Oscillations and evolution of a hot and dense gas of flavor neutrinos: A quantum field theory study

Abstract

We study the time evolution of the distribution functions for hot and or degenerate gases of two flavors of Dirac neutrinos as a result of flavor mixing and dephasing. This is achieved by obtaining the time evolution of the flavor density matrix directly from quantum field theory at finite temperature and density. The time evolution features a rich hierarchy of scales which are widely separated in the nearly degenerate or relativistic cases and originate in interference phenomena between particle and antiparticle states. In the degenerate case the flavor asymmetry $\ensuremath{\Delta}N(t)$ relaxes to the asymptotic limit $\ensuremath{\Delta}N(\ensuremath{\infty})=\ensuremath{\Delta}N(0){\mathrm{cos}}^{2}(2\ensuremath{\theta})$ via dephasing resulting from the oscillations between flavor modes that are not Pauli blocked, with a power law $1/t$ for $t>{t}_{s}\ensuremath{\approx}{2k}_{F}/\ensuremath{\Delta}{M}^{2}.$ ${k}_{F}$ is the largest of the Fermi momenta. The distribution function for flavor neutrinos and antineutrinos as well as off-diagonal densities are obtained. Flavor particle-antiparticle pairs are produced by mixing and oscillations with typical momentum $k\ensuremath{\sim}\overline{M},$ the average mass of the neutrinos. An effective field theory description emerges on long time scales in which the Heisenberg operators obey a Bloch-type equation of motion valid in the relativistic and nearly degenerate cases. We find the nonequilibrium propagators and correlation functions in this effective theory and discuss its regime of validity as well as the potential corrections.