Parameter symmetries of neutrino oscillations in vacuum, matter, and approximation schemes

Abstract

Expressions for neutrino oscillations contain a high degree of symmetry, but typical forms for the oscillation probabilities mask these symmetries of the oscillation parameters. We elucidate the $2^7$ parameter symmetries of the vacuum parameters and draw connections to the choice of definitions of the parameters as well as interesting degeneracies. We also show that in the presence of matter an \emph{additional} set of $2^7$ parameter symmetries exist of the matter parameters. Due to the complexity of the exact expressions for neutrino oscillations in matter, numerous approximations have been developed; we show that under certain assumptions, approximate expressions have at most $2^6$ additional parameter symmetries of the matter parameters. We also include one parameter symmetry related to the LMA-Dark degeneracy that holds under the assumption of CPT invariance; this adds one additional factor of two to all of the above cases. Explicit, non-trivial examples are given of how physical observables in neutrino oscillations, such as the probabilities, CP violation, the position of the solar and atmospheric resonance, and the effective $\Delta m^2$'s for disappearance probabilities, are invariant under all of the above symmetries. We investigate which of these parameter symmetries apply to numerous approximate expressions in the literature and show that a more careful consideration of symmetries improves the precision of approximations.