Low-energy photon production in neutrino neutral-current interactions

TL;DR

This paper investigates low-energy photon production in neutrino neutral-current interactions, focusing on the contribution of the Wess-Zumino-Witten anomaly, and finds its role to be smaller than previously estimated.

Contribution

It provides a revised, lower estimate of the anomaly-induced photon production rate in neutrino interactions, refining previous models.

Findings

Anomaly contribution is about 1/4 of previous estimates.

The anomaly's role in photon production is even less significant than earlier thought.

The study uses known decay rates to normalize the anomaly term.

Abstract

The search for $\nu_\mu \to \nu_e$ oscillations by the MiniBooNE Collaboration at Fermilab has revealed a low-energy signal which could be due either to electrons produced by $\nu_e$ or photons produced by the interaction of the weak neutral current on the target nucleus. One contribution to the latter is a Wess-Zumino-Witten anomaly leading to a term in the Lagrangian proportional to $\epsilon^{\mu \nu \kappa \lambda} Z_\mu \omega_\nu F_{\kappa \lambda}$. This term is normalized with the help of the known rates for the processes $f_1 \to \rho \gamma$ and $\tau \to \nu_\tau a_1$. A rate of about 1/4 of that employed in several previous estimates is obtained. As the anomaly term had already been found to play a subdominant role in photon production (e.g., in comparison with $\Delta$ excitation and decay), the present estimate reduces its strength even further.