Geometric phases in neutrino mixing

Abstract

Neutrinos can acquire both dynamic and geometric phases due to the non-trivial mixing between mass and flavour eigenstates. In this article, we derive the general expressions for all plausible gauge invariant diagonal and off-diagonal geometric phases in the three flavour neutrino model using the kinematic approach. We find that diagonal and higher order off-diagonal geometric phases are sensitive to the mass ordering and the Dirac CP violating phase $\delta$. We show that, third order off-diagonal geometric phase ($\Phi_{\mu e\tau}$) is invariant under any cyclic or non-cyclic permutations of flavour indices when the Dirac CP phase is zero. For non-zero $\delta$, we find that $\Phi_{\mu e\tau}(\delta)=\Phi_{e \mu \tau}(-\delta)$. Further, we explore the effects of matter background using a two flavour neutrino model and show that the diagonal geometric phase is either 0 or $\pi$ in the MSW resonance region and takes non-trivial values elsewhere. The transition between zero and $\pi$ occurs at the point of complete oscillation inversion called the nodal point, where the diagonal geometric phase is not defined. Also, in two flavour approximations, two distinct diagonal geometric phases are co-functions with respect to the mixing angle. Finally, in the two flavour model, we show that the only second order off-diagonal geometric phase is a topological invariant quantity and is always $\pi$.