Electromagnetic interactions in elastic neutrino-nucleon scattering

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for electromagnetic interactions in elastic neutrino-nucleon scattering, incorporating neutrino charge, magnetic, electric, and anapole form factors, and considering neutrino flavor and spin changes.

Contribution

It introduces a formalism using form factor matrices in the mass basis and accounts for spin-flavor evolution, advancing the understanding of neutrino electromagnetic properties in scattering experiments.

Findings

Potential effects of neutrino charge radii, magnetic moments, and spin polarization are outlined.

Formalism includes three-neutrino mixing and spin-flavor density matrices.

Provides a basis for analyzing electromagnetic contributions in neutrino scattering experiments.

Abstract

A thorough account of electromagnetic interactions of massive Dirac neutrinos as well as their spin-flavor state in the theoretical formulation of elastic neutrino-nucleon scattering is given. The formalism of neutrino charge, magnetic, electric, and anapole form factors defined as matrices in the mass basis is employed under the assumption of three-neutrino mixing. The flavor and spin change of neutrinos propagating from the source to the detector is taken into account in the form of a spin-flavor density matrix of the neutrino arriving at the detector. The potential effects of the neutrino charge radii, magnetic moments, and spin polarization in the neutrino-nucleon scattering experiments are outlined.