Direct Experimental Constraints on the Spatial Extent of a Neutrino Wavepacket
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arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
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2024
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| author | Smolsky, Joseph Leach, Kyle G Abells, Ryan Amaro, Pedro Andoche, Adrien Borbridge, Keith Bray, Connor Cantor, Robin Diercks, David Fretwell, Spencer Friedrich, Stephan Gillespie, Abigail Guerra, Mauro Hall, Ad Harris, Cameron N Harris, Jackson T Hinkle, Calvin Lamm, Amii Hayen, Leendert M Hervieux, Paul-Antoine Kim, Geon-Bo Kim, Inwook Lennarz, Annika Lordi, Vincenzo Machado, Jorge Marino, Andrew McKeen, David Mougeot, Xavier Ponce, Francisco Ruiz, Chris Samanta, Amit Santos, José Paulo Stone-Whitehead, Caitlyn Taylor, John Templet, Joseph Upadhyayula, Sriteja Wagner, Louis Warburton, William K |
| author_facet | Smolsky, Joseph Leach, Kyle G Abells, Ryan Amaro, Pedro Andoche, Adrien Borbridge, Keith Bray, Connor Cantor, Robin Diercks, David Fretwell, Spencer Friedrich, Stephan Gillespie, Abigail Guerra, Mauro Hall, Ad Harris, Cameron N Harris, Jackson T Hinkle, Calvin Lamm, Amii Hayen, Leendert M Hervieux, Paul-Antoine Kim, Geon-Bo Kim, Inwook Lennarz, Annika Lordi, Vincenzo Machado, Jorge Marino, Andrew McKeen, David Mougeot, Xavier Ponce, Francisco Ruiz, Chris Samanta, Amit Santos, José Paulo Stone-Whitehead, Caitlyn Taylor, John Templet, Joseph Upadhyayula, Sriteja Wagner, Louis Warburton, William K |
| contents | Despite their high relative abundance in our Universe, neutrinos are the least understood fundamental particles of nature. They also provide a unique system to study quantum coherence and the wavelike nature of particles in fundamental systems due to their extremely weak interaction probabilities. In fact, the quantum properties of neutrinos emitted in experimentally relevant sources are virtually unknown and the spatial extent of the neutrino wavepacket is only loosely constrained by reactor neutrino oscillation data with a spread of 13 orders of magnitude. Here, we present the first direct limits of this quantity through a new experimental concept to extract the energy width, $σ_{\textrm{N},E}$, of the recoil daughter nucleus emitted in the nuclear electron capture (EC) decay of $^7$Be. The final state in the EC decay process contains a recoiling $^7$Li nucleus and an electron neutrino ($ν_e$) which are entangled at their creation. The $^7$Li energy spectrum is measured to high precision by directly embedding $^7$Be radioisotopes into a high resolution superconducting tunnel junction that is operated as a cryogenic sensor. The lower limit on the spatial uncertainty of the recoil daughter was found to be $σ_{\textrm{N}, x} \geq 6.2$\,pm, which implies the final-state system is localized at a scale more than a thousand times larger than the nucleus itself. From this measurement, the first direct lower limits on the spatial extent of the neutrino wavepacket were extracted using two different theoretical methods. These results have wide-reaching implications in several areas including the nature of spatial localization at sub-atomic scales, interpretation of neutrino physics data, and the potential reach of future large-scale experiments. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_03102 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Direct Experimental Constraints on the Spatial Extent of a Neutrino Wavepacket Smolsky, Joseph Leach, Kyle G Abells, Ryan Amaro, Pedro Andoche, Adrien Borbridge, Keith Bray, Connor Cantor, Robin Diercks, David Fretwell, Spencer Friedrich, Stephan Gillespie, Abigail Guerra, Mauro Hall, Ad Harris, Cameron N Harris, Jackson T Hinkle, Calvin Lamm, Amii Hayen, Leendert M Hervieux, Paul-Antoine Kim, Geon-Bo Kim, Inwook Lennarz, Annika Lordi, Vincenzo Machado, Jorge Marino, Andrew McKeen, David Mougeot, Xavier Ponce, Francisco Ruiz, Chris Samanta, Amit Santos, José Paulo Stone-Whitehead, Caitlyn Taylor, John Templet, Joseph Upadhyayula, Sriteja Wagner, Louis Warburton, William K Nuclear Experiment High Energy Physics - Experiment Quantum Physics Despite their high relative abundance in our Universe, neutrinos are the least understood fundamental particles of nature. They also provide a unique system to study quantum coherence and the wavelike nature of particles in fundamental systems due to their extremely weak interaction probabilities. In fact, the quantum properties of neutrinos emitted in experimentally relevant sources are virtually unknown and the spatial extent of the neutrino wavepacket is only loosely constrained by reactor neutrino oscillation data with a spread of 13 orders of magnitude. Here, we present the first direct limits of this quantity through a new experimental concept to extract the energy width, $σ_{\textrm{N},E}$, of the recoil daughter nucleus emitted in the nuclear electron capture (EC) decay of $^7$Be. The final state in the EC decay process contains a recoiling $^7$Li nucleus and an electron neutrino ($ν_e$) which are entangled at their creation. The $^7$Li energy spectrum is measured to high precision by directly embedding $^7$Be radioisotopes into a high resolution superconducting tunnel junction that is operated as a cryogenic sensor. The lower limit on the spatial uncertainty of the recoil daughter was found to be $σ_{\textrm{N}, x} \geq 6.2$\,pm, which implies the final-state system is localized at a scale more than a thousand times larger than the nucleus itself. From this measurement, the first direct lower limits on the spatial extent of the neutrino wavepacket were extracted using two different theoretical methods. These results have wide-reaching implications in several areas including the nature of spatial localization at sub-atomic scales, interpretation of neutrino physics data, and the potential reach of future large-scale experiments. |
| title | Direct Experimental Constraints on the Spatial Extent of a Neutrino Wavepacket |
| topic | Nuclear Experiment High Energy Physics - Experiment Quantum Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.03102 |