Decoherence-effects in the neutrino-mixing mechanism: active and sterile neutrinos in the three flavor scheme

Abstract

In this work we analyze the effects of quantum decoherence upon the precession of the neutrino polarization vector in a supernovae-like environment. In order to perform the study we have determined the time-dependence of the polarization vector by solving the equation of motion for different neutrino-mixing schemes. The results of the calculations show that the onset of decoherence depends strongly on the parameters of the adopted mixing scheme. As examples we have considered : a) the mixing between active neutrinos and b) the mixing between active end sterile neutrinos.