Topological phase in two flavor neutrino oscillations

Understand

We show that the phase appearing in neutrino flavor oscillation formulae has a geometric and topological contribution.

• We identify a topological phase appearing in the two flavor neutrino oscillation formula using Pancharatnam's prescription of quantum collapses between non-orthogonal states.
• Such quantum collapses appear naturally in the expression for appearance and survival probabilities of neutrinos.
• Our analysis applies to neutrinos propagating in vacuum or through matter.