Neutrino propagation in magnetized plasma

Abstract

The process of neutrino propagation through an active medium consisting of magnetic field and plasma is analysed. We consider in detail the contribution of a magnetic field B into the neutrino self-energy operator Sigma (p). The results for this contribution were contradictory in the previous literature. For the conditions of the early universe where the background medium consists of a charge-symmetric plasma, the pure B-field contribution to the neutrino dispersion relation is proportional to (e B)^2 and thus comparable to the contribution of the magnetized plasma. The neutrino self-energy operator Sigma (p) is calculated also for the case of high-energy neutrinos, which corresponds to the crossed field approximation. The probability of the neutrino decay nu to e^- W^+ is calculated from the imaginary part of the Sigma (p) operator. A simple analytical result is obtained for the most interesting region of parameters which was not considered earlier. The external magnetic field contribution into the neutrino magnetic moment is calculated. The result obtained corrects the formulas existed earlier. We show qualitatively that the effect of ``neutrino spin light'' discussed in the literature has no physical region of realization because of the medium influence on photon dispersion.