Neutrino Oscillations Induced by Chiral Torsion

Abstract

Neutrino mixing is caused by the fact that neutrino flavors are not eigenstates of the free Hamiltonian. This causes oscillations among different neutrino flavors. When neutrinos pass through a medium, weak interactions produce different effective masses for neutrinos of different flavors, leading to a modification of the mixing parameters. In curved spacetime there is an additional contribution to neutrino Hamiltonian from a torsion-induced four-fermion interaction, which also causes neutrino mixing while propagating through fermionic matter. We provide an outline of the calculation of this effect on neutrino oscillation.