Neutrino spin and flavor oscillations in gravitational fields

Abstract

We study spin and flavor oscillations of astrophysical neutrinos under the influence of external fields in curved spacetime. First, we consider spin oscillations in case of neutrinos gravitationally scattered off a rotating supermassive black hole surrounded by a thin magnetized accretion disk. We find that the gravitational interaction only does not result in the spin-flip of scattered ultrarelativistic neutrinos. Realistic magnetic fields lead to the significant reduction of the observed flux of neutrinos possessing reasonable magnetic moments. Second, we study neutrino flavor oscillations in stochastic gravitational waves (GWs). We derive the effective Hamiltonian for neutrinos interacting with a plane GW having an arbitrary polarization. Then, we consider stochastic GWs with arbitrary correlators of amplitudes. The equation for the density matrix for neutrino oscillations is solved analytically and the probabilities to detect certain neutrino flavors are derived. We find that the interaction of neutrinos, emitted by a core-collapsing supernova, with the stochastic GW background results in the several percent change of the neutrino fluxes. The observability of the predicted effects is discussed.

8 pages in LaTeX2e, 8 eps figures, contribution to proceedings of International Conference on Quantum Field Theory, High-Energy Physics, and Cosmology (July 18-21, 2022; JINR, Dubna, Russia), to be published in Phys. Part. Nucl. Lett

References in corpus (7)

• First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole in the Center of the Milky Way
• GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run
• Neutrino spin oscillations in external fields in curved spacetime
• Interaction of supernova neutrinos with stochastic gravitational waves
• Neutrino scattering off a black hole surrounded by a magnetized accretion disk
• Spin oscillations of neutrinos scattered off a rotating black hole
• Flavor ratios of astrophysical neutrinos interacting with stochastic gravitational waves having arbitrary spectra

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Curved-spacetime dynamics of spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ particles in superposed states from a WKB approximation of the Dirac equation
• Neutrino spin oscillations in a magnetized Polish doughnut
• Spin oscillations in neutrino gravitational scattering
• Spin oscillations of neutrinos scattered by the supermassive black hole in the galactic center
• Neutrino spin oscillations near a black hole
• Neutrino spin oscillations in gravitational fields in noncommutative higher dimensions
• Spin and flavor oscillations of neutrinos in gravitational fields