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Interactions of neutrino wave packets

Michael J. Cervia*

  • *Contact author: cervia@uw.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 043010 – Published 5 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/r54h-jj1f

Abstract

The low energy effective field theory of interacting neutrinos derived from the Standard Model may be framed as a pointlike interaction and thereby modeled on a lattice of neutrino momenta. We identify a path to take a continuum limit of this lattice problem in the center of momentum frame. In this limit, the weak interaction is found to become trivial between incoming plane waves describing ultrarelativistic particles, unless finite neutrino wave packet sizes are taken into consideration. We follow up with an analytic treatment of interacting neutrino wave packets, demonstrating the importance of the wave packet size for characterizing neutrino-neutrino scattering in dense environments.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 043010– Published 5 February, 2026
  • Received 24 October 2025
  • Accepted 20 January 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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