Inelastic photon-neutrino interactions using an effective Lagrangian

Abstract

We justify the feasibility of substituting a photon leg by a neutrino current in the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian to obtain an effective Lagrangian for the process $\gamma \nu \to \gamma \gamma \nu$ and its crossed reactions. We establish the link between these processes and the four-photon scattering in both the Standard Model and the effective theory. As an application, we compute the processes $\gamma \nu \to \gamma \gamma \nu$ and $\gamma \gamma \to \gamma \nu \bar{\nu }$, give their polarized cross sections, and show how to use the $\gamma \gamma \to \gamma \gamma$ results as a check. We settle the question about the disagreement between two computations in the literature concerning the reaction $\gamma \gamma \to \gamma \nu \bar{\nu }$.

Comments: 14 pages, RevTeX, axodraw, 3 figures, comment added