Influence of Quantum Decoherence on the Survival of Neutrino Oscillation Quantumness

Abstract:This study examines the dynamics of quantumness in two-flavor neutrino oscillations subjected to a dephasing channel, using representative oscillation parameters associated with the KamLAND, MINOS, and Daya Bay experiments. We analyze three complementary quantum-correlation measures -- entanglement of formation (EOF), quantum discord (QD), and local quantum uncertainty (LQU) -- within an effective two-qubit description. In the unitary case, all three measures display oscillatory behavior controlled by flavor mixing, and their amplitudes are strongly shaped by the relevant mixing angle. MINOS exhibits the largest correlations because $\theta_{23}$ is close to maximal, KamLAND shows intermediate values associated with the solar sector, and Daya Bay yields smaller correlations due to the relatively small value of $\theta_{13}$. Under dephasing, the off-diagonal coherence terms are suppressed and the three quantifiers decrease accordingly, while QD remains non-zero in regimes where entanglement is weak. For pure states, LQU satisfies $\mathcal{U}=\mathcal{C}^2$ and therefore tracks entanglement monotonically, whereas QD provides a broader witness of non-classical correlations. These results provide a compact quantum-information description of two-flavor neutrino oscillations in both coherent and dephased regimes. We also quantify the sensitivity of these observables to oscillation and decoherence parameters, showing that their main added value relative to flavor probabilities is their direct response to off-diagonal coherence loss.

arXiv:2605.24654 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2605.24654v2 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.24654 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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