Light neutrino propagation in matter without heavy neutrino decoupling

Abstract

We review the propagation of light neutrinos in matter assuming that their mixing with heavy neutrinos is close to present experimental limits. The phenomenological implications of the non-unitarity of the light neutrino mixing matrix for neutrino oscillations are discussed. In particular we show that the resonance effect in neutrino propagation in matter persists, but for slightly modified values of the parameters and with the maximum reduced by a small amount proportional to the mixing between light and heavy neutrinos squared.