Long Range Forces and Neutrino Mass

Abstract

We explore the limits on neutrino mass which follow from a study of the long-range forces that arise from the exchange of massless or ultra-light neutrinos. Although the 2-body neutrino-exchange force is unobservably small, the many-body force can generate a very large energy density in neutron stars and white dwarfs. We discuss the novel features of neutrino-exchange forces which lead to large many-body effects, and present the formalism that allows these effects to be calculated explicitly in the Standard Model. After considering, and excluding, several possibilities for avoiding the unphysically large contributions from the exchange of massless neutrinos, we develop a formalism to describe the exchange of massive neutrinos. It is shown that the stability of both neutrons stars and white dwarfs in the presence of many-body neutrino-exchange forces implies a lower bound, $m \gtrsim 0.4$ eV/$c^{2}$ on the mass $m$ of any neutrino.