The Effective Matter Potential for Highly Relativistic Neutrinos

Abstract

We investigate matter effects on highly relativistic neutrinos. The self-energy of neutrinos is determined in an electron or neutrino background taking into account resonance and finite width effects of the gauge bosons. We find minor changes compared to the formerly used formula for the propagator function and large deviations of the effective width from the decay width of the gauge bosons considering higher moments of the electron or neutrino distribution function.

Comments: 10 pages, 4 figures, latex. Final version published in Phys. Lett. B