Chaos, determinacy and fractals in active-sterile neutrino oscillations in the early universe
- Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-4111 (United States)
The possibility of light sterile neutrinos allows for the resonant production of lepton number in the early universe through matter-affected neutrino mixing. For a given mixing of the active and sterile neutrino states it has been found that the lepton number generation process is chaotic and strongly oscillatory. We undertake a new study of the sensitivity of this process to initial conditions through the quantum rate equations. We confirm the chaoticity of the process in this solution, and moreover find that the resultant lepton number and the sign of the asymmetry produce a fractal in the parameter space of mass, mixing angle and initial baryon number. This has implications for future searches for sterile neutrinos, where arbitrarily high sensitivity may not be determinate in forecasting the lepton number of the universe.
- OSTI ID:
- 22156764
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2008, Issue 10; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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