Measuring entangled neutrino states in a toy model QFT

Abstract

Localized wave packet treatments of neutrino oscillations by various groups lead to mutually inconsistent predictions. The neutrino wave packet description arises as an approximate substitute for the evolution of an entangled state which is not localized. The disagreements arise from qualitative differences in the framework which are not specific to electroweak interactions, and so have analogues in simpler models. Therefore in this note we introduce a toy model which allows one to explicitly test these predictions while consistently keeping track of the entanglement of the neutrinos and the source particles. Our study is robust as we use only the Schrodinger picture evolution equations on the entangled state, which are solved explicitly without recourse to the wave packet approximation.