Coherence and the Day - Night Asymmetry in the Solar Neutrino Flux

Abstract

We consider the day-night asymmetries predicted by MSW solutions of the solar neutrino problem. The integration over the neutrino energy, as well as over the production region or over the time intervals of more than a day leads to the averaging of oscillations on the way to the earth. This is equivalent to considering the neutrino state arriving at the surface of the earth as an incoherent mixture of the neutrino mass eigenstates (even if there is no divergence of wavepackets). As a consequence, the $ν_e$-regeneration effect inside the earth is incoherent, in contrast with the result in hep-ph/9902435.