Abstract
We present new approaches to distinguish between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos. The first is based on the analysis of the geometric phases associated to neutrinos in matter, the second on the effects of decoherence on neutrino oscillations. In the former we compute the total and geometric phase for neutrinos, and find that they depend on the Majorana phase and on the parametrization of the mixing matrix. In the latter, we show that Majorana neutrinos might violate CPT symmetry, whereas Dirac neutrinos preserve CPT. A phenomenological analysis is also reported showing the possibility to highlight the distinctions between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos.
Highlights
Neutrino oscillations, first theorized by Pontecorvo [1,2,3], and later confirmed by several experiments [4,5,6,7,8,9], hint at physics beyond the Standard Model of particles
On the other hand the total and geometric phases depend on the transition amplitude and they can depend on the Majorana phase and on the choice of the mixing matrix
In the figures we show the behaviour of the total and the geometric phases for regimes compatible with RENO and T2K experiments
Summary
First theorized by Pontecorvo [1,2,3], and later confirmed by several experiments [4,5,6,7,8,9], hint at physics beyond the Standard Model of particles. Majorana neutrinos allow for processes in which total lepton number is not preserved, like neutrino–less double beta decay, whereas the same processes cannot take place if the neutrinos are Dirac in nature. As Majorana neutrinos allow for the violation of lepton number, experiments based on the detection of the (lepton–number violating) phenomenon of neutrino–less double beta decay have been proposed [11] to discriminate between the two. The first approach is based on the analysis of the phases for neutrinos [15], both total and geometric. We prove that these are sensitive to the nature of neutrinos, so that interferometric experiments might distinguish between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos. The nature of neutrinos could be revealed in long baseline experiments
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