Neutrino induced decoherence and variation in nuclear decay rates

Abstract

Recent work has proposed that the interaction between ordinary matter and a stochastic gravitational background can lead to the decoherence of large aggregates of ordinary matter. In this work we point out that these arguments can be carried over to a stochastic neutrino background but with the Planck scale of the gravitational decoherence replaced by the weak scale. This implies that it might be possible to observe such neutrino induced decoherence on a small, microscopic system rather than a macroscopic system as is the case for gravitationally induced decoherence. In particular we suggest that neutrino decoherence could be linked with observed variations in the decay rates of certain nuclei. Finally we point out that this proposed neutrino induced decoherence can be considered the complement of the Mikheev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein (MSW) effect.