Angular momentum non-conserving decays in isotropic media

Various processes that are forbidden in the vacuum due to angular momentum conservation can occur in a medium that is isotropic and does not carry any angular momentum. We illustrate this by considering explicitly two examples. The first one is the decay of a spin-0 particle into a photon and another spin-0 particle, using a model involving the Yukawa interactions of the scalar particles with a charged fermion field. The second one involves the decay of a neutrino into another neutrino and a graviton, in the standard model of particle interactions augmented with the linearized gravitational couplings.Comment: 22 pages, Latex, uses axodraw.sty. 3 figures embedded in the tex file. This paper contains the same material as that presented in two earlier papers, arXiv:0901.2981 and arXiv:0901.2982, written by us. This version supersedes those two paper

Non-universal gravitational couplings of neutrinos in matter

When neutrinos travel through a normal matter medium, the electron neutrinos couple differently to gravity compared to the other neutrinos, due to the presence of electrons in the medium and the absence of the other charged leptons. The matter-induced gravitational couplings of the neutrinos under such conditions are calculated and their contribution to the neutrino index of refraction in the presence of a gravitational potential is determined.Comment: Latex, 10 page

Neutrino propagation in an electron background with an inhomogeneous magnetic field

We study the electromagnetic coupling of a neutrino that propagates in a two-stream electron background medium. Specifically, we calculate the electromagnetic vertex function for a medium that consists of a \emph{normal} electron background plus another electron \emph{stream} background that is moving with a velocity four-vector $v^\mu$ relative to the normal background. The results can be used as the basis for studying the neutrino electromagnetic properties and various processes in such a medium. As an application, we calculate the neutrino dispersion relation in the presence of an external magnetic field ($\vec B$), focused in the case in which $B$ is inhomogeneous, keeping only the terms of the lowest order in $1/m^2_W$ and linear in the $B$ and its gradient. We show that the dispersion relation contains additional anisotropic terms involving the derivatives of $\vec B$, such as the gradient of $\hat k\cdot(\vec v\times\vec B)$, which involve the stream background velocity, and a term of the form $\hat k\cdot(\nabla\times \vec B)$ that can be present in the absence of the stream background, in addition to a term of the form $\hat k\cdot\vec v$ and the well known term $\hat k\cdot\vec B$ that arises in the constant $\vec B$ case. The derivative-dependent terms are even under a $CP$ transformation. As a result, in contrast to the latter two just mentioned, they depend on the sum of the particle and antiparticle densities and therefore can be non-zero in a $CP$-symmetric medium in which the particle and antiparticle densities are equal.Comment: Title changes, 39 pages, 2 figure

Thermal Field Theory in a wire: Applications of Thermal Field Theory methods to the propagation of photons in a one-dimensional plasma

We apply the Thermal Field Theory (TFT) methods to study the propagation of photons in a plasma wire, that is, a system in which the electrons are confined to a one-dimensional tube or wire, but are otherwise free. We find the appropriate expression for the photon \emph{free-field} propagator in such a medium, and write down the dispersion relation in terms of the free-field propagator and the photon self-energy. The self-energy is then calculated in the one-loop approximation and the corresponding dispersion relation is determined and studied in some detail. Our work differs from previous work on this subject in that we do not adopt any specific electronic wave functions in the coordinates that are transverse to the idealized wire, or rely on particular features of the electronic structure. We treat the electrons as a free gas of particles, constrained to move in one dimension, but otherwise in a model-independent way only following the rules of TFT adapted to the situation at hand. For the appropriate conditions of the plasma the \emph{static approximation} can be employed and the dispersion relation reduces to the results obtained in previous works, but the formula that we obtain is valid under more general conditions, including those in which the static approximation is not valid. In particular, the dispersion relation has several branches, which are not revealed if the static approximation is used. The dispersion relations obtained reproduce several unique features of these systems that have been observed in recent experiments.Comment: 17 pages Revised and extended discussion of the dispersion relation