Studying Quantum Kinetics With Neutrinos in the Early Universe

The evolution of particles in a dense system is influenced by two competing effects: quantum coherence which builds up quantum phase and the kinetic destruction of this phase through inelastic scattering. One example of this quantum kinetic behavior is the evolution of neutrino states in the hot and dense early universe. Neutrinos oscillate because, fundamentally, their interaction states are incompatible with their energy eigenstates. In the early universe, large distributions of neutrinos and anti-neutrinos non-linearly affect both the coherent and scattering-induced decoherent evolution of neutrino states. In this poster, we look to explore and characterize the properties of this quantum kinetic behavior.