Quasi-Classical Gravity Effect on Neutrino Oscillations in a Gravitational Field of a Heavy Astrophysical Object

Figure 2

Shown are diagrams of neutrino propagation in the quantum field theoretical description (such as found in [22]). The neutrino is described as a stretched propagator between the production () and detection () (b) weak processes (with initial and final states denoted by subscripts and ). In the case of quantum decoherence (a), the emission of a graviton in between the production and detection processes means that the neutrino exists in a definitive mass state since both the propagation Hamiltonian and graviton interaction Hamiltonian conserve mass. The quantum decoherence effect described here follows from the discussion in Section 2 of [22].

(a) Diagram for neutrino propagation with quantum decoherence

(b) Diagram for neutrino propagation