Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 87: Neutrino Physics V

T 87.3: Talk

Friday, March 20, 2026, 09:30–09:45, AudiMax

Quantum Decoherence with KM3NeT/ORCA — •Mays Massarwa for the KM3NET-ERLANGEN collaboration — Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, ECAP, Erlangen, Germany

KM3NeT is a research infrastructure currently under construction in the Mediterranean Sea, that consists of two water Cherenkov detectors: ARCA, whose main purpose is to search for cosmic neutrinos in the TeV-PeV range and ORCA that uses atmospheric neutrinos for measurements of neutrino oscillations. ORCA is sensitive to effects beyond the standard model (BSM), such as quantum decoherence.

Treating neutrinos as an open quantum system interacting with an external environment leads to non-unitary time evolution, which can be described by a Lindblad master equation. This results in deviations from the standard neutrino oscillation probabilities and provides a phenomenological description of neutrino decoherence.

Several models propose that quantum gravity could leave a potentially observable imprint in the evolution of the neutrino as an open quantum system. This motivates the study of neutrino decoherence with the ORCA detector by investigating deviations from the expected standard 3-flavour neutrino oscillations. This contribution will report the projected sensitivity of an intermediate detector configuration of ORCA to this effect.

Keywords: Quantum Decoherence; KM3NeT; ORCA; Neutrino Oscillations; Sensitivity