High energy photon-neutrino elastic scattering

Abstract

The one-loop helicity amplitudes for the elastic scattering process $\gamma \nu \to \gamma \nu$ in the Standard Model are computed at high center of mass energies. A general decomposition of the amplitudes is utilized to investigate the validity of some of the key features of our results. In the center of mass, where $\sqrt{s}=2\omega$, the cross section grows roughly as ${\omega }^6$ to near the threshold for $W$-boson production, $\sqrt{s}=m_W$. Although suppressed at low energies, we find that the elastic cross section exceeds the cross section for $\gamma \nu \to \gamma \gamma \nu$ when $\sqrt{s}>13$ GeV. We demonstrate that the scattered photons are circularly polarized and the net value of the polarization is non-zero. Astrophysical implications of high energy photon-neutrino scattering are discussed.

9 pages, 7 figures, RevTeX4

References in corpus (6)

• Neutrino-photon reactions in astrophysics and cosmology
• Photon-neutrino interactions
• Photon neutrino scattering
• High energy photon-neutrino interactions
• gamma nu -> gamma gamma nu and crossed processes at energies below m_W
• Photons, neutrinos and large compact space dimensions

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Dipole portal to heavy neutral leptons
• High-energy neutrino conversion and the lepton asymmetry in the universe
• Photon Neutrino Scattering in Non-Commutative Space
• Oscillation Induced Neutrino Asymmetry Growth in the Early Universe
• Optical activity of neutrinos and antineutrinos
• Photons, neutrinos and optical activity
• Electron-Neutrino Bremsstrahlung in Electro-Weak Theory
• The effect of electromagnetic properties of neutrinos on the photon-neutrino decoupling temperature