Hierarchy

Abstract

The annihilation of electron-positron pairs around one second after the big bang distorts the Fermi-Dirac spectrum of neutrino energies. We determine the distortions assuming neutrino mixing with an inverted neutrino-mass hierarchy. Nonequilibrium thermodynamics, the Boltzmann equation, and numerical integration are used to achieve the results. The various types of neutrino behavior are established as a function of masses and mixing angles.Comment: 9 pages in Latex with 6 figures (10 postscript files