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Neutrino helicity oscillations in astrophysical environments: A many-body approach

Yiheng Xu1,*, Julien Froustey2,†, George M. Fuller1,‡, Lukáš Gráf3,4,§, and Amol V. Patwardhan5,∥

  • 1Department of Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
  • 2Institut de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), CSIC-Universitat de València, Parc Científic UV, C/ Catedrático José Beltrán 2, E-46980 Paterna (Valencia), Spain
  • 3Institute of Particle and Nuclear Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague, V Holešovičkách 2, 180 00 Praha 8, Czech Republic
  • 4Institute of Physics, Silesian University in Opava, Bezručovo náměstí 1150/13, 746 01 Opava, Czech Republic
  • 5Department of Physics, Reed College, Portland, Oregon 97202, USA

  • *Contact author: y7xu@physics.ucsd.edu
  • †Contact author: julien.froustey@ific.uv.es
  • ‡Contact author: gfuller@physics.ucsd.edu
  • §Contact author: lukas.graf@matfyz.cuni.cz
  • ∥Contact author: apatwardhan@reed.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 063016 – Published 9 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2p4r-f1gs

Abstract

Neutrino rest mass enables left-handed states to “flip” to right-handed states and vice versa. In-medium effects can enhance the probability for such spin flip. We demonstrate that a full many-body calculation of this process in neutrino-dense environments can lead to spin-flip probabilities that exceed by orders of magnitude those calculated with mean-field treatments. We study simple configurations with a few neutrinos in well-defined momentum states, for which we show that the helicity conversion enhancement is connected to many-body momentum exchange. Such an effect would therefore be missed in a calculation that considers only forward processes. We speculate on the potential astrophysical implications of these results and the range of applicability of our calculation and its limitations.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 063016– Published 9 September, 2026
  • Received 5 June 2026
  • Accepted 10 August 2026
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