Energy-independent neutrino dephasing from an ultralight axion-like background

Abstract

We study neutrino oscillations in an ultralight axion-like particle (ALP) dark-matter background using a bottom-up derivative interaction for active neutrinos. For couplings diagonal in the neutrino mass basis, the leading relative phase is fixed by the difference of the ALP field between production and detection. More generally, an unresolved background multiplies each interference term by the characteristic function of this endpoint field difference. For a single fixed-amplitude coherent mode with uniformly sampled phase, the factor is $J_0(A_{ij})$. In the slow-flight and small-dephasing regimes, this result and a Gaussian virialized-halo treatment agree at quadratic order and produce a leading $L^2E^0$ suppression. We identify the finite-exposure and coherence conditions under which the two statistical descriptions apply. As an application, we analytically map the energy-independent damping constraint derived from the first JUNO data onto the flavor benchmark $g_2=g_3$. For a local ALP density of $0.4\mathrm{GeV}/\mathrm{cm}^3$, the low-mass plateau gives $|Δg_{21}|=|Δg_{31}|\lesssim0.90\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$. This number is a baseline-matched EFT recast of the reference damping analysis. No specific ultraviolet completion is assumed.