Coherent neutrino interactions in a dense medium
- Department of Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973-5000 (United States)
- School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv (Israel)
Motivated by the effect of matter on neutrino oscillations (the MSW effect) we study in more detail the propagation of neutrinos in a dense medium. The dispersion relation for massive neutrinos in a medium is known to have a minimum at nonzero momentum p{approximately}G{sub F}{rho}/{radical}(2). We study in detail the origin and consequences of this dispersion relation for both Dirac and Majorana neutrinos both in a toy model with only neutral currents and a single neutrino flavor and in a realistic {open_quotes}standard model{close_quotes} with two neutrino flavors. We find that for a range of neutrino momenta near the minimum of the dispersion relation, Dirac neutrinos are trapped by their coherent interactions with the medium. This effect does not lead to the trapping of Majorana neutrinos. {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}
- OSTI ID:
- 543906
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review, D, Vol. 56, Issue 9; Other Information: PBD: Nov 1997
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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