MSW effect with flavor changing interactions and the atmospheric neutrino problem

Abstract

We consider flavor changing effective neutrino interactions in the context of massive neutrinos in the issue of atmospheric neutrinos. Assuming as usual that this is an indication of the oscillation of muon neutrinos into tau neutrinos we show that there is a set of parameters which is consistent with the MSW resonance condition for the typical Earth density and atmospheric neutrino energies. In particular we show that even if the vacuum mixing angle vanishes it is still possible to have a resonance which is compatible with the atmospheric neutrino data. We also briefly consider the case of the solar neutrino problem.