Quantum Coherence of Relic Neutrinos

Understand

We argue that in at least a portion of the history of the universe the relic background neutrinos are spatially-extended, coherent superpositions of mass states.

• We show that an appropriate quantum mechanical treatment affects the neutrino mass values derived from cosmological data.
• The coherence scale of these neutrino flavor wavepackets can be an appreciable fraction of the causal horizon size, raising the possibility of spacetime curvature-induced decoherence.