Electromagnetic interactions in elastic neutrino-nucleon scattering

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.