Neutrino Oscillations as an Open Quantum System in Strong Gravitational Fields: Spin-Connection Decoherence and Kerr Frame Dragging
Abstract
We investigate neutrino flavor evolution in strong gravitational fields within an open-quantum-system framework in curved spacetime. Starting from the Dirac equation in the vierbein formalism, we construct an effective flavor Hamiltonian incorporating gravitational redshift, spin--curvature couplings, and Kerr frame-dragging effects. Treating spin-connection fluctuations as a stochastic gravitational environment, we derive a Lindblad master equation and introduce a curvature-enhanced decoherence rate governed by local spacetime geometry. We compute oscillation probabilities, coherence loss, flavor-ratio distortions, entanglement entropy generation, and event-rate modifications for neutrinos propagating near Schwarzschild and Kerr compact objects. The resulting signatures are compared with projected sensitivities of IceCube-Gen2, KM3NeT, and P-ONE, and are further quantified through detector-level significance estimates. Our results provide a unified effective framework linking neutrino oscillations, gravitationally induced decoherence, quantum-information observables, and high-energy astrophysical neutrino measurements in strong-curvature environments.
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