Optimizing T-violating Effects for Neutrino Oscillations in Matter

Abstract

Matter effects may strongly enhance the Jarlskog factor J in T and CP-violating three-neutrino oscillation probabilities. However, we show that when J is enhanced, the same matter effects suppress the oscillating factors and increase the oscillation length. The net result is that there is no large enhancement in measurable probabilities for earth-bound experiments using neutrino parameters suggested by current experiments. We show that by an appropriate choice of the experimental parameters, neutrino energy and travel length, the T-violating probability can be enhanced by matter effects over their vacuum values by 50%. Our approach is analytical, allowing considerable insight into the underlying physics.