Quantum-gravity decoherence effects in neutrino oscillations: Expected constraints from CNGS and J-PARC

Abstract

Quantum decoherence, the evolution of pure states into mixed states, may be a feature of quantum-gravity models. In most cases, such models lead to fewer neutrinos of all active flavors being detected in a long-baseline experiment as compared to three-flavor standard neutrino oscillations. We discuss the potential of the CNGS and J-PARC beams in constraining models of quantum-gravity induced decoherence using neutrino oscillations as a probe. We use as much as possible model-independent parametrizations, even though they are motivated by specific microscopic models, for fits to the expected experimental data which yield bounds on quantum-gravity decoherence parameters. © 2008 The American Physical Society.