Taming the pinch singularities in the two-loop neutrino self-energy in a medium

TL;DR

This paper calculates the neutrino self-energy in a medium at high energy, effectively handling pinch singularities at two loops, and derives formulas for damping that depend on background conditions, relevant for understanding neutrino decoherence.

Contribution

It introduces a method to treat pinch singularities in two-loop thermal self-energy calculations, providing precise damping formulas applicable to high-energy neutrinos in a medium.

Findings

Pinch singularities are effectively eliminated using thermal propagator properties.

Derived explicit formulas for neutrino damping in various background conditions.

Predicted damping dependence on neutrino energy and medium parameters.

Abstract

We consider the calculation of the thermal self-energy of a neutrino that propagates in a medium composed of fermions and scalars interacting via a Yukawa-type coupling, in the case that the neutri no energy is much larger than the fermion and scalar masses, as well as the temperature and chemical potentials of the background. In this kinematic regime the one-loop contribution to the imaginary part of the self-energy is negligible. We consider the two-loop contribution and we encounter the so-called pinch singularities which are known to arise in higher loop self-energy calculations in Thermal Field Theory. With a judicious use of the properties and parametrizations of the thermal propagators the singularities are treated effectively and actually disappear. From the imaginary part of the self-energy, we obtain a precise formula for the damping matrix expressed in terms of integrals over the background particle distributions. The formulas predict a specific dependence of the damping terms on the neutrino energy, depending on the background conditions. For guidance to estimating the effects in specific contexts, we compute the damping terms for several limiting cases of the momentum distribution functions of the background particles. We discuss briefly the connection between the results of our calculations for the damping matrix and the decoherence effects described in terms of the Lindblad equation.