Oscillations of Dirac and Majorana neutrinos in matter and a magnetic field
Maxim Dvornikov, Jukka Maalampi
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RevTeX4, 15 pages, 4 eps figures. The paper was significantly revised; 17 references were added, many misprints throughout the text were corrected. The variant to be published in Phys. Rev. D
We study the evolution of massive mixed Dirac and Majorana neutrinos in matter under the influence of a transversal magnetic field. The analysis is based on relativistic quantum mechanics. We solve exactly the evolution equation for relativistic neutrinos, find the neutrino wave functions, and calculate the transition probability for spin-flavor oscillations. We analyze the dependence of the transition probability on the external fields and compare the cases of Dirac and Majorana neutrinos. The evolution of Majorana particles in vacuum is also studied and correction terms to the standard oscillation formula are derived and discussed. As a possible application of our results we discuss the spin-flavor transitions in supernovae.
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The magic textures are successful candidates of the correct texture for the Majorana neutrinos. In this study, we show that some types of magic texture for Majorana neutrinos approximately immanent in the flavor mass matrix for Dirac neutrinos. In addition, it turned out that the normal mass ordering of the Dirac neutrino masses is slightly preferable to the inverted mass ordering in the context of the magic textures.
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Cross sections involving massive Dirac or Majorana neutrinos usually differ only by terms which are suppressed by the smallness of the neutrino mass. The process $e^+e^-\toνν$, however, is an example in which the two differential cross sections are quite distinct even in the limit $m_ν\to 0$ as long as $m_ν\not=0$. I discuss the cause of this phenomenon and comment on strategies to identify processes with quite different Majorana and Dirac neutrino signals.
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The history of research associated with the fundamental problem of the nature of massive neutrinos, which can be Dirac particles or Majorana fermions, and the related processes of neutrinoless double beta decay, $(A,Z)\rightarrow (A,Z+2) + e^- + e^-$, and two neutrino double beta decay, $(A,Z)\rightarrow (A,Z+2) + e^- + e^- + \bar{ν_e} + \bar{ν_e}$, is reviewed.
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Neutrino mass matrix via a seesaw mechanism is constructed by assuming that the underlying symmetry of both heavy Majorana and Dirac mass matrices is the discrete subgroup $Δ(27)$ symmetry of SU(3). Using the experimental data of neutrino oscillation, the neutrino mass matrix exhibits maximal $ν_μ-ν_τ$ mixing and has a specific prediction on the effective neutrino mass in neutrinoless double beta decay which can be tested in future experiment.
Majorana neutrinos naturally lead to a Lepton Number Violation (LNV). A superposition of Majorana states can mimic Dirac-type neutrinos, leading to its conservation (LNC). We demonstrate on the example of specific observables related to high and low energy processes how a strength of LNV correlates with neutrino parameters such as CP-phases, flavor mixings, mass ratios. We stress the coaction between low and high energy studies for putting phenomenological models to a quantitative test. Secondly, we conclude that in order to fully study the role of heavy neutrinos in search for New Physics (NP…
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We analyze both chirality-changing and chirality-preserving transitions of Dirac-Majorana neutrinos. In vacuum, the first ones are suppressed with respect to the others due to helicity conservation and the interactions with a (``normal'') medium practically does not affect the expressions of the probabilities for these transitions, even if the amplitudes of oscillations slightly change. For usual situations involving relativistic neutrinos we find no resonant enhancement for all flavour-conserving transitions. However, for very light neutrinos propagating in superdense media, the pattern of os…
It is shown that the Majorana phases of the neutrino mixing matrix cannot have any effect in neutrino oscillations, contrary to the argument presented in arXiv:0912.5266. It is also shown that in a charged-current weak interaction process it is not possible to create a coherent superposition of different flavor neutrinos which is independent of the associated charged leptons.
If the massive neutrinos are Majorana particles, neutrinoless double beta ($0νββ$) decay experiments are not enough to determine the Majorana phases. We carry out a systematic study of CP violation in neutrino-antineutrino oscillations. In these processes, CP-conserving parts involve six independent $0νββ$-like mass terms $\langle m\rangle_{αβ}$ and CP-violating parts are associated with nine independent Jarlskog-like parameters ${\cal V}^{ij}_{αβ}$ (for $α, β= e, μ, τ$ and $i, j = 1, 2,3$). With the help of current neutrino oscillation data, we illustrate the salient features of six independe…
We study the conditions under which the Majorana phase of the two flavor neutrino mixing matrix appears in the oscillation probabilities and causes $CP$ violation. We find that the Majorana phase remains in the neutrino evolution equation if the neutrino decay eigenstates are not aligned with the mass eigenstates. We show that, in general, two kinds of $CP$ violation are possible: one due to the Majorana phase and the other due to the phase of the off-diagonal element of the neutrino decay matrix. We find that the $CP$ violating terms in the oscillation probabilities are also sensitive to neut…
With the help of current neutrino oscillation data, we illustrate the three-dimensional (3D) profiles of all the six distinct effective Majorana neutrino masses $|\langle m\rangle^{}_{αβ}|$ (for $α, β= e, μ, τ$) with respect to the unknown neutrino mass scale and effective Majorana CP phases. Some salient features of $|\langle m\rangle^{}_{αβ}|$ and their phenomenological implications are discussed in both the normal and inverted neutrino mass ordering cases.
Radiative corrections to ${\rm e}^{+}{\rm e}^{-}\! \rightarrow {\rm W}^{+}{\rm W}^{-}$ from Majorana neutrinos are studied in the context of the see-saw mechanism. Focusing on the effects of the fourth generation neutrinos, we calculate W-pair form factors, the differential cross sections and the forward-backward asymmetries for the polarized electrons at one-loop level. The behaviour of the form factors at the threshold of Majorana particle pair productions is found to differ from that of Dirac particle pair productions. In the cross section for unpolarized electrons, the radiative correction…
The intent of this paper is to convey a new primary physical idea of a Dirac-Majorana neutrino duality in relation to the topical problem of neutrino oscillations. In view of the new atmospheric, solar and the LSND neutrino oscillation data, the Pontecorvo $ν- K^0$ oscillation analogy is generalized to the notion of neutrino duality with substantially different physical meaning ascribed to the long-baseline and the short-baseline neutrino oscillations. At the level of CP-invariance, the suggestion of dual neutrino properties defines the symmetric two-mixing-angle form of the widely discussed f…
We propose a strategy for distinguishing the Dirac / Majorana character of heavy neutrinos with masses below the $W$ boson mass, using purely leptonic decays at the LHC. The strategy makes use of a forward-backward asymmetry of the opposite charge lepton in the $W^{+}\rightarrow l^{+}l^{+}l^{'-}ν$ decay. In order to check the experimental feasibility of the model, we show, through a numerical analysis, that in the decay $W^{+}\rightarrow e^{+}e^{+}μ^{-}ν$ the two positrons in the final state can be distinguished for different ranges of the heavy neutrino masses. Finally, we estimated the numbe…
