Neutrino Propagation When Mass Eigenstates and Decay Eigenstates Mismatch

Abstract

We point out that the Hermitian and anti-Hermitian components of the effective Hamiltonian for decaying neutrinos cannot be simultaneously diagonalized by unitary transformations for all matter densities. We develop a formalism for the two-flavor neutrino propagation through matter of uniform density, for neutrino decay to invisible states. Employing a resummation of the Zassenhaus expansion, we obtain compact analytic expressions for neutrino survival and conversion probabilities, to first and second order in the "mismatch parameter" γ[over ¯].

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