Gravitationally Induced Quantum Mechanical Phases and Neutrino Oscillations in Astrophysical Environments

We report a new effect of gravitationally induced quantum mechanical phases in neutrino oscillations. In the neighborhood of a neutron star, gravitationally induced quantum mechanical phases are roughly 15% of their kinematical counterparts. When this information is coupled with the mass square differences implied by the existing neutrino–oscillation data we find that the ∗This work was done, in part, under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy; and supported by facilities and financial support of the groups P-25 and T-5 of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. †Electronic address: [email protected] . ‡Electronic address: [email protected] .