## Cosmological neutrino entropy changes due to flavor statistical mixing    [PDF]

Alex E. Bernardini
Entropy changes due to delocalization and decoherence effects should modify the predictions for the cosmological neutrino background (C$\nu$B) temperature when one treats neutrino flavors in the framework of composite quantum systems. Assuming that the final stage of neutrino interactions with the $\gamma e^{-}e^{+}$ radiation plasma before decoupling works as a {\em selective} measurement scheme in the context of the generalized theory of quantum measurements, the resulting free-streaming neutrinos can be described as a statistical ensemble of flavor-mixed neutrinos. In this case the von-Neumann entropy should deserve some special attention since the statistical weights, $w$, shall follow the electron elastic scattering cross section relative proportion given by $0.16\,w_{e} = w_{\mu} = w_{\tau}$. After decoupling and even if not corresponding to an electronic-flavor pure state, the statistical ensemble is described by a density matrix that evolves in time with the full Hamiltonian accounting for flavor mixing, momentum delocalization and, in case of an open quantum system approach, decoherence effects. Depending on the quantum measurement scheme used for quantifying the entropy, such effects can lead to an increasing of the flavor associated von-Neumann entropy for free-streaming neutrinos. Once it is relevant in the context of neutrino flavor oscillations, the production of von-Neumann entropy mitigates the constraints on the predictions for energy densities and temperatures of a cosmologically evolving isentropic fluid. That is the case of the cosmological neutrino background. The effects of entropy changes on the cosmological neutrino temperature are quantified, and the {\em constraint} involving the number of neutrino species, $N_{\nu} \approx 3$, in the phenomenological confront with Big Bang nucleosynthesis parameters is consistently relieved.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.1504