English

A New Spin on Neutrino Quantum Kinetics

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2015-05-06 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated that in anisotropic environments a coherent spin-flip term arises in the Quantum Kinetic Equations (QKEs) which govern the evolution of neutrino flavor and spin in hot and dense media. This term can mediate neutrino-antineutrino transformation for Majorana neutrinos and active-sterile transformation for Dirac neutrinos. We discuss the physical origin of the coherent spin-flip term and provide explicit expressions for the QKEs in a two-flavor model with spherical geometry. In this context, we demonstrate that coherent neutrino spin transformation depends on the absolute neutrino mass and Majorana phases.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1406.5558,
  title  = {A New Spin on Neutrino Quantum Kinetics},
  author = {Vincenzo Cirigliano and George M. Fuller and Alexey Vlasenko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.5558},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

11 pages, 3 figures, Major changes compared to v1, accepted for publication in Physics Letters B

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:43:49.433Z