Solar neutrinos and leptonic spin forces

TL;DR

This paper investigates how light spin-zero particles affect solar neutrino evolution, leading to observable spectral distortions and potential antineutrino fluxes, with implications for neutrino nature and mediator properties.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of spin-zero particle effects on solar neutrinos, distinguishing Dirac and Majorana cases, and constrains mediator parameters using solar neutrino data.

Findings

Constraints on mediator mass and couplings derived from solar neutrino data.

Potential observable flux of solar electron antineutrinos for Majorana neutrinos.

Distortions in the solar neutrino spectrum due to spin precession effects.

Abstract

We quantify the effects of light spin-zero particles with pseudoscalar couplings to leptons and scalar couplings to nucleons on the evolution of solar neutrinos. In this scenario the matter potential sourced by the nucleons in the Sun's matter gives rise to spin precession of the relativistic neutrino ensemble. As such the effects in the solar observables are different if neutrinos are Dirac or Majorana particles. For Dirac neutrinos the spin-flavour precession results into left-handed neutrino to right-handed neutrino (i.e., active-sterile) oscillations, while for Majorana neutrinos it results into left-handed neutrino to right-handed antineutrino (i.e., active-active) oscillations. In both cases this leads to distortions in the solar neutrino spectrum which we use to derive constraints on the allowed values of the mediator mass and couplings via a global analysis of the solar neutrino data. In addition for Majorana neutrinos spin-flavour precession results into a potentially observable flux of solar electron antineutrinos at the Earth which we quantify and constrain with the existing bounds from Borexino and KamLAND.