Majorana phase and matter effects in neutrino chiral oscillation

Abstract

Due to finite masses and mixing, for neutrinos propagation in space-time, there is a chiral oscillation between left- and right- chiral neutrinos, besides the usual oscillation between different generations. The probability of chiral oscillation is suppressed by a factor of m2/E2 making the effect small for relativistic neutrinos. However, for non-relativistic neutrinos, this effect can be significant. In matter, the equation of motion is modified. When neutrinos produced in weak interaction pass through the matter, the eigen-energies are split into two different ones depending on the helicity of the neutrino. This results in different oscillation behavior for neutrinos with different helicity, in particular there is a new resonant effect related to the helicity state of neutrino different than the usual MSW effect. For Majorana neutrinos, chiral oscillation also depends on Majorana phases.