Nucleon contribution to the induced charge of neutrinos in a matter background and a magnetic field

We study the nucleon contribution to the electromagnetic vertex function of neutrinos that propagate in a matter background in the presence of a magnetic field. Starting from the one-loop expression for the corresponding terms of the vertex function, and taking into account the anomalous magnetic coupling of the nucleons, we calculate the B-dependent part of the form factors that determine the induced charge of the neutrino. A formula for the neutrino induced charge is obtained, and it is evaluated for various illustrative situations. The terms due to the nucleons can be important in some cases, depending on the physical conditions of the environment.Comment: revtex4, 13 pages. Contains the minor revisions made in the prd accepted versio

Electromagnetic effects of neutrinos in an electron gas

We study the electromagnetic properties of a system that consists of an electron background and a neutrino gas that may be moving or at rest, as a whole, relative to the background. The photon self-energy for this system is characterized by the usual transverse and longitudinal polarization functions, and two additional ones which are the focus of our calculations, that give rise to birefringence and anisotropic effects in the photon dispersion relations. Expressions for them are obtained, which depend on the neutrino number densities and involve momentum integrals over the electron distribution functions, and are valid for any value of the photon momentum and general conditions of the electron gas. Those expressions are evaluated explicitly for several special cases and approximations which are generally useful in astrophysical and cosmological settings. Besides studying the photon dispersion relations, we consider the macroscopic electrodynamic equations for this system, which involve the standard dielectric and permeability constants plus two additional ones related to the photon self-energy functions. As an illustration, the equations are used to discuss the evolution of a magnetic field perturbation in such a medium. This particular phenomena has also been considered in a recent work by Semikoz and Sokoloff as a mechanism for the generation of large-scale magnetic fields in the Early Universe as a consequence of the neutrino-plasma interactions, and allows us to establish contact with a specific application in a well defined context, with a broader scope and from a very different point of view.Comment: Revtex 20 page

Neutrino Oscillations, Fluctuations and Solar Magneto-gravity Waves

This review has two parts. The first part summarizes the current observational constraints on fluctuations in the solar medium deep within the solar Radiative Zone, and shows how the KamLAND and SNO-salt data combine to make the experimental determination of the neutrino oscillation parameters largely insensitive to prior assumptions about the nature of these oscillations. As part of a search for plausible sources of solar fluctuations to which neutrinos could be sensitive, the second part of the talk summarizes a preliminary analysis of the influence of magnetic fields on helioseismic waves. Using simplifying assumptions which should apply to modes in the solar radiative zone, we find a resonance between Alfven waves and helioseismic g-modes which potentially modifies the solar density profile fairly significantly over comparatively short distance scales, too narrow to be ruled out by present-day analyses of p-wave helioseismic spectra.Comment: Plenary talk presented at AHEP 2003, Valencia, Spain, October 200

Radiative Neutrino Decay in Media

In this letter we introduce a new method to determine the radiative neutrino decay rate in the presence of a medium. Our approach is based on the generalisation of the optical theorem at finite temperature and density. Differently from previous works on this subject, our method allows to account for dispersive and dissipative electromagnetic properties of the medium. Some inconsistencies that are present in the literature are pointed-out and corrected here. We shortly discuss the relevance of our results for neutrino evolution in the early universe.Comment: 11 pages, 3 encapsulated figure

Neutrino magnetic moment in a magnetized plasma

The contribution of a magnetized plasma to the neutrino magnetic moment is calculated. It is shown that only part of the additional neutrino energy in magnetized plasma connecting with its spin and magnetic field strength defines the neutrino magnetic moment. It is found that the presence of magnetized plasma does not lead to the considerable increase of the neutrino magnetic moment in contrast to the results presented in literature previously.Comment: 7 page, 1 figures, based on the talk presented by E.N.Narynskaya at the XVI International Seminar Quarks'2010, Kolomna, Moscow Region, June 6-12, 2010, to appear in the Proceeding

Large mixing angle oscillations as a probe of the deep solar interior

We re-examine the sensitivity of solar neutrino oscillations to noise in the solar interior using the best current estimates of neutrino properties. Our results show that the measurement of neutrino properties at KamLAND provides new information about fluctuations in the solar environment on scales to which standard helioseismic constraints are largely insensitive. We also show how the determination of neutrino oscillation parameters from a combined fit of KamLAND and solar data depends strongly on the magnitude of solar density fluctuations. We argue that a resonance between helioseismic and Alfven waves might provide a physical mechanism for generating these fluctuations and, if so, neutrino-oscillation measurements could be used to constrain the size of magnetic fields deep within the solar radiative zone.Comment: 13 pages, LaTeX file using AASLaTeX, 6 figures included. Improved version including the new KamLAND data. To appear in APJ letter

GZK Photons Above 10 EeV

We calculate the flux of "GZK-photons", namely the flux of photons produced by extragalactic nucleons through the resonant photoproduction of pions, the so called GZK effect. This flux depends on the UHECR spectrum on Earth, of the spectrum of nucleons emitted at the sources, which we characterize by its slope and maximum energy, on the distribution of sources and on the intervening cosmological backgrounds, in particular the magnetic field and radio backgrounds. For the first time we calculate the GZK photons produced by nuclei. We calculate the possible range of the GZK photon fraction of the total UHECR flux for the AGASA and the HiRes spectra. We find that for nucleons produced at the sources it could be as large as a few % and as low as 10^{-4} above 10 EeV. For nuclei produced at the sources the maximum photon fraction is a factor of 2 to 3 times smaller above 10 EeV but the minimum could be much smaller than for nucleons. We also comment on cosmogenic neutrino fluxes.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures (21 panels), iopart.cls and iopart12.clo needed to typese

Neutrino propagation in a random magnetic field

The active-sterile neutrino conversion probability is calculated for neutrino propagating in a medium in the presence of random magnetic field fluctuations. Necessary condition for the probability to be positive definite is obtained. Using this necessary condition we put constraint on the neutrino magnetic moment from active-sterile electron neutrino conversion in the early universe hot plasma and in supernova.Comment: 11 page