Neutrino matter potentials induced by Earth

Abstract

An instructive method of deriving the matter potentials felt by neutrinos propagating through matter on Earth is presented. This paper thoroughly guides the reader through the calculations involving the effective weak Hamiltonian for lepton and quark scattering. The matter potentials are well-known results since the late 70's, but a detailed and pedagogical calculation of these quantities is hard to find. We derive potentials due to charged and neutral current scattering on electrons, neutrons and protons. Intended readership is for undergraduates/graduates in the fields of relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. In addition to the derivation of the potentials for neutrinos, we explicitely study the origin of the reversed sign for potentials in the case of antineutrino-scattering.