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Distinguishing Dirac and Majorana neutrinos: Resonant spin-flavor precession of GeV-scale astrophysical transients

David Delepine* and A. Yebra†

  • *Contact author: delepine@ugto.mx
  • †Contact author: azarael@fisica.ugto.mx
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 015012 – Published 7 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/z9cs-9kbw

Abstract

We present a unified formalism to study the resonant spin-flavor precession (RSFP) of high-energy (∼1  GeV) transient astrophysical neutrinos as a probe of their fundamental Dirac or Majorana nature. Current MeV-scale neutrino studies face stringent restrictions: efficient core RSFP for Dirac supernova neutrinos is excluded by SN1987A cooling bounds, while solar neutrino conversion is tightly constrained by Borexino data. We show that considering the 1 GeV energy scale—accessible through solar flares—modifies the resonance conditions. For 1 GeV solar flare neutrinos, the resonance shifts to the tachocline and convective zones, where toroidal magnetic fields (B∼50  kG) induce adiabatic spin-flavor conversion. In contrast, for supernovae, to avoid the cooling constraints, the RSFP is moved from the core supernovae to the stellar envelope. As for nonthermal 1 GeV supernova neutrinos, the resonance is located in the dilute stellar wind where magnetic fields are negligible, suppressing RSFP and preserving the flux, and one can use these nonthermal neutrinos as a candle to calibrate our signal, reducing its dependence on astrophysical uncertainties. Evaluating these helicity transitions through a density matrix approach, we predict distinct asymmetries in coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering and neutrino-electron scattering cross sections for solar flare neutrinos and supernova neutrinos. Our proposal provides a viable method to distinguish Dirac from Majorana neutrinos and to probe magnetic moments down to μν∼10−14μB.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 015012– Published 7 July, 2026
  • Received 8 February 2026
  • Accepted 12 June 2026
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