Dissipative neutrino oscillations in randomly fluctuating matter

Abstract

The generalized dynamics describing the propagation of neutrinos in randomly fluctuating media is analyzed: it takes into account matter-induced, decoherence phenomena that go beyond the standard MSW effect. A widely adopted density fluctuation pattern is found to be physically untenable: a more general model needs to be instead considered, leading to flavor changing effective neutrino-matter interactions. They induce new, dissipative effects that modify the neutrino oscillation pattern in a way amenable to a direct experimental analysis.Comment: 14 pages, plain-Te