Stars As Laboratories For Fundamental Physics

Georg G.
Raelt
Stars as Laboratories
for Fundamental Physics
The Astrophysics of Neutrinos, Axions, and Other
Weakly Interacting Particles
Final Manuscript, October 1995
Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1996
Georg G. Raelt is a sta researcher at the Max-Planck-Institut f

ur Physik (MPP)
in Munich, Germany, and a member of the Sonderforschungsbereich Astroteilchenphysik (Special Research Center Astroparticle Physics) at the Technische Universitat M
unchen. He is co-editor of the journal Astroparticle Physics. He studied
physics at the University of Munich and the University of California at Berkeley,
received a Master of Arts from the latter, and a Diplom and in 1986 a doctorate
from the former. Before taking up his position at the MPP in 1990 he has completed
several years of postdoctoral research at the Astronomy Department in Berkeley,
the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics in Livermore, and the Institute
for Advanced Study in Princeton.
To be published by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

c University of Chicago Press (1996)
Table of Contents
Preface (xiv)
Acknowledgments (xxii)
1. The Energy-Loss Argument
1.1 Introduction (1)
1.2 Equations of Stellar Structure (5)
1. Hydrostatic Equilibrium (5) 2. Generic Cases of Stellar Structure (7)
3. Energy Conservation (10) 4. Energy Transfer (11) 5. Gravitational
Settling (13)
1.3 Impact of Novel Particles (14)

1. Energy Loss (14) 2. Application to the Sun (16) 3. Radiative Energy
Transfer (17) 4. Opacity Contribution of Arbitrary Bosons (18) 5. Solar
Bound on Massive Pseudoscalars (20)
1.4 General Lesson (21)
2. Anomalous Stellar Energy Losses Bounded

by Observations
2.1 Stages of Stellar Evolution (23)
1. The Main Sequence (23) 2. Becoming a Red Giant (28) 3. Helium
Ignition (33) 4. The Horizontal Branch (34) 5. From Asymptotic Giants
to White Dwarfs (35) 6. Type I Supernovae (36) 7. Intermediate-Mass
Stars (37) 8. Massive Stars and Type II Supernovae (37) 9. Variable
Stars (39)
2.2 White-Dwarf Cooling (42)

1. Theoretical and Observed White-Dwarfs Properties (42) 2. Cooling
Theory (45) 3. Neutrino Cooling (47) 4. Cooling by Boson Emission (50)
5. Period Decrease of Variable White Dwarfs (52)
2.3 Neutron Stars (54)

1. Late-Time Cooling (54) 2. X-Ray Observations (56) 3. Nonstandard
Cooling and Heating Eects (58) 4. Cooling by Particle Emission (59)
vi
Table of Contents
2.4 Globular-Cluster Stars (60)

1. Observables in the Color-Magnitude Diagram (60) 2. Theoretical Relations (65) 3. Observational Results (70) 4. Interpretation of the
Observational Results (74) 5. An Alternate Analysis (76) 6. Systematic
Uncertainties (78)
2.5 Particle Bounds from Globular-Cluster Stars (79)

1. Helium-Burning Lifetime (79) 2. Helium Ignition (83)
2.6 Summary (87)
3. Particles Interacting with Electrons

and Baryons
3.2 Compton Process (91)
1. Vector Bosons (91) 2. Scalars (93) 3. Pseudoscalars (94) 4. Neutrino
Pairs (95) 5. Energy-Loss Rates (96) 6. Applying the Energy-Loss
Argument (98)
3.3 Pair Annihilation (99)

3.4 Free-Bound and Bound-Free Transitions (100)
3.5 Bremsstrahlung (101)
1. Nondegenerate, Nonrelativistic Medium (101) 2. High Degeneracy:
Pseudoscalars (103) 3. High Degeneracy: Neutrino Pairs (105) 4. NeutronStar Crust (106) 5. Applying the Energy-Loss Argument (107)
3.6 Astrophysical Bounds on Yukawa and Gauge Couplings (109)

1. Pseudoscalars (Axions) (109) 2. Energy Loss by Scalar and Vector
Bosons (110) 3. Long-Range Forces (112) 4. Leptonic and Baryonic
Gauge Interactions (114)
3.7 Graviton Emission from Stars (116)
4. Processes in a Nuclear Medium

4.2 Axionic Bremsstrahlung Process (119)
1. Matrix Element for N N N N a (119) 2. Energy-Loss Rate (120)
3. Nondegenerate Limit (121) 4. Degenerate Limit (123) 5. Bremsstrahlung Emission of Scalars (124) 6. Mixture of Protons and Neutrons (125)
4.3 Neutrino Pair Emission (126)

1. Structure Function (126)
Pairs (130)
4.4 Axion Opacity (131)
2. Bremsstrahlung Emission of Neutrino
Table of Contents
vii
4.5 Neutrino Opacity (132)

1. Elastic Scattering (132) 2. Pair Absorption (132) 3. Inelastic Scattering
(133)
4.6 Structure Functions (136)

1. Formal Denition (136) 2. Nonrelativistic Limit (138) 3. The f-Sum
Rule (139) 4. Long-Wavelength Properties (141) 5. Axion Emission
in the Classical Limit (143) 6. Classical vs. Quantum Result (146)
7. High-Density Behavior (147)
4.7 Eective Nucleon Mass and Coupling (151)

4.8 The URCA Processes (152)
4.9 Novel Phases of Nuclear Matter (155)
1. Pion Condensate (155) 2. Quark Matter (157) 3. Bubble Phase (159)
4.10 Emission of Right-Handed Dirac Neutrinos (160).
5. Two-Photon Coupling of Low-Mass Bosons

5.1 Electromagnetic Coupling of Pseudoscalars (165)
5.2 Primako Process in Stars (168)
1. Screened Cross Section and Emission Rate (168) 2. Plasmon Decay
and Coalescence (170) 3. Axion Emission from Electromagnetic Plasma
Fluctuations (172) 4. Solar Axion Spectrum (175) 5. Globular-Cluster
Bound on ga (176)
5.3 Search for Cosmic Axions (176)

5.4 Axion-Photon Oscillations (179)
1. Mixing Equations (179) 2. Solar Axions (181) 3. Shining Light through
Walls (182) 4. Vacuum Birefringence (183).
5.5 Astrophysical Magnetic Fields (185)

1. Transitions in Magnetic Fields of Stars (185) 2. Birefringence in a
Pulsar Magnetosphere (186) 3. Conversion of Stellar Arions in the Galactic
Field (188) 4. Polarimetry of Distant Radio Sources (190) 5. Temperature
Fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background (191).
5.6 Summary of Constraints on ga (191)
6. Particle Dispersion and Decays in Media

6.2 Particle Dispersion in Media (196)
1. Refractive Index and Forward Scattering (196) 2. Particle Momentum
and Velocity (198) 3. Wave-Function Renormalization (200)
viii
Table of Contents
6.3 Photon Dispersion (202)

1. Maxwells Equations (202) 2. Linear Response of the Medium (204)
3. Isotropic Polarization Tensor in the Lorentz Gauge (206) 4. LowestOrder QED Calculation of (209) 5. Dispersion Relations (212)
6. Renormalization Constants ZT,L (217)
6.4 Screening Eects (219)

1. Debye Screening (219) 2. Correlations and Static Structure Factor (222)
3. Strongly Coupled Plasma (223) 4. Screened Coulomb Scattering (224)
6.5 Plasmon Decay in Neutrinos (227)

1. Millicharged Neutrinos (227) 2. Neutrino Dipole Moments (228)
3. Standard-Model Couplings (229) 4. Summary of Decay Rates (231)
5. Energy-Loss Rates (232) 6. Astrophysical Bounds on Neutrino Electromagnetic Properties (234)
6.6 Neutrino Form Factors in Media (237)

6.7 Neutrino Refraction (241)
1. Neutrino Refractive Index (241) 2. Higher-Order Eects (245) 3. The
Sun a Neutrino Lens? (247)
6.8 Majoron Decay (248)
7. Nonstandard Neutrinos
7.1 Neutrino Masses (251)
1. The Fermion Mass Problem (251) 2. Dirac and Majorana Masses (253)
3. Kinematical Mass Bounds (254) 4. Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay (257)
5. Cosmological Mass Bounds (258).
7.2 Neutrino Mixing and Decay (260)

1. Flavor Mixing (260) 2. Standard-Model Decays of Mixed Neutrinos (263)
7.3 Neutrino Electromagnetic Form Factors (267)

1. Overview (267) 2. Single-Photon Coupling (268) 3. Two-Photon
Coupling (271)
7.4 Electromagnetic Processes (272)

7.5 Limits on Neutrino Dipole Moments (275)
1. Scattering Experiments (275) 2. Spin-Flip Scattering in Supernovae (277)
3. Spin-Flip Scattering in the Early Universe (277) 4. Search for Radiative
Neutrino Decays (278) 5. Plasmon Decay in Stars (279).
Table of Contents
ix
8. Neutrino Oscillations
8.2 Vacuum Oscillations (282)
1. Equation of Motion for Mixed Neutrinos (282) 2. Two-Flavor Oscillations (284) 3. Distribution of Sources and Energies (287) 4. Experimental
Oscillation Searches (289) 5. Atmospheric Neutrinos (290)
8.3 Oscillations in Media (293)

1. Dispersion Relation for Mixed Neutrinos (293) 2. Oscillations in Homogeneous Media (296) 3. Inhomogeneous Medium: Adiabatic Limit (297)
4. Inhomogeneous Medium: Analytic Results (299) 5. The Triangle and
the Bathtub (301) 6. Neutrino Oscillations without Vacuum Mixing (303)
8.4 Spin and Spin-Flavor Oscillations (304)

1. Vacuum Spin Precession (304) 2. Spin Precession in a Medium (306)
3. Spin-Flavor Precession (306) 4. Twisting Magnetic Fields (308)
9. Oscillations of Trapped Neutrinos

9.2 Kinetic Equation for Oscillations and Collisions (313)
1. Stodolskys Formula (313) 2. Matrix of Densities (315) 3. Free
Evolution: Flavor Oscillations (316) 4. Interaction with a Background
Medium (317)
9.3 Neutral-Current Interactions (320)

1. Hamiltonian (320) 2. Neutrino Refraction (321) 3. Kinetic Terms (322)
4. Recovering Stodolskys Formula (324) 5. Weak-Damping Limit (325)
6. Small Mixing Angle (328) 7. Flavor Conversion by Neutral Currents? (328)
9.4 Charged-Current Interactions (329)

1. Hamiltonian (329)
Limit (330)
2. Kinetic Terms (329)
3. Weak-Damping
9.5 Flavor Conversion in a SN Core (332)

1. Rate Equation (332) 2. Neutrino Interaction Rates (334) 3. Time
Scale for Flavor Conversion (335)
9.6 Sterile Neutrinos and SN 1987A (338)
10. Solar Neutrinos

10.2 Calculated Neutrino Spectrum (347)
1. Individual Sources (347) 2. Standard Solar Models (351) 3. Uncertainties of Standard Neutrino Predictions (353)
Table of Contents
10.3 Observations (357)

1. Absorption Reactions for Radiochemical Experiments (357) 2. Chlorine Detector (Homestake) (360) 3. Gallium Detectors (SAGE and
GALLEX) (362) 4. Water Cherenkov Detector (Kamiokande) (365)
5. Summary (372)
10.4 Time Variations (372)

1. Day-Night Eect (372) 2. Seasonal Variation (372) 3. Correlation
with Solar Cycle at Homestake (373) 4. Summary (376)
10.5 Neutrino Flux Decits (377)

1. Boron Flux (377) 2. Beryllium Flux (378) 3. An Astrophysical
Solution? (379)
10.6 Neutrino Oscillations (380)

1. Which Data to Use? (380) 2. Vacuum Oscillations (381) 3. Resonant
Oscillations (MSW Eect) (384)
10.7 Spin and Spin-Flavor Oscillations (387)

10.8 Neutrino Decay (389)
10.9 Future Experiments (390)
1. Superkamiokande (390) 2. Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) (392)
3. BOREXINO (393) 4. Homestake Iodine Detector (394) 5. Summary (394)
11. Supernova Neutrinos

11.1 Stellar Collapse and Supernova Explosions (395)
1. Stellar Collapse (395) 2. Deleptonization and Cooling (399) 3. Supernova Explosions (401) 4. Nucleosynthesis (405)
11.2 Predicted Neutrino Signal (407)

1. Overall Features (407) 2. Energies and Spectra (408) 3. Time
Evolution of the Neutrino Signal (411)
11.3 SN 1987A Neutrino Observations (414)

1. Supernova 1987A (414) 2. Neutrino Observations (415) 3. Analysis of
the Pulse (423) 4. Neutrino Mass and Pulse Duration (426) 5. Anomalies
in the Signal? (427)
11.4 Neutrino Oscillations (430)

1. Overview (430) 2. Prompt e Burst (432) 3. Cooling-Phase e s
(434) 4. Shock Revival (436) 5. R-Process Nucleosynthesis (437)
6. A Caveat (442)
11.5 Neutrino Propulsion of Neutron Stars (443)

11.6 Future Supernovae (445)
Table of Contents
xi
12. Radiative Particle Decays from Distant

Sources
12.1 Preliminaries (449)
12.2 Laboratory Experiments (451)
1. Spectrum of Decay Photons (451) 2. Electron Neutrinos from Reactors (453) 3. Heavy Neutrinos from Reactors (455) 4. Neutrinos from
a Beam Stop (456)
12.3 Particles from the Sun (458)

1. Electron Neutrinos (458) 2. Heavy Neutrino Admixtures (461) 3. New
Particles (462)
12.4 Supernova 1987A (462)

1. Decay Photons from Low-Mass Neutrinos (462) 2. SMM Observations (465) 3. Radiative Decay Limit: Low-Mass Neutrinos (467)
4. Decay Photons from High-Mass Neutrinos (469) 5. Radiative Decay
Limits: High-Mass Neutrinos (472) 6. Summary of Limits (477)
7. Limit on e e+ e (480) 8. Heavy, Sterile Neutrinos (482)
9. Axions (483) 10. Supernova Energetics (483)
12.5 Galactic Supernovae and e e+ e (484)

1. Bounds on the Positron Flux (484)
Heavy? (485)
2. Can the Tau Neutrino Be
12.6 Neutrinos from All Stars (486)

12.7 Cosmological Bounds (488)
1. Neutrinos (488) 2. Axions (491)
13. What Have We Learned from SN 1987A?

13.2 Basic Characteristics of the Neutrino Burst (494)
1. Fluence (494) 2. Energy Distribution (495) 3. Prompt e Burst (496)
4. Nonobservation of a -Ray Burst (497)
13.3 Dispersion Eects (497)

1. Photons vs. Antineutrinos (497) 2. Neutrinos vs. Antineutrinos (498)
3. Intrinsic Dispersion of the e -Pulse (499)
13.4 Duration of Neutrino Emission (501)

1. A General Argument (501) 2. Analytic Criterion in the Free-Streaming
Limit (504) 3. Trapping Limit (506)
13.5 Axions (508)

1. Numerical Studies (508) 2. Impact of Multiple-Scattering Eects (511)
13.6 How Many Neutrino Flavors? (513)
xii
Table of Contents
13.7 Neutrino Opacity (514)

13.8 Right-Handed Neutrinos (516)
1. Dirac Mass (516) 2. Right-Handed Currents (519) 3. Magnetic
Dipole Moments (521) 4. Millicharges (522) 5. Charge Radius (523)
14. Axions
14.1 The Strong CP-Problem (524)
14.2 The Peccei-Quinn Mechanism (521)
1. Generic Features (526) 2. Axions as Nambu-Goldstone Bosons (528)
3. Pseudoscalar vs. Derivative Interaction (531) 4. The Onslaught of
Quantum Gravity (532)
14.3 Fine Points of Axion Properties (534)

1. The Most Common Axion Models (534) 2. Axion Mass and Coupling
to Photons (535) 3. Model-Dependent Axion-Fermion Coupling (536)
14.4 Astrophysical Axion Bounds (538)

14.5 Cosmological Limits (540)
15. Miscellaneous Exotica

15.1 Constancy of Fermis Constant (545)
15.2 Constancy of Newtons Constant (546)
1. Present-Day Constraints from Celestial Mechanics (546) 2. Big-Bang
Nucleosynthesis (547) 3. Properties of the Sun (549) 4. White
Dwarfs (551) 5. Globular Clusters (551)
15.3
15.4
15.5
15.6
15.7
Test of the Equivalence Principle (554)

Photon Mass and Charge (555)
Free Quarks (556)
Supersymmetric Particles (557)
Majorons (558)
1. Particle-Physics and Cosmological Motivations (558) 2. Majorons and
Stars (562)
15.8 Millicharged Particles (564)
16. Neutrinos: The Bottom Line

16.1 Standard Neutrinos (568)
16.2 Minimally Extended Standard Model (570)
1. Cosmological Mass Limit for All Flavors (570) 2. Oscillations of Solar
Neutrinos (571) 3. Oscillation of Supernova Neutrinos (572) 4. Electromagnetic Properties (573)
Table of Contents
xiii
16.3 New Interactions (574)

1. Majorana Masses (574) 2. Heavy Neutrinos and Fast Decays (574)
3. Electromagnetic Properties (576) 4. Summary (579)
Appendices
A. Units and Dimensions (580)
B. Neutrino Coupling Constants (583)
C. Numerical Neutrino Energy-Loss Rates (585)
1. Plasma Process (585) 2. Photoneutrino and Pair-Annihilation Process (586) 3. Bremsstrahlung (588) 4. Total Emission Rate (589)
D. Characteristics of Stellar Plasmas (591)

D.1 Normal Matter (591)
1. Temperatures and Densities (591) 2. Relativistic Conditions for Electrons (593) 3. Electron Degeneracy (593) 4. Plasma Frequency (596)
5. Screening Scale (596) 6. Summary (598)
D.2 Nuclear Matter (600)

1. The Ideal p n e e Gas (600) 2. Kinetic and Chemical Equilibrium (600)
3. Cold Nuclear Matter (601) 4. Hot Nuclear Matter (602)
References (606)
Acronyms (642)
Symbols (644)
Subject Index (649)
Preface
Ever since Newton proposed that the moon on its orbit follows the same
laws of motion as an apple falling from a tree, the heavens have been
a favorite laboratory to test the fundamental laws of physics, notably
classical mechanics and Newtons and Einsteins theories of gravity.
This tradition carries onthe 1993 physics Nobel prize was awarded
to R. A. Hulse and J. H. Taylor for their 1974 discovery of the binary
pulsar PSR 1913+16 whose measured orbital decay they later used to
identify gravitational wave emission. However, the scope of physical
laws necessary to understand the phenomena observed in the superlunar sphere has expanded far beyond these traditional elds. Today,
astrophysics has become a vast playing ground for applications of the
laws of microscopic physics, in particular the properties of elementary
particles and their interactions.
This book is about how stars can be used as laboratories to probe
fundamental interactions. Apart from a few arguments relating to gravitational physics and the nature of space and time (Is Newtons constant
constant? Do all relativistic particles move with the same limiting velocity? Are there novel long-range interactions?), most of the discussion
focusses on the properties and nongravitational interactions of elementary particles.
There are three predominant methods for the use of stars as particlephysics laboratories. First, stars are natural sources for photons and
neutrinos which can be detected on Earth. Neutrinos are now routinely
measured from the Sun, and have been measured once from a collapsing
star (SN 1987A). Because these particles literally travel over astronomical distances before reaching the detector one can study modications
of the measured signal which can be attributed to propagation and dispersion eects, including neutrino avor oscillations or axion-photon
oscillations in intervening magnetic elds. It is well known that the
discrepancy between the calculated and measured solar neutrino spectra is the most robust, yet preliminary current indication for neutrino
oscillations and thus for nonvanishing neutrino masses.
xiv
Preface
xv
Second, particles from distant sources may decay, and there may
be photons or even measurable neutrinos among the decay products.
The absence of solar x- and -rays yields a limit on neutrino radiative decays which is as safe as a laboratory limit, yet nine orders
of magnitude more restrictive. An even more restrictive limit obtains
from the absence of -rays in conjunction with the SN 1987A neutrinos which allows one to conclude, for example, that even must obey
the cosmological limit of m <
30 eV unless one invents new invisible
decay channels.
Third, the emission of weakly interacting particles causes a direct
energy-loss channel from the interior of stars. For neutrinos, this eect
has been routinely included in stellar evolution calculations. If new lowmass elementary particles were to exist such as axions or other NambuGoldstone bosons, or if neutrinos had novel interactions with the stellar
medium such as one mediated by a putative neutrino magnetic dipole
moment, then stars might lose energy too fast. A comparison with the
observed stellar properties allows one to derive restrictive limits on the
operation of a new energy-loss or energy-transfer mechanism and thus
to constrain the proposed novel particle interactions.
While these and related arguments as well their application and results are extensively covered here, I have not written on several topics
that might be expected to be represented in a book on the connection
between particle physics and stars. Neutron stars have been speculated
to consist of quark matter so that in principle they are a laboratory to
study a quark-gluon plasma. As I am not familiar enough with the literature on this interesting topic I refer the reader to the review by Alcock
and Olinto (1988) as well as to the more recent proceedings of two topical conferences (Madsen and Haensel 1992; Vassiliadis et al. 1995).
I have also dodged some important issues in the three-way relationship between cosmology, stars, and particle physics. If axions are not
the dark matter of the universe, it is likely lled with a background
sea of hypothetical weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) such
as the lightest supersymmetric particles. Moreover, there may be exotic particles left over from the hot early universe such as magnetic
monopoles which are predicted to exist in the framework of typical
grand unied theories (GUTs). Some of the monopoles or WIMPs
would be captured and accumulate in the interior of stars. GUT
monopoles are predicted to catalyze nucleon decay (Rubakov-Callaneect), providing stars with a novel energy source. This possibility can
be constrained by analogous methods to those presented here which
limit anomalous energy losses. The resulting constraints on the pres-
xvi
Preface
ence of GUT monopoles in the universe have been reviewed, for example, in the cosmology book of Kolb and Turner (1990). Because nothing
of substance has changed, a new review did not seem warranted.
WIMPs trapped in stars would contribute to the heat transfer because their mean free path can be so large that they may be orbiting almost freely in the stars gravitational potential well, with only
occasional collisions with the background medium. Originally it was
thought that this eect could reduce the central solar temperature
enough to solve the solar neutrino problem, and to better an alleged
discrepancy between observed and predicted solar p-mode frequencies.
With the new solar neutrino data it has become clear, however, that a
reduction of the central temperature alone cannot solve the problem.
Worse, solving the old solar neutrino problem by the WIMP mechanism now seems to cause a discrepancy with the observed solar p-mode
frequencies (Christensen-Dalsgaard 1992). In addition, a signicant effect requires relatively large scattering cross sections and thus rather
contrived particle-physics models. Very restrictive direct laboratory
constraints exist for the presence of these cosmions in the galaxy.
Given this status I was not motivated to review the topic in detail.
The annihilation of dark-matter WIMPs captured in the Sun or
Earth produces high-energy neutrinos which are measurable in terrestrial detectors such as Kamiokande or the future Superkamiokande,
NESTOR, DUMAND, and AMANDA Cherenkov detectors. This indirect approach to search for dark matter may well turn into a serious
competitor for the new generation of direct laboratory search experiments that are currently being mounted. This material is extensively
covered in a forthcoming review Supersymmetric Dark Matter by Jungman, Kamionkowski, and Griest (1995); there is no need for me to
duplicate the eort of these experts.
The topics covered in my book revolve around the impact of lowmass or massless particles on stars or the direct detection of this radiation. The highest energies encountered are a few 100 MeV (in the
interior of a SN core) which is extremely small on the high-energy scales
of typical particle accelerator experiments. Therefore, stars as laboratories for fundamental physics help to push the low-energy frontier of
particle physics and as such complement the eorts of nonaccelerator
particle experiments. Their main thrust is directed at the search for
nonstandard neutrino properties, but there are other fascinating topics which include the measurement of parity-violating phenomena in
atoms, the search for neutron or electron electric dipole moments which
would violate CP, the search for neutron-antineutron oscillations, the
Preface
xvii
search for proton decay, or the search for particle dark matter in the
galaxy by direct and indirect detection experiments (Rich, Lloyd Owen,
and Spiro 1987). It is fascinating that the IMB and Kamiokande water
Cherenkov detectors which had been built to search for proton decay
ended up seeing supernova (SN) neutrinos instead. The Frejus detector, instead of seeing proton decay, has set important limits on the
oscillation of atmospheric neutrinos. Kamiokande has turned into a
major solar neutrino observatory and dark-matter search experiment.
The forthcoming Superkamiokande and SNO detectors will continue
and expand these missions, may detect a future galactic SN, and may
still nd proton decay.
All currently known phenomena of elementary particle physics are

either perfectly well accounted for by its standard model, or are not
explained at all. The former category relates to the electroweak and
strong gauge interactions which have been spectacularly successful at
describing microscopic processes up to the energies currently available
at accelerators. On the other side are, for example, the mass spectrum
of the fundamental fermions (quarks and leptons), the source for CP
violation, or the relationship between the three families (why three?).
There must be physics beyond the standard model!
In the standard model, neutrinos have been assigned the most minimal properties compatible with experimental data: zero mass, zero
charge, zero dipole moments, zero decay rate, zero almost everything.
Any deviation from this simple picture is a sensitive probe for physics
beyond the standard modelthus the enthusiasm to search for neutrino masses and mixings, notably in oscillation experiments, but also
for neutrino electromagnetic properties, decays, and other eects. In
astrophysics, even minimal neutrinos play a major role for the energy loss of stars as they can escape unscathed from the interior once
produced. Moreover, in spite of their weak interaction there are two
astrophysical sites where they actually reach thermal equilibrium: the
early universe up to about the nucleosynthesis epoch and in a SN core
for a few seconds after collapse. Neutrinos thus play a dominant role
in the cosmic and SN dynamical and thermal evolutionlittle wonder
that these environments are important neutrino laboratories.
Nonstandard neutrino properties such as small Majorana masses
or magnetic dipole moments would be low-energy manifestations of
novel physics at short distances. Another spectacular interloper of highenergy physics in the low-energy world would be a Nambu-Goldstone
xviii
Preface
boson of a new symmetry broken at some large energy scale. Such a

particle would be massless or nearly massless. The most widely discussed example is the invisible axion which has been postulated as
an explanation for the observed absence of a neutron electric dipole
moment which in QCD ought to be about as large as its magnetic one.
The axion also doubles as a particle candidate for the dark matter of
the universe; two beautiful experiments to search for galactic axions are
about to go on line in Livermore (California) and Kyoto (Japan). Because of their weak interactions, the role of axions and similar particles
in stellar evolution is closely related to that of neutrinos.
The complete or near masslessness of the particles studied here (neutrinos, photons, axions, etc.) opens up a rich phenomenology in its own
right. One intriguing issue is the production and propagation of these
objects in a hot and dense medium which modies their dispersion relations in subtle but signicant ways. One of the most important neutrino
production processes in stars is the photon decay which is
enabled by the modied photon dispersion relation in a medium, and
by an eective neutrino-photon coupling mediated by the ambient electrons. Another example is the process of resonant neutrino oscillations
(MSW eect) which is instrumental at explaining the measured solar
neutrino spectrum, and may imply vast modications of SN physics,
notably the occurrence of r-process nucleosynthesis. The MSW eect
depends on a avor-birefringent term of the neutrino dispersion relation in a medium. In a SN, neutrinos themselves make an important
contribution to the background medium so that their oscillations become a nonlinear phenomenon. In the deep interior of a SN core where
neutrinos are trapped, a kinetic treatment of the interplay between oscillations and collisions requires a fascinating nonabelian Boltzmann
collision equation.
One may think that low-energy particle physics in a dense and hot
medium requires the tools of eld theory at nite temperature and
density (FTD) which has taken a stormy development over the past
fteen years. In practice, its contribution to particle astrophysics has
been minor. The derivation of dispersion relations in a medium can be
understood in kinetic theory from forward scattering on the medium
constituentsdispersion is a lowest-order phenomenon. The imaginary
part of a particle self-energy in the medium is physically related to its
emission and absorption rate which in FTD eld theory is given by
Preface
xix
cuts of higher-order graphs. These methods have been applied only

in a few cases of direct interest to particle astrophysics where the results seem to agree with those from kinetic theory in the limits which
have been relevant in practice. A systematic formulation of astrophysically relevant particle dispersion, emission, and absorption processes
in the framework of FTD eld theory is a project for another author.
Tanguy Altherr had begun to take up this challenge with his collaborators in a series of papers. However, his premature death in a tragic
climbing accident on 14 July 1994 has put an abrupt end to this line
of research.
My presentation of dispersion, emission, and absorption processes
is based entirely on the old-fashioned tools of kinetic theory where, say,
an axion emission rate is given by an integral of a squared matrix element over the thermally occupied phase space of the reaction partners.
Usually this approach is not problematic, but it does require some tinkering when it comes to the problem of electromagnetic screening or
other collective eects. I would not be surprised if subtle but important
collective eects had been overlooked in some cases.
A simple kinetic approach is not adequate in the hot nuclear medium
characteristic for a young SN core. However, in practice quantities like
the neutrino opacities and axion emissivities have been calculated as
if the medium constituents were freely propagating particles. At least
for the dominant axial-vector current interactions this approach is not
consistent as one needs to assume that the spin-uctuation rate is small
compared with typical thermal energies while a naive calculation yields
a result much larger than T . Realistically, it probably saturates at
O(T ), independently of details of the assumed interaction potential.
This conjecture appears to be supported by our recent calibration of
SN opacities from the SN 1987A neutrino signal. However, a calculation
of either neutrino opacities or axion emissivities on the basis of rst
principles is not available at the present time because FTD eects as
well as nuclear-physics complications dominate the problem.
It has been challenging to hammer the multifarious and intertwined

aspects of my topic into the linear shape required by the nature of
a book. Chapters 16 are mainly devoted to the stellar energy-loss
argument. It is introduced in Chapter 1 where its general aspects are
developed on the basis of the stellar structure equations. Chapter 2
establishes the observational limits on those stellar evolutionary time
xx
Preface
scales that have been used for the purposes of particle astrophysics.
For each case the salient applications are summarized. Chapters 36
deal with the interaction of radiation (neutrinos, axions, other lowmass bosons) with the main constituents of stellar plasmas (photons,
electrons, nucleons). In these chapters all information is pulled together
that pertains to the given interaction channel, even if it is not directly
related to the energy-loss argument. For example, in Chapter 5 the
limits on the electromagnetic coupling of pseudoscalars with photons
are summarized; the stellar energy-loss ones are the most restrictive
which justies this arrangement.
Chapter 6 develops the topic of particle dispersion in media. The
medium-induced photon dispersion relation allows for the plasma process which yields the best limit on neutrino dipole moments
by virtue of the energy-loss argument applied to globular-cluster stars.
The neutrino dispersion relation is needed for the following discussion
of neutrino oscillations, establishing a link between the energy-loss argument and the dispersion arguments of the following chapters.
Dispersion and propagation eects are particularly important for
massive neutrinos with avor mixing. To this end the phenomenology
of massive, mixed neutrinos is introduced in Chapter 7. Vacuum and
matter-induced avor oscillations as well as magnetically induced spin
oscillations are taken up in Chapter 8. If neutrinos are in thermal equilibrium as in a young SN core or the early universe, neutrino oscillations
require a dierent theoretical treatment (Chapter 9).
Chapters 1013 are devoted to astrophysical sources where neutrinos have been measured, i.e. the Sun and supernovae (for the latter only the SN 1987A signal exists). Neutrino oscillations, notably
of the matter-induced variety, play a prominent role in Chapter 10
(solar neutrinos) and Chapter 11 (SN neutrinos). Radiative particle
decays, especially of neutrinos, are studied in Chapter 12 where the
Sun and SN 1987A gure prominently as sources. In Chapter 13 the
particle-physics results from SN 1987A are summarized, including the
ones related to the energy-loss and other arguments.
Chapters 1416 give particle-specic summaries. While axions play
a big role throughout this text, only the structure of the interaction
Hamiltonian with photons, electrons, and nucleons is needed. Thus
everything said about axions applies to any pseudoscalar low-mass boson for which they serve as a generic example. In Chapter 14 these
results are interpreted in terms of axion-specic models which relate
their properties to those of the neutral pion and thus establish a nearly
unique relationship between their mass and interaction strength. Often-
Preface
xxi
quoted astrophysical bounds on the axion mass are really transformed

bounds on their interaction strength. This chapter also summarizes
recent developments of the putative cosmological role of axions. Chapter 15 takes up a variety of hypotheses which can be tested by the
methods developed in this book. Finally, Chapter 16 is an attempt at
a bottom line of what we have learned about neutrino properties in the
astrophysical laboratory.
Parts of my presentation are devoted to theoretical and calculational ne points of particle dispersion and emission eects in media. I
nd some of these issues quite intriguing in their own right. Still, the
main goal has been to provide an up-to-date overview of what we know
about elementary particles and their interactions on the basis of established stellar properties and on the basis of measured or experimentally
constrained stellar particle uxes.
All those whose lives are spent searching for truth are well
aware that the glimpses they catch of it are necessarily eeting, glittering for an instant only to make way for new and
still more dazzling insights. The scholars work, in marked
contrast to that of the artist, is inevitably provisional. He
knows this and rejoices in it, for the rapid obsolescence of
his books is the very proof of the progress of scholarship.
(Henri Pirenne, 18621935)
In spite of this bittersweet insight, and in spite of some inevitable
errors of omission and commission, I hope that my book will be of some
use to researchers, scholars, and students interested in the connection
between fundamental physics and stars.
Munich, May 1995.
Acknowledgments
While writing this book I have benetted from the help and encouragement of many friends and colleagues. In particular, I need to mention
Hans-Thomas Janka, Lothar Luh, G
unter Sigl, Pierre Sikivie, Thomas
Strobel, and Achim Weiss who read various parts of the manuscript,
and the referees Josh Frieman and J. Craig Wheeler who read all or
most of it. Their comments helped in no small measure to improve the
manuscript and to eliminate some errors. Hans-Thomas, in particular,
has spared no eort at educating me on the latest developments in the
area of supernova physics. Several chapters were written during a visit
at the Center for Particle Astrophysics in BerkeleyI gratefully acknowledge the ne hospitality of Bernard Sadoulet and his sta. Staying for that period as a guest in Edward Janellis house made a huge
dierence. During the entire writing process Greg Castillo provided
encouragement and a large supply of Cuban and Puerto Rican music
CDs which have helped to keep my spirits up. At the University of
Chicago Press, I am indebted to Vicki Jennings, Penelope Kaiserlian,
Stacia Kozlowski, and Eleanore Law for their expert handling of all
editorial and practical matters that had to be taken care of to transform my manuscript into a book. David Schramm as the series editor
originally solicited this opus (just expand your Physics Report a little
bit). It hasnt quite worked that way, but now that Im nished I am
grateful that David persuaded me to take up this project.
xxii
Chapter 1
The Energy-Loss Argument
Weakly interacting, low-mass particles such as neutrinos or axions contribute to the energy loss or energy transfer in stars. The impact of
an anomalous energy-loss mechanism is discussed qualitatively and in
terms of homology relations between standard and perturbed stellar
models. The example of massive pseudoscalar particles is used to illustrate the impact of a new energy-loss and a new radiative-transfer
mechanism on the Sun.
1.1
Introduction
More than half a century ago, Gamow and Schoenberg (1940, 1941)
ushered in the advent of particle astrophysics when they speculated that
neutrinos may play an important role in stellar evolution, particularly
in the collapse of evolved stars. Such a hypothesis was quite bold for
the time because neutrinos, which had been proposed by Pauli in 1930,
were not directly detected until 1954. That their existence was far from
being an established belief when Gamow and Schoenberg wrote their
papers is illustrated by Bethes (1939) complete silence about them in
his seminal paper on the solar nuclear fusion chains.
Even after the existence of neutrinos had been established they
seemed to interact only by reactions of the sort e + (A, Z)
(A, Z1) + e or (A, Z1) (A, Z) + e + e , the so-called URCA
reactions which Gamow and Schoenberg had in mind, or by fusion processes like pp de+ e . The URCA reactions and related processes
become important only at very high temperatures or densities because
of their energy threshold. While the Sun emits two neutrinos for every
helium nucleus fused from hydrogen, the energy loss in neutrinos is only
a few percent of the total luminosity and thus plays a minor role.
1
Chapter 1
Still, neutrinos can be important in normal stars. This became

clear when in 1958 Feynman and Gell-Mann as well as Sudarshan and
Marshak proposed the universal V A interaction law which implied
a direct neutrino-electron interaction with the strength of the Fermi
constant. Pontecorvo (1959) realized almost immediately that this interaction would allow for the bremsstrahlung radiation of neutrino pairs
by electrons, and that the absence of a threshold renders this process
an important energy loss mechanism for stars. Of course, their typical
energies will correspond to the temperature of the plasma (about 1 keV
in the Sun) while neutrinos from nuclear reactions have MeV energies.
On the basis of the bremsstrahlung process, Gandelman and Pinaev
(1959) calculated the approximate conditions for which neutrino losses
would outshine the photon luminosity of stars. For the Sun, thermal
neutrino emission is found to be irrelevant.
Subsequently, the neutrino emissivity was calculated by many authors. It was quickly realized that the dominant emission processes from
a normal stellar plasma are the photoneutrino process e e , the
bremsstrahlung process e +(A, Z) (A, Z)+e +, and the plasma
process (photon decay) which is possible because photons
have an eective mass in the medium. These and related reactions will
be discussed at length in Chapters 36.
In the late 1960s Stothers and his collaborators1 established that
the observed paucity of red supergiants is best explained by the fast
rate with which these carbon-burning stars spend their nuclear fuel
due to neutrino emission. Therefore, the existence and approximate
magnitude of the direct electron-neutrino coupling was at least tentatively established by astrophysical methods several years before its
experimental measurement in 1976.
While standard neutrino physics today is an integral part of stellar
evolution and supernova theory, they could have novel couplings to the
plasma, for example by a magnetic dipole moment. Then they could
be emitted more eciently than is possible with standard interactions.
Moreover, new concepts of particle physics have emerged that could be
equally important despite the relatively low energies available in stellar
interiors. In various extensions of the standard model, the spontaneous
breakdown of a symmetry of the Lagrangian of the fundamental interactions by some large vacuum expectation value of a new eld leads
to the prediction of massless or nearly massless particles, the NambuGoldstone bosons of the broken symmetry. The most widely discussed
1
For a summary see Stothers (1970, 1972).
example is the axion (Chapter 14) which arises as the Nambu-Goldstone

boson of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry which explains the puzzling absence of a neutron electric dipole moment, i.e. it explains CP conservation in strong interactions. The production of axions in stars, like that
of neutrinos, is not impeded by threshold eects.
Clearly, the emission of novel weakly interacting particles or the
emission of neutrinos with novel properties would have a strong impact
on the evolution and properties of stars. Sato and Sato (1975) were
the rst to use this energy-loss argument to derive bounds on the
coupling strength of a putative low-mass Higgs particle. Following this
lead, the argument has been applied to a great variety of particlephysics hypotheses, and to a great variety of stars.
In the remainder of this chapter the impact of a novel energy-loss
mechanism on stars will be discussed in simple terms. The main message will be that the emission of weakly interacting particles usually
leads to a modication of evolutionary time scales. By losing energy in
a new channel, the star eectively burns or cools faster and thus shines
for a shorter time. In the case of low-mass red giants, however, particle
emission leads to a delay of helium ignition and thus to an extension
of the red-giant phase. Either way, what needs to be observationally
established is the duration of those phases of stellar evolution which
are most sensitive to a novel energy-loss mechanism. In Chapter 2 such
evolutionary phases will be identied, and the observational evidence
for their duration will be discussed. In the end one will be able to
state simple criteria for the allowed rate of energy loss from plasmas at
certain temperatures and densities.
One may be tempted to think that one should consider the hottest
and densest possible stars because no doubt the emission of weakly interacting particles is most ecient there. However, this emission competes with standard neutrinos whose production is also more ecient
in hotter and denser objects. Because neutrinos are thermally emitted
in pairs their emission rates involve favorable phase-space factors which
lead to a temperature dependence which is steeper than that for the
emission of, say, axions. Thus, for a given axion coupling strength the
relative importance of axion emission is greater for lower temperatures.
Of course, the temperatures must not be so low that neither neutrino
nor axion emission is important at all relative to the photon luminosity. Consequently, the best objects to use are those where neutrinos just
begin to have an observational impact on stellar observables. Examples are low-mass red giants, horizontal-branch stars, white dwarfs, and
old neutron stars. They all have masses of around 1 M (solar mass).
Chapter 1
For low-mass stars plenty of detailed observational data exist, allowing

one to establish signicant limits on possible deviations from standard
evolutionary time scales.
From the astrophysical perspective, the energy-loss argument requires establishing evolutionary time scales and other observables that
are sensitive to a novel energy sink. This problem will be taken up
in Chapter 2. From the particle-physics perspective, one needs to calculate the energy-loss rate of a plasma at a given temperature, density,
and chemical composition into a proposed channel. For this purpose
it is not necessary to know any of the underlying physics that leads to
the hypothesis of nonstandard neutrino properties or the prediction of
new particles such as axions. All one needs is the structure of the interaction Hamiltonian with the constituents of stellar plasmas (electrons,
nucleons, nuclei, and photons). For example, it is enough to know that
an axion is a low-mass particle with a pseudoscalar interaction with
electrons to calculate the axion emission rate. As such axion stands
for any particle with a similar interaction structure. The motivation
for real axions and their detailed model-dependent properties are not
discussed until Chapter 14. In Chapters 35 and partly in Chapter 6
various interaction structures will be explored and constraints on the
overall coupling strengths will be derived or summarized. Also, they
will be put into the context of evidence from sources other than the
stellar energy-loss argument.
Putative novel particles almost inevitably must be very weakly interacting or else they would have been seen in laboratory experiments.
Still, one is sometimes motivated to speculate about particles which
may be so strongly interacting that they cannot freely escape from
stars; their mean free path may be shorter than the stellar radius. It
is often incorrectly stated that such particles would be astrophysically
allowed. Nothing could be further from the truth. Particles which
are trapped, i.e. which cannot freely stream out once produced, contribute to the radiative transfer of energy in competition with photons.
Radiative energy transfer occurs because particles produced in a hot
region get absorbed in a neighboring somewhat cooler region. This
mechanism is more ecient if the mean free path is larger because then
ever more distant regions with larger temperature dierences are thermally coupled. Therefore, particles which interact more weakly than
photons would dominate the radiative energy transfer and thus have a
tremendous impact on the structure of stars.
Very roughly speaking, then, novel particles must be either more
strongly interacting than photons, or more weakly interacting than neu-
trinos, to be harmless in stars. Of course, depending on whether the

particles are bosons or fermions, and depending on the details of their
interaction structure, this statement must be rened. Still, the impact
of novel particles on stellar structure and evolution is maximized when
their mean free path is of order the geometric dimension of the system.
The energy-transfer argument is equally powerful as the energy-loss argument. The only reason why it has not been elaborated much in the
literature is because there is usually little motivation for considering
strongly interacting novel particles.
When it comes to the evolution of a supernova (SN) core after collapse even neutrinos are trapped. Such a newborn neutron star is so
hot (T of order 30 MeV) and dense ( exceeding nuclear density of
31014 g cm3 ) that neutrinos take several seconds to diuse to the
surface. Particles like axions can then compete in spite of the extreme
conditions because they freely stream out if their coupling is weak
enough. The energy-loss argument can be applied because the neutrino cooling time scale has been established by the SN 1987A neutrino
observations. While the energy-loss argument in this case is fundamentally no dierent from, say, white-dwarf cooling, the detailed reasoning
is closely intertwined with the issue of neutrino physics in supernovae,
and with the details of the SN 1987A neutrino observations. Therefore, it is taken up only in Chapter 13. The groundwork concerning
the interactions of neutrinos and axions with nucleons, however, is laid
in Chapter 4 within the series of chapters devoted to various modes of
particle interactions with the constituents of stellar plasmas.
1.2
1.2.1
Equations of Stellar Structure

Hydrostatic Equilibrium
To understand the impact of a novel energy-loss mechanism on the

evolution of stars one must understand the basic physical principles that
govern stellar structure. While a number of simplifying assumptions
need to be made, the theory of stellar structure and evolution has been
extremely successful at modelling stars with a vast range of properties.
For a more detailed account than is possible here the reader is referred
to the textbook literature, e.g. Kippenhahn and Weigert (1990).
One usually assumes spherical symmetry and thus excludes the effects of rotation, magnetic elds, tidal eects from a binary companion,
and large-scale convective currents. While any of those eects can be
important in special cases, none of them appears to have a noticeable
Chapter 1
impact on the overall picture of stellar structure and evolution, with

the possible exception of supernova physics where large-scale convective
overturns may be crucial for the explosion mechanism (Chapter 11).
Second, one usually assumes hydrostatic equilibrium, i.e. one ignores
the macroscopic kinetic energy of the stellar medium. This approximation is inadequate for a study of stellar pulsation where the inertia of
the material is obviously important, and also inadequate for hydrodynamic events such as a supernova explosion (Sect. 2.1.8), and perhaps
the helium ash (Sect. 2.1.3). For most purposes, however, the changes
of the stellar structure are so slow that neglecting the kinetic energy is
an excellent approximation.
Therefore, as a rst equation one uses the condition of hydrostatic
equilibrium that a spherical shell of the stellar material is held in place
by the opposing forces of gravity and pressure,
dp
G N Mr
=
.
dr
r2
(1.1)
Here, GN is Newtons constant, p and are the

pressure and mass den r 2
sity at the radial position r, and Mr = 4 0 dr r is the integrated
mass up to the radius r.
With apologies to astrophysicists I will usually employ natural units
where h
= c = kB = 1. In Appendix A conversion factors are given
between various units of mass, energy, inverse length and time, temperature, and so forth. Newtons constant is then GN = m2
Pl with the
19
5
Planck mass mPl = 1.22110 GeV = 2.17710 g. Stellar masses are
always denoted with the letter M to avoid confusion with an absolute
bolometric brightness which is traditionally denoted by M .
In general, the pressure is given in terms of the density, temperature,
and chemical composition by virtue of an equation of state. For a
classical monatomic gas p = 23 u with u the density of internal energy.
One may multiply Eq. (1.1) on both sides with 4r3 and integrate
from the center (r = 0) to the surface (r = R). The r.h.s. gives the
total gravitational energy while the l.h.s. yields 12 0R dr p r2 after a
partial integration with the boundary condition p = 0 at the surface.
With p = 23 u this is 2U with U the total internal energy of the star.
Because for a monatomic gas U is the sum of the kinetic energies of the
atoms one nds that on average for every atom
Ekin = 21 Egrav .
(1.2)
This is the virial theorem which is the most important tool to understand the behavior of self-gravitating systems.
As a simple example for the beauty and power of the virial theorem one may estimate the solar central temperature from its mass and
radius. The material is dominated by protons which have a gravitational potential energy of order GN M mp /R = 2.14 keV where
M = 1.991033 g is the solar mass, R = 6.961010 cm the solar
radius, and mp the proton mass. The average kinetic energy of a
proton is equal to 32 T (remember, kB has been set equal to unity),
yielding an approximate value for the solar internal temperature of
T = 13 2.14 keV = 0.8107 K. This is to be compared with 1.56107 K
found for the central temperature of a typical solar model. This example illustrates that the basic properties of stars can be understood from
simple physical principles.
1.2.2
Generic Cases of Stellar Structure
a) Normal Stars
There are two main sources of pressure relevant in stars, thermal pressure and degeneracy pressure. The third possibility, radiation pressure,
never dominates except perhaps in the most massive stars. The pressure provided by a species of particles is proportional to their density,
to their momentum which is reected on an imagined piston and thus
exerts a force, and to their velocity which tells us the number of hits on
the piston per unit time. In a nondegenerate nonrelativistic medium
a typical particle velocity and momentum is proportional to T 1/2 so
that p (/) T with the mass density and the mean molecular weight of the medium constituents. For nonrelativistic degenerate
electrons the density is ne = p3F /3 2 (Fermi momentum pF ), a typical
momentum is pF , and the velocity is pF /me , yielding a pressure which
is proportional to p5F or to n5/3
and thus to 5/3 .
e
The two main pressure sources determine two generic forms of behavior of overall stellar models, namely normal stars such as our Sun
which is dominated by thermal pressure, and degenerate stars such as
white dwarfs which are dominated by degeneracy pressure. These two
cases follow a very dierent logic.
A normal star is understood most easily if one imagines how it initially forms from a dispersed but gravitationally bound gas cloud. It
continuously loses energy because photons are produced in collisions
between, say, electrons and protons. The radiation carries away energy
which must go at the expense of the total energy of the system. If it is
roughly in an equilibrium conguration, the virial theorem Eq. (1.2) in-
Chapter 1
forms us that a decrease of Ekin +Egrav causes the gravitational energy

to become more negative, corresponding to a more tightly bound and
thus more compact system. At the same time the average kinetic energy
goes up which corresponds to an increased temperature if the system
can be considered to be locally in thermal equilibrium. Therefore, as
the system loses energy it contracts and heats up. Self-gravitating systems have a negative specic heat!
As a protostar contracts it becomes more opaque and soon the energy loss is limited by the speed of energy transfer from the inner parts
to the surface, i.e. essentially by the photon diusion speed. Before an
internal energy source for stars was known it was thought that gravitational energy provided for their luminosity. Stellar lifetimes seemed to
be given by the Kelvin-Helmholtz time scale for thermal relaxation
which is xed by the speed of energy transfer. The total reservoir of
gravitational energy of the Sun is estimated by GN M2 /2R and its
luminosity is L = 3.851026 W = 3.851033 erg/s so that the thermal
1 1
relaxation scale is about KH 21 GN M2 R
L = 1.6107 yr. Pressed
by thermodynamic theory and the authority of Lord Kelvin, geologists
tried to adjust the age of the Earth to this short time scale against
sound evidence to the contrary. At the beginning of our century the
discovery of radioactivity and thus of nuclear processes revealed that
stars had another source of energy and consequently could live much
longer than indicated by KH .
A further contraction is thus intercepted by the onset of hydrogen
burning which commences when the temperature is high enough for
protons to penetrate each others electrostatic repulsive potential. The
hydrogen-burning reactions are more fully discussed in Chapter 10; the
bottom line is that four protons and two electrons combine to form
a helium nucleus ( particle), releasing 26.73 MeV of energy. A few
percent are immediately lost in the form of two neutrinos which must
emerge to balance the electron lepton number, but most of the energy is available as heat. Because the nuclear reaction rates have a
steep temperature dependence, a further contraction and heating of
the star leads to much more nuclear energy generation, which quickly
increases the average Ekin of the nuclei and thus leads to an expansion
and cooling by the same virial-theorem logic that led to contraction and
heating when energy was lost. Thus a stable conguration of thermal
equilibrium is reached where the energy lost is exactly balanced by
that produced from nuclear reactions. Stars as fusion reactors are perfectly regulated by the negative specic heat of a self-gravitating
system!
The most salient feature of a normal stellar conguration is the interplay of its negative specic heat and nuclear energy generation. Conversely, if the pressure were dominated by electron degeneracy it would
be nearly independent of the temperature. Then this self-regulation
would not function because heating would not lead to expansion. Thus,
stable nuclear burning and the dominance of thermal pressure go inseparably hand in hand. Another salient feature of such a conguration is
the inevitability of its nal demise because it lives on a nite supply of
nuclear fuel.
b) Degenerate Stars
Everything is dierent for a conguration dominated by degeneracy
pressure. Above all, it has a positive heat capacity so that a loss
of energy no longer implies contraction and heating. The star actually cools. This is what happens to a brown dwarf which is a star
so small (M < 0.08 M ) that it did not reach the critical conditions to ignite hydrogen: it becomes a degenerate gas ball which slowly
browns out.
The relationship between radius and mass is inverted. A normal
star is geometrically larger if it has a larger mass; very crudely R
M. When mass is added to a degenerate conguration it becomes
geometrically smaller as the reduced size squeezes the electron Fermi
sea into higher momentum states, providing for increased pressure to
balance the increased gravitational force. The l.h.s. of Eq. (1.1) can be
approximated as p/R where p 5/3 is some average pressure. Because
M/R3 one nds p/R M5/3 /R6 while the r.h.s. of Eq. (1.1) is
proportional to M/R2 and thus to M2 /R5 . Therefore, a degenerate
conguration is characterized by R M1/3 .
Increasing the mass beyond a certain limit causes the radius to
shrink so much that the electrons become relativistic. Then they move
with a velocity xed at c (or 1 in natural units), causing the pressure
to vary only as p4F or 4/3 . In this case adding mass no longer leads to a
sucient pressure increase to balance for the extra weight. Beyond this
Chandrasekhar limit, which is about 1.4 M for a chemical composition with Ye = 21 (number of electrons per baryon), no stable degenerate
conguration exists.
In summary, the salient features of a degenerate conguration are
the inverse mass-radius relationship R M1/3 , the Chandrasekhar
limit, the absence of nuclear burning, and the positive specic heat
which allows the conguration to cool when it loses energy.
10
Chapter 1
c) Giant Stars
A real star can be a hybrid conguration with a degenerate core and
a nondegenerate envelope with nuclear burning at the bottom of the
envelope, i.e. the surface of the core. The core then follows the logic
of a degenerate conguration. The envelope follows the self-regulating
logic of a normal star except that it is no longer dominated by its selfgravity but rather by the gravitational force exerted by the compact
core. Amazingly, the envelopes of such stars tend to expand to huge
dimensions. It does not seem possible to explain in a straightforward
way why stars become giants2 except that the equations say so. Lowmass red giants will play a major role in Chapter 2a further discussion
of their fascinating story is deferred until then.
1.2.3
Energy Conservation
Returning to the basic principles that govern stellar structure, energy

conservation yields another of the stellar structure equations. If the local sources and sinks of energy balance against the energy ow through
the surface of a spherical mass shell one nds
dLr /dr = 4r2 ,
(1.3)
where Lr is the net ux of energy through a spherical shell of radius r

while is the eective rate of local energy production (units erg g1 s1 ).
It is a sum
= nuc + grav x ,
(1.4)
where nuc is the rate by which nuclear energy is liberated, is the

energy-loss rate by standard neutrino production, and x is for novel
particles or nonstandard neutrinos with, say, large magnetic dipole moments. Further,
grav = cp T (ad p/p
T /T )
(1.5)
is the local energy gain when T and p change because of expansion or

contraction of the star. This term is the dominant heat source in a
red-giant core which contracts because of the mass gained by hydrogen
shell burning. Conversely, it is a sink which absorbs energy when helium
ignites in such a star: the would-be explosion is dissipated by expansion
2
For recent attempts see Faulkner and Swenson (1988), Eggleton and Cannon
(1991), and Renzini et al. (1992).
11
against the force of gravity. In Eq. (1.5) cp is the heat capacity at

constant pressure. Further, the quantity ad ( ln T / ln p)s , taken
at constant entropy density s, is the adiabatic temperature gradient.
It is not really a gradient. It is a thermodynamic quantity characteristic
of the medium at the local conditions of , p, T , and the chemical
composition.
The calculation of x for a number of hypotheses concerning the
existence of novel particles or novel properties of neutrinos will be a
major aspect of this book. Even for a given interaction law between
the particles and the medium constituents this is not always a straightforward exercise because the presence of the ambient medium can have
a signicant impact on the microscopic reactions.
This is equally true for the nuclear energy generation rates. Nuclear
reactions are slow in stars because the low temperature allows only few
nuclei to penetrate each others Coulomb barriers. Therefore, screening
eects are important, and the nuclear cross sections need to be known at
energies so low that they cannot be measured directly in the laboratory.
Much of the debate concerning the solar neutrino problem revolves
around the proper extrapolation of certain nuclear cross sections to
solar thermal energies.
1.2.4
Energy Transfer
The transfer of energy is driven by the radial temperature gradient. In

the absence of convection heat is carried by photons and electrons moving between regions of dierent temperature, i.e. by radiative transfer
and by conduction. In this case the relationship between the energy
ux and the temperature gradient is
Lr =
4r2 d(aT 4 )
,
3
dr
(1.6)
where aT 4 is the energy stored in the radiation eld (a = 2 /15 in

natural units) and is the opacity (units cm2 /g). It is given by a sum
1
1
1 = 1
+ c + x ,
(1.7)
where is the radiative opacity, c the contribution from conduction

by electrons, and x was included for a possible contribution from novel
particles. The quantity ( )1 = R is the Rosseland average
of the photon mean free pathits precise denition will be given in
Sect. 1.3.4.
12
Chapter 1
One of the main diculties at calculating the opacity is that heavier

elements, notably iron, are only partially ionized for typical conditions.
Resonant transitions of electrons between dierent bound states are
very important, an eect which causes stellar models to be rather sensitive to the amount of metals (elements heavier than helium). The
construction of an opacity table is a major eort as it requires including huge numbers of electronic energy levels. Widely used were the Los
Alamos and the Livermore Laboratory opacity tables.
Recently, the Livermore tables were systematically overhauled (Iglesias, Rogers, and Wilson 1990; Iglesias and Rogers 1991a,b), resulting
in the new OPAL tables which since have become the standard in stellar evolution calculations. The main dierences to the previous tables
are at moderate temperatures so that no substantial changes in the
deep interior of stellar structures have occurred. However, envelope
phenomena are aected, notably convection near the surface and stellar pulsations. A number of previous discrepancies between theory and
observations in this area have now disappeared.
If the equation of state, the energy generation rate, and the opacity
are known one can construct a stellar model for an assumed composition prole by solving the stellar structure equations with suitable
boundary conditions. (It is not entirely trivial to dene surface boundary conditions because the star, strictly speaking, extends to innity.
A crude approach is to take T = 0 and p = 0 at the photosphere.)
It may turn out, however, that in some locations this procedure yields
a temperature gradient which is so steep that the material becomes
unstable to convectionit boils.
An adequate treatment of convection is one of the main problems
of stellar evolution theory. A simplication occurs because convection
is extremely eective at transporting energy and so the temperature
gradient will adjust itself to a value very close to the adiabatic gradient which marks the onset of the instability. At this almost xed
temperature gradient a nearly arbitrary energy ux can be carried by
the medium. This approximation tends to be justied for regions in the
deep interior of stars while the superadiabatic convection found near
the surface requires a substantial renement. One usually applies the
mixing length theory which contains one free parameter, the ratio between the convective mixing length and the pressure scale height. This
parameter is empirically xed by adjusting the radius of a calculated
solar model to the observed value.
Main-sequence stars like our Sun with M <
M have a radiative
interior with a convective surface which penetrates deeper with decreas-
13
>
ing M; stars with M <
0.25 M are fully convective. For M M
the outer regions are radiative while the core is convective out to an ever
increasing mass fraction of the star with increasing M. A star with M
near 1 M is very special in that it is radiative almost throughout; the
Sun is thought to have only a relatively minor convective surface layer.
Besides transporting energy, convection also moves matter and thus
aects the composition prole of a star. This is seen, for example, in
the upper panels of Fig. 2.4 where the hydrogen depletion of a solar
model (which is radiative) is a function of the local nuclear burning
rates while for the convective helium core of a horizontal-branch (HB)
star the helium depletion reaches to much larger radii than nuclear
burning. The long lifetimes of HB stars cannot be understood without
the convective supply of fuel to the nuclear furnace at the center. The
Sun, on the other hand, will complete its main-sequence evolution when
hydrogen is depleted at the center, corresponding to about a 10% global
depletion only.
The extent of convective regions can change during the course of
stellar evolution. They can leave behind composition discontinuities
which are a memory of a previous conguration. For example, on the
lower red-giant branch (RGB) the convective envelope reaches so deep
that it penetrates into the region of variable hydrogen content caused
by nuclear burning. Later, the convective envelope retreats from the advancing hydrogen-burning shell which encounters a discontinuity in the
hydrogen prole. This causes a brief hesitation on the RGB ascent
and thus a bump in the distribution of stars in the color-magnitude
diagram of globular clusters on the lower RGB. This bump has been
identied in several clusters (Figs. 2.18 and 2.19); its location is in good
agreement with theoretical expectations (Fusi Pecci et al. 1990).
1.2.5
Gravitational Settling
The composition prole of a star can also change by diusion, and notably by gravitational settling of the heavier elements. This eect was
ignored in most evolution calculations because the time scales are very
large. Still, the settling of helium will displace hydrogen from the center of a hydrogen-burning star and thus accelerate the depletion and
main-sequence turno. The gravitational settling of metals will lead
to an opacity increase in the central regions. Helium settling reduces
the inferred globular cluster ages by 1 Gyr or more which is about a
10% eect (Prott and Michaud 1991; Chaboyer et al. 1992). Because the inferred globular cluster ages are larger than the expansion
14
Chapter 1
age of the universe, this cosmic age problem is slightly alleviated by

gravitational settling.
Helium and metal settling was recently included in solar models
(Bahcall and Pinsonneault 1992, 1995; Kovetz and Shaviv 1994; Prott
1994). It increased the predicted neutrino uxes on the 1030% level,
depending on the specic treatment of gravitational settling and on the
neutrino source reaction. These modications are not huge, but surely
not entirely negligible. They go in the direction of aggravating the solar
neutrino problem.
1.3
1.3.1
Impact of Novel Particles

Energy Loss
One of the most interesting possibilities to use stars as particle-physics

laboratories is to study the backreaction of the novel energy-loss rate
x implied by the existence of new low-mass particles such as axions, or
by nonstandard neutrino properties such as magnetic dipole moments.
The impact on degenerate stars such as white dwarfs is rather obvious: the new energy-loss rate accelerates the cooling. Therefore, the
observationally established cooling speed allows one to constrain this
process or to detect evidence for it.
The impact of a novel energy-loss mechanism on a nondegenerate
star like the Sun is less obvious. According to the virial theorem one
expects that the loss of energy leads to heating and contraction up to
a point where the temperature has risen enough that increased nuclear
burning provides for the extra energy loss. Because of the steep temperature dependence of nuc one expects that the overall stellar structure
changes very little in response to x the main impact is to accelerate
the consumption of nuclear fuel and thus the completion of hydrogen
burning.
This argument was cast into a quantitative form by Frieman, Dimopoulos, and Turner (1987). They asked how a given equilibrium
structure of a star would change in response to turning on a new energyloss rate x . The main simplifying assumption is that the perturbed
conguration is obtained by a homology transformation, so that the
distance between any two points is altered in the same way as the radius of the conguration. Thus, if the new radius of the star is given
by R = yR with a dimensionless scaling factor y, then every point
in the star is mapped to a new position r = yr. The mass interior
to the new radius is identical with that interior to the old location,
15
M (r ) = M(r), and the chemical composition at r is the same as

that at r. The density is transformed by (r ) = y 3 (r), and from
Eq. (1.1) one nds that the pressure scales as p (r ) = y 4 p(r). The
equation of state for a nondegenerate, low-mass star is approximately
given by the ideal-gas law where p T /, where is the average
molecular weight of the electrons and nuclei. Since (r ) = (r) by
assumption, the temperature is found to scale as T (r ) = y 1 T (r), and
the temperature gradient as dT (r )/dr = y 2 dT (r)/dr.
The assumption that the star reacts to new particle emission by a
homologous contraction imposes restrictions on the constitutive relations for the eective energy generation rate and the opacity. In particular, for a chemically homogeneous star one needs to assume that
n T
and
s T p .
(1.8)
For the opacity, Frieman et al. took the Kramers law with s = 1
and p = 3.5 which is found to be a reasonable interpolation formula throughout most lower main-sequence interiors. Hence, the local
energy ux scales as
L (r ) = y 1/2 L(r) .
(1.9)
The hydrogen-burning rate nuc also has the required form with n = 1,
and for the pp chain = 46; it dominates in the Sun and in stars
with lower mass. It is assumed that the new energy-loss rate x follows
the same proportionality; the standard neutrino losses are ignored
because they are small on the lower main sequence. If the star is not
in a phase of major structural readjustment one may also ignore grav
in Eq. (1.4) so that in Eq. (1.3)
= (1 x ) nuc ,
(1.10)
where x < 1 is a number which depends on the interaction strength of

the new particles. From Eq. (1.3) one concludes that
L (r ) = y (3+) (1 x ) L(r),
(1.11)
leading to
y = (1 x )2/(2+5) .
(1.12)
Assuming x 1, Frieman et al. then found for the fractional changes

of the stellar radius, luminosity, and interior temperature,
R
2x
L
x
T
2x
=
,
=
,
=
.
(1.13)
R
2 + 5
L
2 + 5
T
2 + 5
Therefore, the star contracts, becomes hotter, and the surface photon
luminosity increasesit overcompensates for the new losses. Moreover,
16
Chapter 1
even if the luminosity Lx in exotics is as large as the photon luminosity (x = 12 ) the overall changes in the stellar structure remain moderate. The predominant eect is an increased consumption of nuclear
fuel at an almost unchanged stellar structure, leading to a decreased
duration of the hydrogen-burning phase of
/ x .
(1.14)
The standard Sun is halfway through its main-sequence evolution so

that a conservative constraint is x < 21 .
In general, the exotic losses do not have the same temperature and
density dependence as the nuclear burning rate, implying a breakdown
of the homology condition. However, to lowest order these results will
remain valid if one interprets x as a suitable average over the entire star,
x = Lx /(Lx + L ),
(1.15)
with the photon luminosity L and that in exotics Lx . To lowest order

Lx can be computed from an unperturbed stellar model.
For a convective structure (M <
0.25 M main-sequence stars)
Frieman et al. found by a similar treatment
R
2x
=
,
R
2 + 11
L
5x
=
,
L
2 + 11
T
2x
=
.
T
2 + 11
(1.16)
These stars also contract, and the internal temperature increases, but
the surface luminosity decreases.
1.3.2
Application to the Sun
For the Sun, the radius and luminosity are very well measured and
so one may think that small deviations R and L from a standard
model were detectable. This is not so, however, because a solar model
is defined to produce the observed radius and luminosity at an age
of 4.5 Gyr. The unknown presolar helium abundance Yinitial is chosen
to reproduce the present-day luminosity, and the one free parameter
of the mixing-length theory relevant for superadiabatic convection is
calibrated by the solar radius.
In a numerical study Raelt and Dearborn (1987) implemented axion losses by the Primako process in a 1 M stellar model, metallicity Z = 0.02, which was evolved to 4.5 Gyr with dierent amounts
of initial helium and dierent axion coupling strengths. Details of the
emission rate as a function of temperature and density are studied in
17
Table 1.1. Initial helium abundance for solar models with axion losses.
g10
Yinitial
Xc
0
10
15
20
25
0.274
0.266
0.256
0.241
0.224
0.00
0.16
0.32
0.51
0.65
0.362
0.307
0.292
0.245
0.151
Sect. 5.2. For the present discussion the axion losses represent some
generic energy-loss mechanism with a rate proportional to the square
of the axion-photon coupling strength ga .
Without exotic losses a presolar helium abundance of Yinitial = 0.274
was needed to reproduce the present-day Sun. For several values of
g10 ga /1010 GeV1 Raelt and Dearborn found the initial helium
values given in Tab. 1.1 necessary to produce the present-day luminosity. The values for x in Tab. 1.1 are dened as in Eq. (1.15) with Lx
the axion luminosity of the (perturbed) present-day solar model which
has L = L . Also, the central hydrogen abundance Xc of the presentday model is given. For g10 = 30, corresponding to x 0.75, no
present-day Sun could be constructed for any value of Yinitial .
The primordial helium abundance is thought to be about 23%, and
the presolar abundance is certainly larger. Still, a value of x less than
about 0.5 is hard to exclude on the basis of this calculation. Therefore,
1
<
the approximate solar constraint remains x <
2 or Lx L as found
from the analytic treatment in the previous section.
One may be able to obtain an interesting limit by considering the
oscillation frequencies of the solar pressure modes. Because of the excellent agreement between standard solar models and the observed p-mode
frequencies there is little leeway for a modied solar structure and composition. This method has been used to constrain a hypothetical time
variation of Newtons constant (Sect. 15.2.3).
1.3.3
Radiative Energy Transfer
If novel particles are so weakly interacting that they escape freely from
the star once produced their role is that of a local energy sink. Neutrinos are of that nature, except in supernova cores where they are
trapped for several seconds. One could imagine new particles with
18
Chapter 1
such large interactions that they are even trapped, say, in the Sun.
Because their mean free path (mfp) is now less than the geometric dimension of the star, they remove energy from one region and deposit it
at an approximate distance of one mfp. This is precisely the mechanism
of radiative energy transfer: the particles now contribute to the opacity. In a transition region where the mfp is on the order of the stellar
radius this mode of energy transfer couples distant regions and thus
cannot be described in the form of the dierential equation (1.6). In
this case the dierence between an energy-loss and an energy-transfer
mechanism is blurred.
Equation (1.6) is justied when the mfp is less than the temperature scale height (d ln T /dr)1 . For radiative transfer ()1 is an
average mfp. Therefore, Eq. (1.6) informs us that the energy ux carried through a sphere of radius r is a product of a numerical factor, the
area, the photon mfp, the number density of photons, and the temperature gradient. Radiative transfer is more ecient for a larger mfp, i.e.
for a more weakly interacting particle!
If a second photon existed with a coupling strength instead of
1
= 137
, it would contribute more to the energy transfer for < .
The observed properties of the Sun and other stars conrm that the
standard opacities certainly cannot be wrong by more than a factor
of a few. Therefore, the new photon must interact about as strongly
as the standard one to be in agreement with the properties of stars,
or it must interact so weakly that it freely escapes and the integrated
volume emission L is less than the photon luminosity L .
1.3.4
Opacity Contribution of Arbitrary Bosons
In order to implement the energy-transfer argument one needs a properly dened expression for the Rosseland opacity contribution of arbitrary bosons. Following the textbook derivation of the photon radiative
opacity such a denition was provided by Carlson and Salati (1989) as
well as Raelt and Starkman (1989).
For a suciently short mean free path the radiation eld of the
new bosons is taken to be locally isotropic. The local energy ux is then
found to be F = 31 B where the index indicates that a quantity refers to the boson energy . Moreover, B and F are understood
to be specic, i.e. an energy density and ux per unit energy interval.
The velocity is = [1 (m/)2 ]1/2 for a boson with mass m. (Recall
that natural units with h
= c = kB = 1 are always used.) In local
thermal equilibrium the energy density for massive bosons correspond-
19
ing to the phase-space element d3 p is g (e/T 1)1 d3 p/(2)3 where

g is the number of polarization degrees of freedom and (e/T 1)1
is the thermal boson occupation number. With an angular integration
d3 p becomes 4p2 dp where p = |p|. Using p = ( 2 m2 )1/2 one nds
p dp = d so that
B =
g 2 ( 2 m2 )1/2
.
2 2
e/T 1
(1.17)
The total energy ux is found by integrating over all frequencies,

F = 13 T
d T B ,
(1.18)
where B = T B T was used with T = /T .

For photons, one usually writes F = (3 )1 aT 4 where aT 4
is the total energy density in photons (a = 2 /15). Together with
Eq. (1.18) this denes the photon Rosseland mean opacity . For
other bosons one denes a corresponding quantity,
1
1
d T B .
x
4aT 3 m
(1.19)
The exotic opacity thus dened appears in the stellar structure equation in the way indicated by Eq. (1.7).
The production and absorption of bosons involves a Bose stimulation factor. This eect is taken account of by including a factor
(1 e/T ) under the integral in Eq. (1.19). The absorptive opacity
thus derived is usually referred to as the reduced opacity which is
the quantity relevant for energy transfer. In practice, it is not very
dierent from as is typically 3T for massless bosons.
In the large-mass limit (m T ) the reduction factor may be ignored
entirely and one nds to lowest order,
1
15
=g 4
x
4
m
T
)3
em/T
dy (y) y ey ,
(1.20)
where y 2 m/2T was used so that the energy of a nonrelativistic

boson is given by = m + yT .
20
1.3.5
Chapter 1
Solar Bound on Massive Pseudoscalars
In order to illustrate the energy-loss and energy-transfer argument for

a boson with arbitrary mass I use the example of pseudoscalars which
couple to electrons by a ne-structure constant x . This is the only
case in the literature where both arguments have been applied without
assuming that the particle mass mx is small relative to T .
The new bosons can be produced and absorbed by a variety of
reactions. For purposes of illustration I focus on the Compton-type
process e e. For mx T the energy-loss rate per unit mass will
be given in Eq. (3.23) in a more general context. For arbitrary masses
it was derived by Raelt and Starkman (1989). The result is
x =
160x Ye T 6
F (mx /T ),
mu m4e
(1.21)
where F (z) = 1 for mx T and F (z) = (20 2)1 z 9/2 ez for T

mx me . Further, Ye is the number of electrons per baryon and mu is
the atomic mass unit. (It was used that approximately ne / = Ye /mu
with the electron density ne .)
For T mx me the Compton absorption rate is found to be
x = 4x m2x m4
e ne , leading to an opacity contribution of the pseudo-
Fig. 1.1. Eects of massive pseudoscalar particles on the Sun (interior temperature about 1 keV). Above the dashed line they contribute to the radiative energy transfer, below they escape freely and drain the Sun of energy.
The shaded area is excluded by this simple argument. (Adapted from Raelt
and Starkman 1989.)
21
scalars of
2(2)9/2 x Ye T 5/2 emx /T
x =
1/2
45
mx m4e
2.5 mx /T
,
= 4.4103 cm2 g1 x Ye m0.5
keV TkeV e
(1.22)
where mkeV = mx /keV and TkeV = T /keV.

The observed properties of the Sun then allow one to exclude a large
range of parameters in the mx -x -plane. The energy-loss rate integrated
over the entire Sun must not exceed L . Moreover, 1
x must not exceed
2
1
the standard photon contribution 1 g/cm , apart from perhaps
a factor of order unity. Taking a typical solar interior temperature
of 1 keV, these requirements exclude the shaded region in Fig. 1.1.
The dashed line marks the parameters where the mfp is of order the
solar radius.
1.4
General Lesson
What have we learned? Weakly interacting particles, if they are not

trapped in stars, carry away energy. For a degenerate object this energy loss leads to additional cooling, for a burning star it leads to an
accelerated consumption of nuclear fuel. New particles would cause signicant eects only if they could compete with neutrinos which already
carry away energy directly from the interior.
If new particles are trapped because of a short mfp, they contribute
to the energy transfer. They dominate unless their mfp is shorter than
that of photons. Such particles probably do not exist or else they
would have been found in laboratory experiments. This justies the
usual focus on the energy-loss argument or free streaming limit.
Still, the impact of new low-mass particles is maximized for an mfp
of order the stellar radius, a fact which is often not appreciated in the
literature.
If the particles were so heavy that they could not be produced by
thermal processes in a stellar plasma they would be allowed for any coupling strength. How heavy is heavy? The average energy of blackbody
photons is about 3T . Therefore, if mx <
3T the particle production
will not be signicantly suppressed. However, the solar example of
Fig. 1.1 illustrates that for a suciently large coupling strength even
a particle with a mass of 30 T could have a signicant impact. While
it can be produced only by plasma constituents high up in the tails
of the thermal distributions, the Boltzmann suppression factor emx /T
22
Chapter 1
can be compensated by a strong coupling. For particles with a dierent

interaction structure the equivalent of Fig. 1.1 would look qualitatively
similar, albeit dierent in detail.
Particles are not harmless in stars just because they are trapped,
or just because their mass exceeds a typical temperature. However, in
practice new particles are usually thought to be very weakly interacting
and either essentially massless on the scales of stellar temperatures, or
else very massive on those scales. In this book I will focus on low-mass
particles with very weak interactions so that the energy-loss argument
will be in the foreground of the discussion.
The opposite case of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs)
is of great interest in the framework of a hypothesis which holds that
such objects are the dark matter of the universe. (Another dark matter
candidate are axions which fall into the low-mass category covered in
this book.) WIMP masses would be in the 10 GeV range and above so
that they cannot be produced in stars, but they can be captured from
the galactic background. They would contribute to the energy transfer
by conduction. Hence their role in stars is similar to that of electrons,
except for their large mfp which allows them to contribute signicantly
even if their concentration is low. I do not treat this subject because
it requires entirely dierent formal tools from those relevant for lowmass particles. The fascinating story of WIMPs in stars will be told
comprehensively within a forthcoming review paper Supersymmetric
Dark Matter by Jungman, Kamionkowski, and Griest (1995).
Chapter 2
Anomalous
Stellar Energy Losses
Bounded by Observations
After a description of the main phases of stellar evolution, a review is
given of the observations that have been used to constrain novel stellar
energy losses. The main arguments involve the cooling speed of white
dwarfs and old neutron stars, the delay of helium ignition in low-mass
red giants, and the helium-burning lifetime of horizontal-branch stars.
The latter two arguments, which are based on observations of globularcluster stars, are cast into the form of an easy-to-use analytic criterion
that allows for a straightforward application in many dierent cases.
The cooling speed of nascent neutron stars is discussed in Chapter 11
in the context of supernova neutrinos.
2.1
2.1.1
Stages of Stellar Evolution

The Main Sequence
To identify those observables of stellar structure and evolution that can

be used to constrain or perhaps discover a novel energy-loss mechanism
it is necessary to understand how stars live and die. In Chapter 1 the
basics of the theory of stellar structure have already been discussed.
It is now time to give an overview of the stages of stellar evolution,
and how they manifest themselves in the observable properties of stars.
Because stellar evolution is an old subject, the literature is vast. I
will give reference only to a few recent original papers that I need to
support specic points. Otherwise, detailed quantitative accounts of
23
24
Chapter 2
stellar structure and evolution and their observational consequences

are found in the textbook and review literature.3
How do stars form in the rst place? While a detailed understanding
of this process is still elusive, for the present discussion it is enough to
know that gravitationally bound clouds of gas ultimately fragment and
condense because of their continuous energy loss by electromagnetic
radiation. As discussed in Sect. 1.2.2, the negative specic heat of a
self-gravitating system enforces its contraction and heating. For the
fragmentation process a variety of parameters may be important such
as overall pressure, angular momentum, or magnetic elds.
Because the formation process of stars is poorly understood the
initial mass function (IMF) is not accounted for theoretically. Typically,
the number of stars per mass interval may be given by Salpeters IMF,
dN/dM (M/M )1.35 , which means that there are a lot more small
than large stars. However, the overall range of stellar masses is quite
limited. The largest stars have masses of up to 100 M ; a value beyond
this limit does not seem to allow for a stable conguration. At the
small mass end, stars with M < 0.08 M never become hot enough to
ignite hydrogen; such brown dwarfs have never been unambiguously
detected. It has been speculated that they could make up the dark
matter of spiral galaxies. A search in our galaxy by the gravitational
microlensing technique has yielded rst candidates (Alcock et al. 1993,
1995; Aubourg et al. 1993, 1995).
The rst stars consist of a mixture of X 0.75 (mass fraction of
hydrogen) and Y 0.25 (mass fraction of helium), the material left over
from the big bang of the universe. Subsequent generations also contain
a small amount of metals which in astronomers language is anything
heavier than helium; our Sun has a metallicity Z 0.02 (mass fraction
of metals). These heavier elements were bred by nuclear fusion in earlier
generations of stars which returned some of their mass to the interstellar
3
An excellent starting point for the nonexpert is Shu (1982). The classics are
Chandrasekhar (1939), Schwarzschild (1958), Clayton (1968), and Cox and Giuli
(1968). A recent general textbook is Kippenhahn and Weigert (1990). Recent monographs specializing on the Sun in general are Stix (1989), and on solar neutrinos
Bahcall (1989). The theory of stellar pulsation is covered in Cox (1980). A classic on
the physics of compact stars is Shapiro and Teukolsky (1983). A recent monograph
on neutron stars is Lipunov (1992) and on pulsars Meszaros (1992). Recent collections of papers or conference proceedings are available on the physics of red giants
(Iben and Renzini 1981), white dwarfs (Barstow 1993), pulsating stars (Schmidt
1989), neutron stars (Pines, Tamagaki, and Tsuruta 1992), and supernovae (Brown
1988; Petschek 1990). Many excellent reviews are found in the Annual Review of
Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Anomalous Stellar Energy Losses Bounded by Observations
25
medium. Mass loss in advanced stages of stellar evolution can take

on the benign form of a stellar wind, or it can occur in gigantic
supernova explosions. The end state of stellar evolution must be
complete disruption, or a compact object (white dwarf, neutron star, or
black hole), because a normal star, supported by thermal pressure, can
exist only as long as its nuclear fuel lasts (Sect. 1.2.2). The masses of
degenerate stars are constrained by their Chandrasekhar limit of about
1.4 M for white dwarfs, and a similar value for neutron stars. Most
massive stars seem to return enough mass to the interstellar medium
that their typical end states are degenerate stars, not black holes. The
primordial material evolves chemically because it is cycled through one
generation of stars after another.
Today, the continuing birth and death of stars takes place mostly in
the disks of spiral galaxies. Such galaxies also have a population of old
halo stars and of globular clusters, about 150 in our Milky Way, each of
which is a gravitationally bound system of about 106 stars (Fig. 2.1).
Most of the globular clusters are in the galactic halo, far away from the
disk. The gravitational escape velocity for stars or gas from a cluster
is rather small, about 10 km s1 . A supernova explosion, on the other
hand, ejects its material with typical velocities of several 103 km s1 .
A single supernova is enough to sweep a globular cluster clean of all
Fig. 2.1. Globular cluster M3. (Image courtesy of Palomar/Caltech.)
26
Chapter 2
Fig. 2.2. Zero-age main sequence in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, with a

composition of 68.5% hydrogen, 29.4% helium, and 2.1% metals. (Adapted
from Kippenhahn and Weigert 1990.)
gas; then no further star formation is possible.4 Therefore, these systems are very clean laboratories for studies of stellar evolution as they
contain an early generation of stars (typical metallicities 103 104 )
which in a given cluster are all coeval and have almost equal chemical
compositions. To a rst approximation the stars in a globular cluster
dier only in one parametertheir initial mass.
The virial theorem explains (Sect. 1.2.2) that the negative specic
heat of a protostellar cloud leads to contraction and heating until it has
reached a thermal equilibrium conguration where the nuclear burning
rate exactly balances its overall luminosity. At this point the conguration is determined entirely by its mass, apart from a small inuence
of the metal content. Therefore, after the initial contraction hydrogenburning stars of dierent mass form the zero-age main sequence in
a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram where the eective surface temperature
is plotted on the horizontal axis and the stellar luminosity on the vertical axis (Fig. 2.2). As hydrogen is consumed small adjustments of the
conguration occur. However, essentially a star remains at its initial
main-sequence location for most of its life.
The escape velocity from our galaxy is about 500 km s1 . However, in a galactic
spiral arm the interstellar medium is dense enough to dissipate a SN explosion which
is only able to blow a hole into the interstellar material.
4
27
A 1 M star lives about 10 Gyr (1 Gyr = 109 yr) on the main

sequence; our Sun is thought to have completed about half of this
episode. Heavier stars burn brighter (crudely L M3 ) and thus
live shorter lives. Because the universe is 1020 Gyr old, stars with
M <
0.70.9 M have not yet completed their hydrogen-burning
phase, even if they formed shortly after the big bang. Because globular clusters formed very early one expects a main-sequence turno
Fig. 2.3. Color magnitude diagram for the globular cluster M3 according
to Buonanno et al. (1986), based on the photometric data of 10,637 stars.
Following Renzini and Fusi Pecci (1988) the following classication has been
adopted for the evolutionary phases. MS (main sequence): core hydrogen
burning. BS (blue stragglers). TO (main-sequence turno): central hydrogen is exhausted. SGB (subgiant branch): hydrogen burning in a thick shell.
RGB (red-giant branch): hydrogen burning in a thin shell with a growing
core until helium ignites. HB (horizontal branch): helium burning in the
core and hydrogen burning in a shell. AGB (asymptotic giant branch): helium and hydrogen shell burning. P-AGB (post-asymptotic giant branch):
nal evolution from the AGB to the white-dwarf stage. (Original of the
gure courtesy of A. Renzini.)
28
Chapter 2
near this mass, depending somewhat on their metallicity. Indeed, the

color-magnitude diagram5 of the cluster M3 (Fig. 2.3) clearly shows this
eect. The location of the turno (TO) point in such a diagram can be
converted to the mass and thus to the age of a star which is just about
to complete hydrogen burning. Globular clusters, therefore, allow one
to establish a signicant lower limit for the age of the universe.
2.1.2
Becoming a Red Giant
A main-sequence star naturally is hottest and densest at the center

where hydrogen is depleted fastest. (See Fig. 2.4 for the overall structure of a typical solar model which represents a low-mass star about
halfway through its main-sequence evolution.) After all of the hydrogen is consumed at the center, the further evolution depends on
the total massI begin with the fascinating story of low-mass stars
(M <
2 M ).
After central hydrogen exhaustion a new conguration establishes
itself where the helium ashes which have accumulated at the center form an ever denser core surrounded by a hydrogen burning shell
(Fig. 2.5). At the same time the material above the core begins to expand which implies that the stellar surface becomes larger and thus the
surface temperature lower according to the Stefan-Boltzmann law. Put
another way, the star becomes redder, and ultimately a red giant.
In the color-magnitude diagram of the globular cluster M3 (Fig. 2.3),
the collection of stars which begins to form a contracting core and an
expanding envelope is marked as the subgiant branch (SGB).
5
The brightness of a star is photometrically measured on the basis of the luminosity in a wavelength band dened by a lter with a well-dened spectral response.
There exist many dierent color systems, corresponding to many dierent lters. In
Fig. 2.3 the visual brightness is dened by V = 2.5 log LV + const. with LV the luminosity measured with the visual lter, centered in the yellow-green waveband,
and a similar denition applies to the brightness B in the blue. The color B V
is a measure of the surface temperature with lower temperatures (redder color) to
the right. For technical denitions see Allen (1963). Note that the downward turn
of the horizontal branch in the blue is determined by the V lter; bolometrically
the HB is truly horizontal. An absolute bolometric brightness is given by
Mbol = 4.74 2.5 log(L/L ).
It is a dimensionless number, but often the unit mag (magnitude) is appended for
clarity. The visual brightness in Fig. 2.3 is given in apparent magnitudes which depend on the distance of the cluster. However, because of the logarithmic brightness
denition a dierent distance leads only to a vertical shift of the entire picture; the
color and relative brightnesses remain unchanged.
29
Fig. 2.4. Left panels: A typical solar model (Bahcall 1989) as an example for a low-mass star which is halfway through its hydrogen-burning
(main-squence) phase. Right panels: Horizontal-branch star (central helium
burning, shell hydrogen burning) with a metallicity Z = 0.004 after about
2.5107 yr which is about a quarter of the HB lifetime. (Model from the
calculations of Dearborn et al. 1990.)
30
Chapter 2
Fig. 2.5. Main evolutionary phases of low-mass stars. The envelope and core
dimensions depend on the location on the RGB, HB, or AGB, respectively.
The given radii are only meant to give a crude orientation.
31
As hydrogen burning continues it dumps more and more helium on

the core which at rst supports itself by thermal pressure. Soon it
becomes so dense, however, that the electrons become degenerate, inverting the mass-radius relationship to R M1/3 (Sect. 1.2.2). Thus,
as the helium core mass Mc grows, the core radius Rc shrinks. The
gravitational potential c at the edge of the core is determined entirely
by the core because the envelope contributes little due to its large extension so that c GN Mc /Rc M4/3
c . Because the hydrogen-burning
shell above the core still supports itself by thermal pressure, the temperature near the core edge is determined by c M4/3
c . The growing
core mass causes the hydrogen burning shell to become ever hotter!
Because of the steep T dependence of the hydrogen burning rates, the
growing core causes the star to become ever brighter (Fig. 2.6). In this
Fig. 2.6. Evolutionary track of a 0.8 M star (Z = 0.004) from zero age
to the asymptotic giant branch. The evolutionary phases are as in Fig. 2.3.
(Calculated with Dearborns evolution code.)
32
Chapter 2
shell-burning phase the luminosity is determined almost entirely by the

core mass. On the MS it was determined by the total mass, a parameter
which now hardly matters.
The red-giant branch (RGB) ascension is a fast process compared
with the main-sequence (MS) evolution (Fig. 2.6). Therefore, the red
giants in the observational color-magnitude diagram of Fig. 2.3 dier
only by very small amounts of their initial mass. The stars beyond
the MS have nearly identical properties while those on the MS dier
by their total mass. Therefore, the evolved stars in Fig. 2.3 essentially
trace out the evolutionary path of a single star with an approximate
mass corresponding to the MS turno (TO). For example, the stars on
the RGB in Fig. 2.3 essentially constitute snapshots of the single-star
evolutionary track shown in the upper panel of Fig. 2.6.
A red giant is a star with a compact energy source at the center and
a large convective envelope. In the present case we have a degenerate
helium core with shell hydrogen burning, but other congurations are
possible. The core is a star unto itself with near to negligible feedback from the envelope. The envelope, on the other side, is strongly
inuenced by the nontrivial central boundary conditions provided by
the core. Convective congurations with a xed mass and a prescribed
luminosity from a central point source occupy the Hayashi line in
the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. A low-mass red giant ascends the
Hayashi line corresponding to its envelope mass.
The ination of a star to red-giant dimensions is a remarkable phenomenon which dees an intuitive explanation, except that the stellar
structure equations allow for such solutions. Another conceivable structure is a much smaller envelope with radiative rather than convective
energy transferupper MS stars are of that nature. Prescribing a core
with a given luminosity one can imagine these two extreme congura2
tions. Indeed, bright stars (L >
10 L ) are usually found either near
the MS or near the RGB which together form a V-shaped pattern in
the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (Fig. 2.9). The empty space in the
V is known as the Hertzsprung gapthe few stars found there are
thought to be on the move from one arm of the V to the other, i.e.
from a radiative to a convective envelope structure. Massive stars after completing hydrogen burning move almost horizontally across the
Hertzsprung gap and inate to red-giant dimensions. Remarkably, they
can deate and move horizontally back, executing a blue loop.

2.1.3
33
Helium Ignition
The core of a red giant reaches its limiting mass when it has become
so hot and dense that helium ignites. Because the nucleus 8 Be which
consist of two particles (He nuclei) is not stable, He burning proceeds
directly to carbon, 3 12 C (triple- reaction), via an intermediate
8
Be state. Because it is essentially a three-body reaction its rate depends sensitively on and T . In a red-giant core helium ignites when
Mc 0.5 M with central conditions of 106 g cm3 and T 108 K
where the triple- energy generation rate per unit mass, 3 , varies approximately as 2 T 40 . This steep temperature dependence allows one
to speak of a sharp ignition point even though there is some helium
burning at any temperature and density.
The helium core of a red giant is like a powder keg waiting for a
spark. When the critical temperature is reached where 3 exceeds
the neutrino losses a nuclear runaway occurs. Because the pressure
is mainly due to degenerate electrons the energy production at rst
does not lead to structural changes. Therefore, the rise in temperature
is unchecked and feeds positively on the energy generation rate. As
this process continues the core expands nearly explosively to a point
where it becomes nondegenerate and the familiar self-regulation by the
gravitational negative specic heat kicks in (Chapter 1). The explosion
energy is absorbed by the work necessary to expand the core from
about 106 g cm3 to about 104 g cm3 . The core temperature of the nal
conguration remains at about 108 K because of the steep temperature
dependence of 3 which allows only for a narrow range of stationary
burning conditions.
The nal conguration with a helium-burning core and a hydrogenburning shell (Fig. 2.5) is known as a horizontal-branch (HB) star, a
term which is justied by the location of these objects in the colormagnitude diagram Fig. 2.3. Note that the overall luminosity has decreased by the process of helium ignition (Fig. 2.6) because of the core
expansion which lowers the gravitational potential at the core edge and
thus the temperature in the hydrogen-burning shell which continues to
be regulated by the core mass and radius. The total luminosity of an
HB star is given to about 1/3 by He burning and 2/3 by hydrogen shell
burning (Fig. 2.4, right panels).
Because helium ignition is an almost explosive process on dynamical
time scales it is known as the helium ash. For the same reason, a
realistic numerical treatment does not seem to exist (for a review, see
Iben and Renzini 1984). There are two main problems. First, normal
34
Chapter 2
stellar-evolution codes use hydrostatic stellar structure equations which

ignore kinetic energies which are small in stationary phases or phases
of slow expansion or contraction (Sect. 1.2.1). However, in a phase of
fast expansion kinetic energies can be large. It is not known whether
the helium ash is a hydrostatic or a hydrodynamic event. Secondly,
convection undoubtedly plays a large role at transferring energy from
the ignition point. Note that helium ignites o-center because neutrino
losses cause a temperature dip at the center. A fundamental theory
of convection does not exist; it is likely that one would have to perform a three-dimensional hydrodynamic calculation to develop a full
understanding of the helium ash.
2.1.4
The Horizontal Branch
After helium ignition the overall luminosity has dropped as explained

above, and the surface has shrunk considerably, leading to a substantially hotter (bluer) conguration. Precisely how blue an HB star becomes depends on the size of its envelope and thus on its total mass.
A substantial amount of mass loss occurs on the RGB where the photosphere of the star is so inated that it is only weakly gravitationally
bound; a red giant may typically lose about 0.2 M of its envelope
before helium ignites. Presumably, the amount of mass loss is not exactly the same from star to star; a small spread of order 0.03 M is
enough to explain the wide range of surface radii and thus colors found
for these objects which form a horizontal branch in the color-magnitude
diagram.6 The downward turn of the HB in Fig. 2.3 is an artifact of the
lter which determines the visual brightnessthe bolometric brightness
is the same. It is xed by the core properties.
In practice, the HB morphology found in dierent clusters is complicated. Some clusters have widely spread HBs such as that shown in
Fig. 2.3 while others have stars only near the red or blue end, and gaps
and blue tails occur. One important parameter is the metallicity of the
envelope which determines the opacity to which the envelope structure
is very sensitive. However, one nds clusters with the same chemical
composition but dierent HB morphologies, a phenomenon which has
prompted a search for the second parameter. Many suggestions have
been made by some and refuted by others. One candidate second parameter which appears to remain viable is the cluster age, or rather,
the MS mass of the stars observed today on the HB. The envelope mass
6
For recent synthetic HBs see Lee, Demarque, and Zinn (1990, 1994).
35
remaining for an HB star after mass loss on the RGB will still depend
on its initial value, rendering this a rather natural possibility. However, it implies that the globular clusters of our galaxy did not form
at the same timean age spread of several Gyr is required with the
older clusters predominantly at smaller galactocentric distances (Lee,
Demarque, and Zinn 1994 and references therein). Apart from some
anomalous cases such an age spread appears to be enough to explain
the second parameter phenomenon.
Returning to the inner structure of an HB star, it evolves quietly
at an almost xed total luminosity (Fig. 2.6). The core constitutes
essentially a helium main-sequence star. Because its inner core is
convective it dredges helium into the nuclear furnace at the very center,
leaving a sharp composition discontinuity at the edge of the convective
region (Fig. 2.4). After some 12 C has been built up, 16 O also forms. At
the end of the HB phase, the helium core has developed an inner core
consisting of carbon and oxygen.
2.1.5
From Asymptotic Giants to White Dwarfs
After the exhaustion of helium at the center a degenerate carbonoxygen (CO) core forms with helium shell burning and continuing hydrogen shell burning (Fig. 2.5). Again, the star grows progressively
brighter and inates. Put another way, it becomes very similar to a
star which rst ascended the RGB: it ascends its Hayashi line for a
second time. The track in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram asymptotically approaches that from the rst ascent (asymptotic giants).
The upper RGB can be observationally dicult to distinguish from the
asymptotic giant branch (AGB) even though they are reasonably well
separated in Fig. 2.3.
In low-mass stars carbon and oxygen never ignite. The shell sources
extinguish when most of the helium and hydrogen has been consumed
so that the star has lost its entire envelope either by hydrogen burning
or by further mass loss on the AGB. The remaining degenerate CO
star continues to radiate the heat stored in its interior. At rst these
stars are rather hot, but geometrically very small with a typical radius of 104 km. Their small surface area restricts their luminosity in
spite of the high temperature and so they are referred to as white
dwarfs. Because they are supported by electron degeneracy pressure,
their remaining evolution is cooling by neutrino emission from the interior and by photon emission from the surface until they disappear
from visibility.
36
Chapter 2
Fig. 2.7. Ring Nebula in Lyra (M57), a planetary nebula. (Image courtesy
of Palomar/Caltech.)
For stars which start out suciently large the mass loss on the
AGB can be so dramatic that one may speak of the ejection of the
entire envelope. It forms a large shell of gas which is illuminated by
its central star, the newborn white dwarf. Such systems are known as
planetary nebulae (Fig. 2.7).
2.1.6
Type I Supernovae
A white dwarf can make a spectacular reappearance if it is in a binary

system. If the other member expands because it is in an earlier evolutionary phase it can transfer mass, allowing for renewed nuclear burning
on the white-dwarf surface. This adds mass to the CO conguration
which ultimately becomes so hot and dense that these elements ignite,
leading to a (subsonic) deagration or (supersonic) detonation front
which sweeps through the star and disrupts it entirely. This course of
events is the standard scenario for type I supernova explosions which
are among the most energetic events known in the universe. They must
be carefully distinguished from type II supernovae which are related to
the collapse of evolved, massive stars.

2.1.7
37
Intermediate-Mass Stars
The evolutionary scenario described so far applies to stars with a mass

below 23 M . For larger masses the core conditions evolve continuously to the ignition of helium which is then a quiet process. For a
given chemical composition the transition between the two scenarios is
a sharp function of the total mass. Because red giants are very bright
they dominate the total luminosity of an old stellar population so that
this transition aects its integrated brightness in a discontinuous way.
Some authors have used the concept of an RGB phase transition to
describe this phenomenon (Sweigart, Greggio, and Renzini 1990, and
references therein; Bica et al. 1991).
Stars with masses of up to 68 M are expected to end up as CO
white dwarfs. Their evolution on the AGB can involve many interesting
phenomena such as thermal pulsesfor a key to the literature see
Iben and Renzini (1984). Intermediate-mass stars have thus far played
little role for the purposes of particle astrophysics, and so their evolution
does not warrant further elaboration in the present context.
2.1.8
Massive Stars and Type II Supernovae
The course of evolution for massive stars (M > 68 M ) is qualitatively dierent because they ignite carbon and oxygen in their core,
allowing them to evolve further. This is possible because even after
mass loss they are left with enough mass that their CO core grows
toward the Chandrasekhar limit. Near that point the density is high
enough to ignite carbon which causes heating and thus temporarily relieves the electron degeneracy. Next, the ashes of carbon burning (Ne,
Mg, O, Si) form a degenerate core which ultimately ignites Ne burning,
and so forth. Ultimately, the star has produced a degenerate iron core,
surrounded by half a dozen onion rings of dierent burning shells.
The game is over when the iron core reaches its Chandrasekhar limit
because no more nuclear energy can be released by fusion. The temperature is at 0.81010 K = 0.7 MeV, the density at 3109 g cm3 , and
there are about Ye = 0.42 electrons per baryon. Further contraction
leads to a negative feedback on the pressure as photons begin to dissociate iron, a process which consumes energy. Electrons are absorbed
and converted to neutrinos which escape, lowering the electron Fermi
momentum and thus the pressure. Therefore, the core becomes unstable and collapses, a process which is intercepted only when nuclear
density (31014 g cm3 ) is reached where the equation of state stiens.
38
Chapter 2
Fig. 2.8. The Crab nebula, remnant of the supernova of A.D. 1054. (Image
courtesy of the European Southern Observatory.)
At this point a shock wave forms at the edge of the core and moves
outward. The implosion can be said to be reected and thus turned into
an explosion. In practice, it is dicult to account for the subsequent
evolution as the shock wave tends to dissipate its energy by dissociating
iron. Currently it is thought that a revival of the stalled shock is needed
and occurs by neutrinos depositing their energy in the hot bubble
below the shock. This region has a low density yet high temperature,
and thus a high entropy per baryon by common astrophysical standards.
Within about 0.3 s after collapse the shock has moved outward and
ejects the entire overburden of the mantle and envelope. This course
of events is the scenario of a type II supernova (SN) explosion.
What remains is an expanding nebula such as the Crab (Fig. 2.8)
which is the remnant of the SN of A.D. 1054, and a central neutron
star (radius about 10 km, mass about 1 M ) which often appears in
the form of a pulsar, a pulsating source of radiation in some or all
electromagnetic wave bands. The pulsed emission is explained by a
complicated interplay between the fast rotation and strong magnetic
elds (up to 1012 1013 G) of these objects.
Returning to the moment after collapse of the iron core, it is so dense
(nuclear density and above) and hot (temperature of several 10 MeV),
39
that even neutrinos are trapped. Therefore, energy and lepton number are lost approximately on a neutrino diusion time scale of several
seconds. The neutrinos from stellar collapse were observed for the rst
and only time when the star Sanduleak 69 202 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way) collapsed. The
subsequent explosion was the legendary SN 1987A.
After the exhaustion of hydrogen, massive stars move almost horizontally across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram until they reach their
Hayashi line, i.e. until they have become red supergiants. However, subsequently they can loop horizontally back into the blue; the progenitor
of SN 1987A was such a blue supergiant.
The SN rate in a spiral galaxy like our own is thought to be about
one in a few decades, pessimistically one in a century. Because many
of the ones occurring far away in our galaxy will be obscured by the
dust and gas in the disk, one has to be extremely lucky to witness
such an event in ones lifetime. The visible galactic SNe previous to
1987A were Tychos and Keplers in close succession about 400 years
ago. Both of them may have been of type Ino pulsar has been found
in their remnants.7 Of course, in the future it may become possible to
detect optically invisible galactic SNe by means of neutrino detectors
like the ones which registered the neutrinos from SN 1987A.
2.1.9
Variable Stars
Stars are held in equilibrium by the pull of gravity which is opposed

by the pressure of the stellar matter; its inertia allows the system to
oscillate around this equilibrium position. If the adiabatic relationship
between pressure and density variations is written in the form P/P =
/, the fundamental oscillation period P of a self-gravitating homogeneous sphere (density ) is found to be8 P 1 = [( 43 )GN /]1/2 .
This yields the period-mean density relationship P ()1/2 const.
which is often written in the form P (/ )1/2 = Q with the average
solar density = 1.41 g cm3 and the pulsation constant Q. It is
in the range 0.53 h, depending on the adiabiatic coecient and the
7
Observationally, type I and II SNe are distinguished by the absence of hydrogen

spectral lines in the former which is explained by their progenitor being an accreting white dwarf which explodes after carbon ignition. Therefore, it is dicult to
establish the type of a historical SN unless a pulsar is detected as in the Crab.
8
For < 4/3 the star is dynamically unstable. We have already encountered
this magic number for the relationship between pressure and density of a degenerate
relativistic electron gas where it led to Chandrasekhars limiting white-dwarf mass.
40
Chapter 2
detailed structure of the star.

When these oscillations are damped, stars are found in their equilibrium congurations with constant color and brightness. However, it
is possible that a small deviation from equilibrium is amplied, leading
to a growing oscillation amplitude. Throughout a star there can be regions which try to excite oscillations, and others which damp them. If
the driving mechanism is strong enough the star is found in a continuing
oscillation which manifests itself in an oscillating lightcurve.
Of particular interest are the Cepheid-type variables. Their oscillations are excited by the mechanism where the driving force is the
heat valve provided by the opacity of the stellar matter near the surface. There, hydrogen and helium are only partially ionized so that a
temperature increase leads to increased ionization which increases the
opacity because the Thomson cross section on free electrons is much
larger than the Rayleigh one on neutral atoms. Therefore, the temperature increase caused by compression makes it more dicult for energy
to escape: the valve shuts. In most regions of the star the opposite happens. Increased temperature makes it easier for energy to leak out from
the compressed region, the valve opens, and oscillations are damped.
Because the operation of the mechanism is determined by conditions near the stellar surface which is characterized by its temperature
and luminosity, Cepheid-type variables are found on a certain locus of
color and brightness. This instability strip extends throughout the
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (hatched band in Fig. 2.9); it applies to
stars of radically dierent internal structure. Variable stars are found
wherever the instability strip overlaps with an actual stellar population.
At the bright end of the strip which is close and nearly parallel to the
red-giant Hayashi line one nds the classical Cepheids ( Cepheids) with
luminosities 30030,000 L and periods 150 days. The brightness
variation can be up to 1 mag (visual), or a luminosity which changes
by up to a factor of 3. Classical Cepheids are massive stars which cross
the otherwise unpopulated Hertzsprung gap from the main-sequence
to the red-giant region, and red giants and supergiants which execute
blue loops and so temporarily move to the blue of the Hayashi line.
The linear relationship between period and brightness of Cepheids as
well as their large intrinsic luminosities are the key for their prominent
role as standard candles and thus as astronomical distance indicators.
The crossing of the instability strip with the HB is the domain of
the RR Lyrae stars. Their luminosities are around 50100 L , their
periods 1.524 h. Their color coincides with the MS turno in globular
clusters (Fig. 2.3). RR Lyrae stars play an important role in the ongoing
41
Fig. 2.9. Schematic Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of the main types of stars.

The hatched band is the instability strip, the locus of Cepheid-type variables.
The Hertzsprung gap between the main sequence and the red-giant region
is populated with stars crossing between these branches, and by red giants
and supergiants which execute blue loops.
debate about the age of globular clusters.

Toward fainter luminosities the instability strip crosses the MS, a
region where the Scuti stars and dwarf Cepheids (periods of 13 h)
are located.
Fainter still, the only remaining population of stars are white dwarfs.
At the crossover of their locus with the instability strip the ZZ Ceti
variables are found; they have periods of a few minutes. Because the
oscillation period depends on the luminosity, an observed secular change
of the period of a ZZ Ceti star can serve as a sensitive diagnostic for a
decrease of its luminosity and thus for its cooling speed.
42
2.2
2.2.1
Chapter 2
White-Dwarf Cooling
Theoretical and Observed White-Dwarf Properties
After this general survey of how stars evolve it is time to study individual aspects in more detail, and notably, how stellar evolution is aected
by the emission of weakly interacting particles. I begin with the conceptually most transparent case of stars for which the loss of energy
simply accelerates their cooling, i.e. white dwarfs and neutron stars.
The former represent the nal state of the evolution of stars with
initial masses of up to several M , perhaps up to 8 M (Sect. 2.1).
For reviews of the theory and observed properties see Hubbard (1978),
Liebert (1980), Shapiro and Teukolsky (1983), Weidemann (1990), and
DAntona and Mazzitelli (1990). Because white dwarfs (WDs) are supported by electron degeneracy pressure the hydrostatic and thermal
properties are largely decoupled. In Sect. 1.2.2 we had encountered
their inverted mass-radius relationship; in a polytropic approximation
of the WD structure one nds quantitatively (Shapiro and Teukolsky 1983)
R = 10,500 km (0.6M /M)1/3 (2/e )5/3 .
(2.1)
1
Here, M is the stellar mass and e = m1
= Ye1 the mean
u ne
molecular weight of the electrons with the mass density, mu the
atomic mass unit, ne the electron density, and Ye the number of electrons per baryon. WDs do not contain any hydrogen in their interiorit
would immediately igniteso that e = 2. Typically they consist of
carbon and oxygen, the end products of helium burning in the core of
the progenitor star. The central density of a polytropic model is
c = 1.46106 g cm3 (M/0.6 M )2 (e /2)5 ,
(2.2)
assuming nonrelativistic electrons.

If the mass is so large (the radius so small) that the electrons become
relativistic there exists no stable conguration, i.e. the masses of WDs
must lie below the Chandrasekhar limit (Shapiro and Teukolsky 1983)
MCh = 1.457 M (2/e )2 .
(2.3)
Observationally the WD mass distribution is strongly peaked near M =

0.6 M (Weidemann and Koester 1984) so that a nonrelativistic treatment of the electrons is justied. The low mass of observed WDs is
understood by the large rate of mass loss during the red giant and
43
asymptotic giant evolution which can amount to an ejection of the entire envelope and thus to the formation of a planetary nebula (Fig. 2.7).
A theoretical evolutionary track for a 3 M star from the MS to the
WD stage was calculated, e.g. by Mazzitelli and DAntona (1986). The
central stars of planetary nebulae are identied with nascent WDs. The
rate of WD formation inferred from the luminosity function discussed
below agrees within a factor of about 2 with the observed formation
rate of planetary nebulae, which means that both quantities agree to
within their statistical and systematic uncertainties.
The hottest and brightest WDs have luminosities of L 0.5 L
while the faintest ones are observed at L 0.5104 L . Thus, because of their small surface area WDs are intrinsically faint (see the
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram Fig. 2.9). This implies that they can be
observed only in the solar neighborhood, for bright WDs out to about
100 pc (300 lyr). Because their vertical scale height in the galactic disk
is about 250 pc (Fleming, Liebert, and Green 1986) the observed WDs
homogeneously ll a spherical volume around the Sun. One may then
express the observed number of WDs in terms of a volume density; it
is of order 102 pc3 .
The observed luminosity function (the space density of WDs per
brightness interval) is shown in Fig. 2.10 and listed in Tab. 2.1 according
to Fleming, Liebert, and Green (1986) and Liebert, Dahn, and Monet
(1988). The operation of a novel cooling mechanism can be constrained
by three important features which characterize the luminosity function:
its slope, which signies the form of the cooling law, its amplitude,
which characterizes the cooling time and WD birthrate, and its sudden
break at log(L/L ) 4.7, which characterizes the beginning of WD
formation. Even the oldest WDs have not had time to cool to lower
luminosities. From this break one can infer an age for the galactic
disk of 810.5 Gyr (Winget et al. 1987; Liebert, Dahn, and Monet
1988; Iben and Laughlin 1989; Wood 1992) while Hernanz et al. (1994)
nd 9.512 Gyr on the basis of their cooling calculations which include
crystallization eects.
Because of the WD mass-radius relationship the surface temperature and luminosity are uniquely related for a given WD mass. Therefore, instead of the luminosity function one may consider the temperature distribution which, in principle, is independent of uncertain WD
distance determinations. Fleming, Liebert, and Green (1986) gave the
distribution of their sample of hot WDs in several temperature bins
(Tab. 2.2). Numerical cooling calculations of Blinnikov and DuninaBarkovskaya (1994) found good agreement with this distribution, as-
44
Chapter 2
Table 2.1. Observed WD luminosity function according to Fleming, Liebert,

and Green (1986) and Liebert, Dahn, and Monet (1988). For the hot and
bright degenerates (upper part of the table) a large fraction of their spectrum
lies in the ultraviolet, causing a large discrepancy between the absolute visual
magnitude MV and the absolute bolometric magnitude Mbol . For the hot
dwarfs the bins orginally had been chosen on the MV scale with a width
of 0.5 mag, centered on the half-magnitudes; the listed Mbol is the mean in
these intervals.
MV
9.5
10.0
10.5
11.0
11.5
12.0
12.5
13.0
Mean
Mbol
Mean
log(L/L )
dN/dMbol
[pc3 mag1 ]
5.50
6.88
7.84
8.92
10.12
11.24
11.98
12.55
13.50
14.50
15.50
0.31
0.86
1.25
1.68
2.16
2.61
2.90
3.13
3.51
3.91
4.31
1.22106
1.01105
2.16105
9.56105
1.21104
1.51104
2.92104
6.07104
0.89103
1.34103
0.24103
log(dN/dMbol )
5.91
5.00
4.67
4.02
3.92
3.82
3.54
3.22
3.05
2.87
3.62
(+0.18,0.31)
(+0.14,0.21)
(+0.13,0.18)
(+0.12,0.16)
(+0.11,0.15)
(+0.11,0.16)
(+0.11,0.16)
(+0.20,0.39)
(+0.14,0.21)
(+0.14,0.20)
(+0.18,0.31)
Table 2.2. Temperature distribution of hot WDs according to Fleming,

Liebert, and Green (1986).
Te [103 K] Fraction of WDs

4080
2040
1220
(7.06 1.27) 103

0.235 0.026
0.759 0.083
suming that the WD mass function was peaked around 0.7 M which
is somewhat larger than the canonical value of 0.6 M . For the present
purpose, however, the smallness of this dierence is taken as a conrmation of the standard WD cooling theory.
45
Fig. 2.10. Observed WD luminosity function as in Tab. 2.1. The dotted line represents Mestels cooling law with a constant WD birthrate of
B = 103 pc3 Gyr1 . The dashed line is from the numerical cooling curve
of a 0.6 M WD (Koester and Schonberner 1986), including neutrino losses
and assuming the same constant birthrate.
2.2.2
Cooling Theory
A WD has no nuclear energy sources and so it shines on its residual thermal energy: the evolution of a WD must be viewed as a cooling process
(Mestel 1952). Because electron conduction is an ecient mechanism
of energy transfer the interior can be viewed, to a rst approximation,
as an isothermal heat bath with a total amount of thermal energy U .
Because the nondegenerate surface layers have a large thermal resistance, they insulate the hot interior from the cold surrounding space,
throttling the energy loss L by photon radiation. Of course, WDs can
also lose energy by neutrino volume emission L , and by novel particle
emission Lx . Hence, WD cooling is governed by the equation
dU/dt = (L + L + Lx ).
(2.4)
This simple picture ignores the possibility of residual hydrogen burning near the surface, a possibly important luminosity source for young
WDs (e.g. Castellani, DeglInnocenti, and Romaniello 1994; Iben and
Tutukov 1984). I will get back to this problem below.
46
Chapter 2
In order to translate this equation into the observable luminosity

function I assume a constant WD birthrate B so that the total number
density of degenerates is N = B tgal (age of the galactic disk tgal ).
Taking the above values N 102 pc3 and tgal 9 Gyr one nds
B 103 pc3 Gyr1 . Because the number density of WDs in a given
magnitude interval dMbol is proportional to the time interval dt it takes
to cool through this magnitude range one readily obtains
dt
dU/dMbol
dN
=B
= B
.
dMbol
dMbol
L + L + Lx
(2.5)
The photon luminosity is L = 78.7 L 102Mbol /5 in terms of the bolometric magnitude, equivalent to log(L /L ) = (4.74 Mbol )/2.5. L is
related to the internal temperature T by the thermal conductance of
the surface layers so that one may derive a function T (L ). The quantities U , L , and Lx are given in terms of T so that they can be expressed
in terms of L and hence of Mbol .
In hot WDs the thermal energy is largely stored in the nuclei which
form a nearly classical Boltzmann gas. At low T the ideal-gas law
breaks down and eventually the nuclei arrange themselves in a lattice.
The internal energy is then a more complicated function of temperature.
The heat capacity per nucleon, which is 32 for an ideal gas, rises to
3 near the Debye temperature D and then drops approximately as
(16 4 /5) (T /D )3 to zero (Shapiro and Teukolsky 1983). However, the
observed WDs have a relatively small because of their small mass
around 0.6 M so that even the oldest WDs have not yet crystallized.
Therefore, as a reasonable rst approximation the internal energy is
U = C T with the ideal-gas heat capacity for the entire star of
C=
3 M Xj
L Gyr M Xj
= 3.95102
,
2 mu j Aj
107 K M j Aj
(2.6)
where Xj is the mass fraction of the element j, atomic mass Aj , and

mu = 1.6611024 g is the atomic mass unit.
The thermal conductance of the surface layers is calculated by solving the stellar structure equations. Using a Kramers opacity law,
= 0 T 7/2 , one nds (van Horn 1971; Shapiro and Teukolsky 1983)
3
L = 1.710
M
L
M
T
107 K
)7/2
K T 7/2 ,
(2.7)
where T is the internal temperature. The observed WD luminosities of

Tab. 2.1 vary between 0.5104 and 0.5 L , corresponding to a range
0.46 107 K of internal temperatures.
47
With these results the luminosity function is found to be

dN
4 ln(10)
C (L /K)2/7
=
B
.
dMbol
35
L + L + Lx
(2.8)
With B3 B/103 pc3 Gyr1 this is numerically

dN
= B3 2.2104 pc3 mag1
dMbol
104Mbol /35 L
78.7L 102Mbol /5 + L + Lx
M
M
)5/7
Xj
j
Aj
(2.9)
If one ignores L and Lx this is

dN
= B3 2.9106 pc3 mag1 102Mbol /7
dMbol
M
M
)5/7
Xj
j
Aj
(2.10)
Taking M = 0.6 M and an equal mixture of
12
log(dN/dMbol ) = 72 Mbol 6.84 + log(B3 ) ,
C and
16
O one nds
(2.11)
a behavior known as Mestels cooling law. For B3 = 1 this function

is shown as a dotted line in Fig. 2.10. Detailed cooling curves and
luminosity functions have been calculated, for example, by Lamb and
van Horn (1975), Shaviv and Kovetz (1976), Iben and Tutukov (1984),
Koester and Schonberner (1986), Winget et al. (1987), Iben and Laughlin (1989), Segretain et al. (1994), and Hernanz et al. (1994).
From Fig. 2.10 it is evident, however, that Mestels cooling law provides a surprisingly good representation for intermediate luminosities
where it is most appropriate. At the bright end, the luminosity function is slightly depressed, providing evidence for neutrino cooling. It
rapidly falls o at the faint end, presumably indicating the beginning
of WD formation as discussed above.
2.2.3
Neutrino Cooling
For the hottest WDs volume neutrino emission is more important than
surface photon cooling. The photon luminosity of Eq. (2.7) can be
expressed as an eective energy-loss rate per unit mass of the star, =
L /M = 3.3103 erg g1 s1 T73.5 with T7 = T /107 K. For the upper
relevant temperature range, neutrinos are emitted mostly by the plasma
48
Chapter 2
process e e which is studied in detail in Chapter 6; numerical

emission rates are discussed in Appendix C. The neutrino energy-loss
rate as a function of temperature is shown in Fig. C.6; for a WD the
short-dashed curve (2/e = 106 g cm3 ) is most appropriate.
Neutrino cooling causes a depression of the WD luminosity function at the bright end. The dashed line in Fig. 2.10 represents a numerical cooling calculation for a 0.6 M WD which included neutrinos
(Koester and Schonberner 1986); the neutrino dip is clearly visible.
The photon decay is a neutrino process made possible by
the medium-induced photon dispersion relation and by the mediuminduced eective photon-neutrino coupling (Chapter 6). As such this
process is not observable in the laboratory, although there is no doubt
about its reality. Still, it is encouraging to see it so plainly in the WD
luminosity function.
If neutrino emission were much stronger than standard, the neutrino dip would be correspondingly deeper. Stothers (1970) used the
observation of several bright WDs in the Hyades cluster to constrain the
eciency of neutrino cooling; at that time the existence and magnitude
of a direct neutrino-electron interaction had not yet been experimentally established. Stothers found that an emission rate 300 times larger
than standard could be conservatively excluded.
Recently, Blinnikov and Dunina-Barkovskaya (1994) have studied
this subject in detail. Their motivation was the possible existence of
a neutrino magnetic dipole moment which would enhance the eective neutrino-photon coupling and thus the eciency of the plasma
process. For the present general discussion it is enough to think of
their study as an arbitrary variation of the neutrino emissivity, even
though the magnetic-moment induced plasma emission rate has a different density dependencesee Eq. (6.94) for details. For the pertinent conditions the energy-loss rate induced by the assumed dipole
moment is roughly 0.06 212 times the standard one where 12
/1012 B (Bohr magneton B ). Blinnikov and Dunina-Barkovskaya
(1994) calculated the luminosity function for 0.6 M WDs for the standard case (12 = 0, dashed line in Fig. 2.11) and for a roughly 25-fold
increased rate of neutrino cooling (12 = 20, dotted line in Fig. 2.11).
The birthrate of WDs was assumed constant and adjusted to optimize the agreement with the observations. For 12 = 0 they needed
B = 0.62103 pc3 Gyr1 while for 12 = 20 the best t was achieved
for 0.67 in these units.
Blinnikov and Dunina-Barkovskaya (1994) pointed out that a particularly sensitive observable for the neutrino dip is the temperature dis-
49
Fig. 2.11. Luminosity function for 0.6 M WDs for two values of 12 (Blinnikov and Dunina-Barkovskaya 1994) compared with the observations quoted
in the upper part of Tab. 2.1 (Fleming, Liebert, and Green 1986).
Fig. 2.12. Relative number of 0.6 and 0.8 M WDs in the two hot temperature bins of Tab. 2.2 as a function of the anomalous neutrino cooling implied
by a magnetic dipole moment (Blinnikov and Dunina-Barkovskaya 1994).
The number of WDs in the temperature range 12,00040,000 K is normalized to unity. The shaded bands correspond to the observations (Tab. 2.2).
50
Chapter 2
tribution of hot WDs derived by Fleming, Liebert, and Green (1986)

see Tab. 2.2. They calculated cooling sequences for M = 0.6 M and
0.8 M with varying amounts of nonstandard cooling. The relative
number of WDs in the two hot temperature bins of Tab. 2.2 are shown
as a function of in Fig. 2.12.
These results seem to indicate that a signicantly enhanced rate of
neutrino emission can be conservatively excluded. However, this view
may be challenged if one includes the possibility of residual hydrogen burning near the WD surface which could mask neutrino cooling
because it would ll in some of the neutrino dip in the luminosity
function. Because it is not known how much hydrogen is retained by
a WD after the planetary nebula phase one has an adjustable parameter to provide a desired amount of heating (Castellani, DeglInnocenti,
and Romaniello 1994). However, preliminary investigations seem to indicate that even when residual hydrogen burning is included the impact
of is masked only in one of the temperature bins used by Blinnikov
and Dunina-Barkovskaya (1994) so that a signicant deformation of the
luminosity function appears to remain (Blinnikov and DeglInnocenti
1995, private communication).
2.2.4
Cooling by Boson Emission
Standard or exotic neutrino emission from WDs (or neutron stars) has
the important property that it switches o quickly as the star cools
because of the steep temperature dependence of the emission rates.
Therefore, neutrinos cause a dip at the hot end of the luminosity function while older WDs are left unaected, even for signicantly enhanced
neutrino cooling (Fig. 2.11). One may construct other cases, however,
where this is dierent. One example is when a putative low-mass boson is emitted in place of a neutrino pair, say, in the bremsstrahlung
process e + (Z, A) (Z, A) + e + . The reduced nal-state phase
space then reduces the steepness of the temperature dependence of the
energy-loss rate. The possible existence of such particles is motivated
by theories involving spontaneously broken global symmetries. The
most widely discussed example is the axion which will be studied in
some detail in Chapter 14. For the present discussion all that matters
is the temperature variation of an assumed energy-loss rate.
The bremsstrahlung rate for pseudoscalar bosons will be calculated
in Chapter 3. For the highly degenerate limit the result is given in
Eq. (3.33) where = g 2 /4 is the relevant ne-structure constant.
Because this rate depends on the density only weakly through a factor
51
F which includes Coulomb screening by ion correlations and electron

relativistic corrections one may easily integrate over the entire star.
For an assumed equal mixture of carbon and oxygen one nds for the
luminosity in pseudoscalar exotica
Lx = 26 2.0103 L (M/M ) F T74 ,
(2.12)
where 26 = /1026 and T7 = T /107 K (internal temperature T ).

Further, F 1.0 within a few 10% (Sect. 3.5.2).
This energy-loss rate varies with internal temperature almost as
the surface photon luminosity of Eq. (2.7). If Lx dominates in Mestels cooling law Eq. (2.11) the slope 10
Mbol is replaced with the al35
12
most identical value 35
Mbol . Thus, for a given WD birthrate the main
impact of pseudoscalars is to reduce the amplitude of the luminosity
function. Conversely, the inferred birthrate is larger by about a factor
1 + Lx /L 1 + 26 . Because the formation rate of planetary nebulae,
the progenitors of WDs, agrees with the standard inferred birthrate to
9
within a factor of about 2, one nds 26 <
1.
The observed break of the luminosity function at the faint end
(Fig. 2.10) has been interpreted as the beginning of WD formation.
If boson cooling were dominant the faintest luminosities would have
been reached in a shorter amount of time, reducing the inferred age of
the galactic disk; standard cooling implies tgal = 812 Gyr. Even the
solar system is 4.5 Gyr old and so a reduction of tgal by more than a
factor of 2 is ruled out. This implies Lx < L so that 26 < 1.0 as
before.
The galactic age constraint appears to be much more reliable than
the one based on the formation rate of planetary nebulae. The former
could be avoided if the observations reported by Liebert, Dahn, and
Monet (1988) were crudely incomplete at the faint end of the luminosity function, i.e. if many faint WDs had been overlooked so that the
break in the luminosity function of Fig. 2.10 were a major observational
selection eect. Barring this remote possibility the limit on 26 is conservative. Even for a much smaller value of 26 , the inferred value for
tgal is reduced by an approximate factor (1 + 26 )1 which may still be
signicant.
Wang (1992) calculated numerical 1 M WD sequences with varying amounts of pseudoscalar cooling while Blinnikov and Dunina-Barkovskaya (1994) performed a more detailed study for 0.6 M WDs.
9
In the original derivation (Raelt 1986b) ion correlations were ignored, leading
to F 3 and to the limit 26 <
0.3.
52
Chapter 2
They calculated the distribution for the temperature bins of Tab. 2.2
in analogy to the discussion of neutrino dipole moments in the previous
section. Their results are shown in Fig. 2.13 as a function of 26 where
I have corrected from F = 3, which they used in order to compare
with Raelt (1986b), to the more appropriate value F = 1.
Fig. 2.13. Relative number of 0.6 M WDs in the hot and intermediate
temperature bins of Tab. 2.2 as a function of the ne-structure constant
26 = /1026 of pseudoscalar bosons (Blinnikov and Dunina-Barkovskaya
1994). I have corrected from F = 3 to the more appropriate value 1. The
number of WDs in the temperature range 12,00040,000 K is normalized to
unity. The shaded bands correspond to the observations (Tab. 2.2).
This temperature method is now relatively insensitive because axion

cooling leaves the shape of the luminosity function nearly unchanged,
except that the neutrino dip is washed out for strong cooling. In detail,
however, important changes occur. It is noteworthy that boson cooling has a signicant impact on the shape of the luminosity function
even for 26 < 1. It appears that the possibility of residual hydrogen
burning in young WDs would make the present argument more conservative because it has the same eect as boson emission, namely to
reduce or wash out the neutrino dip in the luminosity function.
2.2.5
Period Decrease of Variable White Dwarfs
The luminosity function allows one to determine the WD cooling speed

because one is looking at a large WD ensemble of dierent age. Recently
it has become possible for the rst time to measure WD cooling directly
for a single object by virtue of the period change of a ZZ Ceti star.
53
White dwarfs have residual atmospheres which may be hydrogen

rich (DA white dwarfs) or helium rich (DB); the DA stars are about
four times more frequent. The surface layers of DA white dwarfs are
not fundamentally dierent from those of main-sequence or giant stars
and so for appropriate conditions one expects Cepheid-type pulsations.
Indeed, where the faint continuation of the Cepheid instability strip
intersects with the locus of WDs in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
(Fig. 2.9) one nds the DA variables (DAV), also known as ZZ Ceti
stars after their prototype example. They have pulsation periods of a
few minutes.
The oscillation period depends on the temperature of the layer
which exhibits the instability (Sect. 2.1.9) and thus excites the pulsations, and also on the radius of the star. Therefore, the slowing
down of the period P is a direct measure of the temperature decrease
and thus of the WD cooling speed. Standard pulsation theory yields
P /P a T /T + b R/R
where the dimensionless constants a and b
are of order unity (Winget, Hansen, and van Horn 1983). Because
a WD has an almost xed radius, the second term may be ignored.
The time scale of cooling and of the period change are then related by
T /T = a P/P . ZZ Ceti stars have surface temperatures in the neighborhood of 13,000 K where the cooling time scale is of order 1 Gyr.
For a period of a few minutes one is talking of a period decrease
P = O(1014 s s1 ), not an easy quantity to measure.
After upper limits on P had been established over the years for a
number of cases, Kepler et al. (1991) succeeded at a measurement for
the DAV star G117B15A (Tab. 2.3) using the Whole Earth Telescope
which allows for nearly 24 h a day coverage of a given object.
A variety of model calculations give P = 25 1015 s s1 , somewhat smaller than the measured value, i.e. the star appears to cool
Table 2.3. Properties of the DAV star G117B15A.
Surface temperature
Luminosity
Bolometric brightness
Mass
Pulsation period
Period change
Te
log(L/L )
Mbol
M
P
P
P/P
13,200 K
2.3
10.49 mag
(0.49 0.03) M
(215.197,387 0.000,001) s
(12 4) 1015 s s1
(0.57 0.17) Gyr
54
Chapter 2
faster than predicted by these models (Kepler et al. 1991). It should

be noted, however, that part of the observed period change can be attributed to a Doppler shift if G117B15A is a physical binary with its
proper-motion companion G117B15B.
Isern, Hernanz, and Garca-Berro (1992) speculated that an additional cooling agent may be operating and notably that this star is
cooled by axion emission. For a ducial WD model (M = 0.5 M ,
internal temperature T = 1.8107 K) the cooling time scale is found
to be T /T = 1.0 Gyr while P/P 1.4 Gyr. Therefore, Isern et al.
found that Lx = 0.52.6 L was needed to account for the observed P ,
although other models needed little or no axion cooling. For their
ducial model the required axion cooling yielded a coupling constant
26 = 0.20.8. This interpretation is speculative, of course, but apparently not in conict with any other constraints on the electron coupling
of pseudoscalars (Sect. 3.6.1).
The most conservative interpretation of the P measurement of the
star G117B15A is that it agrees with theoretical calculations within
the observational and model uncertainties. Therefore, it provides independent evidence that the WD cooling speed is known to within a
factor of O(1) so that any novel cooling agent is constrained to be less
ecient than O(L ).
2.3
2.3.1
Neutron Stars
Late-Time Cooling
Neutron stars are born when the degenerate iron core of an evolved
massive star becomes unstable and collapses to nuclear densities, an
implosion which is partly reected at the core bounce and leads to a
type II supernova explosion (Sect. 2.1.8). These events and the rst few
seconds of neutron star cooling are discussed more fully in Chapter 11.
For a few seconds the star emits most of its binding energy in the form
of MeV neutrinos which were observed from SN 1987A. Afterward, the
temperature at the neutrino sphere (the analogue of the photosphere in
ordinary stars) has dropped so much that the detectors are no longer
sensitive to the neutrino ux although the star continues to cool by
surface neutrino emission.
After 10100 yr the internal temperature has dropped to about
9
10 K 100 keV where the neutron star becomes entirely transparent to neutrinos and continues to cool by neutrino volume emission.
After about 105 yr it reaches an inner temperature of about 2108 K,
55
a point at which photon emission from the surface becomes the dominant form of cooling. In Fig. 2.14 the central temperature, surface
temperature, neutrino luminosity, and photon luminosity are shown as
functions of age according to a numerical calculation of Nomoto and
Tsuruta (1987).
Fig. 2.14. Cooling of a neutron star with baryon mass 1.4 M (gravitational
mass 1.3 M ) according to Nomoto and Tsuruta (1987). The solid line is
for an equation of state of intermediate stiness (model FP), the dotted
line for a sti model (PS). All nonstandard eects were ignored such as
nucleon superuidity, a meson condensate, magnetic elds, and so forth.
Temperatures and luminosities are local, ignoring the gravitational redshift.
56
Chapter 2
2.3.2
X-Ray Observations
Because the surface temperature of neutron stars is in the keV regime

they can be observed only by x-ray satellites such as the Einstein Observatory which was launched in 1979, and more recently by EXOSAT and
Table 2.4. Selected x-ray observations of SN remnants and pulsars.a
Age [yr]
(in 1995)
Dist.
[kpc]
Pulsarb
3C58
(814)
(2.6)
Crab
941
1.72
0531+21
(r, o, x, )
Remnant
RCW 103
1500 500
Te
[106 K]
2.2 0.2
< 1.6
2.15 0.15
< 1.2
E
R
1
3
detected
0.95 0.15
1.6 0.2
E
R
1
4
MSH1552 1850 250
4.2
(r, x)
12,000
0.5
083345
(r, o, x, )
Monogem
Ring (?)
110,000
(0.5)
0656+14
(r, x)
0.90 0.04
(0.30 0.05)
340,000 0.150.4
Geminga
(x, )
0.52 0.10
540,000
105552
(r, x, )
0.65 0.15
0.75 0.06
X
R
7
8
Vela X
a Adapted
0.51.5
from Tsuruta (1986) and updated.

radiation: r = radio, o = optical, x = x-rays, = -rays.
c E = Einstein, R = ROSAT, X = EXOSAT observation.
d References:
1. See the review by Tsuruta (1986) for references to the original literature.
2. Becker and Aschenbach (1995).
3. Becker et al. (1992).
4. Ogelman,
Finley, and Zimmermann (1993).
5. Thompson et al. (1991). Finley, Ogelman,

and Kiziloglu (1992).
6. Halpern and Ruderman (1993).
7. Brinkmann and Ogelman

(1987).
8. Ogelman and Finley (1993). Anderson et al. (1993).
b Pulsed
57
ROSAT. X-rays have been observed from a number of compact sources

in supernova remnants and from several isolated pulsars. However,
with the limited spectral resolution of these instruments it is dicult
to extract the actual thermal surface emission because there can be
signicant nonthermal x-ray emission from the magnetosphere.
There are three candidates in the 103 yr age category (3C58, the
Crab pulsar, RCW 103) from which x-rays have been observed by the
Einstein Observatory (Tab. 2.4). However, ROSAT did not detect a
compact source in RCW 103; only an upper ux limit has been reported (Tab. 2.4). The Crab pulsar is x-ray bright mostly from nonthermal emission so that ROSAT could only establish an upper limit on
its surface temperature. The remaining Einstein source 3C58 probably
should also be interpreted as an upper limit on thermal surface emission. These upper limits are in agreement with the standard cooling
curves of Nomoto and Tsuruta (1987) shown in Fig. 2.15.
The Einstein data point for the Vela pulsar at an age of about
4
10 yr is somewhat low, a fact which has given rise to the speculation
that exotic cooling eects may be operating such as neutrino emission
by virtue of a meson condensate. However, a blackbody spectral t to
the ROSAT observations yields a much higher temperature (Tab. 2.4,
Fig. 2.15. Surface temperature (observed at innity) of a neutron star with

baryon mass 1.4 M (gravitational mass 1.3 M ) according to Nomoto and
Tsuruta (1987). The solid line is for an equation of state of intermediate
stiness (model FP), the dotted line for a sti (PS), and the dashed line for
a soft model (BPS). All nonstandard eects were ignored. The measurements of Tab. 2.4 are also shown.
58
Chapter 2
open circle in Fig. 2.15). Such a high temperature is not compatible

with the total x-ray luminosity unless the radius of the neutron star is
very small (34 km). Either way, it may be premature to reach denite
conclusions regarding neutron star cooling on the basis of Vela.
At still larger ages, ROSAT measurements of the surface temperature of the pulsars PSR 0656+14, PSR 105552, and Geminga have
been reported which lie close to the theoretical standard cooling curves.
However, the inferred temperature values depend sensitively on the assumed circumstellar atmospheric models which can modify the spectrum and thus lead to an erroneous temperature assignment. Still, the
old isolated pulsars give one a rst realistic observational handle at the
issue of neutron star cooling.
2.3.3
Nonstandard Cooling and Heating Eects
The so-called standard neutron star cooling scenario should be called

a reference or minimal scenario because there are many eects that
will alter the cooling history; no doubt at least some of them will be in
operation in some or all neutron stars. For reviews see Tsuruta (1986,
1992), for recent numerical cooling curves including various nonstandard eects see Umeda, Tsuruta, and Nomoto (1994).
The occurrence of nucleon superuidity slows the neutrino emission
by the URCA process (Sect. 4.8). However, the cooling curves including
superuidity (Nomoto and Tsuruta 1987) do not seem to dier significantly from the reference curves at ages above a few hundred years
unless extreme assumptions are made.
When nucleon superuidity is important, bremsstrahlung emission by electrons in the crust dominates. However, electron bandstructure eects may suppress this process, and the crust mass may be
smaller than previously thought (Pethick and Thorsson 1994). Therefore, the cooling may be slowed even further. Slowed cooling may also
occur by a number of heating eects (accretion, polar cap heating, vortex creep, and others), although such eects become important only
4
for relatively old neutron stars (t >
10 yr). Of course, heating eects
related to accretion will not be important in isolated pulsars which thus
are preferred laboratories to study neutron star cooling.
The cooling is accelerated if the equation of state provides enough
protons to allow for the direct URCA process (Sect. 4.8). In this case
the surface temperature drops catastrophically at an age of about 100 yr
(Page and Applegate 1992; Lattimer et al. 1994) until superuidity sets
in which essentially stops neutrino cooling from the core. The temper-
59
ature then stays almost constant for a long time until photon cooling
from the surface begins to dominate. In this scenario the cooling curve
depends sensitively on the on switch set by the occurrence of the direct URCA process anywhere in the star, and by the o switch from
superuidity. As the occurrence of these eects depends on ne points
of the equation of state as well as on the density and thus the stellar
mass there may not be a universal cooling curve for all neutron stars.
Another eect which would accelerate cooling is the occurrence of
a meson condensate (Sect. 4.9.1) because of the increased eciency of
neutrino emission. Again, this eect depends sensitively on the equation of state and thus on the density and the stellar mass. The most
recent numerical study of neutron-star cooling with a pion condensate
was performed by Umeda, Nomoto, and Tsuruta (1994).
2.3.4
Cooling by Particle Emission
The emission of novel particles would also accelerate the cooling of

neutron stars. Iwamoto (1984) considered axion emission e + (Z, A)
(Z, A) + e + a in the crust and found unacceptably fast cooling unless
25
<
where is the axionic ne-structure constant (Chapter 3).
10
However, this result is quite uncertain, notably in view of the above
Pethick and Thorsson (1994) band-structure suppression of the bremsstrahlung rate. Moreover, in view of the white-dwarf and globular26
cluster bounds of <
it appears that crust cooling by axions is
10
not important in neutron stars.
In the interior of neutron stars, axions can be emitted by the neutron bremsstrahlung process nn nna (Sect. 4.2). With a numerical
implementation of Iwamotos (1984) bremsstrahlung rate Tsuruta and
10
Nomoto (1987) found a limit gan <
for the axion-neutron Yukawa
10
coupling, based on a comparison with the 103 yr old sources. In their
calculation the eect of superuidity apparently was not included which
would diminish the bound. Conversely, including protons in a regime
where neither protons nor neutrons are superuid would increase the
emission rate (Sect. 4.2.6). Of course, the more recent ROSAT results
suggest that thermal surface emission has not been observed for any of
the 103 yr old sources anyway.
Most recently, Iwamoto et al. (1995) considered the plasma decay
process in the crust under the assumption of a large neutrino
magnetic dipole moment. They found that for of order 1010 B a
signicant eect would obtain, but that a value as large as 5107 B
would be consistent with current data. In view of the globular-cluster
60
Chapter 2
12
limit of B <
310 B (Sect. 6.5.6), I interpret these results to mean
that a neutrino magnetic dipole moment leaves neutron-star cooling
unaectedone less nonstandard eect to worry about.
The rough agreement between the reference cooling curves and the
data points in Fig. 2.15, notably for the old pulsars, suggests that nonstandard eects cannot be much more ecient than standard neutrino
cooling unless all of the old isolated pulsar surface temperatures have
been incorrectly assignednot a likely scenario. Therefore, it is clear
that these and future observations of cooling neutron stars will be pivotal as laboratories to study novel phenomena such as the occurrence
of nonstandard phases of nuclear matter.
However, at the present time it is not clear if the emission of weakly
interacting particles such as axions could still have an interesting impact
on neutron star cooling. At the present time it appears easier to make
the reverse statement that such cooling eects likely are not important
in view of the restrictive limits on the interaction strength of axions or
nonstandard neutrinos set by other astrophysical objects. Therefore,
at present it appears that for the more narrowly dened purposes of
particle physics the role of old neutron stars as laboratories is less useful
than had been thought in the early works discussed above. It also
appears that novel weakly interacting particles usually would have a
more dramatic impact on the rst few seconds of Kelvin-Helmholtz
cooling of a protoneutron star (Chapter 11) than they do on the cooling
of old pulsars.
2.4
2.4.1
Globular-Cluster Stars
Observables in the Color-Magnitude Diagram
Globular clusters are gravitationally bound associations of typically

106 stars (Fig. 2.1); the clusters themselves (about 150 in our galaxy)
form an approximately spherical galactic halo. The metallicity is in the
range Z = 104 102 ; it is usually the same for all stars in one cluster.
The low metallicity is one indicator for their great agelike isolated
halo stars they belong to the Population II which formed early from
a relatively uncontaminated hydrogen-helium mixture left over from
the big bang of the universe. Stars found in the galactic disk belong
to the later Population I which continue to form even today from the
interstellar gas. Clusters of disk stars are usually less populous and less
tightly boundthe so-called open clusters.
61
Fig. 2.16. Observables in the color-magnitude diagram of a typical globular

cluster (here M15 after Sandage 1986). Depending on the metallicity, the
red-giant bump can also appear below the HB brightness.
In the color-magnitude diagram of a globular cluster (Fig. 2.3) the

stars arrange themselves in a characteristic pattern which is schematically shown in Fig. 2.16. Each branch corresponds to a certain evolutionary phase as discussed in Sect. 2.1. Typically, all stars in a
given cluster are coeval and have a xed chemical composition; they
dier only in their mass. After formation, they all began their evolution on the zero-age main-sequence as in Fig. 2.2. The more massive stars evolve faster, become red giants and explode as supernovae
<
(M >
8 M ), or become white dwarfs (M 8 M ). Recently, many
pulsars, the remnants of type II supernovae and thus of massive stars,
have indeed been found in globular clusters. The upper main sequence
(MS) is depleted of stars down to a limiting value below which they
have not had time to complete hydrogen burning. Therefore, the stellar mass corresponding to the MS turno (TO) is a precise measure
of the cluster age. A typical value is 0.70.9 M , depending on the
precise age and metallicity.
The color-magnitude diagram of a globular cluster represents an
isochrone of a stellar population. It shows the locus of coeval stars
with dierent initial masses. It is to be distinguished from the evolutionary track of a single star (Fig. 2.6) which shows a star of a xed
mass at dierent ages. However, the evolution beyond the MS is very
62
Chapter 2
fast. Therefore, the stars along the red-giant branch (RGB), horizontal branch (HB), and asymptotic giant branch (AGB) in a globular
cluster have almost identical initial masses whence for these phases a
single-star track is practically identical with an isochrone. On the other
hand, the TO region requires the construction of detailed theoretical
isochrones to compare theory and observations and thus to determine
the ages of globular clusters.
In order to associate a certain stellar mass with the TO in a cluster
one needs to know the absolute brightness of the stars at the TO, i.e.
one needs to know the precise distance. All else being equal, the inferred
age varies with the TO luminosity as log(age)/ log LTO = 0.85 or
log(age)/VTO = 0.34 (Iben and Renzini 1984). Therefore, a 0.1 mag
error in VTO leads to an 8% uncertainty in the inferred cluster age.
Put another way, because L (distance)2 a 10% uncertainty in cluster
distances leads to an 18% age uncertainty. This is the main problem
with the age determination of globular clusters.
A particularly useful method to measure the distance is to use
RR Lyrae stars as standard candles. As discussed in Sect. 2.1, their
luminosity is determined almost entirely by their core mass (apart from
a dependence on chemical composition), which in turn is xed by helium ignition on the RGB which, again, depends only on the chemical
composition and not on the red-giant envelope mass. Therefore, the
brightness of the HB is nearly independent of stellar mass. ConseTO
quently, the brightness dierence VHB
between the HB and the TO
is a distance-independent measure of the TO mass and thus of the cluster age. Moreover, because the color of RR Lyrae stars coincides with
that of the TO region it is not necessary to convert from the measured
brightness with a certain lter (e.g. visual brightness V ) to a bolometric brightness, i.e. there is no need for a bolometric correction (BC).
Also, RR Lyrae stars are bright and easily identied because of their
TO
pulsations. Therefore, VHB
is one of the most important observables
in the color-magnitude diagram of globular clusters (Iben and Renzini
1984; Sandage 1986).
TO
determinations of Buonanno, Corsi,
As an example the recent VHB
and Fusi Pecci (1989) in 19 globular cluster are shown in Fig. 2.17 as
a function of metallicity; the logarithmic metallicity measure [Fe/H] is
dened in Eq. (2.15). The best linear t is
TO
= (3.54 0.13) (0.008 0.078) [Fe/H],
VHB
(2.13)
so that the HB brightness varies with metallicity almost exactly as the

TO brightness. The measured points are in agreement with a Gaussian
63
Fig. 2.17. Brightness dierence between main-sequence turno (TO) and

horizontal branch (HB) in 19 galactic globular clusters according to Buonanno, Corsi, and Fusi Pecci (1989). The shaded band indicates the 1 statistical error of the best t Eq. (2.13).
distribution about the mean. This result illustrates the level of precision
TO
that presently can be achieved at determining VHB
.
In principle, the color of the TO also species the location on the
MS and thus the TO mass and cluster age. In practice, the color of
a star is theoretically less well determined than its luminosity because
it depends on the treatment of the photosphere and on the surface
area and thus on the radius which is partly xed by the treatment
of convection. Still, the TO color is a useful measure for the relative
ages between clusters of identical metallicities. Notably, the distanceindependent color dierence (B V ) between the TO and the base
of the RGB (Fig. 2.16) has been used to establish an age dierence of
about (3 1) Gyr between the clusters NGC 288 and 362 (VandenBerg,
Bolte, and Stetson 1990; Sarajedini and Demarque 1990).
In order to constrain the operation of a novel energy-loss mechanism
the brightness of the RGB tip is particularly useful because particle
emission (neutrinos, axions) from a red-giant core delays helium ignition. This delay allows the stars to develop a more massive core and
thus to turn brighter before they become HB stars. Again, the inferred
luminosity of the brightest star on the RGB depends on the distance
whence the most useful observable is the distance-independent brightness dierence between the RGB tip and the HB. However, because
the color of RR Lyrae stars and red giants is very dierent one must
64
Chapter 2
tip
convert to an absolute bolometric brightness dierence MHB
rather
tip
than using the visual brightness dierence VHB
.
Fig. 2.18. Evolutionary speed on the RGB for a model with M = 0.8 M ,
metallicity Z = 104 , and initial helium abundance Y = 0.240 (Raelt and
Weiss 1992). The dashed line is the tangent near the bright end.
Fig. 2.19. Luminosity function of the RGB of the globular cluster NGC 2808
which has [Fe/H] = 1.37 (Fusi Pecci et al. 1990).
65
A very important measure of the speed of evolution of a single star

along the RGB, HB, and AGB is the relative number of stars found on
these branches in a given cluster. Because for these advanced evolutionary phases a single-star track is essentially an isochrone, these number
ratios R give us directly the relative amounts of time spent on these
branches (R-method). For example, a novel energy-loss mechanism
that operates mostly in the nondegenerate core of an HB star would
shorten the helium-burning lifetime. This possibility is constrained by
the relative number of stars found on the HB and RGB where the RGB
in this context refers to that part which is brighter than the HB.
When a star ascends the RGB, its hydrogen-burning shell encounters at some point a discontinuity in the composition prole left behind
by a previous deep penetration of the envelope convection into the
region of varying hydrogen content caused by nuclear burning. The ascent is briey interrupted and the star stays at a xed luminosity for a
brief period of time. Afterward, the hydrogen shell works itself through
a constant composition prole which was prepared by the convective
envelope. Therefore, at a brightness near the HB one expects to nd
a bump in the number of stars on the RGB, i.e. in the distribution
N/Mbol which essentially corresponds to dt/dMbol for a single-star
evolutionary track (Fig. 2.18). The bump was recently identied in a
number of clusters; for a particularly beautiful example see Fig. 2.19.
It has been suggested to use it as a standard candle to calibrate the
RR Lyrae brightness-metallicity relation (Fusi Pecci et al. 1990).
An important observable is the absolute brightness of RR Lyrae
stars which are not members of globular clusters. No reason is known
why these eld stars for a given metallicity should be any dierent from
those found in a cluster and so brightness determinations of nearby
RR Lyrae stars provide important information about their luminosity
calibration.
2.4.2
Theoretical Relations
In order to test the standard stellar-evolution picture against the observables introduced in Sect. 2.4.1 they need to be related to stellar
properties such as mass and chemical composition. In the past, extensive grids of stellar evolutionary sequences have been calculated and
have been used to derive analytic approximations for the connection
between various stellar parameters; as a canonical standard I use the
evolutionary HB and RG sequences of Sweigart and Gross (1976, 1978).
66
Chapter 2
a) Composition Parameters
The chemical composition is characterized by the helium content and
the metallicity. The convective envelope on the RGB at some point
reaches down into the region of a variable composition prole caused
by nuclear burning, causing a certain amount of processed material
(helium) to be dredged up. Therefore, the helium mass fraction Yenv
of the envelope is slightly larger than the value Y at formation. The
amount of dredge-up is approximately given by (Sweigart, Renzini, and
Tornambe 1987)
Ys Yenv Y 0.0136 + 0.0055 Z13 ,
(2.14)
where the metallicity parameter Z13 is dened in Eq. (2.16) below.

However, because the exact amount of convective dredge-up is somewhat model dependent, and because measurements of 12 C/13 C ratios
in metal-poor eld red giants seem to indicate that the dredge-up of
processed material is more ecient than predicted by standard calculations (Sneden, Pilachewski, and VandenBerg 1986) it is best to use Yenv
rather than Y as an independent parameter to characterize red giants
and HB stars.10
Gravitational settling of helium throughout the MS evolution has
the opposite eect of reducing the envelope abundance relative to the
initial homogeneous value. In recent evolutionary sequences which were
calculated to estimate the eect of helium diusion on the inferred
globular-cluster ages a decrease between Ys = 0.009 and 0.015 was
found (Prott and Michaud 1991; Chaboyer et al. 1992). Therefore,
the eect of MS gravitational settling and that of RG convective dredgeup appear to cancel each other more or less so that Yenv appears to be
much closer to the initial value Y than had been thought previously.
The metallicity is usually characterized by the mass fraction Z of
elements heavier than helium. Because iron is most important for the
opacities one often uses the abundance of iron relative to hydrogen
as a metallicity measure. It is characterized by the quantity [Fe/H]
which is the logarithmic abundance of iron over hydrogen relative to
the solar value. If the solar metallicity is taken to be Z = 0.02 so that
10
In their calculation of RG sequences, Sweigart and Gross (1978) used the symbol
Y to denote the MS helium abundance; the envelope abundance near the helium
ash can be inferred from their tabulation of Ys values for each sequence. In
their 1976 study of HB sequences, they used the symbol Y to denote the envelope
abundance which is here consistently called Yenv .
67
log Z = 1.7 one nds

log Z = [Fe/H] + log Z = [Fe/H] 1.7.
(2.15)
Because globular-cluster metallicities cover a range of Z = 104 to 102

a typical average value is log Z = 3 or [Fe/H] = 1.3. The primordial
helium abundance is thought to be about 23%. Therefore, it is useful
to employ the reduced composition parameters
Y23 Yenv 0.23,
Z13 log Z + 3 = [Fe/H] + 1.3,
(2.16)
which are zero for a typical globular cluster.

b) Core Mass at Helium Ignition
One of the most important quantities to be aected by a novel energyloss mechanism is the core mass at the helium ash because helium
ignition is an extremely sensitive function of the temperature. Based
on the Sweigart and Gross (1978) models Raelt (1990b) has derived
the analytic approximation
Mc = 0.500 0.22 Y23 0.011 Z13 0.021 M7 + Mc ,
(2.17)
where all stellar masses are understood in units of the solar mass M .
Here, Mc is the core mass at helium ignition and M7 M 0.7 is
the reduced total mass. I have increased Mc by 0.004 relative to
the original calculation to account for the corrected plasma neutrino
emission rate (Haft, Raelt, and Weiss 1994). Within about 0.003 M
Raelt and Weiss (1992) found the same expression (when corrected for
the plasma rates) except for a slightly shallower metallicity dependence.
Recently, Sweigart (1994) has reviewed the core-mass calculations
at the helium ash. All workers seem to agree within a few 103 M
except for Mazzitelli (1989) who found core masses larger by some
0.020 M . Sweigart (1994) claims that this disagreement cannot be
attributed to the algorithm adopted to accomplish the shell shifting
of the numerical grid which represents the star on a computer.
Because of substantial mass loss on the RGB the meaning of the
total mass M in this equation is not entirely obvious. If there were
enough time to relax to equilibrium one would think that it is the instantaneous mass at the helium ash. Indeed, Raelt and Weiss (1992)
found in an evolutionary sequence with mass loss that the end mass determined Mc . However, in this calculation the mass loss was stopped
68
Chapter 2
sometime before helium ignition and so this nding is not surprising.

Castellani and Castellani (1993) studied RG sequences with mass loss
in more detail and found the surprising result that the core mass at
helium ignition was determined by the initial stellar mass while the envelope structure followed the instantaneous envelope mass. Apparently,
in these calculations the core retained memory of a previous conguration. The total amount of mass loss on the RGB may be of order
0.2 M , causing a maximum discrepancy between the two scenarios of
about 0.005 M in the expected Mc .
In Eq. (2.17) a deviation Mc was explicitly included which represents nonstandard changes of Mc . The core-mass increase Mc is
the main quantitity to be constrained by observations. It should be
thought of as a function of the parameters which govern the physics
which causes the delay of helium ignition such as coupling constants of
particles which contribute to the energy loss, or a more benign parameter such as the angular frequency of core rotation.
c) Brightness at Helium Ignition
Next, the brightness at helium ignition is needed, identical with the
brightness at the tip of the RGB. In the Sweigart and Gross (1978)
calculations, both the luminosity and the core mass at the helium ash
are functions of Z, Yenv , and M. For the present purposes, however, the
core mass at helium ignition must be viewed as another free parameter
which is controlled, for example, by the amount of energy loss by novel
particle emission. In order to determine how the luminosity at helium
ignition varies with Mc if all other parameters are held xed Raelt
(1990b) considered log L/Mc for a grid of Sweigart and Gross tracks
near the ash. An interpolation yields
log Ltip = 3.328 + 0.68 Y23 + 0.129 Z13 + 0.007 M7 + 4.7 Mc ,
(2.18)
with Ltip the luminosity at the RGB tip in units of L . Ignoring the
dependence on the total mass here and in Eq. (2.17) one nds for the
absolute bolometric brightness of the RGB tip11
Mtip = 3.58 + 0.89 Y23 0.19 Z13 11.8 Mc ,
(2.19)
slightly dierent from the results of Raelt (1990b) who used the mass
of RR Lyrae stars for the total mass in Eq. (2.18).
Recall that the absolute bolometric brightness is given by M = 4.74 2.5 log L
for L in units of L , M in magnitudes.
11
69
d) Brightness of RR Lyrae Stars

Theoretically, details of the evolution of stars on the HB are dicult to
account for. Notably, they may move in and out of the RR Lyrae instability strip so that the stars found there cannot be trivially associated
with a specic age after the beginning of helium burning. Therefore,
it is easiest to use the absolute bolometric brightness of zero-age HB
stars with a mass chosen such that they fall into the RR Lyrae strip
(Buzzoni et al. 1983; Raelt 1990b)
MRR = 0.66 3.5 Y23 + 0.16 Z13 RR 7.3 Mc ,
(2.20)
where RR is an unknown amount of deviation between real RR Lyrae

stars and the zero-age HB models of Sweigart and Gross (1976) that
served to derive this relation.
It is expected that RR is a positive number of order 0.1 mag, i.e.
on average RR Lyrae stars are thought to be somewhat brighter than
zero-age HB star models. This conclusion is supported by Sandages
(1990a) investigation of the vertical height of the HB by means of the
pulsational properties of RR Lyrae stars. Sandage found an intrinsic
width between 0.2 mag for the most metal-poor and about 0.4 mag for
the most metal-rich clusters, i.e. an average deviation between 0.1 and
0.2 mag between zero-age and average HB stars.
Lee, Demarque, and Zinn (1990) have constructed synthetic HBs
for a range of metallicities and helium content on the basis of new
evolutionary sequences. For a MS helium content of 0.20, which in their
calculation amounts to Yenv = 0.22, they found (see also Lee 1990)
MRR = 0.70 + 0.22 Z13 .
(2.21)
Comparing this with Eq. (2.20) at Y23 = 0.01 and Mc = 0 one

nds RR 0. This is not in contradiction with the brightening of
RR Lyrae stars relative to zero age, it only means that there is a slight
oset relative to the analytic representation Eq. (2.20) derived from the
Sweigart and Gross (1976) calculations. RR shall always refer to the
brightness dierence of real RR Lyrae stars relative to Eq. (2.20), it
does not refer to an oset relative to real zero-age HB stars.
e) Brightness Dierence between HB and RGB Tip
The main observable to constrain a deviation from the standard core
mass at the helium ash is the brightness dierence between the HB
70
Chapter 2
(at the RR Lyrae strip) and the RGB tip for which one nds with
Eqs. (2.19) and (2.20)
tip
MHB
MRR Mtip
= 4.24 4.4 Y23 + 0.35 Z13 RR + 4.5 Mc
(2.22)
which is dened such that it is a positive number.

f ) Ratio of HB/RGB Stars
The relative duration of the HB vs. RGB phase is given by the number
ratio of the stars on these branches where the RGB is dened as that
part which is brighter than the HB. The HB lifetime is found to be
(Buzzoni et al. 1983; Raelt 1990b)
log(tHB /yr) = 8.01 + 0.37 Y23 + 0.06 Z13 2.9 Mc .
(2.23)
The RGB lifetime cannot be expressed easily in terms of a simple linear

formula because of the RGB bump discussed earlier. A simple approximation to the lifetime ratio R = tHB /tRGB is (Buzzoni et al. 1983;
Raelt 1990b)
log R = 0.105 + 2.29 Y23 + 0.029 Z13 + 0.33 RR 0.70 Mc .
(2.24)
This quantity is particularly sensitive to the helium content of the stars
and almost independent of the core mass at helium ignition.
2.4.3
Observational Results
a) Brightness at the RGB Tip

The brightness at the tip of the RGB can be estimated by the brightest
red giant in a given globular cluster. A homogeneous set of observations
of the brightest RGs in 33 globular clusters are those of Cohen, Frogel,
and Persson (1978), Da Costa, Frogel, and Cohen (1981), Cohen and
Frogel (1982) and Frogel, Persson, and Cohen (1981, 1983). According
to Frogel, Cohen, and Persson (1983) only in 26 of the 33 clusters
the brightest giant was likely observed; for those cases the bolometric
brightness dierence between the brightest RGs and the HB are shown
as a function of metallicity in Fig. 2.20. Also shown is a linear t
tip
MHB
= 4.06 + 0.38 Z13 . The observational errors are thought to be
less than about 0.05 mag.
71
Fig. 2.20. Bolometric brightness dierence between the horizontal branch

and the brightest red giant in 26 globular clusters from the observations
referenced in the text.
However, because there are relatively few stars near the tip on the
RGB (on average about 10 mag1 in the observed clusters), the brightest RG is on average about 0.1 mag below the actual RGB tip. Raelt
(1990b) estimated the richness of the RGB near the tip for each cluster
on the basis of the rst few brightest stars provided by the observations and thus estimated the expected brightness dierence between
the brightest RG and the tip. This yields a linear regression
tip
= (4.19 0.03) + (0.41 0.06) Z13 ,
MHB
(2.25)
about 0.13 mag brighter than the t shown in Fig. 2.20. The slope of
Eq. (2.25) agrees very well with the theoretical expectation Eq. (2.22),
provided that RR does not introduce a large modication.
More recent observations are those of Da Costa and Armandro
(1990) who also found excellent agreement between the theoretical slope
of the brightness of the RGB tip luminosity as a function of metallicity.
Because the coecient of the metallicity dependence agrees well
with the predicted value one may restrict a further comparison betip
tween theory and observation to MHB
at a given metallicity for which
it is best to use the average value [Fe/H] = 1.48 or Z13 = 0.18
of the globular clusters used in Fig. 2.20. Inserting these values into
Eqs. (2.22) and (2.25) and adding the errors quadratically one nds
4.4 Y23 + RR 4.5 Mc = 0.06 0.03.
(2.26)
If RR = 0.2 mag this result implies that the envelope helium abun-
72
Chapter 2
dance, which presumably is very close to the primordial value, has to

be 0.20 to achieve perfect agreement, or else the core mass at helium
ignition has to be 0.030 M larger than given by the standard theory. Alternatively, the zero-age HB models may represent the brightness of RR Lyrae stars better than anticipated so that RR 0
in which case there is perfect agreement with the standard values
Yenv Yprimordial 0.23 and Mc = 0.
b) Ratio of HB/RGB Stars
Buzzoni et al. (1983) have determined the number of stars on the HB
(including RR Lyrae stars),12 NHB , and on the RGB brighter than the
HB, NRGB , in 15 globular clusters. The resulting values for the number
ratio R = NHB /NRGB is shown in Fig. 2.21 as a function of metallicity.
The individual errors are found by assuming standard deviations of
N 1/2 for the number counts and adding the errors of NHB and NRGB
quadratically (Raelt 1990b). The data are t by a linear regression
log R = (0.162 0.016) + (0.065 0.032) Z13 ,
(2.27)
also shown in Fig. 2.21.
Fig. 2.21. Number ratio of HB/RGB stars for 15 globular clusters according
to Buzzoni et al. (1983).
Comparing this result with the theoretical prediction of Eq. (2.24)

one nds that the metallicity dependence essentially agrees within the
12
Buzzoni et al. (1983) call this quantity NHB+RR .
73
stated uncertainty; it is very shallow anyway. Therefore, one compares

at the average metallicity of the 15 clusters, [Fe/H] = 1.54 or Z13 =
0.24, adds the errors quadratically, and nds
Y23 + 0.14 RR 0.31 Mc = 0.021 0.008.
(2.28)
With RR 0.2 mag and Mc 0 this conrms a primordial helium

abundance of around 23%.
c) RR Lyrae Absolute Brightness
The RR Lyrae absolute brightness as well as the precise variation of
MRR with metallicity is the single most discussed issue about globularcluster color-magnitude diagrams because the distance and thus the
age determination depends critically on this quantity. For example,
TO
when using VHB
measurements like the ones shown in Fig. 2.17, the
inferred relative ages of globular clusters depend crucially on the slope
a of MRR = a [Fe/H] + b.
One possibility to determine a is the use of the pulsation frequencies
of these variable stars. The result is about 0.35, almost twice as large
as that obtained by theoretical zero-age HB models or by synthetic
HBs, an issue known as the Sandage period shift eect (Sandage 1990
and references therein; Iben and Renzini 1984; Renzini and Fusi Pecci
1988). While this issue is crucial for a relative age determination of
globular clusters, it is of relatively minor importance for the present
discussion where the zero point b for an intermediate metallicity is the
most crucial quantity.
Probably the most direct determination of MRR is to use nearby
eld RR Lyrae stars for which, in principle, a distance determination by
parallax measurements is possible. Barnes and Hawley (1986) applied
the method of statistical parallaxes to a sample of 142 stars and found
a mean absolute visual brightness of (0.68 0.14) mag. Assuming a
bolometric correction for RR Lyrae stars of 0.06 mag this leads to
MRR = (0.62 0.14) mag.
(2.29)
The average metallicity of this sample is probably [Fe/H] 1.4.

The Baade-Wesselink method applied to a total of 25 eld RR Lyrae
stars, and using a bolometric correction of 0.06, leads to
MRR = 0.72 + 0.19 Z13
(Sandage and Cacciari 1990, and references therein).
(2.30)
74
Chapter 2
Most recently, the brightness of RR Lyrae stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud was measured; it has a distance which is thought to be
well determined by other methods. Walker (1992) found
MRR = 0.48 + 0.15 Z13 ,
(2.31)
if the same bolometric correction 0.06 is assumed.

In summary, a reasonably conservative estimate of the absolute
RR Lyrae bolometric brightness is
MRR = (0.60 0.15) + 0.17 Z13 .
(2.32)
A comparison with Eq. (2.20) yields

3.5 Y23 + RR + 7.3 Mc = 0.06 0.15.
(2.33)
This is in good agreement with the standard values Yenv = 0.23, Mc =

0, and RR 0.1 mag.
2.4.4
Interpretation of the Observational Results
In order to interpret the observational results it is rst assumed that

there is no anomalous core-mass increase. However, considering the
uncertainties entering the calculation of Mc such as the precise value of
the relevant total stellar mass, uncertainties in the electron conductive
opacities, etc., it appears that a plausible range of uncertainty is Mc =
0.010 M even in the absence of any novel phenomena. Adopting this
uncertainty and adding it quadratically to the previous uncertainties,
the three observables from Eq. (2.26), (2.28), and (2.33) yield
Yenv = (0.244 0.012) 0.23 RR
tip
from MHB
,
Yenv = (0.251 0.009) 0.14 RR
from R,
Yenv = (0.247 0.048) 0.29 RR
from MRR .
(2.34)
The primordial helium abundance likely is in the range 2224%; the

envelope abundance in globular clusters is probably slightly larger, depending on details of gravitational settling on the MS and convective
dredge-up on the RGB. Therefore, with RR between 0 and 0.2 mag
these results are perfectly consistent.
In order to constrain Yenv and Mc simultaneously it is assumed
that RR = 0.1 0.1. Adding this error quadratically in Eq. (2.26),
75
(2.28), and (2.33) one nds

Yenv 1.0 Mc = 0.239 0.024
tip
from MHB
,
Yenv 0.3 Mc = 0.237 0.016
from R,
Yenv + 2.1 Mc = 0.247 0.043
from MRR .
(2.35)
Bands of allowed values for Yenv and Mc are shown in Fig. 2.22.
From Fig. 2.22 one reads o that approximately
Yenv = 0.24 0.02
and
|Mc | < 0.025 M .
(2.36)
Therefore, the core mass at the helium ash is tightly constrained to

lie within 5% of its standard value.
This result allows one to constrain the operation of a novel energyloss mechanism in the core of a red giant, i.e. at densities of around
106 g cm3 and at a temperature of about 108 K. In some cases, however, an energy-loss mechanism is suppressed by degeneracy eects in
a RG core, while it may be fairly ecient in the helium-burning core
of an HB star ( 104 g cm3 , T 108 K) which is essentially nondegenerate. In this case Mc 0 while the energy loss from the HB core
Fig. 2.22. Allowed values for the envelope helium abundance of evolved
globular-cluster stars and of an anomalous core-mass excess at helium ignitip
tion. The limits were derived from the observed brightness dierence MHB
between the HB and the RGB tip, from the R-method (number counts
on the HB vs. RGB), and from the brightness determination of nearby eld
RR Lyrae stars (MRR ) by statistical parallaxes and the Baade-Wesselink
method as well as the brightness of RR Lyrae stars in the LMC.
76
Chapter 2
may be substantial and thus would shorten the helium-burning lifetime

as the nuclear fuel would be consumed faster.
The HB/RGB number ratio R indicates that the acceleration of the
HB evolution must not be too extreme. From Eq. (2.24) together with
the observational result Eq. (2.27) one nds
log R = 0.01 0.06,
(2.37)
if one adopts Yenv = 0.24 0.02, RR = 0.1 0.1, and Mc =

0.010 M . Therefore, R cannot be smaller by much more than about
10% of its standard value. Put another way, the helium-burning lifetime of low-mass stars is determined within about 10% from the ratio
of HB/RGB stars in globular clusters.
With lesser statistical signicance this result is corroborated by
number counts of clump giants in open clusters which consist of more
recently formed stars in the galactic disk (Population I). Clump giants
in open clusters correspond to HB stars in globular clusters; instead
of forming a horizontal branch they are concentrated in a clump near
the base of the RGB. Cannon (1970) compared the number of clump
giants in the open cluster M67 with the number of stars per luminosity interval near the MS turno and found tHe 1.5108 yr, with a
large statistical uncertainty, however, because there were only 5 clump
giants. (Open clusters tend to be much less populous than globular
ones.) Tinsley and Gunn (1976) derived tHe = (1.27 0.29) 108 yr
from low-mass giants of the old galactic disk population. These results
are in full agreement with Eq. (2.23).
2.4.5
An Alternate Analysis
The above discussion of the globular-cluster limits is a somewhat updated version of my own previous work (Raelt 1990b). Very recently,
Catelan, de Freitas Pacheco, and Horvath (1995) have provided an independent new and extended analysis. While they closely follow the
line of reasoning of Raelt (1990b) they have changed numerous detip
tails. Of the 26 globular clusters which enter the MHB
argument,
and of the 15 clusters which enter the R-method, they have discarded
several with an extreme HB morphology. For the absolute brightness
of RR Lyrae stars they have employed Walkers (1992) values which
depend on a precise knowledge of the LMC distance. For the brightness dierence between zero-age HB stars and RR Lyrae stars they use
RR = 0.31 + 0.10 [Fe/H] = 0.18 + 0.10 Z13 .
77
These authors have introduced a fourth observable, the so-called

mass to light ratio A of RR Lyrae stars. This observable has also been
used by Castellani and DeglInnocenti (1993) to constrain a possible
core-mass excess. It amounts to a determination of the core mass of an
RR Lyrae star on the basis of its luminosity and pulsation period.
Going through similar steps as in the previous sections, Catelan,
de Freitas Pacheco, and Horvath (1995) then found the results
Yenv 0.9 Mc = 0.207 0.039
tip
from MHB
,
Yenv 0.3 Mc = 0.218 0.018
from R,
Yenv + 2.1 Mc = 0.250 0.049
from MRR ,
Yenv + 1.5 Mc = 0.238 0.008
from A.
(2.38)
Bands of allowed values for Yenv and Mc are shown in Fig. 2.23 which
is analogous to Fig. 2.22.
From this analysis one infers a best-t value for the envelope helium abundance which is somewhat low. The primordial abundance
probably is not lower than 22%. The only possibility to reduce the
envelope abundance from this level is by gravitational settling which
is counteracted by convective dredge-up, and perhaps by other eects
that might eject helium into the envelope from the core. Therefore,
Fig. 2.23. Allowed values for the envelope helium abundance of evolved
globular-cluster stars and of an anomalous core-mass excess at helium ignition according to the analysis of Catelan, de Freitas Pacheco, and Horvath
(1995). For comparison see Fig. 2.22.
78
Chapter 2
Yenv > 0.22 is probably a conservative estimate. This takes us back

to the conclusion that Mc 0 within at least 0.025 M . Again, the
core mass at helium ignition is found to agree with the standard result
to better than 5%.
2.4.6
Systematic Uncertainties
The globular-cluster argument yields some of the most restrictive limits on novel modes of energy loss. Therefore, it is important to understand some of the systematic uncertainties that enter the nominal limit
Mc <
0.025 M .
Core rotation has often been quoted as an eect to change Mc .
However, as it would actually delay helium ignition it cannot be invoked
to compensate for anomalous cooling eects. In addition, if fast core
rotation were an important eect one would expect it to vary from star
tip
,
to star, causing a random broadening of the distribution of MHB
tip
is
an eect not indicated by the observations. The scatter of MHB
completely within observational errors and within the scatter caused
by the eect that the brightest red giant is not exactly at the tip of the
RGB in a given cluster. Further discussions of the rotational impact
on Mc are found in Catelan, de Freitas Pacheco, and Horvath (1995).
The uncertainty of the conductive opacities are relatively large as
stressed by Catelan, de Freitas Pacheco, and Horvath (1995). However,
conceivable modications of Mc do not seem to exceed the 0.010 M
level even with extreme assumptions.
One of the main theoretical weaknesses of the helium-ignition argument is that the helium ash has never been properly calculated.
Because helium ignites o-center one expects that convection plays a
major role in the process of heating the entire core and its expansion.
One may worry that in the process of the ash, parts of the core are
ejected into the stellar envelope, reducing its post-ash size. However,
if signicant amounts of helium were ejected, the inferred Yenv would be
changed dramatically. Even the ejection of 0.010 M of helium would
increase Yenv by 0.03 if one assumes an envelope mass of 0.3 M and
thus would brighten RR Lyrae stars by 0.12 mag. Within the stated
limit of Mc < 0.025 M , mass ejection from the core is a dramatic
eect that would be hard to hide in the data.
One signicant systematic uncertainty arises from the relative abundance of metals among each other which is usually xed by the solar
mixture (Ross and Aller 1976). The assumption of a Ross-Aller mixture for metal-poor systems like globular-cluster stars has been called
79
into question in recent years (e.g. Wheeler, Sneden, and Truran 1989).
It is thought that in these systems the elements (mostly oxygen)
are enhanced relative to iron. RG sequences calculated by Raelt and
Weiss (1992) with somewhat extreme enhancements indicated that
the red-giant core mass and luminosity at the helium ash are only
moderately changed. Most of the change that did occur was due to
the reduction of Fe at constant Z because of the enhancement. Put
another way, if Z13 = [Fe/H] + 1.3 is used as the dening equation for
the above reduced metallicity the eect of enhancements appear
to be rather minimal.
Catelan, de Freitas Pacheco, and Horvath (1995) have taken the
point of view that for enhanced elements one should rescale the
metallicity according to a recipe given by Chie, Straniero, and Salaris
(1991). Put another way, the metallicity parameter of Eq. (2.16) that
was used in the previous sections should be redened as
Z13 [Fe/H] + 1.3 + log(0.579 f + 0.421).
(2.39)
Here, f is the enhancement factor of the abundance of elements

relative to the solar value. For f = 3 one nds that Z13 must be
oset by +0.33. Catelan, de Freitas Pacheco, and Horvath (1995) went
through their analysis with this modication, causing the allowed bands
of Fig. 2.23 to be slightly shifted relative to each other. However, the
overall change is small, well within the stated upper limit on Mc .
In summary, no eect has been discussed in the literature that would
cause the predicted core mass at helium ignition to deviate from its
standard value beyond the adopted limit of 0.025 M . Therefore, any
new energy-loss mechanism that would cause a signicantly larger coremass excess would have to be compensated by a hitherto unidentied
other novel eect.
2.5
2.5.1
Particle Bounds from Globular-Cluster Stars

Helium-Burning Lifetime
A particularly simple argument to constrain the properties of novel

particles arises from the observed duration of helium burning of lowmass stars, i.e. form the lifetime of stars on the horizontal branch (HB).
In Sect. 2.4.4 it was argued that the number ratio R of stars on the HB
vs. RGB in globular clusters agreed with standard predictions to within
10%. Therefore, the helium-burning lifetime tHe agrees with standard
predictions to within this limit. A less signicant conrmation arises
80
Chapter 2
from the number of clump giants in open clusters and from the old
galactic disk population.
In Sect. 1.3.1 it was shown that the main impact of a nonstandard
energy-loss rate on a star is an acceleration of the nuclear fuel consumption while the overall stellar structure remains nearly unchanged.
The temperature dependence of the helium-burning (triple- reaction)
energy generation rate 3 T 40 is much steeper than the case of hydrogen burning discussed in Sect. 1.3.1 and so the adjustment of the
stellar structure is even more negligible. With L3 the standard heliumburning luminosity of the core of an HB star and Lx the nonstandard
energy-loss rate integrated over the core, tHe will be reduced by an approximate factor L3 /(Lx + L3 ). Demanding a reduction by less than
10% translates into a requirement Lx <
0.1 L3 . Because this constraint is relatively tight one may compute both Lx and L3 from an
unperturbed model. If the same novel cooling mechanism has delayed
the helium ash and has thus led to an increased core mass only helps
to accelerate the HB evolution. Therefore, it is conservative to ignore
a possible core-mass increase.
The standard value for L3 is around 20 L ; see Fig. 2.4 for the
properties of a typical HB star. Because the core mass is about 0.5 M
the core-averaged energy generation rate is 3 80 erg g1 s1 . Then
a nonstandard energy-loss rate is constrained by
1 1
x <
10 erg g s .
(2.40)
Previously, this limit had been stated as 100 erg g1 s1 , overly conservative because it was not based on the observed HB/RGB number
ratios in globular clusters. However, in practice Eq. (2.40) does not
improve the constraints on a novel energy-loss rate by a factor of 10
because the appropriate average density and temperature are somewhat
below the canonical values of = 104 g cm3 and T = 108 K.
For a simple estimate the energy-loss rate may be calculated for
average conditions of the core. Typically, x will depend on some small
power of the density , and a somewhat larger power of the temperature
T . For the HB star model of Fig. 2.4 the core-averaged values n and
T n are shown in Fig. 2.24 as a function of n. The dependence on n
is relatively mild so that the nal result is not sensitive to ne points
of the averaging procedure.
In order to test the analytic criterion Eq. (2.40) in a concrete example consider axion losses by the Primako process. The energy-loss rate
will be derived in Sect. 5.2.1. It is found to be proportional to T 7 /
and to a coupling constant g10 = ga /1010 GeV1 . For a typical HB
81
Fig. 2.24. Average values of n and T n for the HB star model of Fig. 2.4
where 4 = /104 g cm3 and T8 = T /108 K.
2
core I nd T87 /4 0.3 which leads to g10
30 erg g1 s1 . Thus,
for g10 = 1 one concludes that the helium-burning lifetime should be
reduced by a factor 80/(80 + 30) = 0.7.
This result may be compared with numerical evolution sequences
for 1.3 M stars with an initial helium abundance of 25% and a metallicity of Z = 0.02 (Raelt and Dearborn 1987). The helium-burning
lifetime was found to be 1.2108 yr which was modied to 0.7108 yr
for g10 = 1. This means that the axion losses on the HB led to a tHe
reduction by a factor 0.6, in good agreement with the analytic estimate.
This comparison corroborates that the analytic criterion represents the
claimed impact of a novel energy loss on the helium-burning lifetime
with a reasonable precision.
Equation (2.40) may now be applied to many dierent cases. An
overview over the most salient results is given in Tab. 2.5 where the
original references are given, and the sections of this book are indicated where a more detailed discussion can be found. Apart from the
listed examples, the argument has also been applied to low-mass supersymmetric particles (Fukugita and Sakai 1982; Bouquet and Vayonakis
1982; Ellis and Olive 1983). However, it is now thought that supersymmetric particles, if they exist, are probably not light enough to be
produced in stars whence the interest in this case has waned.
82
Chapter 2
Table 2.5. Constraints on low-mass particles from the observed duration

of helium burning in globular-cluster stars. Details are discussed in the
indicated sections of this book.
Particle property
Dominant process
Constrainta
[Ref.]
Sect.
Yukawa coupling of
Bremsstrahlung
gS < 1.31014
4
4
scalar (vector) boson e + He He + e + gV < 0.91014
to electrons
[1]
3.5.5
[1]
3.6.2
Yukawa coupling
to baryons
Compton
+ 4 He 4 He +
gS < 4.31011
gV < 3.01011
Photoproduction of
X boson
Photoproduction
+ 4 He 4 He + X
50
2
<
310 cm
Yukawa coupling of
pseudoscalar boson
a to electrons
Compton
+ee+a
g < 4.51013
[3]
3.2.6
Yukawa coupling of
paraphoton
Compton
+ e e +
g < 3.21013
[4]
3.2.6
coupling of
pseudoscalar boson
Primako
+ 4 He 4 He + a
ga < 0.61010
GeV1
[5]
5.2.5
Neutrino dipole
moment
Plasmon decay

e < 11011 B
[6]
6.5.6
a As
[2]
derived in this book; may dier from the quoted references.

References:
1. Grifols and Masso (1986); Grifols, Masso, and Peris (1989).
2. van der Velde (1989); Raelt (1988b).
3. Dicus et al. (1978, 1980); Georgi, Glashow, and Nussinov (1981);
Barroso and Branco (1982); Fukugita, Watamura, and Yoshimura (1982a,b);
Pantziris and Kang (1986); Raelt (1986a).
4. Homann (1987).
5. Raelt (1986a); Raelt and Dearborn (1987).
6. Sutherland et al. (1976); Fukugita and Yazaki (1987);
Raelt and Dearborn (1988); Raelt, Dearborn, and Silk (1989).

2.5.2
83
Helium Ignition
Another powerful constraint arises from the agreement between the

predicted and observationally inferred core mass at the helium ash
(Sect. 2.4.4). An energy-loss mechanism which is ecient in a degenerate medium ( 106 g cm3 , T 108 K) can delay helium ignition.
To establish the core-mass increase as a function of nonstandard particle parameters one needs to evolve red giants numerically to the helium ash.
However, for a simple analytic estimate one observes that the core
mass of a red giant grows by hydrogen shell burning. Because it is
a degenerate conguration its radius shrinks and so the core releases
a large amount of gravitational binding energy which amounts to an
average energy source grav . If a novel energy-loss rate x is of the
same order then helium ignition will be delayed.
In order to estimate grav one may treat the red-giant core as
a low-mass white dwarf. Its total energy, i.e. gravitational potential
energy plus kinetic energy of the degenerate electrons, is found to be
(Chandrasekhar 1939)
E=
3 GN M 2
.
7 R
(2.41)
The radius of a low-mass white dwarf (nonrelativistic electrons!) may

be expressed as R = R (M /M)1/3 with R = 8800 km so that
E
GN M
grav =
=
M
R
M
M
)1/3
M
.
M
(2.42)
From the numerical sequences of Sweigart and Gross (1978) one nds
0.81015 M s1
that near the helium ash M 0.5 M and M
so that grav 100 erg g1 s1 . Therefore, one must require x
100 erg g1 s1 in order to prevent the helium ash from being delayed.
In order to sharpen this criterion one may use results from Sweigart
and Gross (1978) and Raelt and Weiss (1992) who studied numerically
the delay of the helium ash by varying the standard neutrino losses
with a numerical factor F where F = 1 represents the standard case.
The results are shown in Fig. 2.25. Note that for F < 1 the standard
neutrino losses are decreased so that helium ignites earlier, causing
Mc < 0. It is also interesting that for F = 0 helium naturally
ignites at the center of the core while for F > 1 the ignition point
moves further and further toward the edge (Fig. 2.26). This behavior is
84
Chapter 2
Fig. 2.25. Change of the red-giant core mass at helium ignition, Mc , as a

function of a factor F which multiplies the standard neutrino energy-loss
rate. Triangles: Metallicity Z = 103 (Sweigart and Gross 1978). Squares:
Z = 104 (Raelt and Weiss 1992).
Fig. 2.26. Variation of the red-giant core mass at helium ignition, Mc , as a

function of F as in Fig. 2.25 for Z = 104 , Y = 0.22, and M = 0.8 M .
Also shown is the mass coordinate Mig where helium ignites (Raelt and
Weiss 1992).
85
understood from the relatively steep density dependence of the plasma

neutrino emission rate which is most ecient at the center.
In order to prevent the core mass from exceeding its standard value
by more than 5% (Mc < 0.025 M ) one must require F <
3 or
x <
2
.
According
to
the
Sweigart
and
Gross
(1978)
red-giant
se
quences the neutrino luminosity of the core at helium ignition is approximately 1 L so that 4 erg g1 s1 . Therefore, an approximate
analytic criterion to constrain a nonstandard energy loss is
1 1
x <
10 erg g s ,
(2.43)
where x is to be evaluated in a helium plasma at the average density of

the core of about 2105 g cm3 (the central density is about 106 g cm3 )
and at the almost constant temperature of T = 108 K. The standard
neutrino plasma emission rate evaluated at 2105 g cm3 and 108 K
is 3 erg g1 s1 , in good agreement with the above average neutrino
luminosity of the Sweigart and Gross models.
Table 2.6. Increase of the core mass at helium ignition because of the emission of pseudoscalars (Raelt and Weiss 1995).
[1026 ]
Mc [M ]
0.0
0.5
1.0
2.0
0.000
0.022
0.036
0.056
A simple application of Eq. (2.43) is the case of bremsstrahlung

emission of pseudoscalars e + 4 He 4 He + e + a. For a degenerate
medium the emission rate is given in Eq. (3.33); for T = 108 K it
is approximately 21027 erg g1 s1 with the axion ne-structure
constant . Then, Eq. (2.43) yields
26
<
0.510 .
(2.44)
The same case was treated numerically by Raelt and Weiss (1995)
who implemented the energy-loss rate Eq. (3.33) with varying values
of in several red-giant evolutionary sequences.13 They found the
13
In a previous numerical treatment by Dearborn, Schramm, and Steigman (1986)

the correct emission rate had not yet been available and so they overestimated the
energy-loss rate by as much as a factor of 10 at the center of a red-giant core.
86
Chapter 2
Fig. 2.27. Increase of the core mass of a red giant at helium ignition due
to the emission of pseudoscalars according to Tab. 2.6 (Raelt and Weiss
1995).
core-mass increases given in Tab. 2.6 and shown in Fig. 2.27. The requirement that the core not exceed its standard value by more than 5%
reproduces the analytic bound. This example nicely corroborates the
surprising precision of the simple criterion Eq. (2.43).
Another important case where a detailed numerical study is available is the emission of neutrinos by the plasma process when
they have nonstandard magnetic dipole moments . The emission
rates are derived in Sect. 6.5.5 and the simple criterion Eq. (2.43) is
12
applied in Sect. 6.5.6. It yields a limit 12 <
2 where 12 = /10 B
with the Bohr magneton B = e/2me . The numerical variation of the
core mass with is shown in Fig. 2.28 according to Raelt and Weiss
(1992). An analytic approximation is
[
3/2
Mc = 0.025 M (212 + 1)1/2 1 0.17 12 .
(2.45)
The requirement Mc <

0.025 M then translates into
12
<
310 B ,
(2.46)
a result which, again, is almost identical with the analytic treatment,

supporting the power of the simple criterion stated in Eq. (2.43).
87
Fig. 2.28. Increase of the core mass of a red giant at helium ignition as a
function of an assumed neutrino dipole moment according to Raelt and
Weiss (1992) with a total stellar mass 0.8 M and an initial helium abundance of Y = 0.22 or 0.24 (the core-mass increase is found to be the same).
The triangles refer to the metallicity Z = 103 , the squares to 104 . The
open circles are the corresponding results of Castellani and DeglInnocenti
(1992) with the same stellar mass, Y = 0.23, and Z = 2104 . The solid
line is the analytic t Eq. (2.45).
2.6
Summary
What is the bottom line after studying the impact of an anomalous

energy-loss rate on a variety of stellar-evolution phases? While the Sun
remains an interesting object from a pedagogical point of view, its main
use is that of a distant particle source for terrestrial experimentation,
notably to study neutrino properties (Chapters 10 and 12). Supernovae
and their collapsed cores (newborn neutron stars) remain very important; they will be discussed in Chapters 1113. At the present time
the cooling of old neutron stars appears to be a useful laboratory to
study conventional phenomena (Does the direct URCA process occur?
Are there meson condensates or other exotic phases? What is the role
of magnetic elds?). The emission of weakly interacting particles other
than standard neutrinos appears to play a lesser role in view of other
astrophysical limits on their interaction strength.
Then, apart from the supernova arguments to be discussed later,
the most useful and reliable observables to constrain the operation of a
88
Chapter 2
nonstandard energy-loss mechanism in stars are the white-dwarf luminosity function, the helium-burning lifetime of horizontal-branch stars,
and the nondelay of helium ignition in low-mass red giants as observed
by the brightness of the tip of the red-giant branch in globular clusters. It was possible to condense the latter two arguments into two
exceedingly simple criteria, namely that an anomalous energy-loss rate
in the cores of HB stars as well as in red-giant cores before helium
ignition must not exceed about 10 erg g1 s1 . The emission rate is to
be calculated at the pertinent plasma conditions, i.e. at an approximate temperature of 108 K = 8.6 keV, an electron concentration of
Ye = 0.5, and an average density of about 0.6104 g cm3 (HB stars)
or 2105 g cm3 (red giants). The former case corresponds to roughly
nondegenerate conditions, the latter case to degenerate ones so that it
depends on the density dependence of the emission rates which of these
cases will yield a more restrictive limit.
A red-giant core is essentially a 0.5 M helium white dwarf. The
observed real white dwarfs have typical masses of about 0.6 M ;
they are thought to consist mostly of carbon and oxygen. Both the
helium-ignition argument and the white-dwarf luminosity function allow one to constrain a novel energy-loss mechanism roughly on the level
of standard neutrino emission. Therefore, it is no surprise that bounds
derived from both arguments tend to be very similar.
There may be other objects or phenomena in the universe that measure novel particle-physics hypotheses even more sensitively than the
cases discussed here. They still need to make their way into the particle
astrophysics literature.
Chapter 3
Particles Interacting with
Electrons and Baryons
The stellar energy-loss argument is applied to weakly interacting particles which couple to electrons and baryons. The emission from a normal stellar plasma can proceed by a variety of reactions, for example
the Compton process e e where stands for a single particle
(axion, paraphoton, etc.) or a neutrino pair . Other examples of
practical interest are electron bremsstrahlung e (Z, A) (Z, A)e
or e e e e , electron free-bound transitions, and pair annihilation e e+ or e e+ . The corresponding energy-loss rates
of stellar plasmas are studied for temperatures and densities which are
of interest for stellar-evolution calculations. For particles coupled to
baryons some of the same processes apply in a normal plasma if one substitutes a proton or a helium nucleus for the electron. Reactions specic
to a nuclear medium are deferred to Chapter 4. In addition to draining
stars of energy, scalar or vector bosons would mediate long-range forces.
Leptonic long-range forces would be screened by the cosmic neutrino
background. Thermal graviton emission from stars is mentioned.
3.1
Introduction
If weakly interacting particles couple directly to electrons, they can

be produced thermally in stellar plasmas without nuclear processes.
For neutrinos, a direct electron coupling was rst contemplated after
the universal V A theory for their interactions had been proposed in
1958. It was realized immediately that such a coupling would allow
for thermal pair production by bremsstrahlung e (Z, A) (Z, A)e
89
90
Chapter 3
(Pontecorvo 1959; Gandelman and Pinaev 1959) or by photoproduction e e (Ritus 1961; Chiu and Stabler 1961). The set of
processes important for normal stars was completed by Adams, Ruderman, and Woo (1963) who discovered the plasma process .
Neutrino emission by these reactions is now a standard aspect of stellarevolution theory.
If other weakly interacting particles were to exist which couple directly to electrons they could essentially play the same role and thus
add to the energy loss of stars. The main speculation to be followed
up in this chapter is the possible existence of weakly interacting bosons
that would couple to electrons. Among standard particles the only lowmass bosons are photons and probably gravitons. The former dominate
the radiative energy transfer in stars, the latter are so weakly interacting that their thermal emission is negligible (Sect. 3.7). Why worry
about others?
Such a motivation arises from several sources. Low-mass bosons
could mediate long-range forces between electrically neutral bodies for
which gravity is the only standard interaction. It is an interesting
end in itself to set the best possible bounds on possible other forces
which might arise from the exchange of novel scalar or vector bosons.
Their existence seemed indicated for some time in the context of the
fth-force episode alluded to in Sect. 3.6.3 below. It is also possible
that baryon or lepton number play the role of physical charges similar
to the electric charge, and that a new gauge interaction is associated
with them. The baryonic or leptonic photons arising from this hypothesis are intriguing candidates for weakly interacting low-mass bosons
(Sect. 3.6.4). It will turn out, however, that typically massless bosons
which mediate long-range forces are best constrained by experiments
which test the equivalence principle of general relativity. Put another
way, to a high degree of accuracy gravity is found to be the only longrange interaction between neutral bodies.
Long-range leptonic forces can be screened by the cosmic neutrino
background. In this case the stellar energy-loss argument remains of
importance to limit their possible strength (Sect. 3.6.4).
The remaining category of interesting new bosons are those which
couple to the spin of fermions and thus do not mediate a long-range
force between unpolarized bodies. In the simplest case their CP-conserving coupling would be of a pseudoscalar nature. Such particles arise
naturally as Nambu-Goldstone bosons in scenarios where a global chiral
U(1) symmetry is spontaneously broken at some large energy scale. The
most widely discussed example is the Peccei-Quinn symmetry that was
Particles Interacting with Electrons and Baryons
91
proposed as an explanation of CP conservation in strong interactions.

It leads to the prediction of axions which will be discussed in some detail
in Chapter 14. The most restrictive limits on their coupling strength
arise from the stellar energy-loss argument, and it cannot be excluded
that in fact they play an important role in the evolution of some stars
(Sect. 2.2.5). No wonder that axions have played a primary role in
studies concerning the impact of new weakly interacting particles on
stellar evolution.
The main focus of this chapter is an application of the stellar energyloss argument to weakly interacting bosons which couple to electrons by
a variety of interaction structures. The relevant processes are entirely
analogous to those which emit neutrino pairs except for the plasma process which requires a two-body nal state. Therefore, I will presently
study photo and bremsstrahlung production of weakly interacting particles, including standard neutrinos.
One may consider the same processes with protons substituted for
electrons. For neutrino emission this variation is of no interest because
the rate is much smaller. It is signicant for low-mass bosons which
couple only to baryons.
The energy-loss argument will be systematically applied, yielding
restrictive limits on the possible Yukawa and gauge couplings of novel
bosons to electrons and baryons. For very low-mass scalar or vector
bosons these limits are discussed in the context of those arising from
the absence of novel long-range interactions.
3.2
3.2.1
Compton Process
Vector Bosons
The simplest process for the emission of weakly interacting particles

from the hot and dense interior of a star is the Compton process where
a photon from the heat bath interacts with an electron and is thus converted into a neutrino pair, an axion, or some other boson (Fig. 3.1).
These processes are analogous to the usual Compton scattering of photons. Therefore, I begin with this well-known case which is based on the
standard electron-photon interaction Lint = ie e e A with the electron charge e, the electron Dirac eld e , and the photon eld A. With
the ne structure constant = e2 /4 1/137, the electron mass me ,
and 0 2 /m2e the total Compton cross section is (e.g. Itzykson and
92
Chapter 3
Fig. 3.1. Compton processes for photon scattering as well as for axion and
neutrino pair production (photoneutrino process). In each case there is
another amplitude with the vertices interchanged.
Zuber 1980)
16
s + 1 2 (
s2 6 s 3)
= 0
+
+
ln(
s) .
(3.1)
(
s 1)2
s2
(
s 1)3
Here, s s/m2e with s the CM (center of mass) energy.14 This cross

section is shown in Fig. 3.2 as a function of the CM photon energy .
For me the CM frame is the electron rest frame, s 1, and one
recovers the Thomson cross section = 38 0 . For me one has
s 1 and so = (0 /
s) [2 ln(
s) + 1] = (2 / 2 ) [ln(2) + 14 ] because
2
in this limit s = (2) .
The standard Compton cross section can also be used to study the
photoproduction of novel low-mass vector particles which couple to
electrons in the same way as photons except that the ne-structure
constant must be replaced by the new coupling . Then
0 /m2e
with
g 2 /4,
(3.2)
a denition that pertains to all bosons which couple to electrons with

a dimensionless Yukawa or gauge coupling g.
If novel vector bosons such as paraphotons exist (Holdom 1986)
they likely couple to electrons by virtue of an induced magnetic moment
rather than by a tree-level gauge coupling (Homann 1987),
Lint = (g/4me ) e e F ,
(3.3)
where g is a dimensionless eective coupling constant and F the para14
The square of the CM energy is s = (P + K)2 with P = (E, p) and K = (, k)

the four-vectors of the initial-state electron and photon, respectively. The CM frame
is dened by p = k so that s = (E + )2 = [(m2e + 2 )1/2 + ]2 with the initialstate photon energy in the CM frame. In the frame where the target electron is at
rest (p = 0) one nds s = 2me + m2e where now is the photon energy in the
electron frame. Thus, with the photon energy in the respective frames,
{
1
s 1)/ s in the CM frame,
2 (
= 1
me
(
s 1)
in the electron rest frame.
2
93
photon eld tensor. In the nonrelativistic limit this yields the same total cross section as the interaction with pseudoscalars Eq. (3.6) below.
This is seen if one compares the matrix elements between two electron
states i and f for the two cases. For paraphotons (momentum k, polarization vector ) it is g f |eikr (k ) |i while for pseudoscalars it is
g f |eikr k |i. After an angular average the two expressions are the
same. Of course, one must account for the two paraphoton polarization
states by an extra factor of 2.
Fig. 3.2. Total cross section for the Compton process with a nal-state
vector, scalar, or pseudoscalar boson according to Eqs. (3.1), (3.5), and
(3.9), respectively, with 0 dened in Eq. (3.2) and the CM initial photon
energy.
3.2.2
Scalars
Grifols and Masso (1986) studied the stellar emission of scalars which
couple according to
Lint = g e e .
Integrating their dierential cross section I nd
[
= 0
(3.4)
]
1 3
s (
s + 3)2
16
+
+
ln(
s)
(
s 1)2
2
s2
(
s 1)3
(3.5)
shown in Fig. 3.2 (dashed line). For small and large photon energies
this is half the cross section for massless vector bosons which have
two polarization degrees of freedom. For intermediate energies the two
results are not related by a simple factor.
94
3.2.3
Chapter 3
Pseudoscalars
Next, turn to the photoproduction of low-mass pseudoscalars which

couple to electrons by the interaction
Lint = (1/2f ) e 5 e or Lint = ig e 5 e ,
(3.6)
where f is an energy scale and g a dimensionless coupling constant.

Both interaction laws yield the same Compton cross section with the
identication g = me /f (see the discussion in Sect. 14.2.3).
If a pseudoscalar (frequency , wavevector k) is emitted in a transition between the nonrelativistic electron states |i and |f , the matrix
element is

g
1 ikr

Mpseudoscalar =
f e ki .
(3.7)
2me 2
This is to be compared with the corresponding matrix element for photon transitions,
Mphoton =

e 1 ikr
f e [2 p + (k )]i ,
2me 2
(3.8)
with the photon polarization vector and the electron momentum operator p. Therefore, transitions involving pseudoscalars closely compare
with photonic M1 transitions, a fact that was used to scale nuclear or
atomic photon transition rates to those involving axions (Donelly et al.
1978; Dimopoulos, Starkman, and Lynn 1986a,b).
The relativistic Compton cross section for massive pseudoscalars
was rst worked out by Mikaelian (1978). The most general discussion
of the matrix element was provided by Brodsky et al. (1986) and by
Chanda, Nieves, and Pal (1988) who also included an eective photon
mass relevant for a stellar plasma. For the present purpose it is enough
to consider massless photons and pseudoscalars. With 0 as dened in
Eq. (3.2) one nds
(
= 0
s1
ln(
s) 3
s 1
2
s2
(3.9)
shown in Fig. 3.2 (dotted line).

For me one nds = ( /2 2 ) [ln(2) 34 ], similar to the
scalar case. For me , however,
= 43 0 (/me )2 ,
(3.10)
so that the cross section is suppressed at low energies. This reduction

is related to the M1 nature of the transition.

3.2.4
95
Neutrino Pairs
The photoneutrino process was rst studied by Ritus (1961) and by

Chiu and Stabler (1961). The eective neutral-current Hamiltonian is
GF
Hint = e (CV CA 5 )e (1 5 ) ,
2
(3.11)
where GF is the Fermi constant, and the dimensionless couplings CV

and CA are given in Appendix B. Of course, in the early sixties neutral
currents were not knownone used Fierz-transformed charged currents
which gave CV = CA = 1. For general CV s and CA s the cross section
was rst calculated by Dicus (1972) who found15 (Fig. 3.3)
[
= 0 (CV2 + CA2 )
+ (CV2 CA2 )
,
+ =
49 5 (13 s 7) 15 117 s 55 s3
+
+
12
(
s 1)2
12 s2
25 28 s 27 s2 2 s3 + 2 s4
+
ln(
s),
(
s 1)3
= 39 +
0 =
120 s
8 s 1 12 (2 + 2 s + 5 s2 + s3 )
+
ln(
s),
(
s 1)2
s2
(
s 1)3
G2F m2e
.
9 (4)2
(3.12)
In the nonrelativistic (NR) limit this is (CM photon energy )

NR = 0
6
35
(CV2 + 5CA2 ) (
s 1)4
= 0
96
35
(CV2 + 5CA2 ) (/me )4 .
(3.13)
In the extreme relativistic (ER) limit it is

ER = 0 (CV2 + CA2 ) 2
s [ ln(
s)
55
24
= 0 (CV2 + CA2 ) 16 (/me )2 [ ln(2/me )
55
48
],
(3.14)
where does not contribute.

15
2
With CV2 = CA
= 1 this result agrees with that of Ritus (1961) while Chiu and
Stabler (1961) appear to have an extra factor 2
s/(
s + 1). In the nonrelativistic limit
with s 1 this deviation makes no dierence while in the extreme relativistic limit
their result is a factor of 2 larger than that of Ritus (1961) and Dicus (1972).
96
Chapter 3
Fig. 3.3. Dimensionless total cross sections

+ and
for the photoneutrino
process e e according to Eq. (3.12) with the initial photon energy
in the CM frame.
3.2.5
Energy-Loss Rates
The Compton-type processes are typically important when the electrons are nondegenerate (otherwise bremsstrahlung dominates) and
nonrelativistic (otherwise e+ e annihilation dominates). In these limits one may use the cross sections without Pauli blocking corrections.
Because the recoil of the target electron is neglected, the energy of
a photon impinging on an electron is identical with the energy carried
away by the new boson or neutrino pair. Therefore, the energy-loss
rate per unit volume is a simple integral over the initial-state photon
phase space, weighted with their Bose-Einstein occupation numbers,
Q = ne
2 d3 k
,
(2)3 e/T 1
(3.15)
where ne is the number density of electrons, T the temperature, and

the factor 2 is for two photon polarization states.
In this expression the photon plasma mass P has been neglected.
If P >
3T , corresponding to a typical thermal photon energy, the photon dispersion relation would have to be included properly in both the
phase-space integration and in the cross section calculation. However,
these are insignicant ne points for the cases to be studied below.
In the nonrelativistic limit it is easy to estimate a suppression factor Fdeg by electron degeneracy. If recoil eects can be neglected, the
97
initial- and nal-state electrons have the same momentum, reducing the
calculation to an average of the Pauli blocking factor over all electrons
Fdeg
(
)
1 2 d3 p
1
1
=
1 (E)/T
,
ne (2)3 e(E)/T + 1
e
+1
(3.16)
where is the electron chemical potential and E 2 = m2e + p2 . Then,

Fdeg =
ex
1
p
E
dE
,
ne 2 me
(ex + 1)2
(3.17)
where x (E )/T . For degenerate conditions the integrand is

strongly peaked near x = 0 so that one may replace p and E with the
values pF and EF at the Fermi surface (x = 0), and one may extend the
lower limit of integration to . The integral then yields T so that
Fdeg = 3EF T /p2F ,
(3.18)
where ne = p3F /3 2 was used.

Returning to the nonrelativistic, nondegenerate limit note that the
cross sections are of the form = (/me )p so that
ne T p+4
xp+3
(p + 3)! p+4 ne T p+4
.
Q=
dx
=
2 mpe
ex 1
2
mpe
0
(3.19)
Here, n = (n) is the Riemann zeta function which shall be set equal
to unity.16 In a medium of mass density the electron density is ne =
Ye /mu where Ye is the electron number fraction per baryon and mu
the atomic mass unit. Therefore, the energy-loss rate per unit mass is
=
(p + 3)! Ye T p+4
.
2
mu mpe
(3.20)
The average energy of the photons which are converted into weakly
interacting particles is
= (p + 3) T.
(3.21)
For p = 0 one recovers = 3T for the average energy of blackbody

photons.17
n 1 rather quickly with increasing n; for example 4 = 4 /90 1.082.
Therefore, the error is small if one takes n = 1 which corresponds to using a
Maxwell-Boltzmann rather than a Bose-Einstein distribution. They dier at small
where an eective photon mass in the plasma should be taken into account anyway.
Therefore, at the crude level of accuracy where one uses massless photons nothing
is gained by using the Bose-Einstein distribution.
17
With a Bose-Einstein distribution it is /T = 3 4 /3 = 4 /303 2.70.
16
98
Chapter 3
Beginning with the case of scalars, the low-energy cross section is

constant at = 43 /m2e , leading to
scalar =
8 Ye T 4
= 5.71029 erg g1 s1 Ye T84 ,
mu m2e
(3.22)
where T8 = T /108 K. Vector bosons carry an extra factor of 2 for their

polarization states.
Turning to pseudoscalars, the low-energy cross section was found to
be = 43 ( /m2e ) (/me )2 , i.e. p = 2, so that
pseudo =
160 Ye T 6
= 3.31027 erg g1 s1 Ye T86 .
mu m4e
(3.23)
The average energy is 5T or /me 0.08 T8 .

Finally, turn to neutrino pair production for which the NR cross
section was given in Eq. (3.13). The energy-loss rate is
(
(CV2
5CA2 )
96 G2F m6e
T
Ye
4
mu
me
)8
= (CV2 + 5CA2 ) 0.166 erg g1 s1 Ye T88 .
(3.24)
Because p = 4 for this process, 7T . Relativistic corrections become important at rather low temperatures. For example, at T = 108 K
the true emission rate is about 25% smaller than given by Eq. (3.24).
3.2.6
Applying the Energy-Loss Argument
After the derivation of the energy-loss rates it is now a simple matter

to apply the energy-loss argument. In Chapter 2 it was shown that the
most restrictive limits obtain from the properties of globular-cluster
stars; two simple criteria were derived in Sect. 2.5 which amount to the
requirement that a novel energy-loss rate must not exceed 10 erg g1 s1
for the typical conditions encountered in the core of a horizontal-branch
star, and in the core of a red giant just before helium ignition which
both have T 108 K.
The Compton process is suppressed by degeneracy eects in a dense
plasma as discussed abovesee Eq. (3.18). Therefore, at a xed temperature the emissivity per unit mass decreases with increasing density.
Because a red-giant core is nearly two orders of magnitude denser than
the core of an HB star it is enough to apply the argument to the latter
case.
99
The energy-loss rates for scalars and pseudoscalars in Eqs. (3.22)

and (3.23) are independent of density, and proportional to T 4 and T 6 ,
respectively. The averages over the core of a typical HB star are T84 =
0.40 and T86 = 0.37 (Fig. 2.24). With Ye = 0.5 appropriate for helium,
carbon, and oxygen the 10 erg g1 s1 limit yields
<
0.91028
1.61026
scalar,
pseudoscalar.
(3.25)
These bounds apply to bosons with a mass below a few times the temperature, m <
2030 keV. For larger masses the limits are signicantly
degraded because only the high-energy tail of the blackbody photons
can produce the particles. For massive pseudoscalars this eect was
explicitly studied in Sect. 1.3.5 in the context of solar limits.
For vector bosons which interact by means of a Yukawa coupling,
the same limits to apply except that they are more restrictive by a
factor of 2 because of the two polarization states which increases the
emission rate.
For vector bosons which couple by means of a magnetic moment
as the paraphotons in Eq. (3.3), the bound on g is the same as for
pseudoscalars apart from an extra factor of 2 in the emission rate from
the two polarization states.
3.3
Pair Annihilation
Electron-positron pair annihilation can produce new bosons by the

crossed version of the Compton amplitude while the conversion into
neutrino pairs does not require the participation of a photon (Fig. 3.4).
For pseudoscalars the cross section for e+ e a is (Mikaelian 1978)
[
2
s
=
ln
2
s 4me
4m2e
1+
1 4m2e /s
)]
(3.26)
For e+ e it is (t Hooft 1971; Dicus 1972)

=
G2F (CV2 + CA2 ) (s m2e ) + 3 (CV2 CA2 ) m2e
.
12
1 4m2e /s
(3.27)
Because pair annihilation requires the presence of positrons it is important only for relativistic plasmas.
In this limit s1 ln(s) for the production of bosons (pseudoscalar, scalar, vector) and s for neutrino pairs. Therefore, the
100
Chapter 3
Fig. 3.4. Pair annihilation processes for the production of neutrino pairs or
new bosons where a second amplitude with the vertices interchanged is not
shown.
importance of stellar energy-loss rates into new scalars relative to neutrino pairs decreases with increasing temperature and density. The
impact of new bosons on stellar evolution relative to neutrinos is then
expected to be most pronounced for low-mass stars where other processes such as photoproduction dominate. Consequently, the pair process has not played any signicant role at constraining the interactions
of new bosons.
3.4
Free-Bound and Bound-Free Transitions
Photons, new bosons, or neutrino pairs can be emitted in transitions

where a free electron is captured by an ion to form a bound state.
For the case of axions this eect was dubbed axio-recombination
(Dimopoulos et al. 1986). In the Sun, it contributes about 4% of the
total axion ux which is mostly from bremsstrahlung. The energy-loss
rate scales as T 3/2 , bremsstrahlung as T 5/2 , and Compton emission as
T 6 . Thus, axio-recombination is of importance in low-mass stars which
have low internal temperatures; for main-sequence stars with M <
0.2 M it would be the dominant axion emission process. However,

given the limits on the coupling of pseudoscalars to electrons from other
arguments, no observable eects can be expected.
Of some practical interest is the inverse process where an axion unbinds an atomic electron, the axio-electric eect (Dimopoulos, Starkman, and Lynn 1986a,b). It serves to constrain the solar ux of axions
or other pseudoscalars which could produce keV electrons in a Ge spectrometer designed to search for double- decay (Avignone et al. 1987).
21
Unfortunately, the resulting bound of <
is not very restrictive.
10
Pseudoscalars saturating this limit would be a major energy drain of
the Sun and thus not compatible with its observed properties.
For neutrinos, free-bound transitions were rst discussed by Pinaev
(1963). Recently, Kohyama et al. (1993) studied the corresponding
101
stellar energy-loss rate in detail and found that it dominates the other
neutrino emission processes only in such regions of temperature and
density where the overall neutrino luminosity is very small. Therefore,
free-bound transitions do not seem to be of practical importance as a
stellar energy-loss mechanism.
3.5
3.5.1
Bremsstrahlung
Nondegenerate, Nonrelativistic Medium
The last emission process to be discussed is bremsstrahlung (Fig. 3.5)

where an electron emits a boson or a neutrino pair when scattering
o the Coulomb eld of a nucleus. Conceptually, bremsstrahlung is
closely related to the Compton process (Fig. 3.1) because in both cases
the electron interacts with electromagnetic eld uctuations of the ambient medium which have nonvanishing power for all wavenumbers and
frequencies. The Compton process corresponds to wavevectors which
satisfy the photon dispersion relation so that a real (on-shell) excitation is absorbed. However, in a typical stellar plasma there is more
power in the o-shell electromagnetic eld uctuations associated
with the charged particles.18 Moreover, degeneracy eects do not suppress bremsstrahlung at high densities, in contrast with the Compton
process.
Fig. 3.5. Bremsstrahlung emission of bosons or neutrino pairs by an electron

which scatters from the Coulomb eld of a nucleus of charge Ze. In each
case a second amplitude with the vertices interchanged is not shown.
For neutrino pairs bremsstrahlung dominates over other processes

only in the highly degenerate regime (Appendix C). For pseudoscalars,
18
In a typical stellar plasma there are many more charged particles than blackbody photons. In the solar center, for example, the electron density is 61025 cm3
while for photons at a temperature of 1.3 keV it is 2(3) T 3 / 2 = 61022 cm3 .
102
Chapter 3
however, it is important even in environments which are approximately

nondegenerate and so I begin with this simple case.
The calculation amounts to a straightforward evaluation of the matrix element corresponding to the amplitude of Fig. 3.5 and an integration over the Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions of the electrons. In
order to account for screening eects the Coulomb propagator is modied according to Eq. (6.72), |q|4 [q2 (q2 + kS2 )]1 where kS is a
screening wave number (Sect. 6.4). For the emission of pseudoscalars
one then nds for the energy-loss rate per unit volume to lowest order
in kS2 (Krauss, Moody, and Wilczek 1984; Raelt 1986a)
(
128 2
Q=
45 me
[
nj Zj2 2
T
me
)5/2
ne
5 kS2
1
8 me T
+ Zj
5 kS2
1
4 me T
)]
(3.28)
Here, the sum is extended over all nuclear species with charges Zj e and
number densities nj ; note that ne = j Zj nj . The term quadratic in Zj

corresponds to electron-nucleus collisions while the linear term is from
electron-electron scattering which yields a nonnegligible contribution
under nondegenerate conditions.19
Raelt (1986a) incorrectly used Eq. (6.61) as a modication of the
Coulomb propagator, a procedure which enhances the terms proportional to kS2 by a factor of 2. Either way, screening is never an impor2
tant eect. The screening scale is kS2 = kD
+ ki2 because both electrons
and nuclei (ions) contribute. Then
(
)
kS2
4
2
=
ne +
n j Zj ,
(3.29)
me T
me T 2
j
which is about 0.12 at the center of the Sun and 0.17 in the cores of
horizontal-branch (HB) stars.
Ignoring screening eects, the energy-loss rate per unit mass is
)
(
= 5.91022 erg g1 s1 T82.5 Ye
Yj Zj2 + Zj / 2 , (3.30)
j
8
where T8 = T /10 K, is in g cm , and Yj = Xj /Aj is the number

fraction of nuclear species j relative to baryons while Xj is the mass
fraction, Aj the mass number.
Note that e e e e vanishes to lowest order because two particles of
equal mass moving under the inuence of their Coulomb interaction do not produce
a time-varying electric dipole moment because their center of mass and center of
charge coincide. However, the emission of pseudoscalars corresponds to M1 rather
than E1 transitions and so it is not suppressed.
19
103
Grifols, Masso, and Peris (1989) have worked out the bremsstrahlung rate for a scalar boson; in this case e e collisions can be ignored
relative to electron-nucleus scattering. They found in the nonrelativistic and nondegenerate limit, ignoring screening eects which are small,
=
22 ne T 1/2 Xj Zj2
a
3/2 mu m3/2
Aj
e
j
= 2.81026 erg g1 s1 T80.5 Ye
Xj Zj2
j
Aj
(3.31)
where a is an angular integral which numerically is found to be 8.36,

mu is the atomic mass unit, and is in g cm3 . For low-mass vector
bosons the same result pertains with an extra factor of 2 for the two
polarization states.
3.5.2
High Degeneracy: Pseudoscalars
Bremsstrahlung is a particularly important eect under conditions of

degeneracy. In this case one neglects e e collisions entirely which are
suppressed by degeneracy relative to the the electron-nucleus process.
If the target nuclei are taken to be innitely heavy, Raelt (1990) found
for the volume emissivity of pseudoscalars (axions)

E1
42 2
d2 da
Q=
Zj n j
dE1 f1
dE2 (1 f2 )
2
4
4
me
me
j
[
2
|p1 | |p2 | 2
P1 K P2 K
2 P1 P2 me + (P2 P1 )K
2 2
2
+2
,
2
q (q + )
(P1 K)(P2 K)
P2 K P1 K
(3.32)
where P1 is the four-vector of the incoming, P2 of the outgoing electron,

f1,2 are the electron Fermi-Dirac occupation numbers at energies E1,2 ,
temperature T , and chemical potential . Further, K is the four-vector
of the outgoing pseudoscalar (energy = E1 E2 , direction a , a for
axion), q = p1 p2 k is the momentum transfer to the nucleus, and
kS a screening scale. The Coulomb propagator was modied according
to Eq. (6.72). As long as the plasma is not strongly coupled one may
use kS = ki while the electrons do not contribute because kTF ki in
a strongly degenerate plasma.
If the electrons are very degenerate, the energy integrals can be
done analytically. Moreover, all electron momenta are close to the
Fermi surface, |p1 | |p2 | pF with pF the Fermi momentum dened
104
Chapter 3
by ne = p3F /3 2 . This also implies that |q|2 |p1 p2 |2 2p2F (1 c12 )

where c12 is the cosine of the angle between p1 and p2 . With these
approximations and the velocity at the Fermi surface F pF /EF =
pF /(m2e + p2F )1/2 one nds
(
)
2 2 T 4
2
Q=
nj Zj F,
15 m2e j
where
F =
d2
4
(3.33)
da
(1 F2 ) [2 (1 c12 ) (c1a c2a )2 ]
4 (1 c1a F ) (1 c2a F ) (1 c12 )(1 c12 + 2 )
(3.34)
with 2 kS2 /2p2F .

For a single species of nuclei with charge Ze and atomic weight A
the energy-loss rate per unit mass is
2 2 Z 2 T 4
=
F
15
A mu m2e
Z2 4
T F,
(3.35)
A 8
where again T8 = T /108 K. Because F is of order unity for all conditions, the bremsstrahlung rate mostly depends on the temperature and
chemical composition, and is not suppressed at high density.
Expanding Eq. (3.34) in powers of F for nonrelativistic or partially
relativistic electrons one nds
(
(
]
) [
)
2
2 + 2
2 + 2
2 + 52
2 2
F = ln
+ O(F4 ).
ln
+
3
2
15
2
3 F
(3.36)
= 1.081027 erg g1 s1
Therefore, in contrast to the nondegenerate calculation this expression

would diverge in the absence of screening.
Another approximation can be made if one observes that Coulomb
scattering is mostly forward, i.e. the main contribution to the integral
is from c12 1 which implies c1a c2a . With c2a = c1a only in the
denominator one obtains
(
) [
(
)
]
2
2 + 2
2 + 32
2 + 2
F = ln
+
ln
1 f (F )
(3.37)
3
2
6
2
with
(
)
3 2F2
3 (1 F2 )
1 + F
f (F ) =
ln
.
(3.38)
F2
2F3
1 F
The function f (F ) is 0 at F = 0 and rises monotonically to 1 for
105
F 1. Hence in the relativistic limit

(
2 + 2
2 + 2
ln
F =
2
2
1,
(3.39)
somewhat dierent from what Iwamoto (1984) found who used the
Thomas-Fermi wave number as a screening scale.
For a strongly coupled, degenerate plasma typical for white dwarfs
the factor F was calculated numerically by Nakagawa, Kohyama, and
Itoh (1987) and Nakagawa et al. (1988) who also gave analytic approximation formulae for the axion emission rate, applicable to nonrelativistic and relativistic conditions. For a 12 C plasma with densities in the
range 104 106 g cm3 and temperatures of 106 107 K it is found that
F = 1.0 within a few tens of percent. Therefore, for simple estimates
this value is a satisfactory approximation.
Altherr, Petitgirard, and del Ro Gaztelurrutia (1994) have calculated the bremsstrahlung process with the methods of nite temperature and density (FTD) eld theory. The main point is that one computes directly the interaction of the electrons with the electromagnetic
eld uctuations which are induced by the ambient charged particles.
The result for the emission rate is similar to the one derived above.
3.5.3
High Degeneracy: Neutrino Pairs
Neutrino pair bremsstrahlung (Fig. 3.5) was the rst nonnuclear neutrino emission process ever proposed (Pontecorvo 1959; Gandelman
and Pinaev 1959). A detailed calculation of the energy-loss rate in
a degenerate medium, relativistic and nonrelativistic, was performed
by Festa and Ruderman (1969) while conditions of partial degeneracy
were studied by Cazzola, de Zotti, and Saggion (1971). The Festa and
Ruderman calculation was extended by Dicus et al. (1976) to include
neutral-current interactions. After a calculation very similar to the one
presented above for pseudoscalars the emission rate for neutrino pairs is
(
)[
]
22 2 6
2
nj Zj 12 (CV2 + CA2 )F+ + 21 (CV2 CA2 )F .
Q=
GF T
189
j
(3.40)
With a single species of nuclei (charge Z, atomic mass A) the energyloss rate per unit mass is
= 0.144 erg g1 s1 (Z 2 /A) T86 [ . . . ],
8
(3.41)
where T8 = T /10 K and the square bracket is from Eq. (3.40). The
temperature dependence is steeper than for axions by two powers.
106
Chapter 3
The factors F+ and F are of order unity. Dicus et al. (1976) derived analytic expressions in terms of a screening scale and the Fermi
velocity of the electrons. In fact, because F is always much smaller
than F+ and CV2 CA2 is much smaller than CV2 + CA2 , the minus
term may be neglected entirely. Therefore, the Dicus et al. (1976) result is identical with that of Festa and Ruderman (1969). Either one
is correct only within a factor of order unity because Eq. (6.61) was
used as a screening prescription with the Thomas-Fermi wave number
as a screening scale. However, in a degenerate medium electrons never
dominate screening. The most important eect is from the ion correlations which, in a weakly coupled plasma ( <
1), can be included by
Eq. (6.72) with the Debye scale ki of the ions as a screening scale. While
it is easy to replace kTF with ki in these results, the modication of the
Coulomb propagator according to Eq. (6.72) cannot be implemented
without redoing the entire calculation.
A systematic approach to include ion correlations (i.e. screening
eects) was pioneered by Flowers (1973, 1974) who showed clearly how
to separate the ion correlation eects in the form of a dynamic structure
factor from the matrix element of the electrons and neutrinos. This
approach also allows one to include lattice vibrations when the ions
form a crystal in a strongly coupled plasma. In a series of papers Itoh
and Kohyama (1983), Itoh et al. (1984a,b), and Munakata, Kohyama,
and Itoh (1987) followed this approach and calculated the emission rate
for all conditions and chemical compositions.
As an estimate, good to within a factor of order unity, one may use
F+ = 1 and F = 0. Moreover, inspired by the axion results one can
guess a simple expression which can be tested against the numerical
rates of Itoh and Kohyama (1983). I nd that F = 0 and
(
2 + 2
F+ ln
2
2
2 + 2
(3.42)
is a reasonable t even for strongly coupled conditions (Appendix C).

3.5.4
Neutron-Star Crust
The degenerate bremsstrahlung emission of pairs is relevant in such

diverse environments as the cores of low-mass red giants, white dwarfs,
and in neutron-star crusts. Pethick and Thorsson (1994) noted that
in the latter case the medium is so dense that band-structure eects
of the electrons become important. The band separations can be up
107
to O(1 MeV), suppressing electron scattering and bremsstrahlung pro9

cesses for temperatures below this scale (T <
510 K). Bremsstrahlung of pairs from the crust was thought to dominate neutron-star
cooling for some conditions while Pethick and Thorsson (1994) now
nd that it may never be important. These ndings also diminish
Iwamotos (1984) axion bound based on the bremsstrahlung emission
from neutron-star crusts.
3.5.5
Applying the Energy-Loss Argument
One may now easily derive astrophysical limits on the Yukawa couplings
of scalars and pseudoscalars, in full analogy to Sect. 3.2.6 where the
Compton emission rates were used. I begin with the same case that was
1 1
considered there, namely the restriction <
10 erg g s in the cores
of horizontal-branch stars. For nondegenerate conditions the emission
rates are Eq. (3.30) and Eq. (3.31), respectively. They are proportional
to T 0.5 (pseudoscalar) and T 2.5 (scalar). With 4 = 0.64, T80.5 =
0.82, T82.5 = 0.48, and a chemical composition of pure helium one nds
<
1.41029
1.61025
scalar,
pseudoscalar.
(3.43)
Comparing these limits with those from the Compton process Eq. (3.25)
reveals that for scalars the present bremsstrahlung limit is more restrictive, for pseudoscalars the Compton one.
Because bremsstrahlung is not suppressed in a degenerate plasma,
one can also apply the helium-ignition argument of Sect. 2.5.2 which
1 1
8
again requires <
10 erg g s at the same T 10 K, however at a
density of around 106 g cm3 . For these conditions the plasma is degenerate but weakly coupled (Appendix D) so that Debye screening should
be an appropriate procedure. Therefore, for the emission of pseudoscalars the emission rate Eq. (3.35) with F from Eq. (3.36) should
be a reasonable approximation. The screening scale is dominated by
the ions, kS = ki = 222 keV, the Fermi momentum is pF = 409 keV so
that 2 = 0.15 while F = 0.77, yielding F 1.8.
In Fig. 3.6 the energy-loss rate of a helium plasma at T = 108 K
is plotted as a function of density, including the Compton process,
and the degenerate (D) and nondegenerate (ND) bremsstrahlung rates.
This gure claries that bremsstrahlung, of course, is suppressed by
degeneracy eects relative to the ND rates, but it is not a signicantly
decreasing function of density. In this gure a simple interpolation
(solid line) between the regimes of high and low degeneracy is shown
108
Chapter 3
Fig. 3.6. Energy-loss rate of a helium plasma at T = 108 K as a function

of density for pseudoscalars with the coupling = 1026 . The Compton
rate is given in Eq. (3.23), suppressed with the factor Fdeg of Eq. (3.18) at
high density. The nondegenerate (ND) and degenerate (D) bremsstrahlung
rates are from Eqs. (3.28) and (3.35), respectively. The solid line is the
interpolation formula of Raelt and Weiss (1995).
that was used in a numerical study of axion emission from red giants
by Raelt and Weiss (1995); details of how it was constructed can be
found there.
At T = 108 K the compound rate (solid line) coincidentally is almost
1 1
independent of density. The requirement <
10 erg g s then yields
26
a constraint <
for any density whence the helium-burning life 10
time of HB stars as well as the core mass at helium ignition yield an
almost identical constraint. In detail one needs to apply the heliumignition argument at an average core density of 2105 g/cm3 (the central density is about 106 g/cm3 ) and at the almost constant temperature of T = 108 K. The degenerate emission rate is then approximately
21027 erg g1 s1 so that
26
<
0.510 .
(3.44)
This is the most restrictive available bound on the Yukawa coupling of

pseudoscalars to electrons.
109
The same case was treated numerically by Raelt and Weiss (1995)
who implemented the compound energy-loss rate of Fig. 3.6 with varying values of in several red-giant evolutionary sequences. The results of this work have been discussed in Sect. 2.5.2 where it was used
as one justication for the simple 10 erg g1 s1 energy-loss constraint
that was derived there. This detailed numerical study yielded the same
limit Eq. (3.44) on a pseudoscalar Yukawa coupling to electrons.
3.6
3.6.1
Astrophysical Bounds on Yukawa and Gauge

Couplings
Pseudoscalars (Axions)
The main concern of this chapter was novel bosons which interact with
electrons by a dimensionless Yukawa coupling. It will become clear
shortly that these results can be easily translated into limits on baryonic couplings as well. It may be useful to pull together the main
results found so far, and discuss them in the context of other sources
of information on the same quantities.
The best studied case of boson couplings to electrons is that of
pseudoscalars because the existence of such particles is motivated by
their role as Nambu-Goldstone bosons of a spontaneously broken chiral
symmetry of the fundamental interactions. Within this class, axions
(Chapter 14) have been most widely discussed; they usually serve as a
generic example for low-mass pseudoscalars. For vector bosons which
couple by means of a magnetic moment (Eq. 3.3) such as paraphotons the same limits apply apart from an extra factor of 2 in the
emission rate from the two polarization states of these particles.
The simplest constraint on the Yukawa coupling ga of pseudoscalars
(axions) to electrons (a = ga2 /4) arises from the argument that the
age of the Sun precludes any novel energy-loss mechanism to be more
ecient than the surface photon luminosity (Sect. 1.3.2). The relevant
emission processes are the Compton reaction with the energy-loss rate
given in Eq. (3.23), and bremsstrahlung with electrons scattering on
electrons, protons, and helium nuclei; the emission rate was given in
Eq. (3.28). An integration over a typical solar model yields an axion
luminosity (Raelt 1986a)
La = a 6.01021 L ,
(3.45)
with about 25% from the Compton process, 25% from ee bremsstrahlung, and 50% from bremsstrahlung by electrons scattering on nuclei.
110
Chapter 3
22
<
The requirement La <
L yields a constraint a 1.710 .
A much more restrictive limit arises from the white-dwarf luminosity function as axion emission would accelerate white-dwarf cooling.
This argument was studied in detail in Sect. 2.2.4 as a generic case
for the use of the white-dwarf luminosity function; the resulting constraint is given in Tab. 3.1. The cooling speed of white dwarfs was
also established from a measurement of the period decrease of the DA
variable (ZZ Ceti) star G117B15A which thus yields a similar limit.
However, the period decrease of this star may be slightly faster than
can be attributed to standard cooling processes; it has been speculated
that axions with a coupling strength of about a 0.51026 could be
responsible (Sect. 2.2.5). The limit Eq. (3.44) that was derived in the
previous section from the helium-ignition argument in globular clusters
is of a similar magnitude, but not restrictive enough to exclude this
hypothesis.
All of these constraints apply to low-mass bosons. The most restrictive one is based on the helium ignition argument with T 108 K =
8.6 keV. Therefore, these constraints apply if m <
10 keV. However,
it would be incorrect to think that for larger masses there was no constraint. There is one, but it is degraded because threshold eects limit
the particle production to the high-energy tails of the thermal distributions of the plasma constituents. For massive pseudoscalars, this
question has been studied in Sect. 1.3.5 in the context of general solar
particle constraints. For the more restrictive globular-cluster limits,
such a detailed investigation does not exist in the literature.
3.6.2
Energy Loss by Scalar and Vector Bosons
The couplings of low-mass scalar or vector particles are easy to constrain by the same methods. Because the energy-loss rates have been
calculated only for nondegenerate conditions, only the arguments involving the solar age and the helium-burning lifetime can be employed.
The latter yields a constraint on the -e coupling of
29
e <
1.410 .
(3.46)
It is based on the bremsstrahlung process e + 4 He 4 He + e + as

discussed above in Sect. 3.5.5. For vector bosons which couple by a
current-current structure analogous to photons the same results apply
except for a factor of two in the emission rate which improves the limit
by a factor of 2.
0.51026
1.61026
similar
Core mass at helium ignition in

low-mass red giants
Helium-burning lifetime of
horizontal-branch stars
Period decrease in DAV star G117B15A
Galactic age inferred from break

in white-dwarf luminosity function
Solar age
1.71022
1.01026
Astrophysical
observable
Upper limit
a = ga2 /4
Bremsstrahlung (degenerate)
e+AA+e+a
(A = 4 He, 12 C, 16 O)
Compton
+ee+a
same
Bremsstrahlung (degenerate)
e + 12 C (16 O) 12 C (16 O) + e + a
Bremsstrahlung (75%), Compton (25%)

e + X X + e + a (X = e, p, 4 He)
+ee+a
Dominant emission
process
Sect. 2.5.2
Sect. 3.5.5
Sect. 3.2.6
Sect. 2.2.5
Sect. 2.2.4
here
Detailed
discussion
Tab. 3.1. Astrophysical bounds on the Yukawa coupling ga of pseudoscalars (axions) to electrons.

111
112
Chapter 3
One may also consider the Yukawa coupling of scalar (vector) bosons
to baryons (Grifols and Masso 1986; Grifols, Masso, and Peris 1989b).
In this case one may use the Compton process + 4 He 4 He + on
a helium nucleus for which the emission rate is given mutatis mutandis
by the same formula as for nonrelativistic electrons. Assuming the
same coupling to protons and neutrons the emission rate is coherently
enhanced by a factor 42 . Moreover, in Eq. (3.22) one must replace
Ye with YHe (number of 4 He nuclei per baryon) which is 41 for pure
helium, me is to be replaced by mHe 4mu , and 4 to account
for the coherent photon coupling. Pulling these factors together one
nds = N 0.71023 erg g1 s1 for pure helium. Because the heliumburning lifetime argument limits this energy-loss rate to 10 erg g1 s1
one nds
22
N <
(3.47)
1.510
as a limit on the coupling of a scalar boson to a nucleon N . Again, for
vector bosons this limit is a factor of 2 more restrictive.
3.6.3
Long-Range Forces
Scalar or vector particles mediate long-range forces between macroscopic bodies. For pseudoscalars this is not the case because their CPconserving coupling to fermions has a pseudoscalar structure, i.e. in the
nonrelativistic limit they couple to the fermion spin. Therefore, even
if the mass of the new particles is very small or exactly zero, they do
not mediate a long-range force between unpolarized bodies. The residual force caused by the simultaneous exchange of two pseudoscalars is
found to be extremely small (e.g. Grifols and Tortosa 1994).
Consider a scalar of mass m = 1 (Compton wave length ) which
couples to nucleons with a Yukawa strength g. It mediates an attractive force between two nucleons given in terms of the potential
(g 2 /4) r1 er/ . Two macroscopic test bodies of geometric dimension much below are then attracted by virtue of the total potential
m1 m2
(1 + er/ ),
(3.48)
V (r) = GN
r
19
where GN = m2
Pl is Newtons constant, mPl = 1.2210 GeV is the
Planck mass, m1 and m2 are the masses of the bodies, and
g 2 m2Pl
.
(3.49)
4 u1 u2
Here, u1,2 = m1,2 /N1,2 with N1,2 the total number of nucleons in each
body. Apart from small binding-energy eects which are dierent for
113
dierent materials u1 u2 mu is the atomic mass unit, approximately equal to a nucleon mass mN . For this force not to compete
with gravity one needs g < O(1019 ) or = g 2 /4 < O(1037 ) so that
low-mass scalars, if they exist, need to have extremely feeble couplings
to matter. Their smallness implies that such particles would not have
any impact whatsoever on the energy loss of stars.
Therefore, for boson masses so small that the Compton wave length
is macroscopic, the most restrictive limits on g obtain from analyzing
the forces between macroscopic bodies, not from the energy-loss argument. The existence of a composition-dependent fth force in nature
with a strength of about 1% of gravity and a range of a few hundred meters seemed indicated by a reanalysis of Eotvoss original data
(Fischbach et al. 1986). Subsequently many experiments were carried
out to search for this eect, with no believable positive outcome (for
a review see Fischbach and Talmadge 1992). However, these investigations produced extremely restrictive limits on , depending on the
assumed range of the new force. The limits also depend on the presumed coupling; if the new force couples to baryon number one nds
3
< 9
that <
10 for in the cm range, or 10 for of order the
Earth-Sun distance and above. Thus, novel long-range forces must be
much weaker than gravity. No bounds on seem to exist for below
the cm range, i.e. for boson masses of order 103 eV and above, apart
from the stellar energy-loss argument.
The eect of a novel force with intermediate range on the equations of stellar structure was discussed by Glass and Szamosi (1987,
1989). Solar models including such a force and the impact on the
solar oscillation frequencies were discussed by Gilliland and Dappen
(1987) and Kuhn (1988). For a force so weak or weaker than indicated by the laboratory limits, no observable consequences for stellar structure and evolution seem to obtain. Also, the impact of the
new eld on the value of fundamental coupling constants even at compact objects such as neutron stars is far below any observable limit
(Ellis et al. 1989).
A signicant bound obtains from the orbital decay of the HulseTaylor binary pulsar. In order for the energy loss in the new scalars to
remain below 1% of the gravitational wave emission the Yukawa cou19
pling to baryons must satisfy g <
(Mohanty and Panda 1994).
310
<
This translates into 1 for scalar boson masses below the orbital pul19
sar frequency of 2/P = 2.251104 s1 , i.e. for 1 <
1.510 eV
14
or >
1.310 cm. This fth-force limit, however, is weaker than
those derived by terrestrial laboratory methods.
114
3.6.4
Chapter 3
Leptonic and Baryonic Gauge Interactions
The physical motivation for considering long-range interactions mediated by vector bosons, besides the fth-force episode, is the hypothesis
that baryon number or lepton number could play the role of physical
charges similar to the electric one (Lee and Yang 1955; Okun 1969).
Their association with a gauge symmetry would provide one explanation for the strict conservation of baryon and lepton number which so
far has been observed in nature. In the framework of this hypothesis
one predicts the existence of baryonic or leptonic photons which couple
to baryons or leptons by a charge eB or eL , respectively. The novel
gauge bosons would be massless like the ordinary photon.
Therefore, the limits established in the previous sections on the dimensionless couplings of vector bosons can be readily restated as limits
on the values of putative baryonic or leptonic charges. The energy-loss
argument applied to helium-burning stars yields
14
eL <
110 ,
11
eB <
(3.50)
310 ,
according to Eqs. (3.43) and (3.47), respectively. Tests of the equivalence principle (i.e. of a composition-dependent fth force) on solar9
system scales yield <
10 (Sect. 3.6.3) so that
23
eB <
(3.51)
110 .
Apparently this is the most restrictive limit on eB that is currently
available.
One may be tempted to apply the limits from the equivalence principle also to a leptonic charge eL . However, in this case one has to worry
about the fact that even neutrinos would carry leptonic charges. The
universe is probably lled with a background neutrino sea in the same
way as it is lled with a background of microwave photons. This neutrino medium would constitute a leptonic plasma which screens sources
of the leptonic force just as an electronic plasma screens electric charges
(Zisman 1971; Goldman, Zisman, and Shaulov 1972; C
iftci, Sultansoi,
and T
urkoz 1994; Dolgov and Raelt 1995).
Debye screening will be studied in Sect. 6.4.1. For the screening
wave number one nds the expression
kS2 = 2 (eL /)2
dp fp p (v + v 1 ),
(3.52)
where p = |p| is the momentum (isotropy was assumed), v = p/E

the velocity of the charged particles, and fp the occupation number of
115
mode p. The overall factor of 2 relative to Eq. (6.55) arises because

neutrinos and antineutrinos contribute equally.
The smallest kS (the largest radius over which leptonic elds remain
unscreened) arises if the background neutrinos have such small masses
that they are still relativistic
today (v = 1).
The neutrino number
3
3
density is given by n+ = 2 fp d p/(2) = 0 fp p2 dp/ 2 . Therefore,
in the relativistic limit one nds roughly
1/3
1
kS1 e1
L n+ eL 0.2 cm,
(3.53)
independently of details of the neutrino momentum distribution. In

this estimate the predicted number density of background neutrinos in
each avor of n+ 100 cm3 was used.
The largest conceivable kS would obtain if neutrinos were nonrelativistic today, and if some of them were bound to the galaxy. The
escape velocity from the galaxy is vesc 500 km s1 so that the maximum momentum of a gravitationally bound neutrino is pmax = m vesc .
Because neutrinos obey Fermi statistics, the largest conceivable galactic
3
neutrino density is nmax p3max m3 vesc
. A typical neutrino velocity
is of order the galactic velocity dispersion, i.e. of order vesc . Therefore,
1
2
2
from Eq. (3.52) one estimates kS2 e2L n2/3
max vesc eL m vesc . Because the
largest cosmologically allowed neutrino mass is about 30 eV one nds
5
that neutrino screening cannot operate on scales below e1
cm.
L 10
Therefore, the screening scale is reduced by no more than six orders
of magnitude by the fact that cosmic neutrinos could be nonrelativistic today.
The stellar energy-loss result Eq. (3.50) informs us that for rela13
13
tivistic neutrinos kS >
10 cm 1 AU where 1 AU = 1.510 cm
(astronomical unit) is the distance to the Sun. If neutrinos were nonrelativistic, leptonic forces could be screened over distances six orders
of magnitude smaller, i.e. over about 100 km. However, it is probably safe to assume that leptonic forces with a strength comparable to
gravity would have been noticed in terrestrial experiments searching
for a composition-dependent fth force. Therefore, even with neutrino
screening it appears inconceivable that eL could exceed about 1019 .
In that case the screening scale would always exceed about 0.1 AU so
that terrestrial limits would easily apply. Thereby one could gain a
few orders of magnitude in the limit, and so one could even use solar system constraints, taking one back to a result of order the baryonic one Eq. (3.51). A similar conclusion was reached by Blinnikov
et al. (1995).
116
Chapter 3
Finally, the matter of the galaxy would exert a leptonic force on

neutrinos propagating, say, from a distant supernova to us. This eect
would cause an energy-dependent dispersion of the measurable neutrino
20
burst (Sect. 13.3.3). However, when eL >
10 , which is necessary to
cause an interesting eect on supernova neutrinos, then the galactic
leptonic charge is completely screened over the relevant length scales,
even if the cosmic background neutrinos are relativistic.
3.7
Graviton Emission from Stars
The one nonelectromagnetic long-range force that is actually known

to exist is gravity. Whatever the ultimate quantum theory of gravity,
there is little doubt that there will be quantized wave excitations, the
gravitons. They would be massless spin-2 particles. In fact, gravity is
the only possible force that can be mediated by a massless spin-2 boson
because as a source it needs a conserved rank-2 tensor. The energymomentum tensor, which acts as a source for the gravitational eld, is
the only example.
Classical gravitational waves are an inevitable consequence of Einsteins theory of general relativity. The orbital decay of the binary
pulsar PSR 1913+16 (Hulse and Taylor 1975) yields rm evidence for
their emission (Taylor and Weisberg 1989; Damour and Taylor 1991).
Gravitons can be produced in hot plasmas in analogy to axions or
neutrino pairs; typical processes are bremsstrahlung e + p e + p + g
(graviton g) and the Primako eect (gravitons have a two-photon
coupling). Because of their weak interaction gravitons can freely escape once produced in the interior of stars. Early calculations of the
emission rates were summarized by Papini and Valluri (1977). More
recent discussions include Schafer and Dehnen (1983), Gould (1985),
and del Campo and Ford (1988). As the graviton coupling involves the
inverse of the Planck mass (1.21019 GeV) the graviton luminosity of
stars is inevitably small. For the Sun it is about 1015 erg s1 1019 L ,
much too small to be of any observational relevance. The same conclusion holds for other stars.
Therefore, gravity itself illustrates that the mediation of long-range
forces is a far more important eect of low-mass bosons than their
thermal emission from stellar plasmas. Unless, of course, they only
couple to the fermion spins rather than to a charge. Pseudoscalars
such as axions are in that category.
Chapter 4
Processes in a Nuclear
Medium
The interaction rates of neutrinos and axions with nucleons in a nuclear
medium are studied with a focus on neutral-current processes such as
bremsstahlung emission of axions N N N N a and of neutrino pairs
N N N N as well as neutrino scattering. A severe problem with
the perturbative rate calculations at high density is discussed which has
a strong impact on axion emissivities and the dominant axial-vector
contribution to the neutrino opacities.
4.1
Introduction
New particles which couple to nucleons are emitted from ordinary stars
by analogous processes to those discussed in Chapter 3 for electrons.
For example, axions can be produced by the Compton process p pa;
the previous results can be easily adapted to such reactions. Presently
I will focus on processes involving neutrinos or axions that are specic
to a nuclear medium, i.e. to supernova (SN) cores or neutron stars.
The main focus of the literature which deals with microscopic processes in a nuclear medium was inspired by the problem of late-time
neutron-star cooling. The recent progress of x-ray astronomy has led
to reasonably safe ROSAT identications of thermal surface emission
from a number of old pulsars (Sect. 2.3). Together with the spin-down
age of these objects one can begin to test neutron-star cooling scenarios, notably those that involve novel phases of nuclear matter such
as superuidity, meson condensates, quark matter, etc. (Shapiro and
Teukolsky 1983; Tsuruta 1992).
117
118
Chapter 4
From the perspective of particle physics, however, a more interesting

nuclear environment is a young neutron star for the rst few seconds
after the progenitor collapsed. The nuclear medium here is so hot that
it is essentially nondegenerate, and neutrinos are trapped. Therefore,
the production of even more weakly interacting particles such as axions
or right-handed neutrinos can compete with neutrino energy transfer
which is essentially a diusion process. For a quantitative understanding of the emissivities of the new particles, but also for the conventional
transport of energy and lepton number by neutrinos, a knowledge of
the microscopic interaction rates is needed.
The neutrino opacities that went into standard SN collapse and explosion calculations as well as the particle emissivities that went into
the derivation of, say, axion bounds from SN 1987A were based on the
assumption that the hot nuclear medium can be treated as an ideal
Boltzmann gas of free particles, except for degeneracy eects that are
easy to include. It turns out, however, that the approximations made
are internally inconsistent, notably for the dominant processes which
involve couplings to the nucleon spin (axial-vector current interactions).
In order for the naive neutral-current neutrino opacities to be correct
one needs to assume that the nucleon spins do not uctuate too fast on
a time scale set by the temperature. A naive perturbative calculation,
however, yields a spin-uctuation rate which is much larger than this
limit. This large rate went into the axion emissivities. Therefore, the
existing studies of SN axion bounds are based on microscopic interaction rates which simultaneously make use of the opposite limits of a
spin-uctuation rate very small and very large compared with T .
Beyond the ideal-gas approximation there is virtually no literature
on the microscopic interaction rates in a hot nuclear medium, presumably because of the historical focus on old neutron stars, and presumably because degenerate nuclear matter is more reminiscent of actual
nuclei. Thus there is a dearth of reliable microscopic input physics for
conventional studies of SN evolution, and for variations involving novel
particle-physics ideas.
Most of this chapter focusses on the dominant axial-vector current
interactions of neutrinos and axions with nucleons in a dense and hot
medium. Most of the material is based on a series of papers which
I have co-authored (Raelt and Seckel 1991, 1995; Keil, Janka, and
Raelt 1995; Keil et al. 1995) and as such does not represent a community consensus. On the other hand, I am not aware of a signicant
controversy. Rather, it appears that very little serious interest has
been taken in the dicult question of weakly interacting particles in-
Processes in a Nuclear Medium
119
teracting with a hot nuclear medium, even though these issues are of
paramount importance for a proper quantitative understanding of SN
physics where the interaction of neutrinos with the medium dominates
the thermal and dynamical evolution. My discussion can only be a
starting point for future work that may actually yield some answers to
the questions raised.
4.2
4.2.1
Axionic Bremsstrahlung Process

Matrix Element for N N N N a
The simplest neutral-current process of the kind to be discussed in this

chapter is bremsstrahlung emission of axions or other pseudoscalars
(Fig. 4.1) because the single-particle axion phase space is particularly
simple. It will turn out that the result thus derived can be applied
to neutrino processes almost without modication. The interaction
Hamiltonian with nucleons is of the form
CN
Hint =
5 N ,
(4.1)
2fa N
where fa is an energy scale (the Peccei-Quinn scale for axions), CN with
N = n or p is a dimensionless, model-dependent coupling constant of
order unity, the N are the proton and nucleon Dirac elds, and is
the axion eld or any other pseudoscalar Nambu-Goldstone boson.
Consider a single species of nonrelativistic nucleons interacting by a
one-pion exchange (OPE) potential. The spin-summed squared matrix
element is (Brinkmann and Turner 1988; Raelt and Seckel 1995)
16 (4)3 2 a
k2
|M| =
3m2N
k2 + m2
spins
2
)2
l2
+ 2
l + m2
)2
k2 l2 3 (k l)2
. (4.2)
+ 2
(k + m2 )(l2 + m2 )
Here, a (CN mN /fa )2 /4 and (f 2mN /m )2 /4 15 with f
1 are the axion-nucleon and pion-nucleon ne-structure constants,
respectively. Further, k = p2 p4 and l = p2 p3 with pi the momenta
of the nucleons Ni as in Fig. 4.1.
In a thermal medium k2 3mN T so that [k2 /(k2 + m2 )]2 varies
between 0.86 for T = 80 MeV and 0.37 for T = 10 MeV. Therefore,
neglecting the pion mass causes only a moderate error in a SN core
(Brinkmann and Turner 1988; Burrows, Ressell, and Turner 1990).
120
Chapter 4
Fig. 4.1. Feynman graph for nucleon-nucleon axion bremsstrahlung. There

is a total of eight amplitudes, four with the axion attached to each nucleon
line, and an exchange graph each with N3 N4 .
Raelt and Seckel (1995) showed that including m causes less than
a 30% reduction of typical neutrino or axion rates for T > 20 MeV. Because this will be a minor error relative to the dominant uncertainties
l)2 ].
the term in square brackets is approximated as [3 (k
l)2 term is inconvenient without yielding any
The remaining (k
signicant insights. In a degenerate medium it averages to zero in
expressions such as the axion emission rate while in a nondegenerate
medium it can be as large as about 1.31 (Raelt and Seckel 1995),
leading to an almost 50% reduction of the emissivity. Still, for the
present discussion I will neglect this term and use
|M|2 = 16 (4)3 2 a m2
N .
(4.3)
spins
While this may seem somewhat arbitrary, it must be stressed that using an OPE potential to model the nucleon interactions in a nuclear
medium is in itself an approximation of uncertain precision. For the
present discussion a factor of order unity will not change any of the
conclusions.
4.2.2
Energy-Loss Rate
The axionic volume energy-loss rate of a medium is the usual phasespace integral,
Qa =

4
d3 pi
d3 ka
f f (1 f3 )(1 f4 )
a
3 1 2
2a (2)3
i=1 2Ei (2)
(2)4 4 (P1 + P2 P3 P4 Ka ) 14
|M|2 , (4.4)
spins
where P1,2 are the four-momenta of the initial-state nucleons, P3,4 are
for the nal states, and Ka is for the axion. The factor 41 is a statistics
121
factor to compensate for double counting of identical fermions in the

initial and nal state. The occupation numbers f1,2 and the Pauli
blocking factors (1 f3,4 ) are for the nucleons while the axions are
assumed to escape freely so that a Bose stimulation factor as well as
backreactions (axion absorption) can be neglected.
In the nonrelativistic limit the nucleon mass mN is much larger than
all other energy scales such as the temperature or Fermi energies. The
nucleon momenta are then much larger than the momentum carried by
the radiation. A typical nonrelativistic nucleon kinetic energy is Ekin =
p2 /2mN so that a typical nucleon momentum is p = (2mN Ekin )1/2 .
In a bremsstrahlung process, the radiation typically takes the energy
Ekin with it, less in a degenerate medium, so that a typical radiation
momentum is ka = Ekin p. Therefore, one may ignore the radiation
in the law of momentum conservation so that Eq. (4.4) is simplied
according to
4 (P1 + P2 P3 P4 Ka )
(E1 + E2 E3 E4 a ) 3 (p1 + p2 p3 p4 ).
(4.5)
In this case, the second integral expression in Eq. (4.4), which knows
about axions only by virtue of the energy-momentum transfer Ka in
the function, is only a function of the axion energy a .
Therefore, in terms of a dimensionless function s(x) of the dimensionless axion energy x = a /T one may write the energy-loss rate in
the form (baryon density nB )
(
Qa =
=
CN
2fa
)2
nB
d3 ka
a s(a /T ) ea /T
2a (2)3
a n B T 3
dx x2 s(x) ex .
4 m2N
0
(4.6)
will turn out to represent the approximate rate of change of a nucleon

spin under the inuence of collisions with other nucleons.
4.2.3
Nondegenerate Limit
To nd and s(x) turn rst to an evaluation of Eq. (4.4) in the

nondegenerate limit. The initial-state nucleon occupation numbers f1,2
are given by the nonrelativistic Maxwell-Boltzmann
distribution fp =
3/2 p2 /2mN T
3
(nB /2) (2/mN T ) e
so that 2fp d p/(2)3 = nB gives the
nucleon (baryon) density where the factor 2 is for two spin states. Pauli
blocking factors are omitted: (1 f3,4 ) 1.
122
Chapter 4
Because the matrix element has been assumed to be a constant

it can be pulled out of the integral which reduces to a phase-space
volume. Nonrelativistically, d3 pi /[2Ei (2)3 ] = d3 pi /[2mN (2)3 ] while
Ei = p2i /2mN in the energy function. The axion momentum is ignored
according to Eq. (4.5). One uses CM momenta p1,2 = p0 p and p3,4 =
p0 q where p0 = 21 (p1 + p2 ) = 12 (p3 + p4 ) and denes u2 p2 /mN T
and y v 2 q2 /mN T . Then one nds explicitly
5/2
= 4 2 nB T 1/2 mN ,
du dv u2 v 2 e|x|u (u2 v 2 |x|)

2
s(x) = 4
dy ey |x|y + y 2
)1/2
1 + |x| /4 .
(4.7)
The analytic form is accurate to better than 2.2% everywhere; it has

the correct asymptotic behavior s(0) = 1 and s(|x|1) = (|x|/4)1/2 .
We will see in Sect. 4.6.3 that for |x| 1 the nondegenerate s(x)
must actually decrease, in conict with this explicit calculation. This
problem reveals a pathology of the OPE potential which is too singular
at short distances. For the present discussion this is of no concern so
that I stick to the explicit OPE result in order to facilitate comparison
with the existing literature.
To determine the total
emission rate one uses the rst representation
of s(x) and performs dx rst to remove the function;

the remaining
n
integrals are easily done. Explicit results for sn 0 x s(x) ex dx are
given in Tab. 4.1. The normalized axion energy spectrum dNa /dx =
x s(x)ex /s1 is shown in Fig. 4.2 (solid line). The average axion energy
is a /T = s2 /s1 = 16/7. The total nondegenerate energy-loss rate is
Table 4.1. sn =
(D) conditions.
xn s(x) ex dx for nondegenerate (ND) and degenerate
sn (ND)
sn (D)
1
2
3
4
8/5
23 + 65 / 2
128/35 31 4 /315
256/21 245 + (180/ 2 ) 7
4096/77 82 6 /315
123
Fig. 4.2. Normalized axion spectrum x s(x)ex /s1 from nucleon-nucleon

bremsstrahlung emission. The nondegenerate and degenerate functions s(x)
are given in Eqs. (4.7) and (4.9), respectively, while s1 (ND) and s1 (D) are
found in Tab. 4.1.
explicitly
QND
=
a
128 a 2 n2B T 7/2
,
9/2
35
mN
3.5
ND
= a 1.691035 erg g1 s1 15 TMeV
,
a
(4.8)
where 15 = /1015 g cm3 , TMeV = T /MeV, and ND

= QND
a
a / is the
energy-loss rate per unit mass.
4.2.4
Degenerate Limit
Details of the nucleon phase space in the degenerate limit can be found
in Friman and Maxwells (1979) calculation of emission. The axion
energy-loss rate is expressed as in Eq. (4.6). One nds
=
42 pF T 3
3 nB
and
s(x) =
(x2 + 4 2 ) |x|
,
4 2 (1 e|x| )
(4.9)
where pF is the nucleon Fermi momentum. As in the nondegenerate

case
n
3
2
x
s(0) = 1 while s(|x|1) = |x| /4 . Values for sn = 0 x s(x) e dx
are given in Tab. 4.1. The normalized axion spectrum is shown in
Fig. 4.2 (dotted line), the average energy is a /T = s2 /s1 3.16.
124
Chapter 4
The total energy-loss rate is

2
QD
a = a
31 2 pF T 6
,
945 m2N
2/3
31
1 1
s 15
D
a = a 1.7410 erg g
6
,
TMeV
(4.10)
(Iwamoto 1984; Brinkmann and Turner 1988).

The degenerate and nondegenerate rates are best compared in terms
of a parameter p2F /(2 mN T ) which approaches / in the degenerate limit (degeneracy parameter ),
QD
31 4 5/2
a

=
1.39 5/2 .
QND
1536
2
a
(4.11)
Therefore, they are equal for 1, or a degeneracy parameter of

3.5. This denes the dividing line between the regimes where these
approximations can be reasonably used.
In the degenerate limit the nucleon phase-space integrals can be
done analytically with the inclusion of a nonzero m . The m = 0 rates
must be supplemented with a factor20 (Ishizuka and Yoshimura 1990)
( )
2
5u
u2
G(u) = 1
arctan
+
+
6
u
3(u2 + 4)
(
)
u2
2 2u2 + 4
+ 2
arctan
,
u2
6 2u + 4
(4.12)
where u = m /pF . For only one species of nucleons (as approximately

1/3
1/3
in a neutron star) pF = 515 MeV 15 so that u = 0.26 15 with 15
the mass density in 1015 g/cm3 . For this case G is shown as a function
of in Fig. 4.3 (solid line).
4.2.5
Bremsstrahlung Emission of Scalars
The previous results equally apply to pseudoscalars with a coupling

2
/4 if a derivative pion-nucleon interacigaN N 5 N with a gaN
tion is used (Sect. 14.2.3). However, for scalars which couple according
20
Eq. (4.12) diers from the corresponding result of Friman and Maxwell (1979)
which is identical with that of Iwamoto (1984) who apparently did not take the
third term of the matrix element Eq. (4.2) properly into account.
125
Fig. 4.3. Correction of the degenerate bremsstrahlung rate for a nonzero

pion mass. For pseudoscalars, G(m /pF ) is given explicitly in Eq. (4.12). It
is assumed that only one species of nucleons is present.
to g N N the results are dierent. The degenerate bremsstrahlung

energy-loss rate was worked out by Ishizuka and Yoshimura (1990),
Qscalar = 2
44
153
T
mN
)4
p5F Gscalar (m /pF ),
(4.13)
with g 2 /4. The function Gscalar (u) is similar to Eq. (4.12); it is

plotted in Fig. 4.3 (dashed line).
4.2.6
Mixture of Protons and Neutrons
For a mixed medium of protons and neutrons one needs to consider the
individual Yukawa couplings gan = Cn mN /fa and gap = Cp mN /fa as
well as the isoscalar and isovector combinations g0,1 = 21 (gan gap ) and
the ne-structure constants j = gj2 /4 with j = n, p, 0, 1. For equal
couplings n = p = 0 while 1 = 0.
In the nondegenerate limit, the main dierence is that np scattering
benets from
the exchange of charged pions which couple more strongly
by a factor 2. Depending on the chemical composition of the medium,
the emission rate will be increased by up to a factor of 2. On the other
l)2 term
hand, some reduction factors have been ignored such as the (k
and the pion mass. Therefore, ignoring this enhancement essentially
compensates for the previously introduced errors.
In the degenerate limit the changes are more dramatic. The role
of the Fermi momentum is played by pF (3 2 nB )1/3 . It sets the
126
Chapter 4
scale for the proton and neutron Fermi momenta which are pn,p
=
F
1/3
(3 2 nB )1/3 Yn,p
. According to a result of Brinkmann and Turner (1988)
the eective coupling is then
+
a n Yn1/3 + p Yp1/3 + ( 28
3 0
20
) (Yn2/3
3 1
1

2 2
+ Yp2/3 )1/2
|Yn2/3 Yp2/3 |
2/3
Yn
2/3
+ Yp
(4.14)
The third term is from np collisions; it has the remarkable feature that it
does not vanish as Yp 0. For equal couplings (Cn = Cp ) the variation
of the emission rate is shown in Fig. 4.4 as a function of Yp = 1 Yn .
For all proton concentrations the np contribution dominates.
Fig. 4.4. Variation of the degenerate nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung rate

with Yp (proton number fraction) according to Eq. (4.14) with equal couplings so that n = p = 0 and 1 = 0.
4.3
4.3.1
Neutrino Pair Emission

Structure Function
Neutrino pair emission in nucleon-nucleon collisions (Fig. 4.5) is analogous to that of axions. Therefore, instead of embarking on a new
calculation it is worth understanding their common featuresthe neutrino rates can be obtained for free on the basis of the axion ones.
This approach amounts to dening the dynamical structure functions
127
Fig. 4.5. Bremsstrahlung emission of neutrino pairs in nucleon-nucleon collisions. There is a total of eight amplitudes, four with the neutrinos attached
to each nucleon line, and an exchange graph each with N3 N4 .
of the medium, quantities which are of utmost importance to understand the general properties of the emission, absorption, and scattering
rates independently of phase-space details of the neutrinos or axions.
Contrary to the bremsstrahlung emission in electron-nucleus collisions (Sect. 3.5.3), nonrelativistically only the nucleon axial-vector
coupling contributes in nucleon-nucleon collision (Friman and Maxwell
1979). This dierence originates from the interaction potential of the
colliding particles which involves a spin-dependent force between nucleons so that the spin uctuations caused by collisions are more dramatic
than those of the velocitysee Sect. 4.6.5 below. Hence, the part of the
interaction Hamiltonian relevant for neutrino pair bremsstrahlung is
Hint =
CAN GF
N 5 N (1 5 ) ,
2
(4.15)
where CAp CAn 21 ; see Appendix B for a discussion of the appropriate values in a nuclear medium.
The interaction Hamiltonian Eq. (4.15) has the same structure as
that for axions Eq. (4.1). The squared matrix elements are then of the
general form
(C N GF / 2)2 M N for neutrinos,
A
(4.16)
|M|2 =
(C /2f )2 M K K
for axions.
spins
N
a
a a
Here, Ka is the axion four-momentum while
(
N = 8 K1 K2 + K2 K1 K1 K2 g i K1 K2
(4.17)
with the neutrino and antineutrino four momenta K1 and K2 (Gaemers,

Gandhi, and Lattimer 1989). N and Ka Ka are the squared matrix
elements of the neutrino and axion current, respectively.
128
Chapter 4
The matrix M is the nuclear part of the squared matrix element.

It is exactly the same for axion or neutrino interactions because in
Eq. (4.16) the global coupling constants have been explicitly pulled
out. Therefore, one may go one step further and perform the entire
nucleon phase-space integration for both cases directly on M ,
S
4
1
d3 pi
f1 f2 (1 f3 )(1 f4 )
nB i=1 2Ei (2)3
(2)4 4 (P1 + P2 P3 P4 + K) M .
(4.18)
Here, the Pi are the nucleon four momenta, K = Ka for axion emission, and K = (K1 + K2 ) for neutrino pairs. Thus, K is the energymomentum transfer from the radiation (axions or neutrino pairs) to
the nucleons. Because S knows about the radiation only through
the energy-momentum function it is only a function of K = (, k),
apart from the temperature and chemical potentials of the medium.
The slightly awkward denition of the sign of K follows the common
denition of the structure function where a positive energy transfer
refers to energy given to the medium.
The energy-loss rates by or axion emission are then the phasespace integrals
(
Q =
(
Qa =
CAN GF
2
CN
2fa
)2
nB
)2
nB
d3 k1
d3 k2
S N (1 + 2 ),
21 (2)3 22 (2)3
d3 ka
S Ka Ka a .
2a (2)3
(4.19)
Here, it was assumed that both axions and neutrinos can escape freely
from the medium so that nal-state Pauli blocking or Bose stimulation
factors can be ignored.
In the nonrelativistic limit the nucleon current in Eqs. (4.1) and
(4.15) reduces to i where is a nucleon two-spinor and i (i =
1, 2, 3) are Pauli matrices representing the nucleon spin operator. Put
another way, in the nonrelativistic limit the axial-vector current represents the nucleon spin density. Therefore, it has only spatial components so that S S ij (i, j = 1, 2, 3). In order to construct the
most general tensorial structure for S ij in an isotropic medium only ij
is available. Recall that in the nonrelativistic limit S does not know
about the momentum transfer k because of Eq. (4.5). There is then no
129
vector available from which a spatial tensor can be constructed. Thus,

the structure function has the most general form
Sij () = S () ij .
(4.20)
For nonrelativistic nucleons all axion or axial-vector neutrino processes

involve only one scalar function S () of the energy transfer.
The contraction of ij with Ka Ka for axion emission yields k2a =
2
a . (The spatial Kronecker should be viewed as a Lorentz tensor
with a zero in the 00 position.) Therefore, S Ka Ka a2 S (a )
in Eq. (4.19). For neutrino emission, K1 K2 = 1 2 k1 k2 and
the contraction of ij with g is 3. Therefore, the contraction of
ij with N yields 81 2 (3 cos ) where is the angle between the
and momenta. The neutrino phase-space integration will always
average cos to zero so that it may be dropped. Therefore, S N
24 1 2 S (1 2 ) in Eq. (4.19). One may then immediately perform
the integration over one of the neutrino energies and is left with an
integration over the energy transfer.
Thus, in the nonrelativistic limit the energy-loss rates Eq. (4.19) are
of the form
(
Q =
(
Qa =
CAN GF
2
CN
2fa
)2
)2
nB
d 6 S (),
20 4 0
nB
d 4 S ().
4 2 0
(4.21)
The medium properties are embodied in a common function which may

be expressed in the form
S () = 2 s(/T )
1
e/T
for > 0,
for < 0.
(4.22)
Because of the detailed-balance relationship between positive and

negative energy transfers to be discussed more fully below, s(x) must
be an even function. In the nondegenerate and degenerate limits
and s(x) have been determined above. They allow one to calculate the
emission rate without any eort.
130
4.3.2
Chapter 4
Bremsstrahlung Emission of Neutrino Pairs
In order to calculate the neutrino pair emission rate explicitly turn

rst to the nondegenerate limit for which one uses and s(x) given
in Eq. (4.7) and the integrals of Tab. 4.1. The average energy of a
neutrino pair is (s4 /s3 ) T 4.36 T and the total energy-loss rate is
QND
=
2 11/2
2048
2 2 2 nB T
C
G
,
385 7/2 A F m5/2
N
5.5
ND
= 2.41017 erg g1 s1 15 TMeV
,
(4.23)
ND
with 15 = /1015 g cm3 , TMeV = T /MeV, and ND
= Q / is the
energy-loss rate per unit mass.
For the degenerate rate one uses Eqs. (4.9). The average energy of
a neutrino pair is (s4 /s3 ) T 5.78 T and the total energy-loss rate is21
QD
=
41 2 2 2
CA GF pF T 8 ,
4725
2/3
13
1 1
D
s 15
= 4.410 erg g
8
TMeV
.
(4.24)
One can correct for a nonvanishing value of the pion mass by virtue of
Eq. (4.12).
For a mixture of protons and neutrons the same remarks as in
Sect. 4.2.6 apply. Apart from a small correction the neutrino coupling is isovector (CAp CAn ) so that 0 0 while the other s are
approximately equal (Appendix B). For degenerate conditions, with a
small modication the dependence on the proton concentration is the
same as that shown in Fig. 4.4. Again, the absolutely dominating contribution is from np collisions unless protons are so rare that they are
nondegenerate.22
21
Friman and Maxwells (1979) total energy-loss rate is 2/3 of the one found here.
Apparently they did not include the crossterm in the squared matrix element, i.e.
the third term in Eq. (4.2).
22
This conclusion, based on the work of Brinkmann and Turner (1988), is in
conict with the results of Friman and Maxwell (1979). They found that Q was
proportional to the proton Fermi momentum which is relatively small in neutronstar matter. On the other hand, for small proton concentrations Brinkmann and
Turners pF in Eq. (4.24) approaches the neutron Fermi momentum. I am in no
position to decide between these conicting results.
4.4
131
Axion Opacity
When axions or other pseudoscalar bosons interact so strongly that

they are trapped in a young SN core, they still contribute to the radiative transfer of energy and can thus have an impact on the cooling
speed. In order to include axions in a numerical evolution calculation
one needs to determine the opacity of the medium to axions (Burrows,
Ressell, and Turner 1990).
The reduced Rosseland mean opacity relevant for radiative transport by relativistic bosons (Sect. 1.3.4) is dened by
1
15
= 2 3
d (1 e/T )1 T B (T ),
a
4 T 0
(4.25)
where is the mass density of the medium, the boson mean free path
against absorption, and B (T ) = (2 2 )1 3 (e/T 1)1 is the boson
spectral density for one spin degree of freedom. After T = /T has
been taken one nds
1
15
x4 e2x
= 4
,
(4.26)
dx x x
a
8 0
(e 1)3
where x /T , and (1 ex )1 = ex (ex 1)1 was used.
The axion opacity thus dened is to be added to the photon opacity
1
1
by 1
tot = + a . The energy ux is then given by the usual expression F = (3tot )1 a T 4 where a = 2 /15 gives the radiation
density of photons. Burrows, Ressell, and Turner (1990) have dened
an axion opacity which is to be used in conjunction with the axion radiation density which is half as large because there is only one spin degree
of freedom, i.e. aa = 2 /30. Their 1
a is twice that in Eq. (4.26) so
that the energy ux is the same. I prefer the present denition because
it allows for the usual addition of all opacity contributions.
It is easy to determine the axion absorption rate from the discussion
in Sect. 4.3.1. Starting
from Qa in Eq. (4.21) one removes the phase
space integral 0 d 4 2 /(2)3 and a factor because Qa was an
energy-loss rate. One includes a factor e/T to account for the detailedbalance relationship (see Eq. 4.43) so that altogether
(
CN
2fa
)2
nB s(x)
,
T
2x
(4.27)
where x = /T . Therefore, the reduced Rosseland mean opacity is

(
a =
CN
2fa
)2
,
T mN
(4.28)
132
Chapter 4
where /nB mN was used. The dimensionless opacity is
15
8 4
dx
x4 e2x
2x
.
(ex 1)3 s(x)
(4.29)
For the nondegenerate case s(x) was given in Eq. (4.7), for the degenerate one in Eq. (4.9). Then one nds numerically
ND = 0.46 and
D = 1.53. The respective s were given in Eqs. (4.7) and (4.9).
4.5
4.5.1
Neutrino Opacity
Elastic Scattering
The trapping of neutrinos in a hot SN core allows them to escape only

by diusion. This implies that they transport energy in a fashion similar
to radiative transfer. Apart from proper spectral weights as in the
Rosseland mean opacity, the main gure of merit that determines the
transport eciency is the neutrino mean free path (mfp). While the
charged-current absorption of e s is very important for practical SN
core-cooling calculations it has no direct bearing on the main issues of
interest here.
However, all neutrino avors interact by neutral-current interactions
which allow for the scattering on nucleons. The inverse mean free path
is then simply the cross section times the nucleon density. If there is
only one species of nondegenerate nucleons one easily nds
1 = (CV2 + 3CA2 ) G2F nB 12 /,
(4.30)
where 1 is the energy of the incident neutrino, assumed to be much

smaller than mN so that recoil eects can be neglected. For a mixture
of protons and neutrons one has to take a proper average with the
coupling constants CV and CA for protons and neutrons (Appendix B).
For e s which have a large chemical potential, a Pauli blocking factor
must be included, and the same for nucleons if they are degenerate.
4.5.2
Pair Absorption
Because the neutrinos are assumed to be trapped there is an ambient

bath of s and s which allows for neutrino absorption by the inverse
bremsstrahlung process N N N N , i.e. Fig. 4.5 read from right to
left. The rate for this process is closely related to that for pair emission:
133
it is based on the same matrix element with the neutrinos crossed

into the initial state. Then one nds in analogy to Sect. 4.3.1
(
=
=
CA GF
)2
nB
d3 k2
f2 S N
3
21 22 (2)
3CA2 G2F nB
d2 22 f2 S (1 + 2 ),
2 2
0
(4.31)
where 1 refers to the for which the mfp is being determined while
2 refers to a from the thermal environment (occupation number
f2 ). With the detailed-balance relationship S () = S () e/T (see
Eq. 4.43) and writing S (||) = ( / 2 ) s(/T ) as before one nds
3CA2
G2F
nB T
dx2 f2
x22 s(x1 + x2 )
,
2 2 (x1 + x2 )2
(4.32)
where xi = i /T . Then one may use the previously determined and

s(x) to nd the mfp for given conditions (degenerate or nondegenerate).
The ratio between the inverse mfps from elastic scattering and pair
absorption is, ignoring the contribution from CV2 ,
1

x22 s(x1 + x2 )
pair
=
dx
f
.
2
2
T 0
2 x21 (x1 + x2 )2
1
scat
(4.33)
An average with regard to a thermal x1 distribution yields about 0.02

for the dimensionless integral where Fermi-Dirac distributions with
chemical potentials = 0 were used. The main gure of merit, however, is /T , the ratio of a typical spin-uctuation rate and the ambient temperature. In the nondegenerate limit one nds with Eq. (4.7)

nB
16
= 4 1/2 2 5/2
T
0
mN T 1/2
30 MeV
T
)1/2
(4.34)
with the nuclear density 0 = 31014 g/cm3 .

4.5.3
Inelastic Scattering
It appears that for typical conditions of a young SN core, pair absorption is almost as important as elastic scattering. However, even though
the quantity is larger than unity, the pair-absorption rate has an
unfavorable phase-space factor from the initial-state so that the dimensionless integral in Eq. (4.33) is a small number. This would not
be the case for the inelastic scattering process N N N N shown in
134
Chapter 4
Fig. 4.6. Inelastic neutrino-nucleon scattering. There is a total of eight

amplitudes, four with the neutrinos attached to each nucleon line, and an
exchange graph each with N3 N4 .
Fig. 4.6. In this process, neutrinos can give or take energy even though
recoil eects for heavy nucleons are small in the elastic scattering process N N .
This reaction is identical with pair absorption with the antineutrino
line crossed into the nal state. The corresponding mfp is given by the
same expression as for pair absorption, except that the index 2 now
refers to the nal-state , the initial-state occupation number f2 is to
be replaced with a nal-state Pauli blocking factor (1 f2 ), and the
energy transfer is = 2 1 ,
3CA2 G2F nB
=
d2 22 (1 f2 ) S (1 2 ).
2 2
0
(4.35)
However, because the energy transfer can be zero, and because S ()

2 , this expression diverges. The 2 behavior seemed harmless before
because it was moderated by powers of from the phase space of axions
or neutrinos.
The occurrence of this divergence could have been predicted without
a calculation by inspecting Fig. 4.6. If one cuts the intermediate-state
nucleon line, this graph falls into two sub-processes (nucleon-nucleon
scattering and nucleon-neutrino scattering) which are each permitted
by energy-momentum conservation, allowing the intermediate nucleon
in the compound process to go on-shell. Therefore, the pole of the
propagator which corresponds to real particles causes a divergence of
the cross section. Physically, the divergence reects a long-range interaction which occurs because the intermediate nucleon can travel arbitrarily far when it is on its mass shell.
Still, the inelastic scattering process is an inevitable physical possibility. For nonzero energy transfers its dierential rate is given by the
unintegrated version of Eq. (4.35). For a vanishing energy transfer it is
elastic and then its rate should be given by Eq. (4.30).
135
However, what exactly does one mean by a vanishing energy transfer? The nucleons in the ambient medium constantly scatter with each
other so that their individual energies are uncertain to within about
1/coll with a typical time between collision coll . Therefore, one would
expect that the structure of S (), which was calculated on the basis
of free nucleons which interact only once, is smeared out over scales
1
of order coll
. In particular, this smearing-out eect naturally
regulates the low- behavior of the structure function (Raelt and
Seckel 1991).
1
Because coll
is a typical nucleon-nucleon collision rate, a simple ansatz for a modied S () is a Lorentzian (Raelt and Seckel 1991)
S (||)
s(/T
)
=
s(x),
2 + 2 /4
T x2 + 2 /4
(4.36)
+
with x = /T . For 1 one has
d S () = 2 + O( ) for the
modied S (). Thus, for 1 essentially S () = 2() so that
the total inelastic scattering rate Eq. (4.35) reproduces the elastic
scattering one. At the same time S () has wings which, for ,
give the correct inelastic scattering rate which is of order .
This simple ansatz can be expected to give a reasonable approximation to the true S () only in the limit 1. For practical
applications in cooling calculations of young SN cores, however, one
has to confront the opposite limit 1 causing the smearing-out effect by multiple nucleon collisions to be a dominating feature of S ()
even for T . This implies that for typical thermal energies of
neutrinos and nucleons a reasonably clean separation between elastic
and inelastic scattering processes is not logically possiblethere is only
one structure function S (), broadly smeared out, which governs all
axial-vector scattering, emission, and absorption processes.
This observation has important ramications not only for neutrino
scattering, but also for the bremsstrahlung emission of axions and neutrino pairs from a nuclear medium. Earlier it seemed that one did not
have to worry about details of the behavior of S () near = 0 because the low- part was suppressed by axion or neutrino phase-space
factors. However, since the notion of low energy presently means
<
, and because T , all relevant energy transfers are low in
this sense, and even the emission processes are dominated by multiplescattering eects. Consequences of this behavior are explored in more
detail below after a formal introduction of the structure functions and
their general properties.
136
4.6
4.6.1
Chapter 4
Structure Functions
Formal Denition
To treat axion and neutrino pair emission and absorption on the same
footing it became useful in Sect. 4.3.1 to dene the quantity S which
was the nuclear part of the squared matrix element of nucleon-nucleon
collisions, integrated over the nucleon phase space. The structure function thus obtained embodied the medium properties relevant for dierent processes without involving the radiation phase space. Clearly, this
method is not limited to the bremsstrahlung process. For example, one
could include the interaction of nucleons with thermal pions or a pion
condensate, three-nucleon collisions, and so forth. Whatever the details of the medium physics, in the end one will arrive at some function
S (, k) of the energy and momentum transfer which embodies all of
its properties. High-density properties of the medium should also appear in the structure function so that multiple-scattering modications
can be consistently applied to all relevant processes such as neutrino
scattering, pair emission, axion emission, and others.
A formal denition of the structure function without reference to
specic processes begins with a neutral-current interaction Hamiltonian
Hint = (gV V + gA A ) J ,
(4.37)
where gV and gA are (usually dimensionful) coupling constants. The

radiation or probe is characterized by a current J which for axions
is , for neutrino interactions (1 5 ) , and for photons the
electromagnetic vector potential. The medium is represented by the
vector and axial-vector currents V and A . If the probe couples only
to one species N of nucleons, V = N N and A = N 5 N .
Next, one imagines that the medium properties are experimentally
investigated with a neutrino beam with xed momentum k1 which is
directed at a bulk sample of the medium, and the distribution of nalstate momenta and energies are measured. The transition probability
W (k1 , k2 ) is proportional to (gV2 SV +gA2 SA +gV gA SVA )N where N
was dened in Eq. (4.17). A standard perturbative expansion (Sect. 9.3)
yields for the dynamical structure functions
SV (, k) =
1 +
dt eit V (t, k)V (0, k) ,
nB
(4.38)
and analogous expressions for SA in terms of A A and for SVA

involving V A + A V . The expectation values are to be taken with
respect to a thermal ensemble of medium states.
137
In addition, one frequently uses the static structure functions which

are functions of the momentum transfer alone. For example,
SV (k) =
d
1
SV (, k) =
V (k)V (k) .
2
nB
(4.39)
+
It was used that
d eit = 2(t) so that dt in Eq. (4.38) is
trivially done and yields the operators at equal times. In Eq. (4.39)
V (k) is V (t, k) at an arbitrary time, for example t = 0. It only matters
that both V (k) and V (k) are taken at equal times.
In an isotropic medium the tensorial composition of the dynamical
structure function can be obtained only from the energy-momentum
transfer K and the four-velocity U of the medium; U = (1, 0, 0, 0) in its
rest frame. The general form of the vector term is (Kirzhnits, Losyakov,
and Chechin 1990)
SV = S1,V U U + S2,V (U U g )
+ S3,V K K + S4,V (K U + U K ).
(4.40)
An analogous expression pertains to SA while the mixed term is

SVA = i SV A U K
(4.41)
because of its transformation properties under parity. The functions

S,V and S,A ( = 1, . . . , 4), and SV A depend on medium properties
and on the Lorentz scalars K 2 and U K that can be constructed from
U and K; the third possibility U 2 = 1 is a constant. Instead of K 2 and
U K one may use the energy and momentum transfer and k = |k|
measured in the medium rest frame.
The structure functions are dened for both positive and negative
energy transfers because the medium can both give or take energy from
a probe. Taking axion emission and absorption as an example, the rate
of change of the occupation number of an axion eld mode k is given by
(
t fk =
CA
2fa
)2
]
nB [
(fk + 1) SA (, k) fk SA (, k) K K .
2
(4.42)
If axions are trapped and reach thermal equilibrium, t fk = 0 and fk =

(e/T 1)1 , a Bose-Einstein distribution. This implies the detailedbalance condition
SA (, k) = SA (, k) e/T .
(4.43)
Recall that a positive energy transfer is energy given to the medium.
138
4.6.2
Chapter 4
Nonrelativistic Limit
In a nuclear medium one is interested primarily in the nonrelativistic

limit. The vector current is then dominated by V 0 = = where
is a nucleon two-spinor. Here, is the operator for the nucleon number
density. The spatial component V is suppressed by a nonrelativistic
velocity factor v. The reverse applies to the axial-vector current where
A0 is suppressed; it is dominated by the spin density s = 21 where
is a vector of Pauli matrices.
In Eqs. (4.40) and (4.41) all terms arise from correlators such as
A0 V i which are suppressed by v 2 , except for the rst term of SV
which arises from V 0 V 0 , and the second term of SA which arises
from Ai Ai . Therefore, the only unsuppressed components are
SV00 (, k) = S (, k) and SAij (, k) = S (, k) ij ,
(4.44)
where the density and spin-density dynamical structure functions are

S (, k) =
1 +
dt eit (t, k)(0, k) ,
nB
S (, k) =
4 +
dt eit s(t, k) s(0, k)
3nB
(4.45)
(Iwamoto and Pethick 1982).

In order to determine the overall normalization in the nonrelativistic limit consider the static structure function for an ensemble of NB
nucleons enclosed in a large volume V . At a given time the system is
characterized by a wavefunction which depends on the locations ri
B
of the nucleons. Then (r)| = N
i=1 (r ri ) | while the Fourier1
3
ikr
transformed operator V
d r e (r) is
NB
1
(k)| =
eikri |.
V i=1
(4.46)
Therefore, a given conguration of nucleons yields

NB
NB
1
1
NB
ikrij
+
|(k)(k)| =
e
eikrij ,
=
V i,j=1
V
V i,j=1
(4.47)
i=j
where rij ri rj . When averaged over a thermal ensemble the second

term will disappear if there are no spatial correlations, and nB = NB /V
so that S (k) = 1.
139
For the static spin-density structure function the same steps can be
performed with the inclusion of the spin operators 12 i for the individual
nucleons. This takes us to the equivalent of Eq. (4.47)
|s(k) s(k)| =
NB
1
ekrij 14 | i j | =
V i,j=1
NB
NB
1
1
2
1
|
|
+
eikrij 14 | i j |.
i
V i=1 4
V i,j=1
(4.48)
i=j
Noting that ( 12 i )2 = 12 (1 + 12 ) = 43 the rst term is 43 NB /V = 34 nB .

Therefore, in the absence of correlations one nds S (k) = 1.
Even in a noninteracting medium there exist anticorrelations between degenerate nucleons. Standard manipulations yield in this case
(e.g. Sawyer 1989)
1 2d3 p
S, (k) =
fp (1 fp+k ),
nB (2)3
(4.49)
with the Fermi-Dirac occupation number fp for the nucleon mode p.

For small temperatures this result can be expanded to yield S, (k) =
3k/2pF + 3T mN /p2F .
4.6.3
The f-Sum Rule
The structure functions have a number of general properties, independently of details of the interactions of the medium constituents. We
have already seen that they must obey the normalization condition
d
1
S (, k) = 1 +
2
nB
d
4
S (, k) = 1 +
2
3nB
NB
cos(k rij ) ,
i,j=1
i=j
NB
i j cos(k rij ) .
(4.50)
i,j=1
i=j
This can be referred to as a sum rule because the strength of S, is

summed (integrated) over all frequencies . Usually we will assume
that the correlation expressions on the r.h.s. are negligible.
A more nontrivial sum rule obtains when a factor is included
under the integral. The denition of the density structure function
140
Chapter 4
then yields
+
d
d +
S (, k) =
dt eit (t, k)(0, k)

2
2
(4.51)
and a similar expression for S . Under the integral, a partial integration

with suitable boundary conditions allows one to absorb the factor,
at the expense of (t, k) (t,
k). Because Heisenbergs equation of
motion informs us that i = [, H] with H the complete Hamiltonian
of the system one nds (Sigl 1995b)
d
1 [
(k), H (k) ,
S (, k) =
2
nB
]
d
4 [
S (, k) =
(k), H (k) .
2
3nB
(4.52)
Here it was used, again, that d eit = 2(t) and (k) (0, k) and
(k) (0, k).
In order to evaluate this sum rule more explicitly one must assume
a specic form for the interaction Hamiltonian. In the simplest case of
a medium consisting of only one species of nucleons one may assume
that H consists of the kinetic energy for each nucleon, plus a general
nonrelativistic interaction potential between all nucleon pairs which
depends on the relative distance and the nucleon spins, i.e.
NB
1
V (rij , i , j ),
H=
+
2 i,j=1
i=1 2mN
NB
p2i
(4.53)
i=j
where again rij ri rj . One can then proceed to evaluate the commutators in Eq. (4.52). By virtue of the continuity equation for the particle
number one can then show (Pines and Nozières 1966; Sigl 1995b)
d
k2
S (, k) =
,
2
2mN
d
k2
S (, k) =
2
2mN
4
+
3nB
NB [
(k), V (rij , i , j ) (k) . (4.54)
i,j=1
i=j
For the density structure function this exact relationship is known as

the f-sum rule.
141
For the spin-density structure function one can go one step further
by expressing the most general nonrelativistic interaction potential as
(Sigl 1995b)
V (rij , i , j ) = U0 (rij ) US (rij ) i j
[
UT (rij ) 3( i rij )( j rij ) i j ,
(4.55)
where U0 is a spin-independent potential of the interparticle distance

rij = |rij |, US is the scalar, and UT the tensor part of the spin-dependent
potential. Of these terms, only the tensor part does not conserve the
total spin in nucleon-nucleon collisions and thus is the only part contributing to spin uctuations. With VijS US (rij ) i j and VijT
UT (rij ) [3( i rij )( j rij ) i j ] one nds
d
k2
S (, k) =
2
2mN
4
+
3nB
NB [
1 cos(k rij )
VijS
+ 1 + cos(k rij )
1
2
VijT
. (4.56)
i,j=1
i=j
The f-sum of the spin-density structure function is thus closely related

to the average spin-spin interaction energy in the medium.
In order for the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian to be bounded from
below one must require that the potentials U0,S,T (r) are not more singular than 1/r2 . In this case the r.h.s. of the spin-density f-sum rule
exists as a nondivergent expression. In our representation S (||) =
( / 2 ) s(/T ), the necessary existence of the l.h.s. of Eq. (4.56) implies that s(x) must be a decreasing function of x for large x. This is
not the case for the s(x) derived from the OPE potential, indicating
that this interaction model is pathological in the sense that it is too
singular. Indeed, it corresponds to a dipole potential and thus varies
as 1/r3 . Real nucleon-nucleon interaction potentials have a repulsive
core and thus do not exhibit this pathology.
4.6.4
Long-Wavelength Properties
In calculations involving the emission or scattering of neutrinos or axions as in Sect. 4.3.1 one usually neglects the momentum transfer k
because the medium constituents are so heavy that recoil eects are
142
Chapter 4
small. In this long-wavelength limit one is only interested in the

small-k structure functions
S, () lim S, (, k).
(4.57)
k0
It should be stressed that this quantity is not identical with S, (, 0).

For example, in Eq. (4.47) for k = 0 the interference term does not
average to zero. The structure function becomes NB2 /V and thus coherently enhanced because the momentum transfer is so small that a
target consisting of many particles in a volume V cannot be resolved.
The limit k 0 is understood such that |k|1 remains much smaller
than the geometrical dimension V 1/3 of the system.
In the long-wavelength limit the normalization Eq. (4.50) and the
f-sum rule Eq. (4.56) yield for the spin-density structure function

d
d
4
S () =
(1 + e/T )S () = 1 +
2
2
3nB
0

d
d
4
S () =
(1 e/T )S () =
2
2
3nB
0
NB
i j ,
i,j=1
i=j
NB
3 T
V
2 ij
i,j=1
i=j
(4.58)
These relations will be of great use to develop a general understanding
of the behavior of S () at high densities. The second column of expressions follows from the rst by detailed balance. Because S () 0 it is
evident that all of these expressions are always positive, independently
of details of the medium interactions.
In a noninteracting medium the operators (t, k) and s(t, k) are
constant so that S, () = 2(), allowing for scattering (zero energy
transfer), but not for the emission of radiation. This behavior is familiar
from a gas of free particles which can serve as targets for collisons, but
which cannot emit radiation because of energy-momentum constraints.
In an interacting medium the density correlator retains this property because in the long-wavelength limit it depends on (t, k0) =
V 1 d3 r (t, r) which remains constant. Therefore, even in an interacting medium one expects S () = 2(), in agreement with the
nding that the neutrino vector current does not contribute to bremsstrahlung in the nonrelativistic limit relative to the axial-vector current
(Friman and Maxwell 1979).
B
The relevant quantity for the latter is V 1 d3 r s(t, r) = 21 N
i=1 i
with i the individual nucleon spins. If the evolution of dierent spins
143
is uncorrelated one may ignore the cross terms in the correlator. With
the single-nucleon spin operator one nds then
S () =
1
3
dt eit (t) (0) .
(4.59)
With Eq. (4.21) one obtains

dIa
=
d
CN
2fa
)2
4
12 2
dt eit (t) (0)
(4.60)
for the dierential axion energy-loss rate (radiation power) per nucleon.
Because of collisions with other nucleons, and because of a spin dependent interaction potential caused by pion exchange, the nucleon spins
evolve nontrivially so that the correlator has nonvanishing power at
= 0, allowing for axion emission.
4.6.5
Axion Emission in the Classical Limit
The correlator representation Eq. (4.60) of the axion emission rate is

extremely useful to develop a general understanding of its main properties without embarking on a quantum-mechanical calculation. To this
end the nucleon spin is approximated by a classical variable, basically
a little magnet which jiggles around under the impact of collisions with
other nucleons. With an ergodic hypothesis about the spin trajectory
on the unit sphere one may replace the ensemble average in Eq. (4.60)
by a time average. The radiation intensity (time-integrated radiation
power) emitted during a long (innite) time interval is then
dIa
=
d
CN
2fa
)2
2
12 2
it
dt e
2

,
(t)
(4.61)
where two powers of were absorbed by a partial integration with

suitable boundary conditions at t = .
In this form the energy-loss rate is closely related to a well-known
expression for the electromagnetic radiation power from a charged particle which moves on a trajectory r(t). The nonrelativistic limit of a
standard result (Jackson 1975) is

2
dI
2 +
it
,
=
dt
e
a(t)

d
3
where a(t) = r(t) is the particles acceleration on its trajectory.
(4.62)
144
Chapter 4
The same result can be found with the above methods applied to the
spatial part of the vector current. Easier still, it can be obtained directly
from Eq. (4.61). To this end note that photon emission by an electron
involves nonrelativistically (e/me ) p = ev so that we must substitute
v = a. The role of k (axions) is played by the polarization
vector (photons) so that k2 = 2 must be replaced by 2 = 1. With
(CA /2fa ) e, using = e2 /4, and inserting a factor of 2 for two
photon polarization states completes the translation.
In order to understand the radiation spectrum consider a single
innitely hard collision with (t)

= (t). The radiation power is
dIa
=
d
CN
2fa
)2
2
||2 .
2
12
(4.63)
For photons one obtains the familiar at bremsstrahlung spectrum

dI /d = (2/3)|v|2 which is hardened, for axions, by the additional factor 2 from their derivative coupling.
In the form Eq. (4.63) the total amount of energy radiated in a single collision is innite. In practice, collisions are not arbitrarily hard,
and the backreaction of the radiation process on the emitter must be
included. This is not rigorously possible in a classical calculation, it requires a quantum-mechanical treatment. Therefore, a classical analysis
is useful only for the soft part of the spectrum where backreactions can
be ignored, i.e. for radiation frequencies far below the kinetic energy
of the emitter. In a thermal environment, a classical treatment then
appears reasonable for <
T.
Next, consider a large random sequence of n hard collisions with a
spin trajectory
(t)
=
i (t ti ).
(4.64)
i=1
This yields the average radiation intensity per collision of

dIa
=
d
CN
2fa
)2
2
coll ()2 F (),
12 2
(4.65)
where coll is the average collision rate and ()2 is the average
squared change of the spin in a collision. Further,
n
i j cos[(ti tj )]
1
,
F () = 1 + lim
n n
()2
i,j=1
(4.66)
i=j
where the rst term (the diagonal part of the double sum) gives the
total radiation power as an incoherent sum of individual collisions. The
145
second term takes account of interference eects between the radiation

emitted in dierent collisions.
The interference term yields a suppression of the incoherent summation because the in subsequent collisions are anticorrelated. The
spin is constrained to move on the unit sphere whence a kick in one
direction is more likely than average followed by one in the opposite
direction. A similar argument pertains to the velocity; a v in one direction is more likely than average to be followed by one in the opposite
direction. The radiation spectrum with >
coll will remain unaected
while for <
it
is
suppressed.
The
low- suppression of brems coll
strahlung is known as the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal eect (Landau
and Pomeranchuk 1953a,b; Migdal 1956; Knoll and Voskresensky 1995
and references therein).
The summation in Eq. (4.66) can be viewed as an integration over
the relative time coordinate t = ti tj with a certain distribution
function f (t). For a random sequence of kicks one expects an exponential distribution of the normalized form f (t) = 41 e t/2
where is some inverse time-scale. This implies the Lorentzian shape
(e.g. Knoll and Voskresensky 1995)
F () =
2
.
2 + 2 /4
(4.67)
A Lorentzian model is familiar, for example, from the collisional broadening of spectral lines. A comparison with Eq. (4.60) indicates that
coll ()2
=
2 + 2 /4
dt eit (t) (0) .
(4.68)
An integral over d/2 reveals a normalization 2 so that

=
()2
coll .
2
(4.69)
Therefore, is identied with a collisional spin-uctuation rate.

For nucleons interacting by an OPE potential one may estimate
without much eort. The N N cross section is dimensionally 2 /m2N .
A typical thermal nucleon velocity is v = (3T /mN )1/2 yielding for a
5/2
typical collision rate coll = vN N nB 2 T 1/2 mN nB . Because
|| 1 in a collision, coll . This estimate agrees
with the
detailed result of Eq. (4.7) apart from a numerical factor 4 .
146
4.6.6
Chapter 4
Classical vs. Quantum Result
In order to make contact with the quantum calculation that led to the
axion emission rate in Eq. (4.6) it is useful to juxtapose it with the
classical result in terms of the spin-density structure function. The
classical calculation led to
2
S () = 2 2
+ 2 /4
(4.70)
while the quantum result is
S () = 2 s(/T )
1
e/T
for > 0,
for < 0.
(4.71)
The function s(x) has the property s(0) = 1, it is even, and according
to the f-sum rule must decrease for large x. In Fig. 4.7 the classical and
quantum results are shown as dotted and dashed lines, respectively,
where for the purpose of illustration s(x) = (1 + x2 /4)1/4 has been
assumed.
Fig. 4.7. Classical, quantum, and compound spin-density structure function in the nondegenerate limit according to Eq. (4.70) and Eq. (4.71) with
/T = 0.2 and s(x) = (1 + x2 /4)1/4 .
This comparison highlights an important weakness of the classical result: it does not obey the detailed-balance requirement S () =
S () e/T . The classical correlators are invariant under time reection t t and thus symmetric under . Again, the classical
result is adequate only for || <
T.
147
Equation (4.71) also highlights an important weakness of the quantum result: It does not include the interference eect from multiple
collisions at || <
because the calculation was done assuming individual, isolated collisions. The normalization condition Eq. (4.58) can
then be satised only by accepting a pathological infrared behavior of
S () like the one suggested by Sawyer (1995).
The classical and the quantum results thus both violate fundamental
requirements. The quantum calculation applies for || >
while the
<
classical one for || T . If T (dilute medium) the regimes of
<
validity overlap for <
|| T and the results agree beautifully. In
this case the two calculations mutually conrm and complement each
other. The compound structure function, where the quantum result is
multiplied with 2 /( 2 +2 /4), fullls the detailed-balance requirement
and approximately the normalization condition. Therefore, it probably
is a good rst guess for the overall shape of S ().
4.6.7
High-Density Behavior
In a SN core one is typically in the limit T so that the regime

<
of overlapping validity <
|| T between a classical and a perturbative quantum calculation no longer exists. Rather, one is in the
<
opposite situation where for T <
|| neither approach appears
directly justied. Because the structure function S () determines all
axial-vector interaction rates in the long-wavelength limit, it is rather
unclear what their high-density behavior might be.
Still, one has important general information about S (). The detailed-balance condition S () = S () e/T reveals that it is enough
to specify S () for positive energy transfers (energy given to the
medium). In the classical limit S (||) = / 2 , while the f-sum rule
informs us that the quantum version must fall o somewhat faster with
large ||. Finally, if spin-spin correlations can be neglected, the normalization condition 0 d (1 + e/T ) S () = 2 obtains.
In order to illustrate the overall impact of the high-density behavior
on axion or neutrino pair emission rates and on neutrino scattering
rates, it is enough to take the classical limiting case for large ||, even
though it does not have an integrable f-sum. Thus a simple ansatz is
S (||) = 2
,
(4.72)
+ 2 /4
where is to be determined by the normalization condition. In the
dilute limit ( T ) this implies while in the dense limit
( T ) one nds /2.
148
Chapter 4
For axion bremsstrahlung,

the energy-loss rate of the medium is
given by a = Qa / 0 d 4 S () so that with Eq. (4.72) one needs

to evaluate
a
4 e/T
2 + 2 /4
(4.73)
with determined from the normalization condition. In the dilute

limit ( T ) one may ignore in the denominator, so that
a . This is indeed what one expects from a bremsstrahlung process
for which the volume energy-loss rate is proportional to the density
squared, and thus a proportional to the density which appears in the
spin-uctuation rate .
In the high-density limit ( /2 T ) the denominator in
Eq. (4.73) is dominated by because the exponential factor suppresses
the integrand for T so that one expects a to be a decreasing
function of . In Fig. 4.8 the variation of a with /T is shown
(solid line), taking Eq. (4.72) for the spin-density structure function.
The dashed line shows the naive rate, based on / 2 which ignores
multiple-scattering eects, and which violates the normalization condition. Fig. 4.8 illustrates that even very basic and global properties
of S () reveal an important modication of the axion emission rate
at high density: they saturate with an increasing spin-uctuation rate,
Fig. 4.8. Schematic variation of the axion emission rate per nucleon with
/T , taking Eq. (4.72) for the spin-density structure function. The dashed
line is the naive rate without the inclusion of multiple-scattering eects, i.e.
it is based on S (||) = / 2 .
149
and may even decrease at large densities, although such large values for
may never be reached in a nuclear medium as will become clear below.
The high-density downturn of the axion emission rate can be interpreted in terms of the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal eect (Landau
and Pomeranchuk 1953a,b; Feinberg and Pomeranchuk 1956; Migdal
1956) as pointed out by Raelt and Seckel (1991). The main idea is
that collisions interrupt the radiation process. The formation of a radiation quantum of frequency takes about a time 1 according to the
uncertainty principle and so if collisions are more frequent than this
time, the radiation process is suppressed. Classically, this eect was
demonstrated in the language of current correlators in Sect. 4.6.5.
The impact of the high-density behavior of S () on the neutralcurrent neutrino opacity is crudely estimated by the inverse mean free
path given in Eq. (4.35), averaged over a thermal energy spectrum of
the initial neutrino. Moreover, all expressions become much simpler if
one replaces the Fermi-Dirac occupation numbers with the MaxwellBoltzmann expression ei /T ; the resulting error is small for nondegenerate neutrinos. The relevant quantity is then
d1
d2 12 22 e1 /T S (1 2 ).
(4.74)
One integral can be done explicitly, leaving one with an integral over
the energy transfer alone. With Eq. (4.72) for the structure function
one nds

(T 2 + T /2 + 2 /12) e/T
1
d
.
(4.75)
2 + 2 /4
0
This expression is constant for T where = and thus the
structure function is essentially 2(). Indeed, the average scattering
cross section (or mean free path) is not expected to depend on the
density.
For dense media ( T ), however, the broadening of S () beyond a delta function leads to a decreasing average scattering rate. This
means that at a xed temperature the medium becomes more transparent to neutrinos with increasing density, even without the impact
of degeneracy eects. This behavior is shown in Fig. 4.9 in analogy to
the axion emission rate Fig. 4.8.
A decreasing cross section is intuitively understood if one recalls
that the nucleon spin is typically ipped in a collision with other nucleons because the interaction potential couples to the spin. Neutrino scattering with an energy transfer implies that properties of the medium
150
Chapter 4
Fig. 4.9. Schematic variation of the neutrino scattering rate per nucleon
(axial-vector interaction only) with /T , taking Eq. (4.72) for the spindensity structure function. The dashed line is the naive rate without the
inclusion of multiple-scattering eects, i.e. it is based on S () = 2().
that uctuate on faster time scales cannot be resolved. Therefore, if

a nucleon spin ips many times within the time scale 1 , the probe
sees a vanishing average spin and the scattering rate is reduced accordingly.
For the vector current, the relevant zeroth component does not uctuate so that this contribution to neutrino scattering is not suppressed
(Sect. 4.6.4). This observation is intimately tied to the absence of
bremsstrahlung emission of neutrino pairs by the vector current. Both
of these eects are summarized in the statement that the vector-current
structure function S () is always given as23 2(), allowing for scattering (energy transfer = 0), but not for bremsstrahlung.
23
This statement is based on the assumption that there are no spatial correlations
among the nucleonspossibly a poor approximation in a dense medium. Moreover,
collective oscillations may occur so that it can be too simplistic to treat the medium
as consisting of essentially free, individual nucleons (Iwamoto and Pethick 1982).
Calculations of the long-wavelength structure factor by Sawyer (1988, 1989) in a
specic nucleon interaction model showed a substantial suppression of S (0) and
thus, of the neutrino mfp. Other related works are those of Haensel and Jerzak
(1987) and of Horowitz and Wehrberger (1991a,b) who calculated the dynamic
structure functions within certain interaction models. Unfortunately, these works
do not shed much light on the high-density behavior of the quantities which are of
prime interest to this book such as the axion emission rate from a hot SN core.
151
The axion emission and the neutrino scattering rates begin to be

suppressed at high density if exceeds a few T . The numerical value
Eq. (4.34) that was derived in a simple OPE calculation indicates that
such large may be expected in a nuclear medium. Of course, one
may well ask if a perturbative calculation of the spin-uctuation rate is
adequate if such a calculation fails for the neutrino scattering rate. Nucleon spins uctuate because of their spin-dependent interaction with
other nucleons and thus are themselves subject to spin averaging eects.
The question of the true value of in a nuclear medium (as opposed
to the OPE-calculated one) can be addressed empirically by virtue of
the SN 1987A neutrino signal and theoretically by the f-sum rule.
Because the axial-vector current contribution to the standard neutral-current scattering rate dominates (the cross section is proportional
to CV2 + 3CA2 ), it would be much easier for neutrinos to diuse out of
the hot SN core if the axial-current scattering rate were signicantly
suppressed. The observed SN 1987A neutrino signal would have been
much shorter than predicted in standard cooling calculations. The
impact of reduced neutrino opacities on the SN 1987A signal has been
studied by Keil, Janka, and Raelt (1995); see Sect. 13.6. The main
conclusion is that a suppression of the axial-vector current opacity by
more than about a factor of 2 is not compatible with the SN 1987A
signal duration. This result would indicate that the eective never
becomes much larger than a few T .
Theoretically, the f-sum rule Eq. (4.58) allows one to relate to
the average spin-spin interaction energy in the medium. According to
Sigls (1995b) estimate one concludes, again, that does not exceed
a few T in a nuclear medium.
These results imply that even in a dense medium the axial-vector
scattering rate is not suppressed as strongly as one may have expected
on the basis of a naive estimate of . It still remains impossible to calculate its exact magnitude from rst principles. Therefore, the neutralcurrent neutrino opacity remains an adjustable function of density for
practical SN cooling calculations much as the equation of state.
4.7
Eective Nucleon Mass and Coupling
In a dense medium it is not necessarily possible to use the vacuum

masses and coupling constants to determine interaction rates. The
axial-vector neutrino couplings are probably suppressed somewhat (Appendix B). For the pion-nucleon coupling, Turner, Kang, and Steigman
152
Chapter 4
(1989) argued on the basis of the nonlinear sigma model that the combination of parameters 2 a /m2N should remain approximately constant.
Mayle et al. (1989) similarly found that this parameter should remain
somewhere in the range 0.31.5 of its vacuum value.
The nucleon eective mass mN deviates substantially from the vacuum value mN = 939 MeV. This shift has an impact on the kinematics
of reactions and the nucleon phase-space distribution. A calculation of
mN has to rely on an eective theory which describes the interaction
of nucleons and mesons. A typical result from a self-consistent relativistic Brueckner calculation including vacuum uctuations is shown
in Fig. 4.10. For conditions relevant for a SN core, an eective value as
low as mN /mN = 0.5 is conceivable.
Fig. 4.10. Eective nucleon mass in a nuclear medium according to a selfconsistent relativistic Brueckner calculation (Horowitz and Serot 1987). Nuclear density corresponds to about 0 = 31014 g/cm3 .
4.8
The URCA Processes
Neutral-current weak processes are of prime interest for the topics studied in this book because they are closely related to exotic reactions
involving new particles such as axions. For completeness, however,
it must be mentioned that the charged-current reactions depicted in
Fig. 4.11 dominate the neutrino energy-loss rate of old neutron stars,
and also dominate the e opacity in young SN cores. The processes
n p e e (neutron decay) and e p n e are usually called the URCA
153
reactions after a casino in Rio de Janeiro. It must have been as easy

to lose money there as it is to lose energy in reactions which produce a
neutrino whether the electron is in the initial or nal state.
Fig. 4.11. The URCA processes. For the modied versions, there are obvious
other graphs with the leptons attached to other nucleon lines, and exchange
amplitudes.
However, in a neutron star the direct URCA processes can be highly

suppressed by energy-momentum conservation. Because all participating degenerate fermions are close to their Fermi surface one must require pF,p + pF,e > pF,n . Because the proton and electron concentration
is small in a neutron star, it was thought that this triangle condition
could not be satised. However, the equilibrium proton concentration
depends on details of the equation of stateeven in a naive model with
free fermions it is a sensitive function of the eective nucleon mass (Appendix D). Therefore, it is conceivable that the direct URCA processes
actually do take place in neutron stars (Boguta 1981; Lattimer et al.
1991), in which case they provide a cooling mechanism much faster
than all other proposed possibilities.
If the triangle condition is fullled, the energy-loss rate is (Lattimer
et al. 1991)
QURCA =
457 2
GF cos2 C (1 + 3CA2 ) m2N pF,e T 6 ,
10080
(4.76)
where C 0.24 is the Cabbibo angle and CA is the charged-current

axial-vector constant which is 1.26 in vacuum while in nuclear matter
it is suppressed somewhat (Appendix B).
154
Chapter 4
If the triangle condition is not satised the URCA processes require bystander particles to absorb momentum, leading to the modied URCA process shown in Fig. 4.11 (Chiu and Salpeter 1964). Of
course, as below in Sect. 4.9.1, the missing momentum can be provided
by pions or a pion condensate (Bahcall and Wolf 1965a,b).
An explicit result for the modied URCA rate in the OPE model
for the nucleon interactions is (Friman and Maxwell 1979)
Qmod.
URCA
11513 2 2
G cos2 C CA2 pF,e T 8 ,
120960 F
(4.77)
ignoring factors of order unity to account for a nonzero m and nucleon

correlations. As in the processes, only the axial-vector coupling
contributes. Some details of the phase-space integration can be found
in Shapiro and Teukolsky (1983).24
The modied URCA reactions (Fig. 4.11) are closely related to
bremsstrahlung and the inelastic scattering process N N N N discussed earlier. It is interesting that the rate for the e p n n n e process does not diverge, in contrast with N N N N where multiplescattering eects had to be invoked to obtain a sensible result. The
divergence was due to the intermediate nucleon going on-shell for a
vanishing energy transfer. In e p n n n e the electron has the energy
EF,e , the neutrino T , and because EF,e T (degenerate electrons!), the
minimum energy transfer to the leptons is EF,e and thus never zero. Of
course, this is the reason why the modied URCA reaction was invoked in the rst place: if the intermediate nucleon line is cut, the two
sub-processes are suppressed by energy-momentum constraints.
The direct and modied URCA process should be expressed in terms
of a common structure function applicable to charged-current processes.
One may expect that at high density, spin and isospin uctuations may
suppress these reactions in analogy to the neutral-current processes
discussed in the previous section. However, the URCA processes have
not been discussed in the literature from this particular perspective.
The equivalent of the modied URCA process for quark matter was
calculated by Iwamoto (1980, 1982), more recently by Goyal and Anand
(1990), and numerically by Ghosh, Phatak, and Sahu (1994) who claim
that Iwamotos phase-space approximations can lead to substantial errors in the emission rate.
24
Shapiro and Teukolskys phase-space volume involves a factor p3F,e because in

their treatment of the nuclear matrix element there is no cancellation of p2F,e with
1/ 2 from the nucleon propagator which occurs in a bremsstrahlung calculation.
4.9
4.9.1
155
Novel Phases of Nuclear Matter

Pion Condensate
Free particles cannot radiate because of energy-momentum constraints

which can be overcome by exchanging momentum with bystander
particles (bremsstrahlung). No bystander is required if the momentum
is taken up by the pion eld directly which in Fig. 4.1 only mediated the
nucleon interaction (Bahcall and Wolf 1965a,b). This possibility is particularly important if a pion condensate develops so that the medium
is characterized by a macroscopic, classical pion eld. The pion dispersion relation can be such that the lowest energy state involves a
nonvanishing momentum k (Baym 1973; Kunihiro et al. 1993; Migdal
et al. 1990). Nucleons can exchange pions with the condensate and
thereby pick up a momentum k which then allows for the radiation of
axions or other particles (Fig. 4.12).
Fig. 4.12. Axion emission by nucleons scattering o a pion condensate.

There is another amplitude with the axion attached to N1 .
The pion condensate causes a periodic potential for the nucleons

which thus must be described as quasi-particles or Bloch states with
a main momentum component p and admixtures p k . Because an
eigenstate of energy is no longer an eigenstate of momentum, these
quasi-particles can emit radiation without violating energy-momentum
conservation. Therefore, the process of Fig. 4.12 can be equally def N
f a.
scribed as a decay N
1
2
The rate for this reaction was calculated by Muto, Tatsumi, and
Iwamoto (1994) who found that the dominant contribution was from a
condensate. It forms a periodic potential A sin(k r) where A is a
dimensionless amplitude which is small compared to unity for a weakly
developed condensate. The Bloch states are to lowest order in A
f = N A0
N
p
p
Npk
Np+k
+
,
Ep+k Ep Epk Ep
(4.78)
156
Chapter 4
where Np is a plane-wave nucleon state with energy Ep and spin orientation relative to k , and 0 is a coupling constant.
In the nonrelativistic limit the axion energy-loss rate corresponding
f N
f a is written as
to the decay N
1
2
Qa =
d3 k
d3 p1 d3 p2
f1 (1 f2 )
2(2)3
(2)3 (2)3
2 (E1 E2 )
|M|2 ,
(4.79)
spins
where k is the axion momentum, p1,2 the nucleon momenta, and f1,2
their occupation numbers. The matrix element, averaged over axion
emission angles (the condensate is not isotropic!) is found to be

|M|2 =
spins
C0 geA C1
2fa
)2
4
3
A2 20
(2)3 3 (p + k ) + 3 (p k ) ,
(4.80)
where p = p1 p2 k. The isoscalar and isovector axion coupling

constants are C0 = 12 (Cp + Cn ) and C1 = 21 (Cp Cn ) in terms of their
couplings to protons and neutrons. The isovector current carries a
renormalized axial-vector coupling constant for which Muto, Tatsumi,
and Iwamoto (1994) found geA 0.43 1.26 = 0.54.
The phase-space integration was carried out by neglecting the axion
momentum in 3 (p k ) and taking the degenerate limit. Then,
Qa =
45
C0 geA C1
2fa
)2
A2 20 m2N T 4
,
|k |
(4.81)
an emission rate with a relatively soft temperature dependence.

For a numerical estimate Muto, Tatsumi, and Iwamoto (1994) found
that in cold neutron-star matter near the critical density (about 2.1
times nuclear) k 410 MeV, the neutron and proton Fermi momenta
are 410 and 150 MeV, respectively (corresponding to Yp = 0.04), and
the coupling strength to the condensate is 0 105 MeV. Therefore,
Qa = a A2
2 20 T 4
= a A2 1.031044 erg cm3 s1 T94 ,
45 |k |
where a [2mN (C0 geA C1 )/2fa ]2 /4 and T9 T /109 K.
(4.82)
157
Instead of an axion one may also emit a neutrino pair in Fig. 4.12.
The corresponding energy-loss rate was worked out by Muto and Tatsumi (1988) who found
Q =
2 e 2 2 2 2 20 T 6
C G m A
.
945 A F N
|k |
(4.83)
Here, CeA is the renormalized neutron neutral-current coupling constant;

in vacuum CA = 1.26/2. A somewhat dierent emission rate was
found by Senatorov and Voskresensky (1987).
A process related to that shown in Fig. 4.12 is pionic Compton
scattering N N a involving thermal pions. The equivalent of the
axion emission rate was calculated by Turner (1992) and by Raelt and
Seckel (1995). This process could be of some importance in the hot
nondegenerate medium of a SN core. However, a thermal population of
pions yields a rate which is always less important than bremsstrahlung.
For a charged pion or kaon condensate, the equivalent of the modied URCA process can occur by exchanging a meson with the condensate rather than with a bystander nucleon. Recent calculations of
such processes include Senatorov and Voskresensky (1987), Muto and
Tatsumi (1988), and Thorsson et al. (1995).
4.9.2
Quark Matter
It has been speculated that a neutron star may actually undergo a

phase transition where the nucleons dissolve in favor of a quark-gluon
plasma. Notably, it is possible that the true ground state of nuclear
matter consists of strange quark matter with about equal numbers
of up, down, and strange quarks. Such a system can emit axions by
virtue of quark-quark bremsstrahlung (Fig. 4.13).
Fig. 4.13. Axion emission by quark-quark bremsstrahlung. There is a total

of eight amplitudes, four with the axion attached to each quark line, and an
exchange graph each with q3 q4 .
158
Chapter 4
The gluon in Fig. 4.13 couples to the quarks with the strong nestructure constant s and the gluon propagator involves an eective
mass for which Anand, Goyal, and Iha (1990) used m2g = (6s /) p2F
where pF is the Fermi momentum of the quark sea. The axion coupling to quarks is the usual derivative form (Cq /2fa ) q 5 q with
q = u, d, s. After a cumbersome but straightforward calculation Anand
et al. found for the energy-loss rate in the degenerate limit
62 2 s2 pF T 6
Qa =
945 (2fa )2
Cq2 (I1 + 2I2 ) for qq qqa,

(Cq2 + Cq2 ) I1 for qq qq a,
(4.84)
where the angular integrals are

I1
s5 (1 + c4 )
1 2
d
d
,
2 2 0
(s2 s2 + 2 )2
0
I2
1 2
s5
d
d
,
2 2 0
(s2 s2 + 2 )(s2 c2 + 2 )
0
(4.85)
where s sin(/2), s sin(/2), c cos(/2), and 2 m2g /2p2F =

3s /2. Numerically, I1 = 12.3, 4.23, and 2.25 for s = 0.2, 0.4, and
0.6, while I2 = 2.34, 1.30, and 0.86, respectively.
The total emission rate involves three processes with equal quarks
(qq = uu, dd, ss), and three with dierent ones (qq = ud, us, ds) so
that Qa is the prefactor of Eq. (4.84) times (Cu2 + Cd2 + Cs2 )(3I1 + 2I2 ),
to be compared with Eq. (4.10) for degenerate neutron matter. The
ratio between the rates is
Qqq
Cu2 + Cd2 + Cs2 pF,q s2 2 (3I1 + 2I2 )
a
=
,
Qnn
Cn2
pF,n 2 G(m /pF,n )
a
(4.86)
where the function G(u) was given in Eq. (4.12). The ratio of coupling
constants is model dependent (Sect. 14.3.3), the Fermi momenta are
approximately equal for equal densities.
For a typical value s = 0.4 one has s2 /2 = 0.6103 while the last
factor is about 140 with G = 0.7 (Fig. 4.3) so that the last two factors
together are about 0.08. Hence, the emission rate from quark matter
is much smaller than that from neutron matter because is so large
relative to s . In the inevitable presence of protons in a neutron star,
the np process will be even more important than nn (Fig. 4.4), further
enhancing the emission rate of nuclear matter relative to quark matter.
For neutrino pairs the ratio of the emission rates is about the same
as for axions and so quark matter is much less eective at emission
159
than nuclear matter (Burrows 1979; Anand, Goyal, and Iha 1990). This
observation has little eect on the neutrino cooling rate of a quark
star because the URCA processes, which are based on charged-current
reactions, dominate for both nuclear or quark matter.
For axions, however, it may seem that the emission rate is much
suppressed relative to nuclear matter. This is certainly true if axion stands for any generic pseudoscalar Nambu-Goldstone boson. The
QCD axion, however, which was introduced to solve the CP problem
of strong interactions (Chapter 14) necessarily has a two-gluon coupling which allows for the gluonic Primako eect (Fig. 4.14) which is
analogous to the photon Primako eect discussed in Sect. 5.2.
Fig. 4.14. Axion emission by the gluon Primako eect.
Altherr (1991) has calculated the emissivity of a hot quark-gluon

plasma and found that it was similar to that of a nuclear medium
at the same temperature and density. Ellis and Salati (1990) found
a much smaller emission rate because they included only the gluonic
plasmon decay process gT gL + , much in analogy to the corresponding photonic process discussed in Sect. 5.2.2. This decay process,
however, is only part of the axion emissivity by the gluon eld uctuations.
For highly degenerate quark matter corresponding to old neutron
stars the emission rate has not be calculated as far as I know.
4.9.3
Bubble Phase
In a hot lepton-rich neutron star the nuclear medium in the density

regime 21 0 to 0 (nuclear matter density 0 = 31014 g cm3 ) may
form a bubble phase with regions of low density embedded in the
medium. Leinson (1993) has estimated the bremsstrahlung rate for the
neutral-current reactions N + bubble bubble + N + . Naturally,
he found that only the axial-vector current contributes. Also, it is easy
to translate his results into an axion emission rate. Apparently, the
bubble phase can be important for early neutron-star cooling.
160
Chapter 4
4.10
Emission of Right-Handed Dirac Neutrinos
So far in this chapter neutrinos were assumed to be massless particles which interact only by the standard left-handed weak current. It
is possible, however, that neutrinos have a Dirac mass in which case
any reaction with a nal-state (anti)neutrino produces both positive
and negative helicity states. Typically, the wrong-helicity states will
emerge in a fraction (m /2E )2 of all cases because of the mismatch
between chirality (eigenstates of 5 ) and helicity. For E m the
wrong-helicity states correspond approximately to right-handed chirality states and so their interaction-rate with the ambient medium is
weaker by an approximate factor (m /2E )2 . This implies that for a
suciently small mass they would not be trapped in a SN core and
thus carry away energy in an invisible channel, allowing one to set
constraints on a Dirac neutrino mass from the observed neutrino signal
of SN 1987A (Sect. 13.8.1). Here, the relationship between the production rate of left- and right-handed neutrinos is explored in some
detail because the simple scaling with (m /2E )2 is not correct in
all cases.
When a neutrino interacts with a medium the transition probability
from a state with four-momentum K1 = (1 , k1 ) to one with K2 =
(2 , k2 ) is written as W (K1 , K2 ). The function W is dened for both
positive and negative energies. The emission probability for a pair
(K1 )(K2 ) is then W (K1 , K2 ), the absorption probability for a pair
is W (K1 , K2 ). The collisional rate of change of the occupation number
fk1 of a neutrino eld mode k1 is then given by

dfk1

=
dt coll
d3 k2 [
WK2 ,K1 fk2 (1 fk1 ) WK1 ,K2 fk1 (1 fk2 )
(2)3
]
+ WK2 ,K1 (1 fk1 )(1 f k2 ) WK1 ,K2 fk1 f k2 , (4.87)

where the variables of W were written as subscripts. The rst term
corresponds to neutrino scatterings into the mode k1 from all other
modes, the second term is scattering out of mode k1 into all other
modes, the third term is pair production with a nal-state neutrino k1 ,
and the fourth term is pair absorption of a neutrino of momentum k1
and an antineutrino of any momentum. f k is the occupation number
for the antineutrino mode k; (1fk ) or (1f k ) represent Pauli blocking
factors. This collision integral only includes (eective) neutral-current
processes while charged-current reactions were ignored.
161
According to the discussion of Sect. 4.6 the transition probability is

given as
W (K1 , K2 ) =
G2F nB
S N ,
8 21 22
(4.88)
where S is an eective structure function given in terms of the vector,

axial-vector and mixed structure function of the medium dened in
Eq. (4.38), and nB is the baryon density. The tensor N is the squared
matrix element of the neutrino current; it was given in Eq. (4.17) in
terms of K1 and K2 . In an isotropic medium the tensorial composition
of the dynamical structure function can be expressed in terms of the
energy-momentum transfer K and the four-velocity U of the medium;
U = (1, 0, 0, 0) in its rest frame. Thus, in analogy to Eqs. (4.40) and
(4.41) one may write
S = S1 U U + S2 (U U g ) + S3 K K
+ S4 (K U + U K ) + i S5 U K ,
(4.89)
where the functions S ( = 1, . . . , 5) depend on medium properties

and on the energy-momentum transfer K = (, k). The transition
probability is then found to be (Raelt and Seckel 1995)
W (K1 , K2 ) =
G2F nB [
(1 + cos )S1 + (3 cos )S2
4
2(1 cos )(1 + 2 )S5 ,
(4.90)
where is the neutrino scattering angle. The terms proportional to S3

and S4 vanish identically.
Next, one may consider processes involving massive Dirac neutrinos with specied helicities. Gaemers, Gandhi, and Lattimer (1989)
showed that in this case the same expressions apply with N as constructed in Eq. (4.17) if one substitutes Ki 12 (Ki m Si ), i = 1
or 2, where the plus sign refers to , the minus sign to , and Si is
the covariant spin vector. For relativistic neutrinos one may consider
a noncovariant lowest-order expansion in terms of m . In this limit Ki
remains unchanged for left-handed states while
f = (m /2 )2 ( , k )
Ki = (i , ki ) K
i
i
i
i
(4.91)
for right-handed ones. After this substitution has been performed all
further eects of m are of higher order so that one may neglect m
everywhere except in the global spin-ip factor.
162
Chapter 4
The dispersion relation of neutrinos in a SN diers markedly from

the vacuum form; in the core the eective m is several 10 keV. However, m in Eq. (4.91) is the vacuum mass which couples left-handed
to right-handed states and thus leads to spin ip while the mediuminduced mass only aects the dispersion relation of left-handed states.
This view is supported by a detailed study of Pantaleone (1991). Of
course, for nonrelativistic neutrinos the situation is more complicated
because an approximate identication of helicity with chirality is not
possible.
Next consider a specic process which involves a left- and a righthanded neutrino such as spin-ip scattering L (KL ) R (KR ).
Then, one needs to construct N from K1 = (L , kL ) and K2 =
(m /2R )2 (R , kR ). The contraction with S leads to (Raelt and
Seckel 1995)
2
f (K , K ) = GF nB
W
L
R
m
2R
)2 [
(1 cos )S1 + (3 + cos )S2

]
+ 4R2 (1 cos )S3 4R (1 cos )S4 + 2(R L )(1 + cos )S5 .

(4.92)
Following Gaemers, Gandhi, and Lattimer (1989) it must be emphasized that this expression diers in more than the factor (m /2R )2
from the nonip case Eq. (4.90). This dierence is due to the changed
angular momentum budget of reactions with spin-ipped neutrinos.
This angular-momentum dierence between spin-ip and no-ip
processes is nicely illustrated by virtue of the pion decay process
. If both nal-state neutrinos are left-handed, i.e. if has negative and positive helicity, this decay is forbidden by angular momentum conservation. This is seen most easily if one recalls that it is the
pion current that interacts with the left-handed neutrino current.
The squared matrix element of the pion current is thus proportional
to K K . For a pion decaying at rest only the 00-component contributes. Contraction with N leads to identically zero if one recalls
that for the nal-state neutrinos 1 = 2 and k1 = k2 . For the spinip process one must use the reversed momentum instead so that in
N one must use 1 = 2 and k1 = k2 , leading to a nonvanishing
contribution. The decay of thermal pions is an important process for
populating the right-handed states of massive Dirac neutrinos in the
early universe (Lam and Ng 1991). Contrary to a discussion by Natale (1991), however, pion decays do not seem to provide a particularly
strong contribution in SN cores (Raelt and Seckel 1991).
163
Right-handed neutrinos can be produced by the interaction with

all medium constituents. For a SN core, the production rate from the
interaction with charged leptons such as e+ e L R or L e e R
was explicitly studied by Perez and Gandhi (1990) and by Lam and Ng
(1992). Still, in a SN core the dominant contribution to the interaction
between neutrinos and the medium is due to the nucleons.
Therefore, one may simplify the expression Eq. (4.92) by applying
the same approximations that were used earlier in Sect. 4.6 in the context of purely left-handed neutrinos. Notably, one may use the nonrelativistic and long-wavelength limits which reveal, again, that only the
terms proportional to S1 and S2 contribute, and that these structure
functions can be taken to be functions of the energy transfer alone.25
Moreover, the neutrino phase-space integration will always average the
cos term to zero. Then, the spin-ip reaction rate is indeed simply
the nonip rate times the spin-ip factor (m /2E )2 .
Right-handed neutrinos can be produced by spin-ip scattering of
left-handed ones L R , or by the emission of pairs L R or R L .
In a SN core, left-handed neutrinos are trapped while right-handed
ones can freely escape whence the quantity of interest is the energyloss rate of the medium in terms of right-handed states. The total
energy-loss rate in R is then QR = Qscat + Qpair where scat refers to
spin-ip scattering and pair to the pair-emission process. The two
contributions are
Qscat =
Qpair =
d3 kL d3 kR f
WKL ,KR fkL R ,
(2)3 (2)3
d3 kL d3 kR f
WKL ,KR (1 f kL )R .
(2)3 (2)3
(4.93)
An analogous expression pertains to the emission of R ; if the trapped

left-handed neutrinos are nondegenerate this contribution has the same
magnitude as that for the emission of R .
f can be
Next, consider the limit where the transition probability W
represented in terms of a single structure function26 S() = S1 () +
3S2 (). Further, the possibility of neutrino degeneracy is ignored which
allows one to approximate the left-handed neutrino Fermi-Dirac distribution by a Maxwell-Boltzmann one, (e/T + 1)1 e/T . Then the
25
In the notation of Sect. 4.6 and for a single species of nucleons one has in this
2
limit S1 = CV2 S and S2 = CA
S .
26
2
In the notation of Sect. 4.6 this is S = CV2 S + 3CA
S in a medium consisting
of a single species of nucleons.
164
Chapter 4
energy-loss rates are

Qscat
Qpair
[( )
]
G2F m2 nB T 4
2
+ 6 + 12 S(),
=
d
4 4
T
T
0
( )
G2F m2 nB T 4
1 4
=
d
S(),
4 4
12 T
0
(4.94)
where the detailed-balance condition S() = S()e/T was used.

These rates include a factor of 2 for the emission of R and R .
As noted by Raelt and Seckel (1995), unless the functional form
of S() is very bizarre one has Qscat Qpair . This is easily understood if one observes that in a scattering process the energy available
for the nal-state R is that of the initial-state L plus energy that
is contributed by the medium. For pair emission, the energy for the
nal-state L and R both have to be provided by the medium. Therefore, the spin-ip scattering process is favored by the neutrino phase
space.27 In a SN core the production of right-handed Dirac neutrinos is given essentially by the standard scattering rate times the factor (m /2E )2 .
27
This conclusion is in contrast to a suggestion that the pair-emission rates

could be relatively important in a SN core (Turner 1992). This statement was
not based on a self-consistent treatment of the medium structure functions, but
rather on a perturbative treatment of the processes involved. The conict between
Turners statement and our nding, which essentially was based on phase-space
considerations, highlights the inadequacy of naive perturbative results in a nuclear
medium.
Chapter 5
Two-Photon Coupling of
Low-Mass Bosons
Well-known particles such as neutral pions, or hypothetical ones such
as axions or gravitons, each have a two-photon interaction vertex. It
allows for radiative decays of the form 2 as well as for the
Primako conversion in the presence of external electric or
magnetic elds. The Primako conversion of photons into gravitons in
putative cosmic magnetic elds could cause temperature uctuations
of the cosmic microwave background radiation. In stars, the Primako
conversion of photons leads to the production of gravitons and axions,
although the graviton luminosity is always negligible. The Primako
conversion of axions into photons serves as the basis for a detection
scheme for galactic axions, and was used in several laboratory axion
search experiments. The modied Maxwell equations in the presence
of very low-mass pseudoscalars would substantially modify pulsar electrodynamics. These physical phenomena are explored and current laboratory and astrophysical limits on the axion-photon coupling are reviewed.
5.1
Electromagnetic Coupling of Pseudoscalars
The idea that symmetries of the fundamental interactions can be broken by the vacuum or ground state of the elds plays an important
role in modern particle physics. The breakdown of a global symmetry by the vacuum expectation value of a Higgs-like eld leads to the
existence of massless particles, the Nambu-Goldstone bosons of the
broken symmetry. One well-known example are the pions which are
165
166
Chapter 5
the Nambu-Goldstone bosons of an approximate SU (2) symmetry of

the system of nucleons and pions in the sigma model (e.g. Itzykson
and Zuber 1983). Another example is the hypothetical axion which is
the Nambu-Goldstone boson of the Peccei-Quinn chiral U (1) symmetry
that would solve the CP problem of strong interactions (Chapter 14).
Both pions and axions carry a small mass because the underlying symmetry is not exact at low energies; they are sometimes called pseudo
Nambu-Goldstone bosons. An example for a true Nambu-Goldstone
boson is the hypothetical majoron which arises from the spontaneous
breakdown of a symmetry by a Higgs eld which would give the neutrinos Majorana masses (Sect. 15.7).
In these examples the Nambu-Goldstone bosons are pseudoscalars
because the underlying symmetry is chiral. Unless the CP symmetry
is violated, their possible coupling to photons must be of the form
Lint = 14 ga F Fe a = ga E B a,
(5.1)
where a is the pseudoscalar eld; the axion will serve as a generic

example. Further, ga is a constant with the dimension (energy)1 , F
is the electromagnetic eld strength tensor, Fe its dual, and E and B are
the electric and magnetic elds, respectively. Because E is a polar and
B an axial vector, E B is a pseudoscalar under a CP transformation
and so Lint remains invariant.
New scalar particles almost inevitably would also couple to photons with a CP conserving structure Lint 14 F F = 12 (E 2 + B 2 ).
Therefore, everything that will be said about axions applies mutatis
mutandis to scalar particles as well.
Gravitons would also have a two-photon vertex. Much of what is
said about axions also applies to them, except that their weak couplings render most of the arguments irrelevantan exception will be
mentioned in Sect. 5.5.5.
Returning to the case of pseudoscalar Nambu-Goldstone bosons,
by the very construction of the underlying models they interact with
certain fermions by a pseudoscalar coupling of the form
Lint = ig 5 a,
(5.2)
where g = m/f is a Yukawa coupling given in terms of the fermion

mass m and an energy scale f related to the vacuum expectation value
of the Higgs eld which breaks the underlying symmetryfor axions
the Peccei-Quinn scale fa (Chapter 14), for pions the pion decay constant f = 93 MeV. In the latter example the relevant fermions are
Two-Photon Coupling of Low-Mass Bosons
167
the nucleons, for axions they are the quarks, possibly the charged leptons, and perhaps some exotic heavy quark state not contained in the
standard model. For majorons, such couplings exist to neutrinos, and
possibly to other fermions.
An interaction of the form Eq. (5.2) with charged fermions automatically leads to an electromagnetic coupling of the form Eq. (5.1)
because of the triangle amplitude shown in Fig. 5.1. For one fermion
of charge e and mass m an explicit evaluation leads to the relationship
(e.g. Itzykson and Zuber 1983)
ga =
=
,
m
f
(5.3)
where m was taken to be much larger than the axion and photon energies. Remarkably, because g = m/f this coupling does not depend
on the fermion mass, but only on the scale f of symmetry breaking.
In general, one must sum over all possible fermions, taking account
of the appropriate charges which are fractional for quarks, and also of
the proper pseudoscalar coupling to the individual fermions which may
vary from m/f by model-dependent factors of order unity.
Fig. 5.1. Triangle loop for the coupling of a pseudoscalar a (axion) to two
photons.
For massive pseudoscalars the two-photon coupling allows for a decay a 2 with a width
2
a2 = ga
m3a /64.
(5.4)
For pions in the sigma model, the only charged fermion is the proton.
Then g = /f and 2 = 2 m3 /64 3 f2 = 7.6 eV, in close
agreement with the experimental value. (For subtleties of interpretation
of this result in the context of current algebra see the standard eld
theory literature, e.g. Itzykson and Zuber 1983).
168
Chapter 5
The main point for the present discussion is that pseudoscalar massless or low-mass bosons are a natural consequence of certain extensions
of the standard model, and that these particles couple to photons according to Eq. (5.1) with a strength
ga =
Ca ,
fa
(5.5)
where fa is the energy scale of symmetry breaking and Ca is a modeldependent factor of order unity. (For axions, model-dependent details
of the couplings are discussed in Chapter 14.) In the following I will
explore a variety of consequences arising from this interaction.
5.2
5.2.1
Primako Process in Stars

Screened Cross Section and Emission Rate
The two-photon coupling of pions or other pseudoscalars allows for the

conversion a in an external electric or magnetic eld by virtue of
the amplitude shown in Fig. 5.2. This process was rst proposed by
Primako (1951) to study the --coupling which is experimentally
dicult to measure in free decays 2. In stars, this process
allows for the production of low-mass pseudoscalars in the electric elds
of nuclei and electrons (Dicus et al. 1978).
Fig. 5.2. Primako conversion between axions or other pseudoscalars and

photons in an external electromagnetic eld.
The Primako process turns out to be important for nonrelativistic

conditions where T me so that both electrons and nuclei can be
treated as heavy relative to typical energies of the ambient photons.
Therefore, ignoring recoil eects one nds for the dierential cross section in this limit (target charge Ze)
g 2 Z 2 |k ka |2
da
= a
,
d
8
q4
(5.6)
where q = k ka is the momentum transfer; the axion and photon

energies are the same.
169
This cross section exhibits the usual forward divergence from the
long-range Coulomb interaction. For ma = 0 it is cut o in vacuum by
the minimum necessary momentum transfer qmin = m2a /2 (ma );
2 1
the total cross section is then a = Z 2 ga
[ 2 ln(2/ma ) 14 ].
In a plasma, the long-range Coulomb potential is cut o by screening
eects; according to Sect. 6.4 the dierential cross section is modied
with a factor q2 /(kS2 + q2 ). In a nondegenerate medium the screening
scale is given by the Debye-H
uckel formula
(
)
4
nB Ye +
Zj2 Yj ,
T
j
kS2 =
(5.7)
where nB = /mu (atomic mass unit mu ) is the baryon density while

Ye and Yj are the number fractions per baryon of the electrons and
various nuclear species j. With this modication the total scattering
cross section is easily calculated (Raelt 1986a). Summing over all
targets one may derive an expression for the transition rate (decay
rate) of a photon of frequency into an axion of the same energy,
a
g2 T k2
= a S
32
[(
k2
1 + S2
4
4 2
ln 1 + 2
kS
1 ,
(5.8)
where the plasma mass of the initial-state photon and the axion mass
were neglected relative to the energy . In the limit kS this ex2
pression expands as a = ga
2 T /16 which is entirely independent
of the density and chemical composition.
For a stellar plasma, however, this approximation is usually not
justied. Ignoring the plasma frequency for the initial-state photons,
the energy-loss rate per unit volume is
Q=
2
ga
T7
2 d3 k a
=
F (2 ),
(2)3 e/T 1
4
(5.9)
where kS /2T and

]
[
(
)
2
2
x
x
dx (x2 + 2 ) ln 1 + 2 x2 x
, (5.10)
F (2 ) = 2
2 0
e 1
with x = /T . This function is shown in Fig. 5.3. In a standard solar

model 2 12 throughout the Sun with a variation of less than 15%. In
the core of an HB star with = 104 g/cm3 and T = 108 K it is 2 2.5.
One nds F = 0.98 and 1.84 for 2 = 2.5 and 12, respectively.
170
Chapter 5
Fig. 5.3. Function F (2 ) according to Eq. (5.10).
5.2.2
Plasmon Decay and Coalescence
Several authors have used the plasma frequency P instead of the

Debye-H
uckel wave number as a screening scale. In a nondegenerate
plasma kS2 /P2 me /T (Sect. 6.3) and so they overestimated the emission rate. Another source of confusion are statements that the decay
a was another axion emission process enabled by the 2 coupling.
This issue can be easily claried, but one needs to draw heavily on the
discussion of photon dispersion of Sect. 6.3.
A medium allows for both transverse and longitudinal electromagnetic excitations. In a nondegenerate and nonrelativistic plasma the
dispersion relation of the former is T2 kT2 = P2 (plasma frequency P )
while the latter oscillate essentially with a xed frequency L = P ,
independently of their wave number. Therefore, the plasmon decay
process T L a as well as the plasmon coalescence T L a are
indeed kinematically possible for kL > P .
It is easy to calculate the inverse lifetime of transverse excitations
against these processes
T a =
d3 ka
1
d3 kL
ZT ZL |M|2 (2)4
3
3
2L (2) 2a (2) 2T
[
4 (KT + KL Ka ) 4 (KT KL Ka )
+
, (5.11)
eL /T 1
1 eL /T
where ZT,L are the vertex renormalization factors. Here, the rst term
in square brackets corresponds to coalescence and so it involves a BoseEinstein occupation number for the initial-state L . The second term
171
is from decay; it involves a Bose stimulation factor [1 + (eL /T 1)1 ] =

(1eL /T )1 for the nal-state L . For the axions, a stimulation factor
is not included because they are assumed to escape immediately.
Because a longitudinal excitation has no magnetic eld, the electric eld in the matrix element corresponding to Eq. (5.1) must be
associated with a longitudinal, the magnetic eld with a transverse excitation. In general B = A and E = A0 t A with the vector
potential A. For a propagating mode A ei(tkx) where is a
polarization vector. This implies that B kT T where T is a polarization vector transverse to kT with 2T = 1, and E L L kL 0L
where L = (kL2 , L kL )kL1 (L2 kL2 )1/2 according to Eq. (6.27) so that
L ( 2 k 2 )1/2 . Then one nds from the usual Feynman rules
Ek
L
L
2
L (kT T )|2 .
(L2 kL2 ) |k
|M|2 = ga
(5.12)
L (kT T )|2 = |(k

L kT ) T |2 . Averaging over the two
Note that |k
L kT |2 .
transverse polarization states yields 12 |k
If one writes ZL = ZeL L2 /(L2 kL2 ) as in Sect. 6.3 and performs the
3
d kL integration in Eq. (5.11) one nds
T a
2
ga
a L
da da ZT ZeL
|kL kT |2
=
2
16 (2)
T
[
(T + L a ) (T L a )
+
.
eL /T 1
1 eL /T
(5.13)
In a nondegenerate, nonrelativistic plasma typically P T . Because

L = P one may expand the exponentials so that (eL /T 1)1 T /L
and also (1 eL /T )1 T /L . If T = O(T ) P one may ignore
L in the functions which are then trivial to integrate,
T a
2
T
ga
L kT |2 .
=
da ZT ZeL |k
2
8 (2)
(5.14)
In this limit a has the same energy as T while L has only provided
momentum.
To nish up, note that in the nondegenerate, nonrelativistic limit
ZT = ZeL = 1. Because P T and T = O(T ) we have P T
L kT |2 =
so that kT T . Moreover, kL = kT ka yielding |k
|ka kT |2 /|ka kT |2 = T2 (1 z 2 )/2(1 z) = 21 T2 (1 + z) where z is the
172
Chapter 5
cosine of the angle between ka and kT . The angular integration then

averages z to zero and leaves us with
T a =
2
ga
T
.
16
(5.15)
Collective longitudinal oscillations only exist for kL <

kD (Debye screening scale). Because a momentum transfer |kT ka | = O(T ) is required,
this result applies only for T <
kD . This conversion rate agrees with
the low- expansion of the Primako result Eq. (5.8).
It must be stressed that Eq. (5.15) is not an additional contribution
to the conversion rate, it is the same result derived in a dierent fashion.
Here, longitudinal plasmons in the static limit were used as the external
electric eld in which the Primako eect takes place. Before, the static
limit was taken from the start; the collective behavior of the electron
motion was reected in the screening of the Coulomb potential. These
two paths of performing the calculation in the end extracted the same
information from the electromagnetic polarization tensor which denes
both screening eects and the dispersion behavior of electromagnetic
excitations.
5.2.3
Axion Emission from Electromagnetic Plasma

Fluctuations
These simple calculations of the axion emission rate apply only in the
classical (nondegenerate, nonrelativistic) limit. Even though this is the
most relevant case from a practical perspective it is worth mentioning
how one proceeds for a more general evaluation. To this end note that
the 2 interaction Eq. (5.1) corresponds to a source term for the axion
wave equation,
( + m2a ) a = ga E B,
(5.16)
where = = t2 2 . Axions are then emitted by the E B uctuations caused by the presence of thermal electromagnetic radiation
as well as the collective and random motion of charged particles.
The Primako calculation in Sect. 5.2.1 used the (screened) electric
eld of charged particles and the magnetic eld of (transverse) electromagnetic radiation (photons) as a source. Actually, one can include
the magnetic eld of moving charges for this purpose. Then axions are
emitted in the collision of two particles (Fig. 5.4), a process sometimes
referred to as the electro Primako eect. Unsurprisingly, the emission rate is much smaller because the magnetic eld associated with
173
Fig. 5.4. Example for the electro Primako eect.
nonrelativistic moving particles is small. (For an explicit calculation

see Raelt 1986a.) Put another way, the dominant contribution to
magnetic eld uctuations in a nonrelativistic plasma is from photons,
not from moving charges.
In order to illustrate the relationship between eld uctuations and
axion emission consider the amplitude for the conversion of a classical
transverse electromagnetic wave into a classical axion wave in the presence of an electric eld conguration E(x). One nds from Eq. (5.16)
ga
ga
f () =
( k) d3 x eiqx E(x) =
( k) E(q),
4
4
(5.17)
where k and are the wave and polarization vector of the incident
wave, respectively, q is the momentum transfer to the axion, and
E(q) is a Fourier component of E(x). The dierential transition rate
is d/d = |f ()|2 so that
g2
da
= a 2 ( k)i ( k)j Ei (q)Ej (q),
d
(4)
(5.18)
where it was used that E(x) is real so that E (q) = E(q). If E(x) is
a random eld conguration one needs to take an ensemble average so
that the transition rate is proportional to Ei Ej q Ei (q)Ej (q).
The electric and magnetic eld uctuations of a plasma are intimately related to the medium response functions to electric and magnetic elds, i.e. to the polarization tensor. For a plasma at temperature T one can show on general grounds (Sitenko 1967)
Ei Ej q =
2
d
/T
2 e
1
(
qi qj Im L
qi qj
+ ij 2
2
2
q |L |
q
Im T
,
|T q2 / 2 |2
(5.19)
where L,T (, q) are the longitudinal and transverse dielectric permittivities of the medium (Sect. 6.3.3). A quantity such as Im L /|L |2 is
known as a spectral densityhere of the longitudinal uctuations.
174
Chapter 5
iq
j T /(1 + q2 /kS2 ) in the classiOne nds explicitly Ei Ej q = q
2
cal limit (Sitenko 1967) where kS is the Debye-H
uckel wave number of
Eq. (5.7). With this result one easily reproduces the Primako transition rate a (Raelt 1988a).
The language of spectral densities for the electromagnetic eld uctuations forms the starting point for a quantum calculation of the axion
emission rate in the framework of thermal eld theory. This program
was carried out in a series of papers by Altherr (1990, 1991), Altherr and
Kraemmer (1992), and Altherr, Petitgirard, and del Ro Gaztelurrutia
(1994). Naturally, in the classical limit they reproduced the Primako
transition rate T a of Eq. (5.8).
In the degenerate or relativistic limit their results cannot be represented in terms of simple analytic formulae. The most important
astrophysical environment to be used for extracting bounds on ga are
low-mass stars before and after helium ignition with a core temperature of about 108 K (Sect. 5.2.5). Altherr, Petitgirard, and del Ro
Gaztelurrutia (1994) gave numerical results for the energy-loss rate for
this temperature as a function of density shown in Fig. 5.5 (solid line).
The dashed line is the classical limit Eq. (5.9); it agrees well with the
general result in the low-density (nondegenerate) limit. In the degen-
Fig. 5.5. Energy-loss rate of a helium plasma at T = 108 K by axion emission

with ga = 1010 GeV1 . The solid line is from transverse-longitudinal
uctuations; the dashed line is the corresponding classical limit. The dotted
line is from transverse-transverse uctuations, i.e. in the axion source term
ga EB both elds are from transverse uctuations. (Adapted from Altherr,
Petitgirard, and del Ro Gaztelurrutia 1994.)
175
erate limit, the emission rate drops precipitously, an important feature

which will be taken advantage of in Sect. 5.2.5 below.
5.2.4
Solar Axion Spectrum
As a rst practical application it is easy to calculate the expected ux

of axions at Earth from the Primako conversion in the Sun where the
classical approximation is well justied. To this end van Bibber et al.
(1989) have integrated Eq. (5.9) over a standard solar model which
yields an axion luminosity
2
La = g10
1.7103 L ,
(5.20)
with L the solar luminosity and g10 ga 1010 GeV. (Recalling that
ga = (/fa ) Ca this corresponds to fa /Ca = 2.3107 GeV.) The
dierential ux at Earth is well approximated by the formula
dFa
(a /keV)3
2
= g10
4.021010 cm2 s1 keV1 a /1.08 keV
da
e
1
(5.21)
which is shown in Fig. 5.6. The average axion energy is a = 4.2 keV.
2
The total ux at Earth is Fa = g10
3.541011 cm2 s1 .
The standard Sun is about halfway through its main-sequence
evolution. Therefore, the solar axion luminosity must not exceed its
Fig. 5.6. Axion ux at Earth according to Eq. (5.25) from the Primako
conversion of photons in the Sun.
176
Chapter 5
photon luminosity; otherwise its nuclear fuel would have been spent
before reaching an age of 4.5109 yr. This requirement yields a bound
1
9
ga <
2.410 GeV .
(5.22)
Detailed solar evolution calculations of Raelt and Dearborn (1987)

showed that this bound was rm, but also that it could not be improved easily (Sect. 1.3.2). The present-day properties of the Sun could
be obtained by a suitable adjustment of the unknown presolar helium
abundance.
5.2.5
Globular-Cluster Bound on ga
Armed with the Primako emission rate Eq. (5.9) it is an easy task
to derive a bound on ga from the energy-loss argument applied to
globular-cluster stars (Sect. 2.5). We need to require that at T 108 K
the axionic energy-loss rate is below 10 erg g1 s1 for a density of about
0.6104 g cm3 , corresponding to a classical plasma, and for about
2105 g cm3 , corresponding to degeneracy. From Fig. 5.5 it is evident that the emission rate is a steeply falling function of density when
degeneracy eects become important. Obviously, the more restrictive
limit is found from the low-density case which is based on the heliumburning lifetime of HB stars (Sect. 2.5.1).
In order to calculate the average energy-loss rate of the core of an
HB star one needs T 7 / if in Eq. (5.9) one uses a constant 2 =
2.5 or F = 1.0. For a typical HB-star model (Fig. 1.4) one nds
T87 /4 0.3 where T8 = T /108 K and 4 = /104 g cm3 . There2
fore, a g10
30 erg g1 s1 so that the criterion Eq. (2.40) yields a
constraint
1
10
ga <
0.610 GeV
or
7
fa /Ca >
410 GeV.
(5.23)
The temperature 108 K corresponds to 8.6 keV; a typical photon energy

is 3 T 25 keV. Therefore, this bound applies to pseudoscalars with a
mass ma <
30 keV while for larger masses it would be degraded.
5.3
Search for Cosmic Axions
One of the most interesting ramications of the electromagnetic coupling of pseudoscalars is the possibility to search for dark-matter axions.
It is briey explained in Chapter 14 that axions would be produced in
the early universe by a nonthermal mechanism which excites classical
177
axion eld oscillations, i.e. a highly degenerate axion Bose condensate

that would play the role of cold dark matter, and notably provide the
unseen mass necessary to explain the rotation curves of spiral galaxies such as our own (e.g. Kolb and Turner 1990). Because there are
uncertainties with regard to details of the primordial axion production
mechanism the exact value of the relevant axion mass is not known.
However, typically it is of order 105 eV so that it is a reasonable speculation that the mass of our galaxy is dominated by very low-mass
bosons. As these particles are bound to the galaxy they must be nonrelativistic; a typical velocity dispersion corresponding to the galactic
gravitational potential is around 103 in units of the speed of light.
Sikivie (1983) proposed to search for galactic axions by means of a
Primako-like method. The a conversion of nonrelativistic axions
in the eV mass range produces photons in the microwave (GHz) range.
Therefore, the idea is to place a microwave cavity in a strong magnetic
eld and wait for cavity modes to be excited by the axion eld. In
this context one may view the electromagnetic modes of the cavity and
the free axion eld modes as oscillators which are coupled by virtue of
the interaction Eq. (5.1) where B is the external static eld while E is
from an electromagnetic cavity mode. Then, power is transferred from
the axion eld to the cavity excitations by virtue of the oscillator beats
induced by the coupling; detailed calculations of the conversion rate
were performed by Sikivie (1985) and Krauss et al. (1985).
It is worth noting that with a mass of 105 eV and a velocity of
3
10 a typical axion momentum is 108 eV which corresponds to a
wave length of about 20 m. Thus on laboratory scales the axion eld
is homogeneous. This does not apply to free microwavestheir energy and momentum are the same ( = |k |); for 105 eV their wave
length is 2 cm. The role of the resonant cavity is to overcome this momentum mismatch: on resonance the fundamental cavity frequency is
degenerate with nonrelativistic axions of a certain mass for which the
energy transfer is maximized. In a search experiment the cavity must
be stepped through a range of resonant frequencies which denes the
range of axion masses to which a given experimental setup is sensitive.
Two pilot experiments of this sort were completed several years ago
(Wuensch et al. 1989; Hagmann et al. 1990). Assuming an axionic darkmatter density at the Earth of 51025 g cm3 = 300 MeV cm3 allowed
these groups to exclude the range of masses and coupling constants
shown in Fig. 5.7. The solid line indicates the relationship between ga
and ma in axion models where E/N = 8/3 or = 1 in Eq. (14.24), i.e.
where ga = (ma /eV) (0.691016 GeV)1 .
178
Chapter 5
Most excitingly, the galactic axion search is going to be taken up

again with two new experimental setups. The one in Livermore (California) has an increased detection volume and magnetic eld (B 2 V =
14 T2 m3 ), and a rened microwave detection method (van Bibber et al.
1992, 1994). Within a running time of two or three years it will be possible to explore the axion mass range 1.3 13 eV down to a coupling
strength ga which is only a factor of about 2.5 shy of the axion line
in Fig. 5.7. If axions interact with photons somewhat stronger than
indicated by this line, or if the local dark-matter density is somewhat
larger than assumed in Fig. 5.7, one may already be able to detect
axions in this round of measurements.
The second experiment (Kyoto, Japan) will use Rydberg atoms in a
novel scheme to detect single microwave quanta (Matsuki et al. 1995).
Because of the intrinsic low noise of this detector one can go to lower
physical temperatures, thereby reducing thermal noise, and thus allowing one to use smaller cavities. This in turn permits one to search for
larger axion masses than is possible with the Livermore-type large cavities. Together, the two experiments can probably cover two decades of
axion masses, between about 106 and 104 eV.
Fig. 5.7. Results of the galactic axion search experiments of the RochesterBrookhaven-Fermilab (RBF) collaboration (Wuensch et al. 1989) and of
the University of Florida (UF) experiment (Hagmann et al. 1990). The
hatched areas are excluded, assuming a local dark-matter axion density of
51025 g cm3 = 300 MeV cm3 . The axion line is the relationship between axion mass and coupling strength for = 1 or E/N = 8/3 according
to Eq. (14.24).
5.4
5.4.1
179
Axion-Photon Oscillations
Mixing Equations
The axion haloscope discussed in the previous section was based on

the Primako conversion between axions and photons in a macroscopic
magnetic or electric eld. The same idea can be applied to other axion
uxes such as that expected from the Sun (axion helioscope, Sikivie
1983). Typical energies of solar axions are in the keV range (Sect. 5.2.4)
so that a macroscopic laboratory magnetic eld is entirely homogeneous
on the scale of the axion wavelength.
In this case the conversion process is best formulated in a way analogous to neutrino oscillations (Anselm 1988; Raelt and Stodolsky 1988).
This approach may seem surprising as the axion has spin zero while
the photon is a spin-1 particle. States of dierent spin-parity can mix,
however, if the mixing agent (here the external magnetic eld) matches
the missing quantum numbers. Therefore, only a transverse magnetic
or electric eld can mix a photon with an axion; a longitudinal eld
respects azimuthal symmetry whence it cannot mediate transitions between states of dierent angular momentum components in the eld
direction.
The starting point for the magnetically induced mixing between
axions and photons is the classical equation of motion for the system
of electromagnetic elds and axions in the presence of the interaction
Eq. (5.1). In terms of the electromagnetic eld-strength tensor F and
its dual Fe one nds, apart from the constraint Fe = 0,
F = J + ga Fe a,
( + m2a ) a = 14 ga F Fe ,
(5.24)
where J is the electromagnetic current density.

In a physical situation with a strong external eld plus radiation one
a
a because a term ga Ferad
may approximate ga Fe a ga Feext
is of second order in the weak radiation elds. Moreover, if only an external magnetic eld is present, the wave equation for the time-varying
part of the vector potential A and for the axion eld are
A = ga BT t a,
( m2a ) a = ga BT t A,
(5.25)
where BT is the transverse external magnetic eld. If one specializes to

a wave of frequency propagating in the z-direction, and denoting the
180
Chapter 5
components of A parallel and perpendicular to BT with A and A ,

respectively, one nds (Raelt and Stodolsky 1988)
n 1
nR
2
2
2
n 1
+ z + 2 nR
0
ga BT /2
A
0

ga BT /2 A = 0,
m2a /2 2
a
(5.26)
where the o-diagonal terms were made real by a suitable global transformation of the elds. Further, a photon index of refraction was included because in practice one never has a perfect vacuum.
The refractive index is generally dierent for the two linear polarization states parallel and perpendicular to BT (Cotton-Mouton eect).
Also, there may be mixing between the A and A elds, i.e. the plane
of polarization may rotate in optically active media, an eect characterized by nR . In general, any medium becomes optically active if there
is a magnetic eld component along the direction of propagation (Faraday eect). Therefore, in general the refractive indices n, depend on
the transverse, the index nR on the longitudinal magnetic eld.
Equation (5.26) is made linear by an approach that will be discussed
in more detail for neutrinos in Sect. 8.2. For propagation in the positive
z-direction and for very relativistic axions and photons one may expand
( 2 + z2 ) = ( + iz )( iz ) 2 ( iz ). Then one obtains the
usual Schrodinger equation
+ R
0
0
A
a + iz A = 0,
a
a
(5.27)
where , = (n, 1) , R = nR , a = m2a /2, and a =

1
g B .
2 a T
If one ignores a possible optical activity or Faraday eect (nR = 0),
the lower part of this equation represents a 2 2 mixing problem. The
matrix is made diagonal by a rotation about an angle
a
ga BT
1
tan 2 =
=
.
(5.28)
2
a
(n 1)2 2 + m2a
In analogy to neutrino oscillations (Sect. 8.2.2) the probability for an
axion to convert into a photon after travelling a distance in a transverse magnetic eld is
prob(a ) = sin2 (2) sin2 ( 12 osc ),
(5.29)
where 2osc = ( a )2 + 2a so that the oscillation length is osc =

2/osc .
181
By adjusting the gas pressure within the magnetic eld volume one
can make the photon and axion degenerate and thus enhance the transition rate (van Bibber et al. 1989). This applies, in particular, to
solar axions which have keV energies so that the corresponding photon dispersion relation in low-Z gases is particle-like with the plasma
frequency being the eective mass.
If there is a gradient of the gas density, for example near a star, or
if the gas density and magnetic eld strength change in time as in the
expanding universe, suitable conditions allow for resonant axion-photon
conversions in the spirit of the neutrino MSW eect (Yoshimura 1988;
Yanagida and Yoshimura 1988).
For the magnetic conversion of pseudoscalars in the galactic magnetic eld one must worry about density uctuations of the interstellar
medium which can be of order the medium density itself. In this case
Eq. (5.29) is no longer valid because it was based on the assumption of
spatial homogeneity of all relevant quantities. Carlson and Garretson
(1994) have derived an expression for the conversion rate in a medium
with large random density variations. They found that it can be signicantly suppressed relative to the naive result.
5.4.2
Solar Axions
An axion helioscope experiment was performed by Lazarus et al. (1992)

who used a vacuum pipe of 6 diameter which was placed in the bore of
a dipole magnet of 72 length (1.80 m); the eld strength was 2.2 T. The
helioscope was oriented so that its long axis pointed along the azimuth
of the setting Sun. This provided a time window of approximately
15 min every day during which the line of sight through the vacuum
region pointed directly to the Sun. As a detector they used an x-ray
proportional chamber at the end of the pipe.
Data were taken on several days with He at dierent pressures in
the pipe. At 1 atm helium provides a plasma mass of about 0.3 keV to
x-rays. For vacuum, a 3 bound of ga < 3.6109 GeV1 for ma <
0.050 eV was found. For a helium pressure of 55 Torr the limit was
3.9 in the same units, applicable to 0.050 < ma /eV < 0.086, and for
100 Torr it was 3.4, applicable to 0.086 < ma /eV < 0.110. These
bounds assume an axion ux as given by Eq. (5.21) which in turn
assumes an unperturbed Sun. Unfortunately, this assumption is not
consistent because the present-day age of the Sun already requires the
bound Eq. (5.22).
182
Chapter 5
However, an ongoing experimental project at the Institute for Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk may be able to improve the helioscope
signicantly. The conversion magnet has been gimballed so that it can
track the Sun, providing much longer exposure times. First results can
be expected for late 1995see Vorobyov and Kolokolov (1995) for a
status report.
Another possibility would be to use the straight sections of the
beam pipe of the LEP accelerator at CERN as an axion helioscope.
Hoogeveen and Stuart (1992) have calculated the times and dates of
alignment with the Sun. They proposed an experimental setup that
might allow one to reach a sensitivity in ga down to 41010 GeV1 ,
which would be very impressive, but still far from the globular-cluster
bound Eq. (5.23).
Finally, Paschos and Zioutas (1994) proposed to use a single crystal
as a detector where the Primako conversion of solar axions is coherently enhanced over the electric elds of many atoms. Put another way,
one would expect a strong enhancement via Bragg scattering. Even
with this improvement, however, it does not seem possible to beat the
bound from globular-cluster stars.
5.4.3
Shining Light through Walls
Instead of using the solar axion ux one can make ones own by shining
a laser beam through a long transverse magnetic eld region where it
develops an axion component. Then the laser beam is blocked while
the weakly interacting axions traverse the obstacle. In a second magnet
they are back-converted into photons so that one shines light through
walls (Anselm 1985; Gasperini 1987; van Bibber et al. 1987). Instead
of a freely propagating beam one may use resonant cavities on either
side of the wall which are coupled by the axion eld (Hoogeveen and
Ziegenhagen 1991). Another possibility to improve the sensitivity is to
use squeezed light (Hoogeveen 1990).
An actual experiment was performed by Ruoso et al. (1992) who
used two superconducting magnets of length 440 cm each with a eld
strength of 3.7 T. The light beam was trapped in a resonant cavity
in the rst magnet, allowing for about 200 traversals; the incident
laser power was 1.5 W. At the end of the second magnet photons were
3
searched for by a photomultiplier. For an axion mass ma <
10 eV an
upper bound ga < 0.7106 GeV1 was found.

5.4.4
183
Vacuum Birefringence
Besides the conversion between photons and axions there is a more

subtle eect that can serve to search for the two-photon vertex of lowmass pseudoscalars. In an external transverse E or B eld the mixing between the A component with a leads to a backreaction on A
(Fig. 5.8b) which amounts to a retardation of its phase. Put another
way, the and polarization states have dierent refractive indices in
vacuum with an E or B eld (vacuum Cotton-Mouton eect). Therefore, if one shines a light beam which is linearly polarized at 45 relative
to a transverse B eld, the beam will develop a small degree of elliptic
polarization (Maiani, Petronzio, and Zavattini 1986).
A vacuum Cotton-Mouton eect is expected even in the absence of
axions from the QED amplitude shown in Fig. 5.8a; in the nonforward
direction it describes Delbr
uck scattering on a charged particle. More
generally, an electron loop mediates an eective interaction which
for low energies can be described by the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian,
L =
]
22 [ 2
2 2
2
(E
B
)
+
7(E
B)
45m4e
(5.30)
(Heisenberg and Euler 1936; see also Itzykson and Zuber 1983).
Fig. 5.8. Vacuum birefringence in the presence of external elds. (a) QED
contribution according to the Euler-Heisenberg interaction. (b) a or
oscillations in an external E or B eld. (c) Photon birefringence in an
external axion eld (axionic domain walls, cosmic axion eld). (d) Axionmediated contribution in a strong E B eld, e.g. near a pulsar.
184
Chapter 5
The vacuum refractive index in an external magnetic eld which

results from this interaction was studied by a number of authors
see Tsai and Erber (1975, 1976) for references to the early literature.
Adler (1971) provided a comprehensive study and derived the correct
expression for the related photon splitting rate in an external
eld.28 The refractive indices for the and polarization states are29
n = 1 + 7
22 B 2
45 m4e
and
n = 1 + 4
22 B 2
,
45 m4e
(5.31)
where
(22 /45) B 2 /m4e = 1.321032 (B/Gauss)2 .
(5.32)
Note that 1 Gauss corresponds to 104 Tesla, and to 1.95102 eV2 in

natural units (Appendix A).
Clearly one needs very strong magnetic elds for vacuum birefringence eects to become important. So far, no positive experimental
measurement exists. A proposal to measure the acquired elliptic polarization of a laser beam was put forth by Iacopini and Zavattini (1979).
More recently Cantatore et al. (1991) proposed to use polarized light
scattered o an electron beam, a method which allows one to obtain
polarized GeV photons. As the relative phase shift is (n n ) for
a distance of travel in the magnetic eld, high-energy photons show
a much stronger eect for otherwise equal conditions.
An experiment to search for the axion contribution of Fig. 5.8b
was recently performed (Semertzidis et al. 1990; Cameron et al. 1993).
Note that there are two axion-induced eects on a laser beam trapped
in an optical cavity. One is the birefringence eect analogous to the
QED eect which leads to a small amount of elliptical polarization.
Another is the loss of photons into the axion channel which depletes
the amplitude of the mode relative to the one, which in turn leads
to a rotation of the plane of polarization. Both eects are of the same
order in the coupling constant; experimentally, the rotation eect led to
28
The photon-splitting box graph with one external eld and three real photons
attached to an electron loop does not contribute. The lowest-order amplitude is
with the external eld attached three times, and three real photons (hexagon diagram). For references to the early literature and a discussion of the astrophysical
implications of the photon-splitting process see Baring (1991).
29
, refer to the electric eld of the wave relative to the external transverse B
eld while Adler (1971) refers with , to the magnetic eld of the wave. Note
also that I use rationalized units where = e2 /4 = 1/137 while in the literature
on photon refraction unrationalized units with = e2 = 1/137 are often employed.
185
4
a more restrictive limit of ga < 3.6107 GeV1 for ma <
710 eV.
For a larger mass an a- oscillation pattern develops on the length scale
of the optical cavity, leading to an oscillating limit as a function of
ma . In this regime the ellipticity measurement was superior.
New experimental eorts in the birefringence category include a
proposal by Cooper and Stedman (1995) to use ring lasers. A laser
experiment which is actually in the process of being built is PVLAS
(Bakalov et al. 1994) which will be able to improve previous laboratory
limits on ga by a factor of 40, i.e. it is expected to be sensitive in
1
8
< 3
the regime ga >
110 GeV as long as ma 10 eV. While such
strong couplings are astrophysically excluded it is intriguing that this
experiment should be able to detect for the rst time the standard QED
birefringence eect of Fig. 5.8a.
5.5
5.5.1
Astrophysical Magnetic Fields

Transitions in Magnetic Fields of Stars
Certain stars have very strong magnetic elds. For example, neutron
stars frequently have elds of 1012 1013 G (e.g. Meszaros 1992), and
even white dwarfs can have elds of up to 109 G. Therefore, one may
think that axions produced in the hot interior of neutron stars at a temperature of, say, 50 keV would convert to -rays in the magnetosphere
(Morris 1986). However, the vacuum refractive term suppresses the
conversion rate because the photon momentum for a given frequency
is k = n, > with the refractive indices Eq. (5.31) while for the
axions ka = m2a /2 < . Therefore, in the presence of a magnetic
eld axions and photons are less degenerate so that it is more dicult
for them to oscillate into each other.
In principle, the refractive index can be cancelled by the presence
of a plasma where the photon forward scattering on electrons induces a
negative n1, i.e. something like a photon eective mass. In the aligned
rotator model for a magnetized neutron star a self-consistent solution of
the Maxwell equations with currents requires the presence of an electron
density of about ne = 71010 cm3 B12 Ps1 where B12 is the magnetic
eld along the rotation axis in units of 1012 G and Ps is the pulsar period
in seconds (Goldreich and Julian 1969). The corresponding plasma
frequency is P2 = 4ne /me = 0.971010 eV2 B12 Ps1 . This implies
1
with keV = /keV, to
k = P2 /2 = 51014 eV B12 Ps1 keV
2
keV which is
be compared with = (n 1) = 0.92104 eV B12
much larger, allowing one to ignore the plasma term.
186
Chapter 5
The o-diagonal term in the mixing matrix Eq. (5.27) is a =

= 0.98109 eV g10 B12 with g10 = ga /(1010 GeV1 ). Ignoring
2 1
ma the oscillation length is 2 (2 + 2a )1/2 1.3 cm B12
keV while
the geometric dimension of the dipole eld is of order the stellar radius,
i.e. of order 10 km. Therefore, many oscillations occur within the magnetosphere, and the average transition probability between photons and
1 1
axions is 2 with the mixing angle a / = 1.1105 g10 B12
keV .
Therefore, the transition rate is very small.
The vacuum refractive index is larger than unity, the plasma contribution less than unity, and so near the stellar surface a crossover must
occur where axions and photons are degenerate. However, the length
scales do not work out to have a resonant MSW-type transition (Raelt
and Stodolsky 1988; Yoshimura 1988).
At a pulsar, reducing B increases the mixing angle and thus the
transition rate while the oscillation length becomes larger. When osc
far exceeds the geometric dimension R of the stellar magnetosphere,
and when the mixing angle is small, one can expand the sine functions
in Eq. (5.29) so that the transition probability is (osc R)2 (a R)2 .
This transition rate scales with B 2 as expected and becomes smaller for
smaller B. Therefore, the optimal situation is when the magnetic eld
strength and geometric dimensions are matched such that R osc .
This condition is approximately met in magnetic white dwarfs with,
say, B = 109 G, = 10 eV, and R = 103 km. In these systems one may
even expect a resonant level crossing if they have a dilute atmosphere
with an appropriate scale height (Raelt and Stodolsky 1988; Gnedin
and Krasnikov 1992). However, a fortuitous combination of particle and
white-dwarf parameters is required, and, even then, observable eects
apparently have not been proposed.
Most recently, Carlson and Tseng (1995) have performed a study of
the conversion of very low-mass pseudoscalars in the magnetic eld of
sunspots. They nd that for certain parameters the x-ray ux from the
conversion process could be observable in solar x-ray telescopes such as
SXT and Yohkoh.
1
g B
2 a
5.5.2
Birefringence in a Pulsar Magnetosphere
In the previous section it was shown that near a pulsar the QED vacuum Cotton-Mouton eect (Fig. 5.7a) induces a sizeable amount of
birefringence between the photon states which are linearly polarized
parallel or perpendicular to the transverse component of the magnetic
eld. Recently, Mohanty and Nayak (1993) showed that in addition
187
there can be a strong and potentially observable circular birefringence

eect along the polar direction if massless pseudoscalars exist. The
masslessness of the pseudoscalars is crucial for this scenario and so axions (Chapter 14) which generically must have a mass do not fulll this
requirement. Therefore, I use arions as a generic example which are
like axions in all respects except that they are true Nambu-Goldstone
bosons of a global chiral U (1) symmetry and thus strictly massless
(Anselm and Uraltsev 1982a,b; Anselm 1982).
The main idea of the pulsar birefringence scenario is that in the
oblique rotator model a strong E B density exists in the pulsar magnetosphere which serves as a source for the arion eld. Therefore, a
pulsar would be surrounded by a strong classical arion eld density
which constitutes an optically active medium, causing a time delay
between the two circular polarization states of the pulsed radio emission from the polar cap region. As a Feynman graph, this situation is
represented by Fig. 5.8d.
In detail, Mohanty and Nayak (1993) considered the oblique rotator model where the pulsar magnetic dipole axis is tilted with regard to its rotation axis by an angle . The instantaneous rotating
],
where B0
magnetic dipole eld is B = (B0 R3 /r3 ) [3r (r )
is the magnetic eld strength at the poles of the pulsar surface (ra is the instantaneous magnetic dipole direction with
dius R) and
the angle relative to the angular velocity vector . The time average of the electric eld which is induced by the rotating magnetic
dipole, and which matches the boundary condition that the electric
eld component parallel to the pulsar surface vanishes, is found to be
where is the
E = B0 R5 cos r4 [3 (sin2 32 ) r 2 sin cos ]
polar angle relative to the rotation axis. The time-averaged value for
the pseudoscalar eld density is
E B = B02 R8 r7 cos cos3 .
(5.33)
It appears as a source for the arion eld on the r.h.s. of Eq. (5.24). Taking account of the relativistic space-time metric outside of the pulsar,
Mohanty and Nayak (1993) found for the resulting arion eld
a = ga
2 B02 R8 cos cos

+ O(r3 ),
575 (GN M)3
r2
(5.34)
where GN is Newtons constant and M the pulsar mass. The entire magnetosphere contributes coherently to this result. If the pseudoscalars had a mass, only the density E B within a distance of about
188
Chapter 5
m1
a would eectively act as a source for the local a eld and so it would
be much smaller.
An inhomogeneous pseudoscalar eld conguration represents an
optically active medium (Fig. 5.8c) as was noted, for example, in the
context of axionic domain wall congurations (Sikivie 1984). To lowest order the dispersion relation for left- and right-handed circularly
polarized light is (e.g. Harari and Sikivie 1992)
a,
k = 1 ga k
(5.35)
2
so that the momentum is shifted by a frequency-independent amount.

a.
The corresponding refractive index is n = 1 12 ga 1 k
Taking account of the relativistic metric in the strong gravitational
eld of a pulsar, Mohanty and Nayak (1993) then found for the time delay between circularly polarized waves which propagate approximately
along the polar axis
(
)
2 2 4 B04 R11 2 cos4
2
ga
t =
.
(5.36)
5 575
2 (GN M )6
For the pulsar PSR 1937+21 a polarimetric analysis yields a time
delay 0.37 0.67 s and thus a 1 upper limit of t < 1s (Klein
and Thorsett 1990). For typical pulsar parameters this allowed Mohanty and Nayak (1993) to place a limit on the arion-photon coupling
1
11
of ga <
210 GeV .
5.5.3
Conversion of Stellar Arions in the Galactic Field
Stars are powerful sources for pseudoscalars which can be produced in

the hot interior by the Primako process, i.e. by the conversion a
in the electric elds of the charged medium constituents. Outside of
the star, the pseudoscalars can be converted back to photons in the
galactic magnetic eld so that stars would appear to be sources of
x- or -rays, depending on the characteristic energy of the stellar core
(Carlson 1995).
In the galaxy, photons propagate with an eective mass given by
the plasma frequency P which for typical electron densities of order
0.1 cm3 is of order 1011 eV. As discussed in Sect. 5.4.1 the pseudoscalar to photon conversion process is an oscillation phenomenon
with a mixing angle given by Eq. (5.28); in the present context it is
ga BT
1
.
(5.37)
tan 2 = 2
2
ma P2
A typical galactic eld strength is 1 G, a typical energy at most of order 100 MeV for axions from supernovae. With ga < 0.61010 GeV1
189
2
19
one nds ga BT <
10 eV . For the allowed range of axion masses
this mixing angle is too small to yield a signicant conversion eect.
Therefore, this entire line of argument is only relevant for massless
(or at least very low-mass) pseudoscalars which again shall be referred
to as arions. Carlson (1995) considered the star -Ori (Betelgeuse),
a red supergiant about 100 pc away from us. He estimated its arion
luminosity from the Primako process, and compared the expected
x-ray ux with data from the HEAO-1 satellite. As a result, a new
1
11
limit of ga <
2.510 GeV emerged which is more restrictive than
the above bound from globular-cluster stars.
Carlsons argument yields an even more restrictive limit if applied
to SN 1987A. One may estimate the arion luminosity of the SN core on
the basis of the Primako process. If arions couple to quarks or electrons, the luminosity can only be higher because existing axion limits
already indicate that arions cannot be trapped by these couplings. In
order to evaluate Eq. (5.9) an average temperature of 30 MeV and an
average density of 31014 g cm3 with a proton fraction of 0.3 is used
(Sect. 13.4.2). The Debye screening scale by the protons is then found
to be 36 MeV so that 2 = 1.41 in Eq. (5.10) leading to F = 0.72.
2
Therefore, the average energy loss rate is about g10
1.41016 erg g1 s1 .
Taking a core mass of 1M = 21033 g and a duration of 3 s one ex2
2
pects about g10
1050 erg to be emitted in arions which is about 103 g10
of the energy emitted in each neutrino avor.
Typical arion energies are 3T 100 MeV so that Eq. (5.37) together
with P 1011 eV in the interstellar medium reveals that mixing is
nearly maximal for the relevant circumstances. Therefore, the oscillation length is given by osc = 4/ga BT which is about 40 kpc for
BT = 1 G and ga = 1010 GeV1 . Therefore, osc far exceeds the
relevant magnetic eld region which is of order 1 kpc as discussed in
Sect. 13.3.3b. The conversion rate is then
prob(a ) = ( 21 ga BT )2
2
= 2.3102 g10
(BT /G kpc)2 ,
(5.38)
where is the eective conversion region (distance to source or distance

within magnetic eld region), and g10 ga /1010 GeV1 .
With Eq. (5.38) and an eective magnetic conversion region of =
1 kpc the expected energy showing up as -rays at Earth corresponds
4
relative to the energy in one neutrino species. In
to about 105 g10
Sect. 12.4.3 the radiative decays of low-mass neutrinos from SN 1987A
was discussed. On the basis of the SMM data it was found that less
190
Chapter 5
than about 109 of a given neutrino species may show up in the form
of decay photons (Fig. 12.9) if the spectral distribution is taken to be
4 <
characterized by T 30 MeV. Therefore, one nds a limit of g10
1
4
11
10 or ga <
10 GeV , applicable if the particle mass is below
about 1010 eV. This is more restrictive than Carlsons original limit,
and of the same order as the PSR 1937+21 birefringence limit quoted
after Eq. (5.36).
5.5.4
Polarimetry of Distant Radio Sources
Nambu-Goldstone bosons a are by denition the result of a spontaneously broken global symmetry. The cosmic evolution from a very
hot initial phase begins with the unbroken symmetry; as the universe
expands and cools a phase transition will occur where the eld responsible for the spontaneous breakdown must nd its new minimum. As
this process occurs independently in each causally connected region of
the universe at that time, the universe today will be characterized by
dierent orientations of the ground state, i.e. by dierent values of a
classical background a eld. If no ination occurred in the universe
after the phase transition, and if the Nambu-Goldstone bosons remain
truly massless (in contrast with axions), the background eld will not
have relaxed to a common ground state everywhere.
In this scenario a radio signal from a distant source travels through
regions with dierent values of the classical a eld, and thus through
regions of gradients a which act as an optically active medium according to Eq. (5.35). Therefore, linearly polarized light will experience a
random rotation of its plane of polarization.
This eect is also expected from the Faraday rotation caused by
intervening magnetic elds which induce optical activity in the cosmic
background plasma. As this eect is frequency dependent it can be
removed by observing a given object at dierent wavelengths. The
eect induced by pseudoscalars, on the other hand, is independent of
frequency.
A systematic correlation between the geometric shape of distant
radio sources and the linear polarization of the emitted radiation has
been observed. This correlation proves that no random rotation of
the plane of polarization occurs over cosmic distances, except for the
Faraday eect which can be removed from the data. Therefore, the
maximum allowed coupling strength of photons to a random cosmic
Nambu-Goldstone eld can be constrained. Harari and Sikivie (1992)
found that Ca <
50 in Eq. (5.5), independently of the symmetry break-
191
ing scale fa . This bound supersedes Sikivies (1988) previous scenario

where he tried to explain the polarization features of certain sources
by the conversion of cosmic-string-produced Nambu-Goldstone bosons
to photons in cosmic magnetic elds. This scenario would have required Ca 105 .
5.5.5
Temperature Fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave

Background
In the presence of large-scale magnetic elds in the universe, photons of

the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) could convert into
arions. The angular variations of the CMBR temperature have been
measured by the COBE satellite and other instruments to be extremely
small; a typical value is T /T 105 . Therefore, the conversion process
must not have been very ecient between the surface of last scattering
and us.
This argument has been studied in detail by Chen (1995) for photongraviton conversion which is a very similar eect due to the two-photon
coupling vertex which the massless gravitons must have. The coupling
constant involves the inverse Planck mass. Therefore, one may also
expect interesting eects for hypothetical arions which could couple to
photons more strongly than gravitons do.
5.6
Summary of Constraints on ga
The astrophysical and experimental bounds on the photon coupling

of arbitrary pseudoscalars are summarized in Fig. 5.9. Haloscope
refers to the search for galactic axions discussed in Sect. 5.3 and so
these constraints (Fig. 5.7) apply only if the pseudoscalars are the dark
matter in our galaxy. The dotted line is the search regime for the
ongoing experiment mentioned in Sect. 5.3.
Helioscope refers to the search for solar axion to x-ray conversion
(Sect. 5.4.2). It is shown as a dashed line because it is not self-consistent
in that it assumes an unperturbed Sunthe area enclosed by the dashed
line is already excluded by the solar age.
Telescope refers to the search for decay photons from the cosmic
axion background (Sect. 12.7.2, Fig. 12.23). It is assumed that the
pseudoscalars were in thermal equilibrium in the early universe.
Laser refers to the birefringence and shining-light-through-walls
experiments discussed above. The most restrictive such limit is from
the rotation of the plane of polarization of a laser beam trapped in
192
Chapter 5
an optical cavity in a strong transverse magnetic eld (Sect. 5.4.4).

The dotted line marks roughly the expected range of sensitivity of the
PVLAS experiment (Sect. 5.4.4).
The solar limit (Eq. 5.22) is based on the Primako energy loss and
the requirement that axions must not exceed the photon luminosity;
otherwise the Sun could not have reached its present-day age.
The HB-star limit (Eq. 5.23) comes from the requirement that these
objects do not spend their nuclear fuel so fast that their observable
number in globular clusters is reduced by more than a factor of 2.
The axion line refers to models where E/N = 8/3 or = 1 in
Eq. (14.24).
10
For very low-mass bosons (ma <
10 eV) the SN 1987A ux of
pseudoscalars would be eciently converted into -rays, leading to a
1
11
limit ga <
10 GeV (Sect. 5.5.3).
Fig. 5.9. Bounds on the photon coupling ga as a function of ma for arbitrary

pseudoscalars; see the text for details. (Adapted from Cameron et al. 1993.)
Chapter 6
Particle Dispersion and
Decays in Media
Dispersion eects in media have a signicant impact on the propagation of some low-mass particles (photons, neutrinos) while others are
left unaected (axions and other Nambu-Goldstone bosons). The relationship between forward scattering and refraction is derived, and the
dispersion relations for photons and neutrinos are thoroughly studied.
Modied particle dispersion relations allow certain decay processes to
occur in media that cannot occur in vacuum, notably the photon decay which dominates the neutrino emissivity in a wide range
of temperatures and densities (plasma process). Other examples are
the neutrino and majoron decay and , respectively.
The rates for such processes are derived. The plasma process allows
one to derive the most restrictive limits on neutrino magnetic dipole
moments. Screening eects in reactions involving Coulomb scattering,
and neutrino electromagnetic form factors in media are discussed.
6.1
Introduction
Particles are the quantized excitations of certain eldsphotons of the

electromagnetic eld, electrons of the electron eld, and so forth. It
is usually convenient to expand these elds in plane waves characterized by frequencies and wave vectors k; the excitations of these modes
then exhibit a temporal and spatial behavior proportional to ei(tkx) .
The frequency for a given wave number is determined by the dispersion relation. Because (, k) is a four-vector, and because of Lorentz
invariance, in vacuum the quantity 2 k2 = m2 is the same for all
193
194
Chapter 6
frequencies; m has the usual interpretation of a particle mass. One consequence of this covariant dispersion relation is that decays of the sort
1 2 + 3 are only possible if m1 > m2 + m3 so that in the rest frame of
particle 1 there is enough energy available to produce the nal states.
In media the dispersion relations are generally modied by the coherent interactions with the background. In the simplest case a particle acquires a medium-induced eective mass. For example, photons in
a nonrelativistic plasma acquire a dispersion relation 2 = P2 +k2 with
the plasma frequency given by P2 = 4 ne /me (electron density ne ).
For P > 2m this implies that the decay becomes kinematically possible and occurs in stars because the ambient electrons mediate
an eective neutrino-photon interaction (Adams, Ruderman, and Woo
1963). In fact, this plasma process is the dominant neutrino source in
a wide range of temperatures and densities which covers, for example,
white dwarfs and red-giant stars (Appendices C and D).
Neutrinos may have nonstandard electromagnetic couplings, notably magnetic dipole moments, which would enhance the plasma process and thus the cooling of stars (Bernstein, Ruderman, and Feinberg
1963). Observational constraints on anomalous cooling rates derived
from white dwarfs and globular-cluster stars then provide the most
restrictive limits on neutrino electromagnetic couplings (Sect. 6.5.6).
Within the standard model all fermions are fundamentally massless;
they acquire an eective mass by their interaction with the vacuum
expectation value 0 of a scalar Higgs eld (Sect. 8.1.1). Therefore,
even vacuum masses can be interpreted as refractive phenomena.
Because the scalar 0 is Lorentz invariant the dispersion relation thus
induced is of the standard form E 2 = m2 + p2 . Normal media,
however, single out a preferred Lorentz frame, usually causing E(p) to
be a more complicated function than (m2 + p2 )1/2 .
Notably, the dispersion relation can be such that the four-momentum P = (E, p) is space-like, P 2 = E 2 p2 < 0, which amounts
to a negative mass-square P 2 = m2e < 0. There is nothing wrong
with such tachyons because the speed of signal propagation safely
remains below the speed of light (Sect. 6.2.2). The dispersion relation
in isotropic media is often expressed as k = |k| = n in terms of a
refractive index n. Space-like excitations correspond to n > 1; examples
are photons in water or air. In this case the well-known decay process
e e is kinematically allowed for suciently fast moving electrons
(Cherenkov radiation).
The dispersion relation can also depend on the spin polarization of
the radiation. In optically active media, the left- and right-handed
Particle Dispersion and Decays in Media
195
circular photon polarizations acquire dierent refractive indices. In this

sense all media are optically active for neutrinos where only the lefthanded states interact while the right-handed ones are sterile. For
Majorana neutrinos the helicity-plus states are equivalent to s which
acquire an opposite energy shift from so that there is an energy gap
between (p) and (p). Therefore, in a medium the majoron decays
or become possible where the majoron is a massless
particle (Sect. 6.8).
The interaction of and with a normal medium is dierent
from that of e because of a charged-current e -e scattering amplitude. Therefore, normal media are avor birefringent in the sense
that the medium induces dierent dispersion relations for neutrinos
of dierent avors. The importance of this eect for neutrino oscillations, which eectively measure relative phases in the propagation of
dierent-avored neutrinos, cannot be overstated.
It must be stressed that usually all particles acquire nontrivial dispersion relations in media although it depends on the detailed circumstances whether or not the refractive eect is signicant. For example,
until recently one found statements in the literature that in a suciently
dense medium where P > 2me photons were damped by electromagnetic pair production e+ e . However, this is incorrect because the
charged leptons also acquire a medium-induced eective mass which is
so large that this decay never occurs (Braaten 1991). On the other
hand, the above majoron decay is only possible because the majorons
are Nambu-Goldstone bosons and thus remain massless even in a
medium, at least to lowest order (Sect. 6.8).
Besides modifying the dispersion relation of particles it is also possible that the presence of the medium allows for entirely new excitations.
The best known example is the longitudinal polarization state of the
electromagnetic eld which exists in a plasma in addition to the usual
states with transverse polarization. These plasmons were rst discussed by Langmuir (1926). Another example from electromagnetism
are the plasminos, spin- 12 excitations of a plasma that were discussed
for the rst time only very recently (Klimov 1981; Weldon 1982b, 1989;
Pisarski 1989; Braaten 1992). For many purposes such (quantized) collective modes play the same role as the usual particles. For example,
in a medium both photons and plasmons can decay into neutrinos and
thus contribute to the plasma process of neutrino emission.
In the present chapter I will follow up these questions in detail.
While the dispersion relations and couplings of particles in media are
formally best dealt with in terms of eld theory at nite temperature
196
Chapter 6
and density, most of the results relevant for particle physics in stars
predate the development of this formalism; they were based on the
old-fashioned tools of kinetic theory. Indeed, for simple issues of dispersion or collective eects a kinetic approach seems often physically
more transparent while yielding identical results. At any rate, the following discussion is based entirely on kinetic theory.
6.2
6.2.1
Particle Dispersion in Media

Refractive Index and Forward Scattering
How does one go about to calculate the all-important dispersion relation for a given particle in a medium with known properties? Usually
it is enough to follow the elementary approach of calculating the forward scattering amplitude of the relevant eld excitations with the constituents of the background medium, an approach which has the added
advantage of physical transparency over a more formal procedure.30
To begin, consider a scalar eld which may be viewed as representing one of the photon or electron polarization states. If a plane
wave excitation of that eld with a frequency and a wave vector k interacts with a scatterer at location r = 0 an additional spherical wave
will be created. The asymptotic form of the original plus scattered
wave is
(
it
(r, t) e
ikr
eikr
+ f (, )
r
(6.1)
where k = |k|, r = |r|, and f is the scattering amplitude. It was assumed that it has no azimuthal dependence, something that will always
apply on average for a collection of randomly oriented scatterers. The
dierential scattering cross section is d/d = |f (, )|2 .
If there is a collection of scattering centers randomly distributed
in space, all of the individual scattered waves will interfere. However,
because of the random location of the scatterers, constructive and destructive interference terms will average to zero. Thus the total cross
section of the ensemble is the (incoherent) sum of the individual ones.
In the forward direction, however, the scattered waves add up coherently with each other and with the parent wave, leading to a phase
shift and thus to refraction. This is seen if one considers a plane wave in
the z-direction incident on an innitesimally thin slab (thickness a) at
30
The derivation below follows closely the exposition of Sakurai (1967).
197
z = 0 which contains n scattering centers per unit volume, and which is

innite in the x- and y-directions. At a distance z from the slab, large
compared with k 1 , the asymptotic form of the parent plus scattered
wave is, ignoring the temporal variation eit ,
(z) e
iz
+ na
2 1/2
eik( +z )
f (, ) 2 d ,
(2 + z 2 )1/2
(6.2)
where (x2 + y 2 )1/2 and = arctan(/z). Moreover, it was assumed

that in vacuum the wave propagates relativistically so that k = .
The integral in Eq. (6.2) is ill dened because the integrand oscillates with a nite amplitude even for large values of . It is made
convergent by substituting k k + i with > 0 an innitely small
real parameter. Integration by parts then yields
[
(z) e
iz
2na
1+i
f0 () ,
(6.3)
where a term of order (z)1 was neglected which becomes small for
large z. Here, f0 () f (, 0) is the forward scattering amplitude.
Turn next to a slab of nite thickness a. The phase change of the
transmitted wave is obtained by compounding innitesimal ones with
a = a/j and taking the limit j ,
]j
2na
lim 1 + i
f0 ()
j
j
= ei(2n/)f0 a .
(6.4)
Inserting this result in Eq. (6.3) reveals that over a distance a in the
medium the wave accumulates a phase einrefr a where
nrefr = 1 +
2
n f0 ()
2
(6.5)
is recognized as the index of refraction.

If the relativistic approximation |nrefr 1| 1 is not valid one must
treat the wave self-consistently in the medium and distinguish carefully
between frequency and wavenumber. In this case one nds (Foldy 1945)
n2refr = 1 +
4
n f0 (k),
k2
(6.6)
where the forward scattering amplitude must be calculated taking the

modied dispersion relation into account.
For the propagation of a eld with several spin or avor components
the same result applies if one remembers that forward scattering not
198
Chapter 6
only refers to scattering in the forward direction, but that all properties
of the wave and the scatterer are left unchanged. If the medium particles have a distribution of momenta, spins, etc. the forward scattering
amplitude must be averaged over those quantities, and dierent species
of medium particles must be summed over.
For a practical calculation it helps to recall that d/d = |f ()|2
so that |f0 | is the square root of the forward dierential cross section.
For example, the Thomson cross section for photons interacting with
nonrelativistic electrons is d/d = (/me )2 | |2 with the polarization vectors and of the initial- and nal-state photon. Forward
scattering implies | |2 = 1 so that |f0 | = /me . The dispersion relation is then 2 = k 2 + P2 with the plasma frequency P2 = 4 ne /me .
Of course, the absolute sign of f0 has to be derived from some other
informationfor photon dispersion see Sect. 6.3.
The forward scattering amplitude and the refractive index are generally complex numbers. Physically it is evident that in a medium the
intensity of a beam is depleted as ez/ . The mean free path is given by
1 = nv where is the total scattering cross section, n is the number
density of scatterers, and v is the velocity of propagation. Thus the
amplitude of a plane wave varies as eikzz/2 . Moreover, the derivation
of the refractive index indicates that the amplitude varies according to
einrefr z , yielding k = Re nrefr and (2)1 = Im nrefr . For relativistic
propagation (v = 1) the last equation implies () = (4/) Im f0 (),
a relationship known as the optical theorem.
For the applications discussed in this book specic interaction models between the propagating particles and the medium will be assumed
so that it is usually straightforward to calculate the dispersion relation
according to Eq. (6.5). One should keep in mind, however, that nrefr as
a function of has a number of general properties, independently of the
interaction model. For example, its real and imaginary part are connected by the Kramers-Kronig relations (Sakurai 1967; Jackson 1975).
6.2.2
Particle Momentum and Velocity
The four-vector (, k) which governs the spatial and temporal behavior

of a plane wave can be time-like ( 2 k2 > 0) as for massive particles
in vacuum, it can be light-like ( 2 k2 = 0) as for photons in vacuum,
or it can be space-like ( 2 k2 < 0) as for visible light in water or air.
Because the quantized excitations of such eld modes are interpreted
as particles, E = h
is the particles energy. (I have temporarily restored h
even though it is 1 in natural units.) Similarly one may be
199
tempted to interpret p = h
k as the particles momentum. In vacuum a
particles velocity is p/E, a quantity which exceeds the speed of light
for space-like excitations. Occasionally one reads in the literature that
for this reason only those branches of a particle dispersion relation were
physical where |p| < E. Such statements are incorrect, however, and
the underlying concern about tachyonic propagation is unfounded.
The quantity p/E has no general physical relevance. Two signicant velocity denitions are the phase velocity and the group velocity of
a wave (Jackson 1975). The former is the speed with which the crest of
a plane wave propagates, i.e. it is given by the condition t kz = 0 or
vphase = /k = n1
refr . For a massive particle in vacuum vphase > 1. However, the phase velocity can drop below the speed of light in a medium.
When this occurs for electromagnetic excitations in a plasma, electrons
can surf in the wave which thus transfers energy at a rate proportional to the ne structure constant (Landau 1946), an eect known
as Landau damping. As long as vphase > 1 the photon propagation is
damped only by Thomson scattering which is an eect of order 2 .
The group velocity vgroup = d/dk is the speed with which a wave
packet or pulse propagates. In terms of the refractive index it is
1
vgroup
= nrefr () + dnrefr /d
(6.7)
(Jackson 1975). For a massive particle in vacuum with 2 = (k 2 +m2 )1/2

it is vgroup = k/ < 1, and also in a medium normally vgroup < 1. Near
a resonance it can happen that vgroup > 1, but there is still no reason
for alarm. The fast variation of nrefr () as well as the presence of a
large imaginary part near a resonance imply that the issue of signal
propagation is much more complicated than indicated by the simple
approximations which enter the denition of the group velocity. For a
detailed discussion of electromagnetic signal propagation in dispersive
media see Jackson (1975).
Evidently a naive interpretation of h
k as a particle momentum can
be quite misleading. Another example relates to the diculty of separating the momentum ow of a (light) beam in a medium into one part
carried by the wave and one carried by the medium. There was a longstanding dispute in the literature with famous researchers on dierent
sides of an argument that was eventually resolved by Peierls (1976);
see also Gordon (1973). Experimentally, it was addressed by shining a
laser beam vertically through a water-air interface and measuring the
deformation of the surface due to the force which must occur because of
a photons change of momentum between the two media (Ashkin and
Dziedzic 1973).
200
Chapter 6
The problem of the physical momentum ow associated with a wave

will be of no concern to the issues addressed in this book. In microscopic
reactions the quantity which appears in the law of energy-momentum
conservation is the wave vector. For example, in the plasma process
the momenta of the outgoing neutrinos must balance against
the wave vector of the decaying electromagnetic excitation. In this
book dispersion eects will be important only for pulse propagation
from distant sources, for particle oscillation eects, and for energymomentum conservation in microscopic reactions. In these cases the
naive interpretation of h
k as a particles momentum is safe. For the
remainder of this book the wave number (or pseudomomentum) and
the momentum of a eld excitation will not be distinguished.
6.2.3
Wave-Function Renormalization
In particle reactions the main impact of medium-induced modications

of the dispersion relations is on the kinematics, notably if a threshold
condition is involved. One is thus tempted to proceed with the usual
Feynman rules and take account of the dispersion relations only in
the phase-space integration, notably in the law of energy-momentum
conservation. In most practical cases this approach causes no problems,
although an exception are interactions involving longitudinal plasmons
(Sect. 6.3). Therefore, one should be aware that the matrix element
also must be modied because of the subtle issue of what one means
with a particle in a medium.
After a spatial Fourier transform the equations of motion for the
Fourier components k of a free eld are those of a harmonic oscillator.
Interpreting the amplitude k and its velocity k as conjugate variables,
the canonical quantization procedure leads to quantized energy levels
h
k , where k is the classical frequency of the mode k according to its
dispersion relation. Conversely, a quantized excitation with energy h
k
has a certain eld strength which determines its coupling strength to a
source, e.g. the coupling strength of a photon to an electron.
In a medium, the energy associated with a frequency k is still h
k .
However, because of the presence of interaction energy between and
the medium, the eld strength associated with a quantized excitation
is modied. For example, photons with a given frequency couple with
a dierent strength to electrons in a medium than they do in vacuum.
This modication can be lumped into a renormalization factor Z

of the coupling strength of external photon lines in a Feynman graph.
201
In order to determine this factor from the dispersion relation consider a scalar eld in the presence of a medium which induces a refractive index. This means that the Klein-Gordon equation in Fourier
space, including a source term , is of the form
[K 2 + (K)](K) = g(K),
(6.8)
where K = (, k) is a four-vector in Fourier space and g is a coupling

constant. (K) is the self-energy which includes a possible vacuum
mass m2 and medium-induced contributions which are calculated from
the forward scattering amplitude. The homogeneous equation with
= 0 has nonvanishing solutions only for K 2 = (K) which denes
the dispersion relation
k2 k2 = (k , k).
(6.9)
This equation determines implicitly the frequency k related to a wave

number k for a freely propagating mode.
A problem with Eq. (6.8) is the general dependence of on
and k which implies dispersion, i.e. in coordinate space it is not a
simple second-order dierential equation. Otherwise the equation of
motion for a single eld mode k would be (t2 + k2 + k )k = gk .
Apart from the source term this is a simple harmonic oscillator with
frequency k2 = k2 + k . The canonical quantization procedure then
leads to quantized excitations with energy h
k the usual particles.
In a medium one follows this procedure in an approximate sense by
expanding k () (, k) to lowest order around k ,
k () = k (k ) + k (k )( k ),
(6.10)
where k () k (). To this order the Klein-Gordon equation is

[
2 + k2 + k (k )( k ) k () = gk (),
(6.11)
where the dispersion relation Eq. (6.9) was used. To rst order in k
one may use 2 = 2k = + k which allows one to write
Z 1 ( 2 k2 ) k () = gk (),
(6.12)
where

(, k)
2k k (k )
=1

.
2k
2 2 k2 =(,k)
(6.13)
202
Chapter 6
Because Z is a constant for a xed k the approximate equation of

motion EE405 corresponds to a Hamiltonian
H = H0 + Hint = 21 Z 1 ( 2k + k2 2k ) + gk k .
(6.14)
The free-eld term

is of the standard harmonic-oscillator form if one
substitutes k = Z ek , i.e. free particles are excitations of the eld
ek which has a renormalized amplitude relative to k .
In terms of the renormalized
eld the interaction Hamiltonian is now
of the form Hint = Zg ek k which means that particles inthe medium

interact with an external source with a modied strength Zg. Therefore, in Feynman graphs one must include one factor of Z for each
external line of the eld. Equivalently, the squared matrix element
involves a factor Z for each external particle.
For relativistic modes where |k2 k2 | k2 the modication is
inevitably small, |Z 1| 1. For (longitudinal) plasmons, however, the
dispersion relation in a nonrelativistic plasma is approximately = P
with the plasma frequency P , i.e. they are far away from the light
cone, and then Z is a nonnegligible correction (Sect. 6.3). In the original
calculation of the plasma decay process an incorrect Z was used
for the longitudinal excitations (Adams, Ruderman, and Woo 1963).
The correct factor was derived by Zaidi (1965).
6.3
Photon Dispersion
6.3.1
Maxwells Equations
For the astrophysical applications relevant to this book the photon refractive index in a fully ionized plasma consisting of nuclei and electrons
will be needed. On the quantum level, this system is entirely described
by quantum electrodynamics (QED). It is sometimes referred to as a
QED plasmain contrast with a quark-gluon plasma which is described
by quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The calculation of the refractive
index amounts to an evaluation of the forward scattering amplitude of
photons on electrons, a simple task except for the complications from
the statistical averaging over the electrons which are partially or fully
relativistic and exhibit any degree of degeneracy. Recently Braaten and
Segel (1993) have found an astonishing simplication of this daunting
problem (Sect. 6.3.4).
A more conceptual complication is the occurrence of a third photon
degree of freedom in a medium (Langmuir 1926), sometimes referred to
203
as Langmuir waves or plasmons.31 Still, one should not think of photons

as becoming literally massive like a massive vector boson which also
carries three polarization states. A photon mass is prohibited by gauge
invariance which remains intact. However, the medium singles out an
inertial frame and thus breaks Lorentz invariance, an eect which is
ultimately responsible for the possibility of a third polarization state.
It is useful, then, to begin with some general aspects of photon propagation in a medium which are unrelated to specic assumptions about
the medium constituents. Notably, begin with the classical Maxwell
equations for the electric and magnetic elds
E = ,
= J,
BE
B = 0,
= 0.
E+B
(6.15)
An additional condition is that the electric charge density and current

density J obey the continuity equation
J = J = 0,
(6.16)
where J = (, J) and = (t , ). Covariantly, Maxwells equations are

F = J ,
F = 0,
(6.17)
where F is the antisymmetric eld-strength tensor with the nonvanishing components F 0i = F i0 = Ei , and F ij = F ji = ijk Bk .
Applying to the inhomogeneous equation and observing that F
is antisymmetric and symmetric under reveals that for
consistency J must obey the continuity equation.
An equivalent formulation arises from expressing the eld strengths
in terms of a four-potential A = (, A) by virtue of
F = A A ,
(6.18)
and B = A. This representation

which amounts to E = A
is enabled by the homogeneous set of Maxwell equations which are then
automatically satised. The inhomogeneous set now takes the form
A ( A) = J,
where
31
(6.19)
= = = t2 2 .
They are sometimes called longitudinal plasmons in contrast to transverse

plasmons. In this nomenclature the term plasmon refers to any excitation of the
electromagnetic eld in a medium while photon refers to an excitation in vacuum.
204
Chapter 6
The eld-strength tensor contains six independent degrees of freedom, the E and B elds. The redundancy imposed by the constraint of
the homogeneous equations was removed by introducing the vector potential. There still remains one redundant degree of freedom related to
a constraint imposed by current conservation. The Maxwell equations
remain invariant under a gauge transformation A A where
is an arbitrary scalar function. The modied A yields the same elds
E and B which are the physically measurable quantities.
The relationship to current conservation is easiest recognized if one
recalls that Maxwells equations can be derived from a Lagrangian
14 F 2 J A where F 2 = F F . A gauge transformation introduces
an additional term J which is identical to a total divergence (J)
if J = 0 and thus leaves the Euler-Langrange equations unchanged.
Indeed, current conservation is a necessary and sucient condition for
the gauge invariance of the theory (Itzykson and Zuber 1983).
A judicious choice of gauge can simplify the equations enormously.
Two important possibilities are the Lorentz gauge and the Coulomb,
transverse, or radiation gauge, based on the conditions
A = 0,
Lorentz gauge,
A = 0,
Coulomb gauge.
(6.20)
Maxwells equations are then found to be (Jackson 1975)

= ,
2 = ,
A = J,
Lorentz gauge,
A = JT ,
Coulomb gauge,
(6.21)
where JT is the transverse part of J characterized by JT = 0.

In the absence of sources ( = 0 and J = 0) the potential vanishes
in the Coulomb gauge while A obeys a wave equation. A Fourier transformation leads to (k2 + 2 )A = 0 whence the propagating modes
have the dispersion relation k2 = 2 corresponding to massless particles. Because of the transversality condition k A = 0 there are only
two polarizations, the usual transverse electromagnetic waves. They
are characterized by an electric eld E transverse to k and a magnetic
eld of the same magnitude transverse to both.
6.3.2
Linear Response of the Medium
Maxwells equations allow one to calculate the electromagnetic elds

in the presence of prescribed external currents. However, the charged
205
particles which constitute the currents move themselves under the inuence of electromagnetic elds. Therefore, the interaction between
elds and currents must be calculated self-consistently. If the elds are
suciently weak one may assume that the reaction of the currents to
the elds can be described as a linear response. (For a general review
of linear-response theory in electromagnetism see Kirzhnits 1987.)
In general this statement cannot be made locally in the sense that
the currents at space-time point (t, x) were only linear functions of
A(t, x). Within the restrictions imposed by causality the relationship between elds and currents is nonlocal; for example, a solution
of Maxwells equations with prescribed currents requires integrations
over the sources in space and time. After a Fourier transformation,
however, the assumption of a linear response can be stated as
Jind
= A .
(6.22)
The polarization tensor (K) with K = (, k) is a function of the

medium properties.
Besides the induced current there may be an externally prescribed
one Jext which is unrelated to the response of the microscopic medium
constituents to the elds; the total current is J = Jind + Jext . Maxwells
equations (6.19) are then in Fourier space
(K 2 g + K K + )A = Jext
.
(6.23)
Invariance under a gauge transformation A A + K requires that

K = 0. Because the external and total currents are conserved
the induced current is conserved as well, leading to K Jind = 0 or
K = 0. Altogether
K = K = 0
(6.24)
which is an important general property of the polarization tensor.

Considering the Maxwell equations in Coulomb gauge in the absence of external currents, the transversality of A still implies that it
provides only two wave polarization states, albeit with modied dispersion relations due to the presence of . With regard to the equation
note that in an isotropic medium the induced charge density ind must
be a spatial scalar and so can depend only on and the combination
k A = 0 which is the only available scalar linear in A. Therefore, the
homogeneous equation for is
(k2 + 00 ) = 0.
00
(6.25)
Because is a function of and k this is a wave equation with the

dispersion relation k2 + 00 (, k) = 0. The electric eld associated
206
Chapter 6
with this third polarization degree of freedom is proportional to k,

along the direction of propagationhence the term longitudinal excitation. There is no magnetic eld associated with it. Physically, it
corresponds to a density wave of the electrons much like a sound wave.
Obviously this mode requires being carried by a medium, as opposed
to the transverse waves which propagate in vacuum as well.
The wave equation Eq. (6.23) corresponds to a Langrangian density
in Fourier space which involves a new term V with V = 12 A A
which plays the role of a medium-induced potential energy for the
eld A. In vacuum can be constructed only from g and K K
which both violate the gauge condition K = 0. Notably, this forbids a
2
photon mass term which would have to be of the form
mass = m g .
In a medium an inertial frame is singled out, allowing one to construct
from the medium four-velocity U and to nd a structure which obeys
the gauge constraint. Strictly speaking, however, the medium does not
induce an eective-mass term which would be of the form m2e g and
which remains forbidden by gauge invariance.
6.3.3
Isotropic Polarization Tensor in the Lorentz Gauge
The Coulomb gauge is well suited to treat radiation in vacuum because

the propagating modes are neatly separated from the scalar potential,
and the gauge component is easily identied with the longitudinal part
of A. In a medium, however, the dierent appearance of and A in
their respective wave equations is cumbersome. The Maxwell equations
in Lorentz gauge are symmetric between and A which allows one to
treat all polarization states on the same footing.
In order to construct the most general (K) for an isotropic medium
it is useful to dene four basis vectors for Minkowski space which are
adapted to the symmetry of the medium as well as to the Lorentz
condition (Weldon 1982a; Haft 1993). For that purpose one may use
the preferred directions in Minkowski space, namely K and the fourvelocity of the medium U which is (1, 0) in its inertial frame. Moreover,
the notation and k is used for the frequency and wave vector of K
in the medium frame; they are covariantly given by = U K and
k 2 = k2 = (U K)2 K 2 .
In Lorentz gauge the physical A elds obey K A = 0. Therefore,
one denes a basis vector for the gauge degree of freedom by
eg K/ K 2 .
(6.26)
Next, one chooses a vector which is longitudinal relative to the spatial
207
part of K and which obeys K eL = 0,

eL
(k 2 , k)
K K 2 U
=
,
k K2
k K2
(6.27)
where the second expression refers to the medium rest frame. There
remain two directions orthogonal to eg and eL , or equivalently, to K
and U . If k is taken to point in the z-direction two possible choices are
the unit vectors ex and ey , respectively. However, in order to retain the
azimuthal symmetry around
the k direction the circular polarization
vectors e = (ex iey )/ 2 are needed. Then
e (0, e )
(6.28)
in the rest frame of the medium; a suitable covariant formulation is

also possible. The basis vectors obey e = e while eg,L are real for
K 2 > 0 (time-like) and eg,L = eg,L for K 2 < 0 (space-like). They are
normalized according to e e = e e = 1 and eL eL = 1 and
eg eg = 1, depending on K 2 being time- or space-like. Evidently, eg
and eL switch properties between a time- and space-like K.
This choice of basis vectors is only possible if K 2 = 0. If K is
light-like one must make some other choice, for example (1, 0) and
in the rest frame of the medium. Because the goal is to describe
(0, k)
electromagnetic excitations in a medium, and because usually K 2 = 0
for such waves, this is no serious limitation. It will turn out that the
dispersion relation of (longitudinal) plasmons crosses the light-cone, i.e.
there is a wave number for which 2 k 2 = 0. The degeneracy of eg
with eL at this single point will cause no trouble.
The most general polarization tensor compatible with the gauge
condition Eq. (6.24) must be constructed from e and eL alone. Azimuthal symmetry about the k direction requires that they occur only
in the scalar combinations ea e
a . Therefore, one denes the projection
operators on the basis vectors
Pa ea e
a ,
(a = , L).
(6.29)
The most general polarization tensor is then given as

=
a Pa ,
(6.30)
a=,L
where the a are functions of the Lorentz scalars K 2 and U K or

equivalently of and k in the medium frame. They represent the
medium response to circularly and longitudinally polarized As.
208
Chapter 6
The homogeneous Maxwell equations in Lorentz gauge in an isotropic medium then have the most general form
(
K 2 g +
a Pa A = 0.
(6.31)
a=,L
The metric tensor is g = Pg + PL + P+ + P where Pg = eg e

g . Hence
2
2
one obtains decoupled wave equations [ + k + a (, k)]Aa = 0 for
the physical degrees of freedom Aa = Pa A with a = , L. The corresponding dispersion relation is
2 + k 2 + a (, k) = 0.
(6.32)
It yields the frequency k for modes with a given polarization and wave
number. The so-called eective mass is then m2e = a (k , k). This
expression is dierent for dierent polarizations and wave numbers,
and may even be negative.
Generally, an isotropic medium is characterized by three dierent
response functions because the left- and right-handed circular polarization states may experience dierent indices of refraction (Nieves and Pal
1989a,b). Such optically active media are not symmetric under a parity
transformation. For example, a sugar solution changes under a spatial
reection because the sugar molecules have a denite handedness.
If the medium and all relevant interactions are even under parity the
circular polarization states have the same refractive index. Then one
needs to distinguish only between transverse and longitudinal modes;
one denes T + = and PT = P+ + P which projects on the
plane transverse to K and U in Minkowski space.
In macroscopic electrodynamics the medium eects are frequently
stated in the form of response functions to applied electric and magnetic elds instead of a response to A. The displacement induced by an
applied electric eld is D = E with the dielectric permittivity. Similarly, the magnetic eld is H = 1 B for an applied magnetic induction
where is the magnetic permeability. For time-varying and/or inhomogeneous elds these relationships are understood in Fourier space
where the response functions depend on and k.
The magnetic eld H and the transverse part of D, characterized
by k DT = 0, do not have independent meaning (Kirzhnits 1987).
Therefore, among other possibilities one may choose H = B, DT =
T ET , and DL = L EL . In this case L is the longitudinal and
T L + (1 1 ) k 2 / 2 the transverse dielectric permittivity.
209
The relationship to the transverse and longitudinal components of

the polarization tensor is (Weldon 1982a)
L = 1 L /( 2 k 2 )
and
T = 1 T / 2 .
(6.33)
This yields the well-known dispersion relations (Sitenko 1967)

L (, k) = 0
and
2 T (, k) = k 2
(6.34)
for the longitudinal and transverse modes.

Calculations of the polarization tensor from the forward scattering
amplitudes on microscopic medium constituents are usually performed
in a cartesian basis and thus yield an expression for . The longitudinal and transverse components are projected out by virtue of
L = e
L eL and T = e e , or explicitly in the medium frame
(Weldon 1982a)
L = (1 2 /k 2 ) 00
and
T = 12 (Tr L ),
(6.35)
with Tr = g .
Recall that the dispersion relations are given by 2 k 2 = T,L (, k).
Thus the frequency (k) and the eective mass of a given mode are
generally complicated functions of k, notably in a medium involving
bound electrons where various resonances occur. It can be shown on
general grounds (Jackson 1975), however, that for frequencies far above
all resonances the transverse mode has a particle-like dispersion relation
2 k 2 = m2T where mT is the transverse photon mass which is a
constant independent of the wave number or frequency.
6.3.4
Lowest-Order QED Calculation of
On the level of quantum electrodynamics (QED) the potential V =

1
A A which modies the free Lagrangian is interpreted as the
2
self-energy of the photons in the medium. As a Feynman graph, it corresponds to an insertion of into a photon line of four-momentum K
and thus corresponds to forward scattering on the medium constituents
(Fig. 6.1), entirely analogous to the interpretation of the refractive index in terms of a forward scattering amplitude in Sect. 6.2.1. One then
concludes that (K) is the truncated matrix element for the forward
scattering of a photon with momentum K, i.e. it is the matrix element of the medium constituents alone, uncontracted with the photon
polarization vectors and .
In general, the calculation of requires the methods of eld theory at nite temperature and density. To lowest order, however, this
210
Chapter 6
Fig. 6.1. Polarization tensor as photon self-energy insertion.
formalism is not required because the only contribution is from lowestorder forward scattering on charged particles. Moreover, because the
scattering amplitude involves nonrelativistically the inverse mass of the
targets one may limit ones attention to the electrons.
Then one takes the standard (truncated) Compton-scattering matrix element (e.g. Bjorken and Drell 1964; Itzykson and Zuber 1983)
and takes an average over the Fermi-Dirac distributions of the electrons. To lowest order in = e2 /4 this yields (Altherr and Kraemmer
1992; Braaten and Segel 1993)
(K) = 16
d3 p
2E(2)3
1
e(E)/T + 1
e(E+)/T + 1
(P K)2 g + K 2 P P P K (K P + K P )
,
(P K)2 14 (K 2 )2
(6.36)
where P = (E, p) and E = (p2 + m2e )1/2 , apart from refractive eects
for the electrons and positrons. The phase-space distributions represent
electrons and positrons at temperature T and chemical potential .
Over the years, the phase-space integration has been performed in
various limits (Silin 1960; Tsytovich 1961; Jancovici 1962; Klimov 1982;
Weldon 1982a; Altherr, Petitgirard, and del Ro Gaztelurrutia 1993).
The most comprehensive analytic result is that of Braaten and Segel
(1993) which contains all previous cases in the appropriate limits.
The main simplication occurs from neglecting the (K 2 )2 term in
the denominator of Eq. (6.36). For light-like Ks this is exactly correct, and in the nonrelativistic limit where me is much larger than all
other energy scales the approximation is also trivially justied. In the
relativistic limit it is only justied if one is interested in (K) near the
light cone ( = k) in Fourier space. In the relativistic limit both transverse and longitudinal excitations have dispersion relations which are
approximately ( 2 k 2 )1/2 e T or eEF in the nondegenerate and degenerate limits, respectively. As detailed by Braaten and Segel (1993),
this deviation from masslessness is small enough to justify the approximation if one aims at the dispersion relations. Including 14 (K 2 )2 yields
an O(2 ) correctionit can be ignored in an O() result.
211
In a higher-order calculation one has to include the proper e dispersion relations which imply that electromagnetic excitations are never
damped by e+ e decay (Braaten 1991), in contrast with statements found in the previous literature. Dropping the (K 2 )2 term in the
denominator of Eq. (6.36) prevents from developing an imaginary
part from this decay, even with the vacuum e dispersion relations.
Therefore, the approximate integral actually provides a better representation of the O() dispersion relations than the exact one.
With the approximation K 2 = 0 in the denominator of Eq. (6.36)
the angular integral is trivial.32 With Eq. (6.35) one nds
[
(
)
]
p2
2 k2
4 2 k 2
+ kv
dp fp
2
1 ,
L =
log
k2
E kv
kv
k2v2
0
[
(
)]
p2
4 2 k 2
2
+ kv
dp fp
T =
log
, (6.37)
k2
E 2 k 2 2kv
kv
0
where v = p/E is the e velocity and fp represents the sum of their

phase-space distributions.
The remaining integration can be done analytically in the classical,
degenerate, and relativistic limits where one nds
[
L = P2 1 G(v2 k 2 / 2 ) + v2 k 2 k 2 ,
[
T = P2 1 + 12 G(v2 k 2 / 2 ) .
(6.38)
Here, v is a typical electron velocity dened by

v 1 /P .
The plasma frequency P and the frequency 1 are
4
2
P
dp fp p (v 13 v 3 ),
0
4
2
1
dp fp p ( 53 v 3 v 5 ).
0
The function G (Fig. 6.2) is dened by
[
(
)]
3
2x 1 x
1+ x
G(x) =
1
log
x
3
2 x
1 x
=6
xn
.
n=1 (2n + 1)(2n + 3)
(6.39)
(6.40)
(6.41)
Note that G(0) = 0, G(1) = 1, and G (1) = .

32
In the degenerate limit, Jancovici (1962) has calculated analytically the full
integral without the K 2 = 0 approximation.
212
Chapter 6
Fig. 6.2. Function G(x) according to Eq. (6.41).
The most astonishing observation of Braaten and Segel (1993) is

that Eq. (6.38) is a good approximation for all conditions, not only for
the limiting cases for which it was derived. As the approximation is
much better than 1%, which is the approximate accuracy of an O()
result, these representations can be taken to be exact to this order.
6.3.5
Dispersion Relations
In order to determine the photon dispersion relation for specic conditions one must determine P and v corresponding to the temperature
T and chemical potential of the electrons. In Fig. 6.3 contours for
v and P /T are shown in the T --plane of a plasma. Analytic
limiting cases are (Braaten and Segel 1993)
1/2
(5T /me )
v =
vF
(
)
4 ne
5 T
me
2 me
4 n
4 2
e
P2 =
=
p F vF
E
3
F
4 ( 2 1 2 2 )
+ T
Classical,
Degenerate,
Relativistic,
(6.42)
Classical,
Degenerate,
(6.43)
Relativistic,
3
3
where vF = pF /EF is the velocity at the Fermi surface, classical refers
to the nondegenerate and nonrelativistic limit, and relativistic is for
any degree of degeneracy.
213
Fig. 6.3. Contours for v and = P /T as dened in Eqs. (6.39) and (6.40)
where Ye is the number of electrons per baryon.
Next, with Eq. (6.38) one must solve the transcendental equations
T,L (, k) = 2 k 2 which are explicitly
[
2 k2
= P2 1 + 12 G(v2 k 2 / 2 )
[
2 v2 k 2 = P2 1 G(v2 k 2 / 2 )
Transverse,
Longitudinal.
(6.44)
In the classical limit this is to lowest order in T /me

(
2
P2
P2
=k +
(
k2 T
1+ 2
me
k2 T
1+3 2
me
Transverse,
Longitudinal.
(6.45)
For small temperatures the longitudinal modes oscillate with an almost xed frequency, independently of momentum, while the transverse
modes behave almost like massive particles (Fig. 6.4).
The general result Eq. (6.38) and the behavior of the function G(x)
reveal that for transverse excitations 2 k 2 can vary only between P2
and 23 P2 . Also, 2 k 2 > 0 so that K 2 is always time-like. For k P
the transverse dispersion relation approaches that of a massive particle
with a xed mass mT , the transverse photon mass. With Eq. (6.38)
and because k/ 1 for k P one nds m2T = P2 [1 + 12 G(v2 )], or
214
Chapter 6
Fig. 6.4. Electromagnetic dispersion relations in the classical limit according

to Eq. (6.45) for v = (5T /me )1/2 = 0.2. The shaded area indicates the
width of (k) in the longitudinal case due to Landau damping.
with = k directly from Eq. (6.37)

m2T
4
p2
=
dp fp .
0
E
(6.46)
Limiting cases are
1 + vF
1 vF2
m2T
1
log
=
2
2
2v
2vF
1 vF
P
3
2
)]
Classical,
Degenerate,
(6.47)
Relativistic.
In Fig. 6.5 ( 2 k 2 ) is shown for several values of v as a function

of k. It is quite apparent how the transverse mass is asymptotically
approached.
The dispersion relation for longitudinal modes is more interesting in
several regards. First, according to Eq. (6.44) the oscillation frequency
is only a function of v k and so the natural scale for k is P /v . In
Fig. 6.6 I show 2 v2 k 2 as a function of v k.
215
Fig. 6.5. Dispersion relation for transverse modes according to Eq. (6.44).
Fig. 6.6. Dispersion relation for longitudinal modes according to Eq. (6.44).
Second, for v < 1 there is always a wave number k1 where (k)

crosses the light cone (/k = 1),
k12
p2 1
1+v
dp fp
log
1
E v
1v
0
[
(
)
]
1
1 + v
2 3
= P 2
log
1 .
v 2v
1 v
4
=
(6.48)
The second identity (Braaten and Segel 1993) applies at the same level
of approximation as T,L in Eq. (6.38). Some analytic limiting cases
216
Chapter 6
are
k12
P2
1 + 3T /me
1
1 + vF
log
1
2vF
1 vF
vF2
Classical,
(6.49)
Degenerate,
Relativistic.
Then, for k > k1 the four-momentum is space-like, 2 k 2 < 0.

As discussed in Sect. 6.2.2 there is nothing wrong with a space-like
four-momentum of an excitation. In media with electron resonances
such as water or air even (transverse) photons exhibit this behavior
which allows kinematically for their Cherenkov emission e e or
absorption e e. In a plasma, transverse excitations are always
time-like and thus cannot be Cherenkov absorbed. Their lowest-order
damping mechanism is Thomson scattering e e which is not included because it is an O(2 ) eect. Longitudinal excitations with
k > k1 , in contrast, can and will be Cherenkov absorbed by the ambient electrons, leading to an O() damping rate. It corresponds to an
imaginary part of the dispersion relation (an imaginary part of L ).
In the expression Eq. (6.36) this damping eect corresponds to a
vanishing denominator, essentially to P K = 0, which occurs when the
intermediate electron in Compton scattering goes on-shell. Evidently,
P K = E p k can never vanish for k < while for k > there are
always some electrons, even in a nonrelativistic plasma, which satisfy
this condition. When the phase velocity /k becomes of the order of
a typical thermal velocity the number of electrons which match the
Cherenkov condition becomes large, and then the damping of plasmons
becomes strong. Because v measures a typical electron velocity this
occurs for k >
/v (Fig. 6.4). Therefore, while nothing dramatic
happens where the dispersion relation crosses the light cone, it zzles
out near the electron cone. For k >
/v there are no organized
oscillations of the electronslongitudinal modes no longer exist.
This damping mechanism of plasma waves was rst discussed by
Landau (1946) and is named after him. A calculation in terms of Cherenkov absorption was performed by Tsytovich (1961). In the classical
limit the Landau damping rate (the imaginary part of the frequency) is
L
=
P
kD
k
)3
D
e 2k2 =
k2
( )3/2 (
5
2
P
v k
)3
5 P
e 2 v2 k2 , (6.50)
2
=
where kD = 4 ne /T is the Debye screening scale. (Note that P2 /kD
T /me = v2 /5.) For a given wave number a plasmon must be viewed
217
as a resonance with a nite width L . The approximate uncertainty

L (k) of the energy (k) is shown in Fig. 6.4 as a shaded area.
The damping rate Eq. (6.50) does not show a threshold eect at
k = because it was calculated nonrelativistically so that the highenergy tail of the electron distribution contains particles with velocities
exceeding the speed of light. Tsytovich (1961) calculated a relativistic result with the correct threshold behavior. However, because the
damping rate is exceedingly small for k kD , the correction is very
small if P kD , equivalent to T me . For the degenerate case,
explicit expressions for the imaginary parts of T,L (, k) were derived
by Altherr, Petitgirard, and del Ro Gaztelurrutia (1993).
The general expressions Eq. (6.38) for the real parts of L and
T were derived without the need to assume that K was time-like.
Therefore, they should also apply below the light cone, even though
Braaten and Segel (1993) conned their discussion to the region k < .
As expected, these expressions break down for k > /v where Landau
damping becomes strong.
6.3.6
Renormalization Constants ZT,L
Armed with the dispersion relation one may determine the vertex renormalization constants ZT,L relevant for the coupling of external photons
or plasmons to an electron in the medium (Sect. 6.2.3),

1
ZT,L
T,L (, k)
=1

.
2 2
2
k =T,L (,k)
(6.51)
With the same approximations as before, Braaten and Segel (1993)

found an analytic representation accurate to O(),
ZT =
2 2 ( 2 v2 k 2 )
,
2 [3P2 2 ( 2 k 2 )] + ( 2 + k 2 )( 2 v2 k 2 )
ZL =
2
2 ( 2 v2 k 2 )
.
3P2 ( 2 v2 k 2 ) 2 k 2
(6.52)
In each case and k are on shell, i.e. they are related by the dispersion relation relevant for the T and L case, respectively.
Inspection of Eq. (6.52) reveals that ZT is always very close to unity,
as expected for excitations with only a small deviation from a massiveparticle dispersion relation. The contours in Fig. 6.7 conrm that ZT
never deviates from unity by more than a few percent.
218
Chapter 6
Fig. 6.7. Contours for the vertex renormalization factor ZT for transverse
electromagnetic excitations in a medium according to Eq. (6.52).
Fig. 6.8. Modied vertex renormalization factor ZeL for longitudinal electromagnetic excitations in a medium according to Eq. (6.53).
The longitudinal case is more complicated. ZL is a product of two

factors ZeL and 2 /( 2 k 2 ) where the former,
ZeL
2 ( 2 v2 k 2 )
,
3P2 ( 2 v2 k 2 )
(6.53)
is a function of the variable v k alone because for plasmons is a

function of v k alone. The function ZeL (v k) is shown in Fig. 6.8; for
v k P it quickly drops to zero. However, in a relativistic plasma
219
with v = 1 the complete factor is ZL = 2 2 /[3P2 ( 2 k 2 )] and thus

rises quickly with k because k.
As discussed in the previous section, the dispersion relation crosses
the light cone at k = k1 , a point at which ZL diverges and changes sign.
The sign change is compensated by the change of the polarization vector
eL (Eq. 6.27) at the light cone where it becomes imaginary. Because
in the squared matrix element a factor eL eL appears, and because
this expression changes sign at the light cone, the expression ZL e

L eL
remains positive.
As for the divergence, it is harmless in reactions of the sort L
(plasmon decay), e eL (Cherenkov emission), L e e (Cherenkov
absorption), and T L a (plasmon coalescence into axions) which are
of interest in this book. These reactions involving three particles are
constrained by their phase space to either time-like excitations (plasmon decay), or to space-like ones (Cherenkov and coalescence process).
Therefore, the threshold behavior of the phase space moderates the
divergence in these cases.
6.4
Screening Eects
6.4.1
Debye Screening
Scattering processes in the Coulomb eld of charged particles such as

Rutherford scattering, bremsstrahlung, or the Primako eect typically
lead to cross sections which diverge in the forward direction because of
the long-range nature of the electrostatic interaction. In a plasma this
divergence is moderated by screening eects which thus are crucial for
a calculation of the cross sections or energy-loss rates.
Screening eects are revealed by turning to the static limit of Maxwells equations in a medium,
[
[
k 2 + L (0, k) (k) = (k),

]
k 2 + T (0, k) A(k) = J(k),
(6.54)
where the current must be transverse in both Coulomb and Lorentz

gauge as t = 0 in the static limit. Notably, the equation for in
vacuum is the Fourier transform of Poissons equation and thus gives
rise to a 1/r Coulomb potential if the source is point-like, (r) = e(r).
In a QED plasma L,T (, k) are given by the integrals Eq. (6.37).
In the static limit ( = 0) one nds T (0, k) = 0 because all terms
in the integrand involve factors of . Therefore, stationary currents
220
Chapter 6
(t J = 0) are not screened. The magnetic eld associated with a stationary current is the same at a distance whether or not the plasma
is present.
Not so for the electric eld associated with a charge. In the static
limit one nds
4
L (0, k) =
dp fp p (v + v 1 ).
(6.55)
Because this expression does not depend on k it can be identied with

the square of a xed wave number kS , leading to Poissons equation in
the form
(
k 2 + kS2 (k) = (k).
(6.56)
Because for a point-like source this gives a Yukawa potential

(r) r1 r1 ekS r
(6.57)
electric charges are screened for distances exceeding about kS1 .

Evaluating Eq. (6.55) explicitly in the classical limit reproduces the
well-known Debye screening scale (Debye and H
uckel 1923; for a textbook discussion see Landau and Lifshitz 1958)
2
kS2 = kD
=
4 ne
me 2
=
.
T
T P
(6.58)
2
At this point one recognizes that kD
is independent of the electron
mass, in contrast with the plasma frequency P2 . Therefore, it is no
longer justied to ignore the ions or nuclei; they contribute little to
dispersion because of their reduced Thomson scattering amplitude, but
2
they contribute equally to screening. Therefore, one nds kS2 = kD
+ ki2
with
ki2 =
4
nj Zj2 ,
T
j
(6.59)
where the sum is over all species j with charge Zj e.

Comparing Eq. (6.55) with the corresponding expression for the
plasma frequency Eq. (6.40) reveals that in the relativistic limit (v = 1)
2
= 3P2 . It is clear that apart from a numerical factor they must
kD
be the same because a relativistic plasma has only one natural scale,
namely a typical electron energy.
221
In the limit of degenerate electrons the integral is also easily solved

and leads to the familiar Thomas-Fermi wave number33 (Jancovici 1962)
2
kS2 = kTF
=
4
3 2
EF pF = 2P .
vF
(6.60)
2
2
so that in a medium of degenerate
always exceeds kTF
However, kD
electrons and nondegenerate ions the main screening eect is from the
latter. Recall that the Fermi momentum is related to the electron
density by ne = p3F /3 2 and the Fermi energy is EF = (p2F + m2e )1/2 .
To compare the Thomas-Fermi with the Debye scale take the nonrelativistic limit (kTF /kD )2 = 32 T /(EF me ). This is much less than 1
or the medium would not be degenerate whence kTF kD . Therefore, if the electrons are degenerate and the ions nondegenerate, a test
charge is mostly screened by the polarization of the ion uid because
the electrons form a sti background. Unfortunately, one often nds
calculations in the literature which include screening by the electrons
(screening scale kTF ) but ignore the ions. The resulting error need not
be large because the screening scale typically appears logarithmically
in the nal answer (see below).
Screening eects in Coulomb processes are often found to be implemented by a modied Coulomb propagator
1
1
,
|q|4
(q2 + kS2 )2
(6.61)
where q is the momentum transfer carried by the intermediate photon.

This substitution arises if one considers Coulomb scattering from a
Yukawa-like charge distribution. It corresponds to the substitution
Eq. (6.57), i.e. to a single charge with an exponential screening cloud.
This picture is appropriate if the Coulomb scattering process itself is so
slow that the charged particles move around and rearrange themselves
so much that the probe, indeed, sees an average screening cloud.
In the opposite limit, a given probe sees a certain conguration, a
dierent probe a dierent one, etc., and one has to average over all of
these possibilities. In this case one needs to square the matrix element
rst, and then take an average over dierent medium congurations.
For Eq. (6.61) one averages rst, obtains an average scattering amplitude or matrix element, and squares afterward.
33
For a textbook derivation from a Thomas-Fermi model see Shapiro and Teukolsky (1983). Note that they work in the nonrelativistic limit: their EF = p2F /2me .
222
Chapter 6
It depends on the physical circumstances which procedure is a better

approximation. If one considers bremsstrahlung processes with degenerate electrons scattering o nondegenerate nuclei, the crossing time of
an electron of a region the size kS1 is short compared to the crossing
time of nuclei. Hence, the latter can be viewed as static, the probe sees
one conguration at a time, and one certainly should use the square
rst procedure instead of Eq. (6.61) to account for screening. This is
achieved by the following consideration of correlation eects.
6.4.2
Correlations and Static Structure Factor
The screening of electric elds in a plasma is closely related to correlations of the positions and motions of the charged particles. If a negative
test charge is known to be in a certain position, the probability of nding an electron in the immediate neighborhood is less than average,
while the probability of nding a nucleus is larger than average. It is
this polarization of the surrounding plasma which screens a charge.
Take one particle of a given species to be the origin of a coordinate
system, and take their average number density to be n. The electrostatic repulsion of the test charge causes a deviation of the surrounding
charges from the average density by an amount
S(r) = 3 (r) + n h(r),
(6.62)
where h(r) measures the particle correlations. They vanish in an ideal

Boltzmann gas: h(r) = 0. The Fourier transform
S(q) =
d3 r S(r) eiqr
(6.63)
is the static structure factor of the electron distribution. In the absence

of correlations (h = 0) one has trivially S(q) = 1.
In order to make contact with Debye screening consider the Yukawa
potential of Eq. (6.57) which represents a charge density
(r) = 3 (r)
kS2 ekS r
.
4 r
(6.64)
The volume integral of (r) vanishes, giving zero total charge, i.e. complete screening at innity. If one imagines that only one species of
charged particles is mobile on a uniform background of the opposite
charge, then Eq. (6.64) implies correlations between the mobile species
of n h(r) = (kS2 /4r) ekS r . As expected, Debye screening corresponds
223
to spatial anticorrelations of like-charged particles. Fourier transforming Eq. (6.64) yields the important result
S(q) =
q2
q2 + kS2
(6.65)
for the structure factor.

The assumption of one mobile species of particles on a uniform
background corresponds to the model of a one-component plasma.
It is approximately realized in the interior of hot white dwarfs or the
cores of red-giant stars where the degenerate electrons form a sti
background of negative charge in which the nondegenerate ions move.
In a nondegenerate situation, however, there are at least two mobile species, ions of charge Ze and electrons. For this two-component
plasma Salpeter (1960) derived the structure functions
See (q) =
2
q2 + ZkD
,
2
q2 + (1 + Z)kD
Sii (q) =
2
q2 + kD
,
2
q2 + (1 + Z)kD
Sei (q) =
2
kD
.
2
q2 + (1 + Z)kD
(6.66)
The Fourier transform of the screening cloud around an electron is

S(q) = See (q) ZSei (q) =
q2
,
q2 + kS2
(6.67)
2
2
with kS2 = kD
+ ki2 = (1 + Z) kD
. (Note that for only one species of ions
2
2
ki = ZkD .) Hence one reproduces a screened charge distribution which
causes a Yukawa potential. However, the small-q behavior of See or Sii
is very dierent: See (0) = Z/(1 + Z) in a two-component plasma while
See (0) = 0 for only one component.
6.4.3
Strongly Coupled Plasma
For low temperatures, the screening will not be of Yukawa type and
the structure factor will deviate from the simple Debye formula. A
plasma can be considered cold if the average Coulomb interaction energy between ions is much larger than typical thermal energies. To
quantify this measure, one introduces the ion-sphere radius ai by
= 4a3i /3 where ni is the number density of the mobile
virtue of n1
i
224
Chapter 6
particle species. Hence, a measure for the Coulomb interaction energy

is Z 2 /ai , assuming the ions have charge Ze. One usually introduces
the parameter
Z 2
(ki ai )2
=
(6.68)
ai T
3
as a measure for how strongly the plasma is coupled, where ki2 =
4Z 2 /T . For 1 it is weakly coupled and approaches an ideal
Boltzmann gas.
The Debye structure factor of a one-component plasma can be written as
|ai q|2
SD (q) =
.
(6.69)
|ai q|2 + 3
This result applies even for large if |ai q| 1. For 1, the plasma
is strongly coupled, and for >
178 the ions will arrange themselves
in a body centered cubic lattice (Slattery, Doolen, and DeWitt 1980,
1982).
In Fig. 6.9 I show S and SD as functions of ai q = |ai q| for = 2, 10
and 100 where S was numerically determined (Hansen 1973; Galam and
Hansen 1976). The emerging periodicity for a strongly coupled plasma
is quite apparent. It is also clear that for <
1 the Debye formula gives
a fair representation of the structure factor while for a strongly coupled
plasma it is completely misleading. The interior of white dwarfs is in
the regime of large , and old white dwarfs are believed to crystallize.
(See Appendix D for an overview over the conditions relevant for stellar
plasmas.)
6.4.4
Screened Coulomb Scattering
Armed with these insights one may turn to the issue of Coulomb scattering processes in a plasma. In the limit of nonrelativistic and essentially
static sources for the electric elds the relevant quantity entering the
matrix element is the Fourier component (q) of the charge distribution (r) where q is the momentum transferred by the Coulomb eld
to the sources. The squared matrix element thus involves the quantity
(q) (q) which is (q)(q) because (r) is real. Taking a statistical
average over all possible congurations of the charge distribution leads
to a rate proportional to
S(q) = (q)(q).
(6.70)
This is the static structure factor introduced earlier as a measure of the

correlation between the charged particles of the medium.
225
Fig. 6.9. Static structure factor for a one-component plasma according to

the numerical calculations of Hansen (1973) and Galam and Hansen (1976).
The dashed lines correspond to the Debye structure factor Eq. (6.69).
226
Chapter 6
Without correlations, the squared matrix element involves |q|4

from the Coulomb propagator. In order to account for screening effects one should substitute
|q|4 |q|4 S(q)
(6.71)
which implies
1
1
2 2
4
|q|
q (q + kS2 )
(6.72)
in the weak-screening limit (Debye screening).

The dierence in a scattering cross section implied by Eq. (6.72)
relative to (6.61) is easily illustrated. Observe that a cross section
involving a Coulomb divergence is typically of the form
+1
1
dx
(1 x) f (x)
,
(1 x)2
(6.73)
where x is the cosine of the scattering angle of the probe. Here, f (x) is
a slowly varying function which embodies the details of the scattering
or bremsstrahlung process. If this function is taken to be a constant,
the two screening prescriptions amount to the two integrals
+1
1
+1
1
2 + 2
1
= log
,
dx
(1 x + 2 )
2
(1 x)
2 + 2
dx
=
log
(1 x + 2 )2
2
2
,
2 + 2
(6.74)
where 2 kS2 /2p2 is the screening scale expressed in units of the initialstate momentum of the probe. Usually, it far exceeds the screening scale
whence 2 1. Then Eq. (6.72) yields a cross section proportional to
log(4p2 /kS2 ) while Eq. (6.61) gives [log(4p2 /kS2 ) 1].
Thus, if one is only interested in a rough estimate, either screening
prescription and any reasonable screening scale yield about the same
result. For an accurate calculation, however, one needs to identify
the dominant source of screening (for example, the nondegenerate ions
in a degenerate plasma and not the electrons), and the appropriate
moderation of the Coulomb propagator, usually Eq. (6.72).
6.5
6.5.1
227
Plasmon Decay in Neutrinos34

Millicharged Neutrinos
Transverse and longitudinal electromagnetic excitations in a plasma

are both kinematically able to decay into neutrino pairs (Fig. 6.10) of
suciently small mass, namely 2m < K 2 where K is the plasmon35
four-momentum. In the following, the neutrinos are always taken to
be massless relative to the plasma frequency and so K 2 > 0 is required
which restricts longitudinal excitations to k < k1 , the wave number
where their dispersion relation crosses the light cone.
Fig. 6.10. Plasmon decay in neutrinos.
In addition, a --interaction is required which does not exist in

the standard model. Still, plasmon decays occur because the medium
itself mediates an eective coupling as will become clear below. As an
easy start, however, consider the hypothesis that neutrinos carry small
electric charges (millicharges). Interestingly, this possibility is not
excluded by the structure of the standard model and has received some
recent attention in the literature (Sect. 7.3.2).
With a neutrino millicharge e the interaction with the electromagnetic vector potential A is the standard expression
Lint = ie A .
(6.75)
The spin-summed squared matrix element is of the form
|M|2 = M P P
(6.76)
spins
where explicitly
M = 4e2 Z (g + 2 ).
(6.77)
Here, Z is the renormalization constant (Sect. 6.2.3 and 6.3.6), P and

P are the and four-momenta, and is the plasmon polarization
vector for which one uses the basis vectors of Eqs. (6.27) and (6.28).
34
I closely follow Haft (1993).

In this section the term plasmon refers to both transverse and longitudinal
electromagnetic excitations in a medium.
35
228
Chapter 6
The decay width of a plasmon with four-momentum K = (, k) in

the medium frame, and with a denite polarization is
d3 p
d3 p
1
4 4
(2)
(K
P
)
|M|2 .
3
3
2Ep (2) 2Ep (2)
2 spins
(6.78)
Because of Eq. (6.76) one may use Lenards (1953) formula
)
( 2
d3 p d3 p 4
P P (K P P ) =
K g + 2K K .
2Ep 2Ep
24
(6.79)
With e2 /4 this leads to

= Z ( 2 k 2 )/3,
(6.80)
where the normalization = 1 for transverse and time-like longitudinal plasmons was used as well as K = 0. applies to both
transverse and longitudinal plasmons with the appropriate ZT,L . For a
chosen three-momentum k = |k| the quantities Z, , and K 2 = 2 k 2
are all functions of k by virtue of the dispersion relation K 2 = T,L (K).
In the classical limit transverse plasmons propagate like massive
particles with K 2 = P2 and ZT = 1. Then T = 31 P3 (P /) where
the last factor is recognized as a Lorentz time-dilation factor. For a
general dispersion relation which is not Lorentz covariant it makes little
sense, of course, to express the decay rate in the plasmon frame. An
example is the classical limit for the longitudinal mode for which to
zeroth order in T /me the frequency is = P , ZL = 2 /K 2 , and then
L = 13 P with the restriction k < P .
6.5.2
Neutrino Dipole Moments
Another direct coupling between neutrinos and photons arises if the former have electric or magnetic dipole or transition moments (Sects. 7.2.2
and 7.3.2)
Lint =
1
2
ab a b + ab a 5 b F .
(6.81)
a,b
Here, F is the electromagnetic eld tensor, = , and a

with a = 1,2,3 or e,, are the neutrino elds.
229
The squared matrix element is of the form Eq. (6.76); for a magnetic
dipole coupling of a single avor one nds
M = 42 Z (2K K 2K 2 K 2 g ).
(6.82)
This leads to a decay rate

= (2 /24) Z ( 2 k 2 )2 /,
(6.83)
applicable to either plasmon polarization with the appropriate Z and

dispersion relation.
In the presence of electric and magnetic transition moments one
obtains the same result with
2
|ab |2 + |ab |2 .
(6.84)
a,b
There is no interference term between the electric and magnetic couplings. The presence of transition moments allows for plasmon decays
of the sort a b with dierent avors a = b, doubling the nal
states which may be a b or b a .
6.5.3
Standard-Model Couplings
In a medium there is an eective coupling between electromagnetic

elds and neutrinos mediated by the ambient electrons. For the purpose
of a plasmon-decay calculation it can be visualized with the Feynman
graph Fig. 6.11 which corresponds to the photoneutrino process or
Compton production of neutrino pairs (Sect. 3.2.4). However, the nalstate electron can have the same four-momentum as the initial state
which amounts to forward scattering of the electrons. In this case
the energy-momentum transfer to the electron vanishes, allowing for a
coherent superposition of these amplitudes from all electrons.
Fig. 6.11. Compton production of neutrino pairs (nonzero momentum transfer to electrons) or plasmon decay (electron forward scattering).
230
Chapter 6
With the dimensionless coupling constants CV and CA given in Appendix B the neutral-current -e-interaction is
GF
Lint = e (CV CA 5 )e (1 5 ) .
2
(6.85)
The vector-current has the same structure that pertains to the electron interaction with photons, Lint = ie e e A . Therefore, after performing a thermal average over the electron forward scattering
amplitudes the plasmon decay is represented by the Feynman graph
Fig. 6.12 which is identical with Fig. 6.1 with one photon line replaced
by a neutrino pair. As far as the electrons are concerned, photon forward scattering is the same as the conversion .
Fig. 6.12. Photon-neutrino coupling by the photon polarization tensor; the

second photon line in Fig. 6.1 was replaced by a neutrino pair.
Put another way, in a plasma the propagation of an electromagnetic

excitation is accompanied by an organized oscillation of the electrons.
This is particularly obvious for longitudinal modes which are the collective oscillation of the electron gas, but it also applies to transverse
modes. The collective motion is the medium response Jind = A to
an electromagnetic excitation, a response which is characterized by the
polarization tensor. The coherent electron oscillations serve as sources
for the neutrino current whence they emit neutrino pairs.
The electron collective motion is an oscillation of their location or
density while their spins remain unaected apart from relativistic corrections. Because the axial-vector current represents the electron spin
density, and because to lowest order no collective spin motion is expected as a response to an electromagnetic excitation, the axial-vector
neutrino coupling to electrons will contribute very little to plasmon decay. This remains true in a relativistic plasma. For example, Koyama,
Itoh, and Munakata (1986) found numerically that the axial vector contributes less than 0.01% to neutrino emission by the plasma process for
all conditions of astrophysical interest. A detailed study of the axial
response function can be found in Braaten and Segel (1993). For the
231
present discussion I will not worry any further about the axial-vector
contribution.
The matrix element for the interaction between neutrinos and photons can then be read from the eective vertex
CV GF
i A (1 5 ) .
e 2
(6.86)
The electric charge in the denominator removes one such factor contained in which was calculated for photon forward scattering. In
the matrix element, is to be taken at the four-momentum K of the
photon. Besides plasmon decay , this interaction also allows for
processes such as Cherenkov absorption or emission .
For the decay of a plasmon with a polarization vector and fourmomentum K the squared matrix element has the form Eq. (6.76) with
M = 8
G2F 2
(g + 2 ).
2e2 T,L
(6.87)
Because the plasmon is a propagating mode it obeys its dispersion

relation, i.e. T,L = 2 k 2 . The decay rate is then
=
CV2 G2F
( 2 k 2 )3
Z
.
T,L
48 2
(6.88)
This result was rst derived by Adams, Ruderman, and Woo (1963),
the correct Z for the longitudinal case was rst derived by Zaidi (1965).
This equation is understood on shell where depends on k through
the dispersion relation 2 k 2 = T,L (, k).
6.5.4
Summary of Decay Rates
In order to express the decay rates in a compact form, recall that on

shell the scale for K 2 is set by the plasma frequency P . Therefore, it
is useful to dene
T,L (k)
T,L (k , k)
,
P2
(6.89)
where k is the frequency related to k as a solution of the dispersion

L 1
equation 2 k 2 = (, k). Recall that 1
T < 32 while 0
2
for a time-like K (k < k1 ). At k = k1 the L dispersion relation crosses
the light cone.
232
Chapter 6
The decay rates of Eqs. (6.80), (6.83) and (6.88) of a plasmon with
three-momentum k are then expressed as
4 Zk
k =
3 k
2
2
P2
k
4
P2
k
4
Millicharge,
)2
Dipole Moment,
(
)3
CV2 G2F P2
k
(6.90)
Standard Model,
where for Zk and

k the T or L value appropriate for the chosen polarization must be used.
6.5.5
Energy-Loss Rates
It is now an easy task to calculate stellar energy-loss rates for the

plasma process. An integration over the Bose-Einstein distributions of
the transverse and longitudinal plasmons yields for the energy-loss rate
per unit volume
2
T
QT = 2
dk k 2 /T
,
2 0
e
1
1 k1
L
QL = 2
dk k 2 /T
.
2 0
e
1
(6.91)
In QT the factor 2 counts two polarization states. In QL the integration

can be extended only to the wave number k1 where the L dispersion
relation crosses the light conefor k > k1 decays are kinematically
forbidden. In either case T,L and are functions of k, the latter given
by the dispersion relation.
For the specic neutrino interaction models discussed in the previous section one obtains with the decay rates of Eq. (6.90)
83 3
Q=
T
2
2
P2
4
P2
4
Q1
Millicharge,
Q2
Dipole Moment,
)2
(
)3
CV2 G2F P2
Q3
(6.92)
Standard Model,
where 3 1.202 refers to the Riemann Zeta function. The dimensionless emission rates Qn for the three cases are each a sum of a transverse
233
and longitudinal term, Qn = QL,n + QT,n where

QL,n
QT,n
2 e
1 k1
1 k1
Ln1
Ln
2 ZL
2 ZL
=
=
,
dk
k
dk
k
43 T 3 0
e/T 1
43 T 3 0
P2 e/T 1
Tn
1
2 ZT
dk
k
=
.
23 T 3 0
e/T 1
(6.93)
The second equation for QL,n relies on the denition Eq. (6.53), i.e.
ZL = ZeL 2 /( 2 k 2 ), and 2 k 2 = L was used.
The normalization factors were chosen such that QT,n = 1 if the
plasmons are treated as eectively massless particles for the phase-space
integration. Then ZT =
T = 1 which is a reasonable approximation
in a nondegenerate, nonrelativistic plasma. In that limit to lowest
order k1 = P , ZeL = 1, and L = P2 k 2 . Therefore, in this limit
QL,n QT,n . In fact, the longitudinal emission rate is of comparable
importance to the transverse one only in a narrow range of parameters
of astrophysical interest (Haft, Raelt, and Weiss 1994).
These simple approximations, however, are not adequate for most of
the conditions where the plasma process is important. In Appendix C
the numerical neutrino emission rates are discussed; a comparison between Fig. C.1 and Fig. 6.3 reveals that the plasma process is important
<
for 0.3 <
P /T 30, i.e. transverse plasmons can be anything from
relativistic to entirely nonrelativistic. For a practical stellar evolution
calculation one may use the analytic approximation formula for the
plasma process discussed in Appendix C, based on the representation
of the dispersion relations of Sect. 6.3.
The main issue at stake in this book, however, is nonstandard neutrino emission from the direct electromagnetic couplings discussed in
Sect. 6.5. Instead of constructing new numerical emission rate formulae
one uses the existing ones for the standard-model (SM) couplings and
scales them to the novel cases. Numerically, one nds
(4)2 Q1
Qcharge
= 2 2 4
= 0.664 e214
QSM
CV GF P Q3
Qdipole
2 2 Q2
= 2 2 2
= 0.318 212
QSM
CV GF P Q3
10 keV
P
10 keV
P
)4
)2
Q1
,
Q3
Q2
,
Q3
(6.94)
where e14 = e /1014 e and 12 = /1012 B with B = e/2me .

Contours for Q1 /Q3 and Q2 /Q3 are shown in Fig. 6.13 according to
Haft, Raelt, and Weiss (1994). Replacing these ratios by unity in a
practical stellar evolution calculation introduces only a small error.
234
Chapter 6
Fig. 6.13. Contours of Q1 /Q3 and Q2 /Q3 dened by Eq. (6.93) in the plane
dened by the plasma frequency P and a typical electron velocity v
discussed in Sect. 6.3. See Fig. 6.3 for contours of v and P in the T -plane. (Adapted from Haft, Raelt, and Weiss 1994.)
6.5.6
Astrophysical Bounds on Neutrino Electromagnetic

Properties
The plasma decay process is the most important neutrino emission

process for a large range of temperatures and densities. Moreover,
it has an observable impact on the cooling of hot white dwarfs, and
on the core mass at helium ignition in low-mass red giants. For a
14
> 12
neutrino millicharge e >
10 e and a dipole moment 10 B the
nonstandard plasmon decay rates in Eq. (6.94) begin to compete with
the standard one if the plasma frequency is around 10 keV. Therefore,
neutrino millicharges or dipole moments of this magnitude will have
observable eects on these stars and thus can be excluded.
235
In Sect. 2.2.3 it has been discussed that neutrino emission cools

hot white dwarfs so fast that there is a clear depression of the whitedwarf luminosity function at the hot and bright end relative to the
simple Mestel law which takes only surface photon emission into account. This depression would be enhanced by additional cooling caused
by dipole moments or millicharges, allowing one to derive a limit of
about 12 < 10, although even for 12 3 a nonnegligible eect
is apparent.
A more restrictive and probably more reliable limit can be derived
from the properties of globular-cluster stars (Raelt 1990b). To this
end one may use the simple criteria derived in Sect. 2.5 which state
1 1
that a novel energy-loss rate is constrained by x <
10 erg g s for
the average core-conditions of a horizontal branch star, and for those of
a low-mass red giant before the helium ash. In both cases T 108 K.
For this temperature, the plasma loss rates are shown in Fig. 6.14 as
a function of density. The anomalous rates were obtained from the
standard one according to Eq. (6.94), taking Q1 /Q3 = Q2 /Q3 = 1 and
using the zero-temperature plasma frequency given in Eq. (D.12) as a
function of density.
The rst criterion of Sect. 2.5, based on the helium-burning lifetime
of HB stars, requires calculating the energy loss rate at an average
density which is below 104 g cm3 . Therefore, the medium is so dilute
Fig. 6.14. Neutrino energy-loss rate in helium at T = 108 K. Solid line:

Total standard rate. Long dashes: Standard plasma rate. Short dashes:
Plasma rate induced by a dipole moment = 21012 B . Dots: Plasma
rate induced by a neutrino millicharge e = 1014 e.
236
Chapter 6
that one may employ the simple analytic form Eq. (6.92) of the emission
rate with Qn = 1. The core of HB stars consists at rst of helium, later
also of carbon and oxygen, for all of which Ye = 0.5. Then,
5.0 e214
x = 1 erg g1 s1 T83 0.098 212 4
0.0127 24
Millicharge,
Dipole Moment, (6.95)
Standard Model,
where T8 = T /108 K and 4 = /104 g cm3 . The core averages for a

typical HB star are T83 = 0.44, T83 4 = 0.47 and T83 24 = 0.57. The
requirement x < 10 erg g1 s1 then gives the limits
14
e <
210 e
and
12
<
1410 B .
(6.96)
Of course, for such large dipole moments the core would grow far beyond its standard value before helium ignites, causing an additional
acceleration of the HB lifetime. In fact, this indirect impact on the HB
lifetime would be the dominant eect as shown, for example, by the
numerical calculations of Raelt, Dearborn, and Silk (1989).
From Fig. 6.14 it is clear that the dipole-induced emission rate is
larger for the conditions of the second criterion, based on the heliumignition argument where 2105 g cm3 . According to Eq. (D.12)
the relevant plasma frequency is P = 8.6 keV so that Qcharge /QSM
1.2 e214 and Qdipole /QSM 0.4 212 in Eq. (6.94). The average total emission rate is then given by the standard rate times F = 1 + Qj /QSM
where j stands for charge or dipole. In order to prevent the core
mass at helium ignition from exceeding its standard value by more
14
than 5% one must require F < 3. Then one nds e <
1.310 e
12
and <
210 B . For the dipole case, a detailed numerical imple12
mentation yielded <
310 B (Sect. 2.5.2), nearly identical with
this simple analytic estimate. The limit on the charge could also be
slightly degraded and so I adopt
14
e <
210 e
and
12
<
310 B
as the nal globular-cluster limits.
(6.97)
6.6
237
Neutrino Form Factors in Media
In a medium, neutrinos can interact with photons using electrons or

other charged particles as go-betweens. The basic idea is to consider the
Compton process of Fig. 6.11 with the initial- and nal-state electrons
in the same state, i.e. forward scattering for the electrons. Then one
may sum over all electrons of the medium. This coherent superposition
of the amplitudes from all electrons was used in the previous section to
calculate the standard-model plasmon decay rate. There, only on-shell
(propagating) photons were considered. In general one may consider
other cases, for example electromagnetic scattering by the exchange of
a space-like photon, or the behavior of neutrinos in an external electric
or magnetic eld.
The neutrino electromagnetic form factors in vacuum will be studied
in Sect. 7.3.2. They can be classied as a charge radius, an anapole
moment, and an electric and a magnetic dipole moment. They are
induced by intermediate (virtual) charged particles such as charged
leptons or W bosons. In the present case the form factors are induced
by the real particles of the ambient heat bath. The eective Lagrangian
Eq. (7.19) is fundamentally Lorentz covariant, a fact which reduces
the number of possible form factors to four. While in a medium the
couplings may also be written in a nominally Lorentz covariant form,
the medium singles out an inertial frame, leading to more complicated
structures. This is analogous to dispersion which is simple in vacuum
(a mass term is the only possibility) while in a medium the dispersion
relations can be excruciatingly complicated.
Limiting the couplings to the ones mediated by electrons and protons, the induced photon coupling to the neutrino is proportional to A
because these fermions couple by the usual e A interaction. The
neutrinos
couple by their standard eective neutral-current interaction
(GF / 2) (1 5 ) e (CV CA 5 )e with the weak coupling
constants CV and CA given in Appendix B. Therefore, after summing
over all intermediate electron states the eective neutrino-photon interaction may be written in the form
Le = 2 GF 12 (1 5 ) A ,
(6.98)
where is a matrix which depends on the medium properties and

on the energy-momentum transfer, i.e. the energy momentum K of the
photon line. It consists of a symmetric piece
V which is proportional
to CV , and an antisymmetric piece
which
is proportional to CA .
A
238
Chapter 6
Explicit expressions in terms of the electron phase-space integrals

were derived, e.g. by DOlivo, Nieves, and Pal (1989) and by Altherr
and Salati (1994),
V = 4e CV
]
d3 p [
+
f
(p)
+
f
(p)
e
e
2E(2)3
(P K)2 g + K 2 P P P K (K P + K P )
,
(P K)2 41 (K 2 )2
= 2ie CA
]
d3 p [
(p) fe+ (p)
f
e
2E(2)3
K 2 P K
,
(P K)2 41 (K 2 )2
(6.99)
where fe (p) is the electron and positron phase-space distribution with

P = (E, p) the electron or positron four-momentum.
Instead of a neutrino pair, another photon can be thought of as
being coupled to the electron line in Fig. 6.11 or 6.12, a process which
represents photon forward scattering. Therefore, apart from overall
coupling constants
V is identical with the electronic contribution to
the photon polarization tensor studied earlier in this chapter
V = (CV /e) .
(6.100)
In an isotropic plasma, is characterized by the two medium characteristics T (, k) and L (, k) which are functions of the photon fourmomentum K = (, k) with k = |k|. For the antisymmetric piece, in
an isotropic medium the phase-space integration averages the spatial
part of P to zero so that
0
K a(, k)
A = 2ieCA
(6.101)
in terms of a single medium characteristic a.

The single most important application of the eective neutrino electromagnetic coupling is the photon decay process that was
studied in the previous section. It turns out that
A contributes very
little to the decay process so that V , or rather the polarization tensor

determines all aspects of the plasma process.
Another possible process is the Cherenkov emission of photons by
neutrinos. Of course, because in a plasma transverse photons acquire an
eective mass, i.e. their dispersion relation is time-like ( 2 k2 > 0),
239
this process is kinematically forbidden. However, longitudinal electromagnetic excitations (plasmons), which exist only in the medium,
propagate such that for some momenta 2 k2 < 0 (space-like fourmomentum), allowing for Cherenkov emission. One nds statements
in the literature that the neutrino energy transfer to the medium by
this process exceeded the transfer by (incoherent) -e scattering (e.g.
Oraevski and Semikoz 1984; Oraevski, Semikoz, and Smorodinski
1986; Semikoz 1987a). This is in conict with the discussion of Kirzhnits, Losyakov, and Chechin (1990) who found on general grounds that
the energy loss of a neutrino propagating in a stable medium was always bounded from above by the collisional energy loss, apart from a
factor of order unity. Granting this, the Cherenkov process does not
seem to be of great practical importance.
If neutrinos have masses and mix, decays of the form 2 1 are
possible in vacuum, and can be kinematically possible in a medium if
the photon eective mass does not exceed the neutrino mass dierence m2 m1 . If kinematically allowed, this decay receives a contribution from the medium-induced coupling which may far exceed the
vacuum decay rate. Explicit calculations were performed by a number of authors36 who unfortunately ignored the kinematic constraint
imposed by the photon dispersion relation. This is not a reasonable
approximation in view of the relatively small neutrino masses that remain of practical interest. Further, in order to judge the importance
of the medium-induced decay it is not relevant to compare with the
vacuum decay rate, but rather one should compare with the collisional
transition rate 2 e e1 (mediated by photon exchange) which is the
process with which the coherent reaction directly competes.
The photon decay as well as the Cherenkov process and the mediuminduced neutrino decay all have in common that the neutrino couples
to an electromagnetic eld which is a freely propagating wave, obeying
the dispersion relation in the medium which is 2 k 2 = T,L (, k)
for transverse and longitudinal excitations, respectively. However, one
may also consider the eect of a static external electric or magnetic
eld.37 To this end, one must take the static limit 0 of the
vertex functions
V,A (, k). For an external static electric eld the
only nonvanishing component of the vector potential A is A0 . Then
36
DOlivo, Nieves, and Pal (1990); Kuo and Pantaleone (1990); Giunti, Kim, and
Lam (1991).
37
This issue has been investigated in many works, e.g. Oraevski and Semikoz
(1985, 1987), Semikoz (1987a,b), Nieves and Pal (1989c, 1994), Semikoz and
Smorodinski (1988, 1989), and DOlivo, Nieves, and Pal (1989).
240
Chapter 6
00
A does not contribute so that only the V component remains of

00
interest. In the static limit is simply given by L (0, k) which in
turn can be identied with the square of the screening scale kS2 in a
medium (Sect. 6.4.1). This implies that the neutrino interacts with the
external electric eld as if it had a charge
(6.102)
e = (CV /e) 2 GF kS2 .
In a classical (nondegenerate, nonrelativistic) hydrogen plasma the

2
screening scale is given by the Debye scale through kS2 = 2kD
= 2e2 ne /T
with the
electron density ne so that the induced neutrino charge is e =
CV e 2 2 GF ne /T . This induced charge is explained by the medium
polarization caused by the weak force exerted by the presence of the
neutrino.
While this induced charge is conceptually very interesting it does
not seem to have any immediate practical consequences. Notably, it
is not the relevant quantity for the interaction with a static magnetic
eld, i.e. one may not infer that neutrinos move on curved paths in
magnetic elds. The presence of a neutrino charge was derived for
the interaction with a static electric eld! The relevant form factor
for the interaction with a static magnetic eld is identied by noting
that now only the spatial components of A are nonzero. In the static
limit only the component 00 of the polarization tensor survives when
contracted with A . Then there is no contribution from
S for the
neutrino interaction with a magnetic eld. The contribution from
A
can be interpreted as a normal or Dirac magnetic moment induced
by the medium (Semikoz 1987a; DOlivo, Nieves, and Pal 1989)

[
]
= eCA 2GF 4
dp fe (p) fe+ (p) .
(6.103)
0
In the limit of a classical plasma this is = (e /2me )(2CA /CV ) where

e is the induced electric charge of Eq. (6.102).
This induced Dirac magnetic moment is to be compared with the
electrons Dirac moment e/2me , not with an anomalous moment. The
former arises from the e e e A coupling, the latter is described by
1
F . This means that the induced dipole moment does
2 e e e
not lead to neutrino spin precessionit only couples to left-handed
states. It entails an energy dierence between neutrinos moving in
opposite directions along a magnetic eld. The transverse part of the
eld has no impact on the neutrinothere is no spin precession, and no
curvature of the trajectory. (These conclusions pertain to the limit of
weak magnetic elds. For strong elds the modication of the electron
241
wavefunctions, i.e. Landau levels rather than plane waves, would have
to be used for a self-consistent treatment of the photon polarization
tensor and thus, for the neutrino coupling to a magnetic eld. For a
rst discussion see Oraevski and Semikoz 1991.)
In summary, on the basis of the existing literature it appears that
the medium-induced electromagnetic form factors of neutrinos are of
practical importance only for the photon decay process that was discussed in the previous section.
6.7
6.7.1
Neutrino Refraction
Neutrino Refractive Index
When neutrinos propagate in a medium they will experience a shift of

their energy, similar to photon refraction, due to their coherent interaction with the medium constituents (Wolfenstein 1978). The neutrino
refractive index can be calculated in the same way as that for any
other particle which propagates in a medium, namely on the basis of
the forward scattering amplitudes as discussed in Sect. 6.2.1. As one
needs only forward scattering, and as the relevant medium constituents
are protons, neutrons, electrons, and possibly other neutrinos, only the
Feynman graphs of Fig. 6.15 need to be considered.38
In most situations of practical interest the energies of the neutrinos
and of the medium particles are much smaller than the W and Z mass
(80.2 and 91.2 GeV) so that the energy and momentum transferred by
the gauge bosons is always much less than their mass.39 This justies
to expand their propagators (energy-momentum transfer Q) as
D (Q) =
g
Q2 g Q Q
+
+ ...
m2Z,W
m4Z,W
(6.104)
and keep only the rst term. (The second term is needed if the contribution of the rst one cancels as in a CP symmetric mediumsee
38
In the formalism of nite temperature and density (FTD) eld theory the amplitudes may be written in a more compact form so that the relevant Feynman
graphs reduce to a tadpole and a bubble graph (Notzold and Raelt 1988; Nieves
1989; Pal and Pham 1989). Apart from a more compact notation, however, the
FTD formalism leads to the same expressions as the pedestrian approach chosen
here.
39
See however Learned and Pakvasa (1995) as well as Domokos and KovesiDomokos (1995) for a discussion of the oscillations of very high-energy cosmic neutrinos for which this approximation is not adequate.
242
Chapter 6
Fig. 6.15. Amplitudes contributing to forward scattering: (a) Neutralcurrent scattering for any or on any f or f as target. (b) e - e scattering.
(c) e -e charged-current scattering. (d) e -e+ charged-current scattering.
(e) Eective four-fermion vertex in the low-energy limit.
Sect. 6.7.2.) This amounts to reducing the weak interaction to the

low-energy Fermi eective Hamiltonian represented by graph (e) in
Fig. 6.15. For the neutral-current processes (a) and (b) it is explicitly
GF
Hint = f (CV CA 5 )f (1 5 ) ,
2
(6.105)
where is a neutrino eld ( = e, , ) while f represents fermions of the medium (f = e, p, n, or even neutrinos ). Here, GF =
1.166105 GeV2 is the Fermi constant. The relevant values of the
vector and axial-vector weak charges CV and CA are given in Appendix B. In the low-energy limit the charged-current reactions (c)
and (d) can also be represented as an eective neutral-current interaction of the same form with CV = CA = 1.
It is now straightforward to work out the forward scattering amplitudes. The axial-vector piece represents the spin of f and so it averages
to zero if the medium is unpolarized. Then one nds for the refractive
index of a neutrino (upper sign) or antineutrino (lower sign) with energy
nrefr 1 = CV GF
nf nf
,
2
(6.106)
where nf and nf are the number densities of fermions f and antifermions f , respectively. The eective weak coupling constants CV are
identical with the CV given in Appendix B except for neutrinos as
243
medium particles40 which are left-handed and thus polarized. Therefore, (1 5 ) = 2 and CV = 2CV .
Because we are dealing with forward scattering where recoil eects
do not occur, the contributions from free or bound nucleons are the
same. Therefore, Eq. (6.106) allows one to determine the refractive
index of any normal medium. Because electric neutrality implies an
excess density of electrons over positrons which balances against the
protons, their neutral-current contributions cancel. (A possible exception is a condensate that may exist in neutron stars.) An excess
of e over e appears to occur only in a young supernova core where
neutrinos have a large chemical potential for the rst few seconds after
collapse.
All told, the dispersion relation for unmixed neutrinos, valid even in
the nonrelativistic limit (Chang and Zia 1988), can be written in terms
of a potential energy as
( V )2 = k 2 + m2 ,
(6.107)
where V = (nrefr 1) . For all practical cases
( 1 Yn + Ye + 2Ye ) for e ,
2
V = 2GF nB
( 1 Y + Y )
for , ,
e
2 n
(6.108)
(upper sign , lower sign ). Here, nB is the baryon density and

Yf
nf nf
nB
(6.109)
are the particle number fractions commonly used in astrophysics. Numerically,
2 GF nB = 0.7621013 eV
(6.110)
g cm3
with the mass density .
A remark concerning the absolute sign of V is in order. The relative
signs between the dierent CV s can be worked out easily from the
weak interaction structure of the standard model. Also, the relative
sign of the eective neutral-current amplitudes which follow from Z
and W exchange follows directly, for example, from the FTD approach
(Notzold and Raelt 1988). Thus to x the overall sign it is enough
40
In a supernova core or in the early universe it is not possible to distinguish

between a test neutrino and a medium neutrino. There, one has to study the
nonlinear evolution of the entire ensemble self-consistently (Sect. 9.3.2).
244
Chapter 6
to understand the absolute sign of neutrino-neutrino scattering. It is

a case where identically charged fermions scatter by the exchange of
a vector boson. The structure of this process is analogous to Coulomb
scattering of like-charged particles which experience a repulsive force.
(The exchange of a spin-0 or spin-2 boson leads to an attractive force.)
Thus a neutrino of given momentum in a region of space lled with
other neutrinos will have a positive potential energy V in addition to
its kinetic energy. The correct absolute sign was rst pointed out by
Langacker, Leveille, and Sheiman (1983).
The deviation from relativistic propagation described by Eq. (6.107)
can be expressed as an eective refractive index which includes the
vacuum neutrino mass,
[(
nrefr =
V
1
)2
m2
2
]1/2
V
m2
2
(6.111)
(relativistic limit). Therefore, the eect of a medium can be expressed

as an eective mass
m2e = m2 + 2V.
(6.112)
A numerical comparison with the vacuum mass is achieved by

(
2 2GF nB
)1/2
(
4
= 3.9110
eV
g cm3
)1/2 (
MeV
)1/2
.
(6.113)
Of course, the term eective mass is a misnomer because me depends

on the energy , and m2e can be negative depending on the vacuum
mass, the medium composition, the avor of the neutrino, and whether
it is or .
1
The phase velocity vphase = /k = nrefr
can be larger or less than
the speed of light, depending on those parameters. However, the group
velocity vgroup = d/dk remains at its vacuum value (1 + m2 /k 2 )1/2
for a given momentum k because is shifted by a constant amount V ,
independently of k.
Because normal media contain about
equal numbers of protons and
1
1
neutrons Yn Ye 2 and so Ve 4 2GF nB V, . Therefore, e
and , are shifted by almost exactly opposite amounts. An exception
is the proton-rich material of normal stars which initially contain about
75% hydrogen. Another exception is the neutron-rich matter of neutron
stars where even Ve is negative.
245
The absolute shift of the neutrino masses is rather negligible because we are dealing with highly relativistic particles. Even in this limit,
however, the dierence between the dispersion relation of dierent avors is important for oscillation eects. Hence the most noteworthy
medium eect is its avor birefringence: e and , acquire dierent
eective masses because of the charged-current contribution from
e -e
scattering. The dierence of their potentials is Ve V, = 2GF nL
with nL = YL nB the lepton-number density where the number fraction of leptons is YL = Ye + Ye . Of course, neutrinos as a background
medium contribute only in a young supernova core.
6.7.2
Higher-Order Eects
In the early universe one has nearly equal densities of particles and antiparticles with an asymmetry of about 109 , leading to a near cancellation of the refractive terms Eq. (6.106). One may think that the next
most important contribution is from - scattering, a process closely
related to the decay briey discussed in Sect. 7.2.2. If one
approximates the weak interactions by an eective four-fermion coupling the relevant amplitude is given by the graph Fig. 6.16 which on
dimensional grounds should be of order GF . However, electromagnetic gauge invariance together with the left-handedness of the weak
interaction implies that it vanishes identically (Gell-Mann 1961). For
massive neutrinos the amplitude is proportional to GF m , but even in
this case it vanishes in the forward direction (Langacker and Liu 1992).
Fig. 6.16. Neutrino-photon scattering with an eective four-fermion weak

interaction and a charged lepton in the loop. This amplitude vanishes
entirely for massless neutrinos, and for massive ones it still vanishes in the
forward direction.
For the lowest-order - contribution to the refractive index one

must then use the full gauge-boson propagator and include all one-loop
amplitudes required by the standard model. Such calculations were
performed by Levine (1966) and by Cung and Yoshimura (1975) who
2
found that the scattering
amplitude was proportional to GF s/mW
(center of mass energy s). Recently this problem was revisited by
246
Chapter 6
Dicus and Repko (1993) who worked out explicitly the matrix elements
and cross sections. From their results one can extract the forward
scattering amplitude which leads to a refractive index for ( = e, , )
in a photon bath,
GF
nrefr 1 =
4 m2W
4
m2W
1 + ln
3
m2
)]
E n ,
(6.114)
where . . . means an average. Numerically, the term in square brackets

is 32.9 for = e and thus not small, but with 4 in the denominator the
whole expression is still of order GF /m2W , i.e. of order41 G2F . (See also
Nieves, Pal, and Unger 1983; Nieves 1987; Langacker and Liu 1992.)
Because the - term is so small a larger refractive index arises
if one includes the second term in the expansion Eq. (6.104) of the
gauge-boson propagators. Of course, in graphs (a) and (c) of Fig. 6.15
forward scattering implies Q = 0 so that only the rst term contributes,
except when f = where the exchange graph has Q = 0. This case
and graphs (b) and (d) yield a second-order contribution (Notzold and
Raelt 1988). For a neutrino of avor which is either e, , or it is
)
8 2 GF (
nrefr 1 =
E
n
+
E
n
3m2
Z
)
8 2 GF (
n + E+ n+ .
+
E
(6.115)
3m2W
In this case the contributions from background fermions and antifermions add with the same sign, and the global sign remains the same for
and as test particles. In practice, only an electron-positron background is of relevance in the early universe so that , for example,
only feels a second-order contribution from other s and s. These
results are of order G2F / and thus they are the dominant contribution
in a CP-symmetric plasma.
One-loop corrections to the amplitudes of Fig. 6.15 yield other
higher-order terms which are of order G2F like Eq. (6.114). They are
still interesting because the loops involve charged leptons with a mass
depending on their avor. Therefore, the universality of the eective
neutral-current interaction is broken on this level, leading to dierent
refractive indices for dierent . Between e and or the medium
is already birefringent to lowest order from e -e charged-current interactions. Between and the one-loop correction dominates. Assum41
2
2
Note that m2
Z = cos W sin W
2
2 GF / and m2
W = sin W
2 GF /.
247
ing electric neutrality it is (Botella, Lim, and Marciano 1987; see also
Semikoz 1992 and Horvat 1993)
[
V V
3G2F m2
m2W
=
n
ln
B
2 2
m2
Yn
1+
,
3
(6.116)
with a sign change for V V . The shift of the eective mass m2e
is numerically
(
2(V V ) = 2.06106 eV
)2
6.61 + Yn /3
,
3
g cm MeV
7
(6.117)
much smaller than the corresponding dierence between e and , .

6.7.3
The Sun a Neutrino Lens?
The most important consequence of neutrino refraction in media is its

impact on neutrino oscillations because dierent avors experience a
dierent index of refraction. In optics, the most notable consequence
of refraction is the possibility to deect light and thus to use lenses and
other optical instruments. In principle, the same is also possible for
neutrinos. The Sun, for example, could act as a gigantic neutrino lens.
One may easily calculate the deection caused by a given body. If
s is a unit vector along the direction of a propagating wave, and if s
is a coordinate along the beam, the deection is given by (Sommerfeld
1958)
|ds/ds| = n1
refr |s nrefr |,
(6.118)
where nrefr is the refractive index. One may equally write

|d/ds| = n1
refr | nrefr |,
(6.119)
where is the angle relative to the local tangential vector, i.e. d/ds
is the local curvature of the beam, and is the transverse gradient.
The total angle of deection is
|| =
ds | nrefr |
(6.120)
if the curvature is small which is the case for |nrefr 1| 1.

If the beam hits a spherically symmetric body (radius R) at an
impact parameter b < R its angle against the radial direction at a
radius r from the center is sin = b/r so that nrefr = (b/r) r nrefr .
248
Chapter 6
Moreover, if s is measured from the point of closest approach one has

s = (r2 b2 )1/2 and so ds = (r2 b2 )1/2 r dr. Altogether one nds
= 2
R
b
b r nrefr
dr 2
.
r b2
(6.121)
The refraction by the surface of the body was ignored: it is assumed

that it is soft with r nrefr = 0 at r = R. The absolute sign was chosen
such that is positive if the spherical body acts as a focussing lens.
This is the case, for example, for light passing through the atmosphere
of the Earth where r nrefr < 0 and so the Sun near the horizon appears
lifted (Sommerfeld 1958).
With the results for the neutrino refractive index of Sect. 6.7.1 one
has for a beam of energy
2 GF nB,c R b r [nB ( 21 Yn + Ye )]
= 2
dr
,
(6.122)
b
nB,c r2 b2
where nB,c is the baryon density at the center of the lens. This expression applies to e while for or the term Ye is absent, and for
antineutrinos the overall sign changes.
For the Sun with a central density of about 150 g cm3 the overall
coecient is 2.31018 (10 MeV/). The integral expression is dimensionless and thus of order unity. Therefore, the focal length of the
Sun as a neutrino lens is of order 1018 R (solar radius) for 10 MeV
neutrinos, or about the radius of the visible universe!
6.8
Majoron Decay
As a rst application for the neutrino dispersion relation I consider the

interaction of neutrinos with the hypothetical majorons (Sect. 15.7).
These particles are Nambu-Goldstone bosons of a symmetry which is
spontaneously broken by a Higgs elds which gives the neutrinos Majorana masses. For the present purposes it is enough to specify a pseudoscalar interaction
Lint = ih 5
(6.123)
between the neutrinos of a given family and the massless majorons.

Here, is a Majorana neutrino eld while h is a dimensionless Yukawa
coupling constant.
Majorana neutrinos are fermions with only two degrees of freedom.
They correspond to a helicity-minus and a helicity-plus . In fact, if
249
they are massless there is no operational distinction between a Majorana neutrino and the two active degrees of freedom of a Dirac neutrino.
Therefore, according to Eq. (6.107) the dispersion relation for the helicity states of a Majorana neutrino is
E = (m2 + p2 )1/2 V,
(6.124)
where the medium-induced

potential V was given in Eq. (6.108). For
1
e it is V = 2GF (ne 2 nn ) with the electron and neutron densities
ne and nn , respectively.
This dispersion relation implies that the medium is optically active with regard to the neutrino helicities, just as some media are
birefringent with regard to the photon circular polarization. In the
optical case the left-right symmetry (parity) is broken by the medium
constituents which must have a denite handedness; sugar molecules
are a well-known example. In the neutrino case parity is broken by the
structure of the interaction; the medium itself is unpolarized.
Because there is an energy dierence between the Majorana helicity
states for a given momentum, decays + are kinematically
allowed. For relativistic neutrinos the squared matrix element is found
to be |M|2 = 4h2 P1 P2 with the four-momenta P1,2 of the initial and
nal neutrino state. The dierential decay rate is then
d =
4h2 d3 p2
d3 k
P1 P2 (2)4 4 (P1 P2 K)
2E1 2E2 (2)3 2(2)3
(6.125)
with the majoron four-momentum K. Integrating out the d3 k variable

removes the momentum function. The remaining dierential decay is
d
=
dE2
+1
P1 P2 p22
dx
(E1 E2 ),
E1 E2
(6.126)
where x = cos for the angle between p1 and p2 and h2 /4

is the majoron ne-structure constant. In the function
one must
use = k = |p1 p2 | = (p21 + p22 2p1 p2 x)1/2 . With dx [f (x)] =

|df /dx|1 = /p1 p2 and with energy-momentum conservation which
yields P1 P2 = K and thus P1 P2 = 21 (P12 + P22 ) one nds
(E12 + E22 p21 p22 ) p2
d
=
.
dE2
2E1 E2 p1
(6.127)
250
Chapter 6
If one ignores the vacuum mass relative to V one has p1,2 = E1,2 V
so that to lowest order in V
d
V (E1 E2 )
.
=
dE2
E12
(6.128)
Therefore, the nal-state neutrino spectrum has a triangular shape

where E2 varies between 0 and E1 . The integrated decay rate is
= 12 V
(6.129)
as rst shown by Berezhiani and Vysotsky (1987). Various subleties

were covered in the detailed discussion by Giunti et al. (1992).
Interestingly, under the same circumstances the decay + is
equally possible (Rothstein, Babu, and Seckel 1993) and proceeds with
the same rate Eq. (6.129)see Berezhiani and Rossi (1994).
In these calculations it was assumed that the majoron is massless
as it behooves a Nambu-Goldstone boson. Does this remain true in a
medium? The majorons could have a Yukawa coupling g to electrons
in which case one would expect on dimensional grounds that they develop a medium-induced mass of order g(ne /me )1/2 in analogy to the
photon plasma mass. Indeed, if one works with a pseudoscalar coupling analogous to Eq. (6.123) one nds such a result. Even if they did
not couple to electrons, in a supernova core there is a background of
neutrinos to which majorons couple by assumption.
However, a pseudoscalar coupling is not appropriate for a NambuGoldstone boson as it is not invariant under a shift + 0 . The
pseudoscalar expression is only the lowest-order expansion of an exponential coupling which respects the symmetry. Equivalently, a derivative coupling of the sort (1/2f ) 5 can be used which satises
the symmetry explicitly (Sect. 14.2.3). Either way one nds that the
forward scattering amplitude between Nambu-Goldstone bosons and
fermions vanishesthere is no refractive index. The same conclusion
was reached by Flynn and Randall (1988) on more general grounds.
For a suitable choice of parameters the medium-induced decay of
electron neutrinos can deplete the solar neutrino ux before it leaves
the Sun. However, it is doubtful if this eect could explain all current
6
solar neutrino measurements (Sect. 10.8). For h >
10 a radical modication of the neutrino signal from a supernova collapse is expected
(Sect. 15.7.2).
Chapter 7
Nonstandard Neutrinos
The phenomenological consequences of nonvanishing neutrino masses
and mixings and of electromagnetic couplings are explored. The decay
channels and electromagnetic properties of mixed neutrinos are discussed. Experimental, astrophysical, and cosmological limits on neutrino masses, decays, and electromagnetic properties are summarized.
7.1
7.1.1
Neutrino Masses
The Fermion Mass Problem
In the physics of elementary particles one currently knows of two categories of apparently fundamental elds: the spin- 12 quarks and leptons on the one-hand side, and the spin-1 gauge bosons on the other.
The former constitute matter while the latter mediate the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces. The gauge-theory description of
the interactions among these particles is renowned for its elegance and
stunning in its success at accounting for all relevant measurements. At
the same time it has many entirely loose ends. Perhaps the most puzzling problem is that of fermion masses and the related issue of the
threefold replication of families: The electron and neutrino as well as
the up and down quarks (which make up protons and neutrons) each
come in two additional avors or families which seem to dier from
the rst one only in their masses (Fig. 7.1).
The standard model of particle physics holds that all fermions and
gauge bosons are fundamentally massless. The gauge symmetry forbids a fundamental mass for the latter while the masslessness of the
former is indicated by the handedness of the weak interaction: only
left-handed (l.h.) fermions feel this force while the right-handed (r.h.)
251
252
Chapter 7
Fig. 7.1. Mass spectrum of elementary fermions according to the Review

of Particle Properties (Particle Data Group 1994). For the top quark see
CDF Collaboration (1995) and D0 Collaboration (1995). For neutrinos the
experimental upper limits of Tab. 7.2 are shown.
ones are sterile. Handedness, however, is not a Lorentz-invariant

concept because a particle with a spin opposite to its momentum (l.h.
or negative helicity) is r.h. when viewed by a suciently fast-moving
observer. Only massless particles cannot be overtaken because they
move with the speed of light and so they can be classied into l.h. and
r.h. states without reference to a specic Lorentz frame.
Any deviation from relativistic propagation is thought to be a refractive eect, much as a photon acquires a nontrivial dispersion in a
medium. Here, the medium is the spin-0 Higgs eld , a hypothetical
third category of fundamental objects, which is believed to take on the
nonzero classical value 0 246 GeV in vacuum due to self-interactions
253
(spontaneous symmetry breaking). Fermion elds interact with the

Higgs eld by virtue of a Lagrangian g where g is a dimensionless
(Yukawa) coupling constant. In vacuum, this coupling leads to an interaction term g0 which has the form of a standard Dirac mass
term m. Dierent fermion masses thus arise from dierent Yukawa
couplings. 0 does not depend on the Lorentz frame because of the
scalar nature of the Higgs eld and so g0 is the same in all frames,
unlike a refractive photon mass in a medium.
It is not known whether the Higgs mechanism is the true source
for the masses of the fundamental fermions. Experimentally, the Higgs
particle (excitations of the Higgs eld) has not yet been discovered,
while theoretically the fermion masses are the least appealing aspect
of the standard model because they require a host of ad hoc coupling
constants which must be experimentally determined.
7.1.2
Dirac and Majorana Masses
Neutrinos break the pattern of Fig. 7.1 in that they are much lighter
than the other members of a given family, a discrepancy which is most
severe for the third family where cosmologically m <
30 eV, eight and
ten orders of magnitude less than m and mt , respectively! Moreover,
neutrinos are dierent in that their r.h. chirality states are sterile because of the handedness of the weak interaction. The r.h. states interact
with the rest of the world only by gravity and by a possible Yukawa
coupling to the Higgs eld.
It is frequently assumed that neutrinos do not couple to the Higgs
eld, and that the r.h. components do not even exist, assumptions which
are part of the particle-physics standard model. In this case there are
only two neutrino states for a given family as opposed to four states for
the charged leptons. Actually, one may interpret the two components
of such a neutrino as the spin states of a Majorana fermion which is dened to be its own antiparticle. Fermions with four distinct states are
known as Dirac fermions. Naturally, a Majorana fermion cannot carry
a charge as that would allow one to distinguish it from its antiparticle.
A magnetic or electric dipole moment is equally forbidden: its orientation relative to the spin is reversed for antiparticles. For example, the
neutron cannot be a Majorana fermion among other reasons because it
carries a magnetic moment.
Because the r.h. neutrino components of a given family, if they exist,
are sterile anyway, there is no practical distinction between massless
Dirac and Majorana neutrinos except in a situation where gravitational
254
Chapter 7
interactions dominate. For example, even otherwise sterile neutrinos

should be thermally emitted from black holes which are thought to
emit blackbody radiation of all physical elds. Equally, they would have
been produced in the very early universe when quantum gravitational
eects dominate. However, their present-day cosmic density, like that
of primordial gravitons, would be very dilute relative to microwave
background photons.
If neutrinos were Majorana particles they could still have a mass
even though it could not arise from the usual Higgs eld which induces Dirac masses. However, a Majorana mass could arise from the
interaction with a second Higgs eld which also develops a vacuum expectation value. Then the smallness of the neutrino masses could be
due to a small vacuum value of the new Higgs eld while the Yukawa
couplings would not need to be anomalously small.
It is also possible that the r.h. components of the neutrinos do exist, but are themselves (sterile) Majorana fermions with large masses.
It should be noted that any Dirac fermion (four components) can be
viewed as a combination of two Majorana fermions (two components
each) with degenerate masses. Certain variations of such models (seesaw mass models) predict for the light, interacting neutrinos
m1 : m2 : m3 = m2e : m2 : m2
or m2u : m2c : m2t .
(7.1)
The smallness of the neutrino masses is then a suppression eect by

the large mass scale of the heavy sterile state whose mass would arise,
for example, at the grand unication scale of 1015 1016 GeV.
For an elementary introduction to the most common models for neutrino masses see, for example, Mohapatra and Pal (1991). The dizzying
variety of such models alone attests to the fact that even very basic questions about the nature of neutrinos remain unanswered. While
some mass schemes like the see-saw relationship Eq. (7.1) are intriguing,
they have no predictive power because there are many other possibilities. Therefore, it is best to remain open to all possibilities which are
not excluded by experimental or astrophysical arguments.
7.1.3
Kinematical Mass Bounds
Unsurprisingly, much experimental eort goes into attempts to measure

or narrow down the range of possible neutrino masses, an area where
astrophysics and cosmology have made their most renowned contributions to particle physics. Direct laboratory experiments rely on the
255
kinematical impact of a mass on certain reactions such as nuclear decays of the form (A, Z) (A, Z + 1) e e where the continuous energy
spectrum of the electrons originally revealed the emission of another
particle that carried away the remainder of the available energy. The
minimum amount of energy taken by the neutrino is the equivalent of
its mass so that the upper endpoint of the electron spectrum is a sensitive measure for me . Actually, the most sensitive probe is the shape
of the electron spectrum just below its endpoint, not the value of the
endpoint itself. The best constraints are based on the tritium decay
3
H 3 He+ e e with a maximum amount of kinetic energy for the
electron of Q = 18.6 keV. This unusually small Q-value ensures that a
large fraction of the electron counts appear near the endpoint (Boehm
and Vogel 1987; Winter 1991).
In Tab. 7.1 the results from several recent experiments are summarized which had been motivated by the Moscow claim of 17 eV <
me < 40 eV (Boris et al. 1987). This range is clearly incompatible
with the more recent data which, however, nd negative mass-squares.
This means that the endpoint spectra tend to be slightly deformed
in the opposite direction from what a neutrino mass would do. This
eect is particularly striking and signicant for the Livermore experiment where it is nearly impossible to blame it on a statistical uctuation. Therefore, at the present time one cannot escape the conclusion that this experimental technique suers from some unrecognized systematic eect. This problem must be resolved before it will
become possible to extract a reliable bound on me although it appears unlikely that an me in excess of 10 eV could be hidden by what-
Table 7.1. Summary of tritium decay experiments.
Experiment
m2e stat syst

[eV2 ]
Los Alamos
Tokyo
Z
urich
Mainz
Livermore
Troitsk
147 68 41
65 85 65
24 48 61
39 34 15
130 20 15
18 6
a See
Reference
Robertson et al. (1991)
Kawakami et al. (1991)
Holzschuh et al. (1992)
Weinheimer et al. (1993)
Stoe and Decman (1994)
Belesev et al. (1994)a
Otten (1995) for a published description.
256
Chapter 7
ever eect causes the wrong deformation of the end-point spectrum.

In spite of apparent systematic problems, the Troitsk group (Belesev
et al. 1994) claims a limit of me < 4.5 eV at 95% CL; see also Otten (1995).
One has attempted to determine m by measuring the muon momentum from the decay of stopped pions, + + , leading to m2 =
m2+ + m2 2m+ (m2 + p2 )1/2 . A recent p measurement (Daum et al.
1991) implied a negative squared mass of m2 = (0.1540.045) MeV2 ,
probably due to large systematic uncertainties in the determination of
m+ . Hence, it seemed that the often-quoted bound of m < 0.27 MeV
did not apply. An older experiment studied the in-ight decay of pions with a result m2 = (0.14 0.20) MeV2 , largely independent of
the pion mass (Anderhub et al. 1982). This implies a 90% CL upper
limit of m < 0.50 MeV. Most recently, the mass of the negative
pion was reconsidered by Jeckelmann, Goudsmit, and Leisi (1994).
Their previous experiment allows for two mass assignments, m =
139.567820.00037 MeV or 139.569950.00035 MeV. The larger value
had previously been rejected on the basis of evidence which now appears
questionable. Together with a new p measurement (Assamagan et al.
1994) one nds m2 = 0.148 0.024 MeV2 or 0.022 0.023 MeV2 .
The rst value is negative by 6.2 standard deviations and thus may
be rejected as unphysical. The second solution is compatible with zero
and gives a 90% CL upper limit of m < 0.16 MeV.
For the best bounds also come from limits on missing energy
in certain reactions, the only form in which has ever been observed. The ARGUS Collaboration (1988, 1992) studied the decay
3 2 + with a total of 20 events with good energy determinations for all ve pions, leading to m < 31 MeV at 95% CL.
A similar experiment by the CLEO Collaboration (1993) based on a
much larger data sample gave m < 32.6 MeV at 95% CL. Most recently, the ALEPH Collaboration (1995) at CERN has reported a new
Table 7.2. Experimental neutrino mass limits.
Flavor Limit
CL
See Tab. 7.1

90% Assamagan et al. (1994)
95% ALEPH Collaboration (1995)
(5 eV)
0.16 MeV
23.8 MeV
Reference
257
95% CL mass limit of 23.8 MeV on the basis of 25 events of the form
5 and 5 where stands for a charged pion.
Another kinematical method to be discussed in Sect. 11.3.4 uses
the neutrino pulse dispersion from a distant supernova (SN). For e the
observed neutrinos from SN 1987A gave me <
20 eV, less restrictive
than the tritium experiments. However, if the neutrino pulse from a
future galactic SN will be detected one may be able to probe even a
mass down to the cosmologically interesting 30 eV range (Sect. 11.6)!
For Dirac neutrinos there is another essentially kinematical constraint from the SN 1987A neutrino observations. The sterile Dirac
components can be produced in scattering processes by helicity ips.
In a supernova core this eect leads to an anomalous energy drain,
limiting a Dirac mass to be less than a few 10 keV (Sect. 13.8.1).
7.1.4
Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay
If neutrinos have Majorana masses, lepton number is not conserved as

one cannot associate a conserved charge with a Majorana particle.
One observable consequence would be the occurrence of neutrinoless
nuclear decay modes of the form (A, Z) (A, Z+2) 2e which would
violate lepton number by two units. There are several isotopes which
can decay only by the simultaneous conversion of two neutrons. Recently it has become possible to observe the electron spectra from the
standard two-neutrino mode (A, Z) (A, Z+2) 2e 2 e ; for a recent
review see Moe (1995). The decay 76 Ge 76 Se 2e 2 e , for example, is
found to have a half-life of (1.430.04stat 0.13syst )1021 yr (Beck 1993).
The age of the universe, by comparison, is about 1010 yr.
In the 0 decay mode, loosely speaking, one of the emitted Majorana
neutrinos would be reabsorbed as an antineutrino with an amplitude
proportional to me ,Majorana and thus a rate proportional to m2e ,Majorana .
In a measurement of the combined energy spectrum of both electrons
the 0 mode would show up as a peak at the endpoint. The best
current upper bound is from the Heidelberg-Moscow 76 Ge experiment
which yields me ,Majorana < 0.65 eV (Balysh et al. 1995), a number which
will likely improve to 0.2 eV over the next few years. This nominal limit
must be relaxed by as much as a factor of 23 for the uncertainty in the
nuclear matrix elements which are needed to translate an experimental
limit on the neutrinoless decay rate into a mass limit.
With neutrino mixing (Sect. 7.2) the other avors also contribute so
that the bound is really on the quantity m j j |Uej |2 mj where j

is a CP phase equal to 1, and the sum is to be extended over all two-
258
Chapter 7
component Majorana neutrinos. In this language a four-component

Dirac neutrino consists of two degenerate two-component Majorana
ones with = +1 and 1 so that their contributions cancel exactly,
reproducing the absence of lepton number violation for Dirac neutrinos.
If one takes the largest cosmologically allowed value m = 30 eV and
the largest experimentally allowed mixing amplitude (Sect. 8.2.4) of
|Ue,3 | 0.16 one may have a contribution as large as 0.8 eV from .
7.1.5
Cosmological Mass Bounds
Cosmology arguably yields the most important neutrino mass bounds

(Kolb and Turner 1990; Borner 1992). In the framework of the big-bang
scenario of the early universe one expects about as many blackbody
neutrinos in the universe as there are cosmic microwave photons. In
detail, the cosmic energy density in massive neutrinos is found to be
=
3
11
mi ,
(7.2)
i=1
with n the present-day density of microwave background photons and

mi the neutrino masses. In units of the cosmic critical density this is
h2 =
mi
,
i=1 93 eV
(7.3)
where h is the Hubble constant in units of 100 km s1 Mpc1 . The

observed age of the universe together with the measured expansion
rate yields h2 <
0.4 so that for any of the known families
m <
30 eV .
(7.4)
If one of the neutrinos had a mass near this bound it would be the main
component of the long-sought dark matter of the universe.
Certain scenarios of structure formation currently favor hot plus
cold dark matter where neutrinos with me + m + m 5 eV play a
sub-dominant dynamical role but help to shape the required spectrum
of primordial density perturbations (Pogosyan and Starobinsky 1995
and references therein). Preferably, the three neutrino masses should
be degenerate rather than one dominating avor.
If neutrinos were unstable and if they decayed so early that their
decay products were suciently redshifted by the expansion of the universe, the cosmological mass bound can be violated without running
into direct conict with observations. The excluded range of masses
259
Fig. 7.2. Cosmological bounds on neutrino masses and lifetimes as described

in the text. The experimental limits are shown above the main panel. If the
dominant decay channel is the majoron mode the BBN-excluded
range extends between the dashed lines. The dotted line is |Ue3 |2 for
standard-model decays 3 1 according to Eq. (7.17).
and lifetimes according to Dicus, Kolb, and Teplitz (1977)42 is shown

in Fig. 7.2 as a shaded area marked Mass Density.
Decaying neutrinos would cause a second cosmic epoch of radiation
domination, suppressing the growth of density uctuations and thus
the formation of structure (Steigman and Turner 1985; Krauss 1991;
Bond and Efstathiou 1991). Somewhat schematically, the area above
the shaded band in Fig. 7.2 marked Structure Formation is excluded
by this more model-dependent argument. For masses and lifetimes on
this band, neutrinos would actually have the benecial eect of modifying the primordial spectrum of density uctuations such as to avoid the
problem of too much small-scale power in cold dark matter universes
(Bardeen, Bond, and Efstathiou 1987; Bond and Efstathiou 1991; Dodelson, Gyuk, and Turner 1994; White, Gelmini, and Silk 1995).
42
Note that the corresponding limits discussed in the book by Kolb and Turner
(1990) are somewhat less restrictive because their treatment does not seem to be
entirely self-consistent (G. Gelmini, private communication).
260
Chapter 7
The expansion rate and thus the energy density of the universe are
well measured at the epoch of nucleosynthesis (T 0.3 MeV) by
the primordial light-element abundances (Yang et al. 1984). This bigbang nucleosynthesis (BBN) argument has been used to constrain the
number of light neutrino families to N <
3.4 (Yang et al. 1984; Olive
et al. 1990). Even though the measured Z decay width has established
N = 3 (Particle Data Group 1994) the BBN bound remains of interest
as a mass limit because massive neutrinos contribute more than a massless one to the expansion rate at BBN. For a lifetime exceeding about
<
100 s this argument excludes 500 keV <
m 35 MeV (Kolb et al. 1991;
Dolgov and Rothstein 1993; Kawasaki et al. 1994), with even more restrictive limits for Dirac neutrinos (Fuller and Malaney 1991; Enqvist
and Uibo 1993; Dolgov, Kainulainen, and Rothstein 1995). In Fig. 7.2
the region thus excluded is hatched and marked BBN.
Kawasaki et al. (1994) have considered the majoron mode
(Sect. 15.7) as a specic model for the neutrino decay. Including the
energy density of the scalar they nd even more restrictive limits
which exclude the region between the dashed lines in Fig. 7.2.
7.2
7.2.1
Neutrino Mixing and Decay

Flavor Mixing
One of the most mysterious features of the particle zoo is the threefold
repetition of families (or avors) shown in Fig. 7.1. The fermions in
each column have been arranged in a sequence of increasing mass which
appears to be the only signicant dierence between them. There is no
indication for higher sequential families; the masses of their neutrinos
would have to exceed 12 mZ = 46 GeV according to the CERN and SLAC
measurements of the Z decay width (Particle Data Group 1994). If
the origin of masses is indeed the interaction with the vacuum Higgs
eld, the only dierence between the fermions of a given column in
Fig. 7.1 is their Yukawa coupling to .
If the only dierence between, say, an electron and a muon is the
vacuum refraction, any superposition between them is an equally legitimate charged lepton except for the practical diculty of preparing it
experimentally. When such a mixed state propagates, the two components acquire dierent phases along the beam exactly like two photon
helicities in an optically active medium, leading to a rotation of the
plane of polarization. Of course, now this polarization is understood
in the abstract avor space rather than in coordinate space.
261
In three-dimensional avor space one is free to choose any superposition of states as a basis. It is convenient and common practice to use
the mass eigenstates (vacuum propagation eigenstates) for each column
of Fig. 7.1. Thus by denition the electron is the charged lepton with
the smallest mass eigenvalue, the muon the second, and the tau the
heaviest, and similarly for the quarks.
All fermions interact by virtue of the weak force and thus couple to
the W and Z gauge bosons, the quarks and charged leptons in addition couple to photons, while only the quarks interact by the strong
force and thus couple to gluons. The W (charged current) interaction has the important property of changing, for example, a charged
lepton into a neutrino as in the reaction p + e n + e (Fig. 7.3). If
the initial charged lepton was an electron (the lightest charged lepton
mass eigenstate), the outgoing neutrino state is dened to be an electron neutrino or e which in general will be a certain superposition of
neutrino mass eigenstates.
Fig. 7.3. Typical charged-current reaction.
This phenomenon of Cabbibo mixing is well established among the

quarks. For example, in the process of Fig. 7.3 the transition among the
quarks is between u and cos C d + sin C s where cos C = 0.975 refers
to the Cabbibo angle. Kinematics permitting, the nal-state hadron
will sometimes be uds which constitutes the particle with a mass of
1.116 GeV compared with 0.934 GeV for the neutron (udd).
The superposition of quark states into which u transforms by a
charged-current interaction is commonly denoted by d , charm couples
to s , and top to b while the unprimed states refer to the rst, second,
and third mass eigenstates in the d-column of Fig. 7.1. Ignoring the
third family one has
(
d
s
cos C
sin C
sin C
cos C
)(
d
.
s
(7.5)
It is only by convention that the mixing is applied to the d-column of

the quarks rather than the u-column or both.
262
Chapter 7
Including the third generation, the mixing is induced by the threedimensional Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix V . After removing all unphysical phases by an appropriate redenition of the quark
elds this unitary matrix is given in terms of four signicant parameters.
The Particle Data Group (1994) recommends a standard parametrization in terms of three two-family mixing angles ij < /2 and one phase
0 < 2. With Cij cos ij and Sij sin ij this standard form is
(Fritzsch and Plankl 1987)
1
0
V = 0 C23
0 S23
0
C13
S23
0
S13 ei
C23
C12 C13
= C23 S12 C12 S23 S13 ei

S12 S23 C12 C23 S13 ei
S12
S12 S23 S13 ei
S12
1
S23
0 S13 ei
C12
1
0 S12
0
C13
0
S12 C13
C12 C23 S12 S23 S13 ei
C12 S23 C23 S12 S13 ei
S12
C12
0
0
1
S13 ei
C13 S23
C13 C23
S13 ei
S23 .
1
(7.6)
Experimentally one has the 90% CL ranges (Particle Data Group 1994)
0.218 < S12 < 0.224,
0.032 < S23 < 0.048,
0.002 < S13 < 0.005.
(7.7)
The approximation in Eq. (7.6) is justied by the small mixing angles.

They and the CP-violating phase = 3.3103 (Wolfenstein 1986) are
measured parameters of the standard model which, like the fermion
masses, are not theoretically accounted for at the present time.
If neutrinos have masses one naturally expects that they follow a
similar scheme and so the weak interaction eigenstates ( = e, , )
are thought to be given as linear superpositions of the mass eigenstates
i by virtue of
=
Ui i ,
(7.8)
i=1
where the unitary matrix U plays the role of the CKM matrix. Unless
otherwise stated 1 will always refer to the dominant mass admixture
of e and so forth. It seems plausible that m1 < m2 < m3 , a hierarchy
that is often assumed.
263
Flavor mixing is the only possibility for members of one family (one
row in Fig. 7.1) to transform into those of a dierent family. This phenomenon is known as the absence of flavor-changing neutral currents;
it means that the Z coupling to quarks and leptons, like the photon
coupling, leaves a given superposition of fermions unaltered. For example, muons decay only by the avor-conserving mode e e
(Fig. 7.4); the experimental upper limits on the branching ratios for
e and e e+ e are 51011 and 1.01012 , respectively.
In the absence of neutrino masses and mixing the individual lepton avor numbers are conserved: a lepton can be transformed only into its
partner of the same family, or it can be created or annihilated together
with an antilepton of the same family.
Fig. 7.4. Allowed and forbidded decays.
When neutrinos have masses and mixings, avor-violating lepton

decays become possible, but their rate would be so small that their
experimentally observed absence does not yield interesting constraints
on neutrino parameters. Because neutrino masses must be very small if
they exist at all, the most signicant observable eect is that of neutrino
oscillations.
7.2.2
Standard-Model Decays of Mixed Neutrinos
For massive neutrinos it is kinematically possible to decay according

to , , or . In the absence of mixing, of
course, all of these modes are forbidden. Even in the presence of mixing,
Fig. 7.5. Allowed and forbidden tree-level decays of mixed neutrinos.
264
Chapter 7
however, the three-neutrino channel remains forbidden by the absence

of avor-changing neutral currents because the avor content of and
in Fig. 7.5 must remain unaltered by the Z vertex. Therefore, in
the standard model low-mass neutrinos can decay only by higher-order
(radiative) amplitudes.
Heavy neutrinos h with mh > 2me 1 MeV may decay at treelevel through the channel h e e+ e at a rate
1
e+ e
= |Ueh |2
G2F
m5 (mh )
3 (4)3 h
= |Ueh |2 3.5105 s1 m5MeV (mh ),
(7.9)
where Ueh is the mixing amplitude between h and e , GF is the Fermi

constant, and mMeV mh /MeV. The phase-space factor is (Shrock
1981)
(mh ) = (1 4a)1/2 (1 14a 2a2 12a3 )
1 + (1 4a)1/2
+ 24a2 (1 a2 ) ln
1 (1 4a)1/2
(7.10)
with a m2e /m2h ; it is shown in Fig. 7.6.
Fig. 7.6. Phase space factor for h e e+ e according to Eq. (7.10).
The one- and two-photon decay modes arise in the standard model
with mixed neutrinos from the amplitudes shown in Fig. 7.7. Turn rst
to the one-photon decay i j with the neutrino masses mi > mj .
265
Fig. 7.7. Feynman graphs for neutrino radiative decays. There are other
similar graphs with the photon lines attached to the intermediate W boson.
In general the matrix element can be thought of as arising from an

eective interaction Lagrangian of the form
Lint = 12 i (ij + ij 5 )j F + h.c.,
(7.11)
where F is the electromagnetic eld tensor, i and j are the neutrino

elds, and ij and ij are magnetic and electric transition moments
which are usually expressed in units of Bohr magnetons B = e/2me .
The decay rate is
1
|ij |2 + |ij |2
=
m2i m2j
mi
)3
1
= 5.308 s
e
B
)2
3
m
m3eV ,
(7.12)
where 2e |ij |2 + |ij |2 , meV mi /eV, and m (m2i m2j )/m2i .
An explicit evaluation of the one-photon amplitude of Fig. 7.7 yields
for Dirac neutrinos (Pal and Wolfenstein 1982)
D
e 2 GF
ij
(m
m
)
Uj Ui f (r ).
(7.13)
=
i
j
2
(4)
D
=e,,
ij
D
M
For Majorana neutrinos one has instead M
ij = 2ij and ij = 0 or
M
M
D
ij = 0 and ij = 2ij , depending on the relative CP phase of i and j .
In Eq. (7.13) r (m /mW )2 where the charged-lepton masses are
me = 0.511 MeV, m = 105.7 MeV, and m = 1.784 GeV while the
W gauge boson mass is mW = 80.2 GeV. Thus for all charged leptons
r 1; in this limit
f (r ) 32 + 34 r .
(7.14)
If one inserts the leading term 32 into the sum in Eq. (7.13) one nds
that its contribution vanishes because the unitarity of U implies that its
rows or columns represent orthogonal vectors. Because the rst nonzero
266
Chapter 7
contribution is from 34 r , the transition moments are suppressed by

(m /mW )2 , an eect known as GIM cancellation after Glashow, Iliopoulos, and Maiani (1970). Explicitly, the transition moments are
D
ij /B
D
ij /B
3GF me
=
(mi mj )
2 (4)2
23
= 3.9610
mi mj
1 eV
m
mW
)2
=e,,
Uj Ui
=e,,
Uj Ui
m
m
m
m
)2
)2
(7.15)
These small numbers imply that neutrino radiative decays are exceedingly slow in the standard model.
Dirac neutrinos would have static or diagonal (i = j) magnetic
dipole moments while the electric dipole moments vanish according to
Eq. (7.13). Their presence would require CP-violating interactions.
Majorana neutrinos, of course, cannot have any diagonal electromagnetic moments. For D
ii the leading term of Eq. (7.14) in Eq. (7.13)
does not vanish because the unitarity of U implies that the sum equals
unity for i = j. Therefore,
D
2 G F me
6
ii
=
mi = 3.201019 meV ,
(7.16)
B
(4)2
much larger than the transition moments because it is not GIM suppressed.
The two-photon decay rate i j is of higher order and thus
may be expected to be smaller by a factor of /4. However, it is
not GIM suppressed so that it is of interest for a certain range of neutrino masses (Nieves 1983; Ghosh 1984). Essentially, the result involves another factor /4 relative to the one-photon rate, and f (r )
in Eq. (7.13) is replaced by (mi /m )2 .
As an example consider the dierent decay modes for 3 1 ,
assuming that m3 m1 and that the mixing angles are small so that
3 and 1 e . Then one has explicitly
(m3 ),
(
)
m 4
27
3 1 e+ e ,
G2 m 5
1
,
3 1 ,
|Ue3 |2 F 33 8 4 mW
3 (4)
(
) (
)
1
2 m3 4
, 3 1 ,
180 4
me
(7.17)
where (mh ) was given in Eq. (7.10) and shown in Fig. 7.6. The
decay dominates in a small range of m3 just below 2me .
267
The quantity |Ue3 |2 is shown as a dotted line in Fig. 7.2. Even

without nonstandard physics the decay rate is fast on cosmological
scales if m3 >
2me . Because experimentally m3 may be as large as
24 MeV the cosmological mass bound of 30 eV does not automatically
apply. Experimental limits on Ue3 together with the BBN mass bound,
however, exclude a heavy standard 3 . Even without reference to BBN
it can be excluded on the basis of the SN 1987A neutrino radiative
lifetime limits (Sect. 12.5.2).
7.3
7.3.1
Neutrino Electromagnetic Form Factors

Overview
When Wolfgang Pauli in 1930 rst postulated the existence of neutrinos he speculated that they might interact like a magnetic dipole of a
certain moment . If that were the case they could be measured by
their ionizing power when they move through a medium; this ionizing
power was rst calculated by Bethe (1935). Nahmias (1935) measured
the event rates in a Geiger-M
uller counter in the presence and absence of a radioactive source and interpreted his null result as a limit
4
<
210 B (Bohr magneton B = e/2me ) on the neutrino dipole
moment. He concluded that since this limit is already smaller than a
nuclear magneton, it seems probable that the neutrino has no moment
at all. Subsequent attempts to measure ever smaller neutrino dipole
moments have consistently failed.
The main dierence between then and now is the advanced theoretical understanding of neutrino interactions in the context of the
standard model of electroweak gauge interactions. A magnetic dipole
interaction couples l.h. with r.h. states so that the latter would not
be strictly sterile. This would be in conict with the standard model
where neutrinos interact only by their l.h. coupling to W and Z gauge
bosons. Thus neutrino dipole moments must vanish identically because
weak interactions violate parity maximally.
This picture changes when neutrinos have masses because even the
r.h. components of a Dirac neutrino are then not strictly sterile as
they couple to the Higgs eldor else they would not have a mass.
Indeed, an explicit calculation in the standard model with neutrino
masses gave a magnetic dipole moment = 3.201019 B (m /eV)
(Eq. 7.16). If neutrinos mix, they also obtain transition magnetic and
electric moments. However, they are even smaller because of the GIM
suppression eectsee Eq. (7.15).
268
Chapter 7
Much larger values would obtain with direct r.h. neutrino interactions. For example, in left-right symmetric models there exist heavier
gauge bosons which mediate r.h. interactions; parity violation would
occur because of the mass dierence between the l.h. and r.h. gauge
bosons. For a neutrino (avor = e, or ) the dipole moment in
such models is (Kim 1976; Marciano and Sanda 1977; Beg, Marciano,
and Ruderman 1978)
eGF
= 2
2 2
m2W1
1 2
mW2
)
3
4
sin 2 + m
m2W1
1+ 2
m W2
)]
,
(7.18)
where is the left-right mixing angle between the gauge bosons WL

and WR ; W1,2 are their mass eigenstates.
Because of the smallness of the mass-induced standard dipole moments any evidence for neutrino electromagnetic interactions would represent evidence for interactions beyond the standard model. Therefore,
the quest for neutrino electromagnetic interactions is more radical than
that for masses and mixings.
In a dense medium even standard massless neutrinos interact with
photons by an eective coupling which is mediated by the ambient electrons. This coupling can be expressed in terms of an eective neutrino
charge radius. Presently I focus on neutrino interactions in vacuum,
leaving a discussion of their properties in media to Sect. 6.6.
7.3.2
Single-Photon Coupling
There are many possible extensions of the standard model which would
give sizeable neutrino dipole and transition moments by some novel r.h.
interaction. For the purposes of this book the underlying new physics
is of no concern; all we need is a generic representation of its observable
eects in terms of neutrino electromagnetic form factors.
The most general interaction structure of a fermion eld with the
electromagnetic eld can be expressed as an eective Lagrangian
Lint = F1 A G1 5 F
12 (F2 + G2 5 )F ,
(7.19)
where A is the electromagnetic vector potential and F the eld

strength tensor. The interpretation of the coupling constants is that
of an electric charge for F1 , an anapole moment for G1 , a magnetic
269
dipole moment for F2 , and an electric dipole moment for G2 . In the

matrix element derived from this Lagrangian these couplings should
be viewed as form factors which are functions of Q2 where Q is the
energy-momentum transfer to the fermion, i.e. the energy momentum
of the photon line attached to the fermion current. The interpretation
of a charge etc. then pertains to the Q2 0 limit.
It is usually assumed that neutrinos are electrically neutral, i.e. that
F1 (0) = 0 because electric charge quantization implies that elementary
particles carry only charges in multiples of 13 e where e is the electron
charge. In recent discussions of electric charge quantization43 it was
stressed, however, that the standard model of electroweak interactions
without grand unication requirements does allow neutrinos to carry
small electric charges. Their possible magnitude is thus an experimental
issue; existing limits are reviewed in Sect. 15.8. Because these limits
are very restrictive, i.e. because neutrino electric charges must be very
small, it appears likely that electric charge is quantized after all so that
neutrino electric charges vanish identically.
Even if neutrinos are electrically neutral, as shall be assumed henceforth, they can virtually dissociate into charged particles and so they
will have a form factor F1 (Q2 ) which does not vanish for Q2 = 0. One
may visualize the neutral object as a superposition of two charge distributions of opposite sign with dierent spatial extensions. In terms
of a power series expansion of F1 (Q2 ) one usually denes the charge
radius by virtue of

F1 (Q2 )
r = 6

e Q2 Q2 =0
2
(7.20)
where r2 may be both positive or negative.

For neutrinos, the interpretation of the charge radius as an observable quantity is a rather subtle issue as it is probed by o-shell
photons (Q2 = 0), i.e. by intermediate photons in processes such as
scattering by photon exchange. Because the form factor is proportional
to Q2 such scattering processes do not exhibit a Coulomb divergence.
The charge radius induces a short-range or contact interaction similar to processes involving Z exchange. Therefore, the charge radius
represents a correction to the standard tree-level electroweak scattering amplitude between neutrinos and charged particles. This tree-level
43
Babu and Mohapatra 1990; Babu and Volkas 1992; Takasugi and Tanaka 1992;
Foot, Lew, and Volkas 1993; Foot 1994. References to earlier works are given in
these papers.
270
Chapter 7
amplitude will receive radiative corrections from a variety of diagrams,

including photon exchange, which must be considered simultaneously
so that it is not at all obvious that one can extract a nite, gaugeinvariant, observable quantity that can be physically interpreted as a
charge radius.44
The charge radius, even if properly dened, represents only a correction to the tree-level weak interaction and as such it is best studied
in precision accelerator experiments. In the astrophysical context, weak
interaction rates involving standard l.h. neutrinos cannot be measured
with the level of precision required to test for small deviations from
the standard model. Indeed, a recent compilation (Salati 1994) reveals
that experimental bounds on r2 are more sensitive than astrophysical
limits, except perhaps for for which experimental data are scarce and
so its standard-model neutral-current interactions are not well tested.
The matrix element for the anapole interaction in the Lorentz gauge
is proportional to Q2 . Therefore, it vanishes in the limit Q2 0, i.e. for
real photons coupled to the neutrino current. The role of the anapole
form factor G1 is thus very similar to a charge radius: it represents a
correction to the standard tree-level weak interaction and as such does
not seem to be of astrophysical interest.
The form factors F2 and G2 are of much greater importance because they may obtain nonvanishing values even in the Q2 0 limit.
Henceforth I shall refer to F2 (0) as a magnetic dipole moment,
to iG2 (0) as an electric dipole moment, respectively. This identication is understood if one derives the Dirac equation of motion
it = H for a neutrino eld (mass m) in the presence of an external, weak, slowly varying electromagnetic eld F . From Eq. (7.19)
one nds for the Hamiltonian
[
H = i + m ( + i5 )(i E + B) ,
(7.21)
where 12 F = i E + B was used. In the Dirac representation

one has
(
,
0
I 0
0 I
0
,
(7.22)
where is a vector of Pauli matrices while I is the 2 2 unit matrix.

For a neutrino at rest the Dirac spinor is characterized by its large
44
For recent discussions of these matters see Lucio, Rosado, and Zepeda (1985),
Auriemma, Srivastava, and Widom (1987), Degrassi, Sirlin, and Marciano (1989),
Musolf and Holstein (1991), and Gongora-T. and Stuart (1992).
271
component, a Pauli two-spinor , which is then found to evolve as

it = (B0 + E0 ) ,
(7.23)
where the index 0 refers to quantities in the neutrino rest frame. A

neutrino polarized in or opposite to the eld direction has the energy
B0 or E0 , respectively, so that and are indeed magnetic and
electric dipole moments, respectively.
The electromagnetic form factors obey certain constraints for Dirac
and Majorana neutrinos; detailed discussions were provided by a number of authors.45 For Dirac neutrinos, all form factors must be real
relative to each other (no relative phases) if CP invariance holds. For
the diagonal case (coupling to one neutrino species) all form factors
must be real, and CP invariance implies that the electric dipole moment
must vanish. For Majorana neutrinos, a magnetic transition moment
(F2 ) must be imaginary, an electric transition moment (G2 ) real. If
CP invariance holds, in addition one of them must vanish, i.e. there is
either a transition electric, or a transition magnetic moment, but not
both. Majorana neutrinos cannot have diagonal electric nor magnetic
moments, nor can they have a charge or charge radius; they may have
an anapole form factor.
7.3.3
Two-Photon Coupling
Discussions of neutrino electromagnetic form factors are usually restricted to the eective neutrino coupling to an electromagnetic wave
or static eld. However, a two-photon coupling of neutrinos is also possible and of some interest. Historically, it was thought for some time
that the process could be of great importance for the emission of neutrinos from stars until it was shown by Gell-Mann (1961)
that the amplitude for this process vanishes identically if neutrinos
have only l.h. local interactions with electrons. Several authors discussed the process when neutrinos are massive, or when they
have more general interaction structures (Halprin 1975; Fischbach et al.
1976, 1977; Natale, Pleitez, and Tacla 1987; Gregores et al. 1995). However, there does not seem to be a plausible scenario where this process
would be of serious astrophysical interest.
In the standard model, there is an eective two-photon coupling
to neutrinos because the interaction is not local; rather, it is mediated by nite-mass gauge bosons. Early calculations of the eective
45
For example Nieves (1982), Kayser (1982), Shrock (1982), and Li and Wilczek
(1982).
272
Chapter 7
coupling in gauge theories were performed by Levine (1966) and Cung

and Yoshimura (1975); for more recent discussions in the framework of
the standard model see Nieves, Pal, and Unger (1983), Nieves (1987),
Dodelson and Feinberg (1991), Liu (1991), Langacker and Liu (1992),
Kuznetsov and Mikheev (1993), and Dicus and Repko (1993). This
two-photon coupling leads to a higher-order contribution to the neutrino refractive index in a bath of photons (Sect. 6.7.2). However, this
and other consequences do not seem to be important in any astrophysical or laboratory setting of practical interest.
For neutrinos with masses and mixings there is a decay amplitude
which can dominate for a small range of neutrino masses
below m = 2me as discussed by Nieves (1983) and Ghosh (1984).
Explicit results were given in Sect. 7.2.2 above.
One of the photons may represent an external electric or magnetic
eld, i.e. one may consider the neutrino decay in the presence of a strong external eld which would modify the propagators
of the intermediate charged leptons. For very strong elds it appears
that a substantial decay rate can obtain (Gvozdev, Mikheev, and Vassilevskaya 1992a,b, 1993, 1994a,b). From this literature it does not
seem to become entirely clear under which if any circumstances these
results might be of practical interest for, say, the decay of supernova or
neutron-star neutrinos.
7.4
Electromagnetic Processes
The presence of electromagnetic dipole and transition moments implies

that neutrinos couple directly to the electromagnetic eld, allowing for
a variety of nonstandard processes (Fig. 7.8). Most obviously, neutrinos
can scatter on electrons by photon exchange. The -e scattering cross
section (electrons at rest in the laboratory frame) was given, e.g. by
Vogel and Engel (1989)
[
G2 m e
T
d
= F
(CV + CA )2 + (CV CA )2 1
dT
2
E
]
+ (CA2
CV2 )
)2
]
me T
1
1
+ 2
,
2
E
T
E
(7.24)
where CV and CA are the weak coupling constants given in Appendix B,

T is the electron recoil energy with the limits 0 T 2E2 /(2E +me ),
and is the neutrino dipole moment.
273
Fig. 7.8. Important processes involving direct neutrino electromagnetic couplings, notably magnetic dipole moments and magnetic or electric transition
moments.
Because an anomalous neutrino charge radius causes a contact interaction

it would manifest itself by the modication CV CV +
1
2
2 r /GF , i.e. there would be a small correction to the overall
3
cross section. A dipole moment, on the other side, modies the energy
spectrum of the recoil electrons, notably at low energies, because of its
forward-peaked nature from the Coulomb divergence.
If neutrinos had electric dipole moments, or electric or magnetic
transition moments, these quantities would also contribute to the scattering cross section. Therefore, the quantity measured in electron recoil
experiments involving relativistic neutrinos is (e.g. Raelt 1989)
2 =
|ij ij |2 ,
(7.25)
j=e , ,
where i refers to the initial-state neutrino avor. Therefore, in principle

there is a possibility of destructive interference between the magnetic
and electric transition moments of Dirac neutrinos. (Majorana neutrinos have only magnetic or electric transition moments, but not both if
CP is conserved.)
274
Chapter 7
A related process to scattering by photon exchange is the spinprecession in a macroscopic magnetic or electric eld into r.h. states of
the same or another avor, i.e. electromagnetic oscillation into wronghelicity states. Such eects will be studied in Sect. 8.4 in the general
context of neutrino oscillations. In principle, this process can be important at modifying the measurable l.h. solar neutrino ux as discussed
in Sect. 10.7 in the context of the solar neutrino problem. Spin oscillations can also be important in supernovae where strong magnetic elds
exist, although a detailed understanding remains elusive at the present
time (Sect. 11.4).
The most interesting process caused by dipole moments is the photon decay into neutrino pairs, , which is enabled in media where
the photon dispersion relation is such that 2 k2 > 0. It is the most
interesting process because it occurs even in the absence of dipole moments due to a medium-induced neutrino-photon coupling (Chapter 6).
This is the dominant standard neutrino emission process from stars for
a wide range of temperatures and densities. Details of both the standard and the dipole-induced plasma process depend on complicated
ne points of the photon dispersion relation in media that were taken
up in Chapter 6.
The salient features, however, can be understood in an approximation where photons in a medium (transverse plasmons) are treated as
particles with an eective mass equal to the plasma frequency P which
in a nonrelativistic medium is P2 = 4ne /me with the electron density ne and electron mass me . The decay rate of these electromagnetic
excitation in their own rest frame is then
=
P3
24
with
2 =
|ij |2 + |ij |2 ,
(7.26)
i,j
while in the frame of the medium where the photon has the energy a
Lorentz factor P / must be included. The sum includes all nal-state
neutrino avors with mi P ; otherwise phase-space modications
occur, and even a complete suppression of the decay by a neutrino
mass threshold. In contrast with Eq. (7.25) relevant for the scattering
rate, no destructive interference eects between magnetic and electric
dipole amplitudes occur.
Transition moments would allow for the radiative decay i j .
Again, because a neutrino charge radius or anapole moment vanish in
the Q2 0 limit relevant for free photons, radiative neutrino decays are
most generally characterized by their magnetic and electric transition
275
moments. The decay rate is found to be

i = 2
m3i
8
with
2 =
|ij |2 + |ij |2 .
(7.27)
The sum is extended over all j with mj mi , otherwise phase-space

corrections as given in Eq. (7.12) must be included. There is no destructive interference between electric and magnetic amplitudes. Because of
the long decay path available in the astronomical environment, the
search for decay photons from known astrophysical neutrino sources is
by far the most ecient method to set limits on radiative decays. This
method and its results are studied in detail in Chapter 12.
Neutrino radiative decays, the plasma process, and scatterings by
photon exchange all depend on the same electromagnetic form factors.
Therefore, a limit on the radiative decay time can be expressed as
a limit on neutrino transition moments, and a limit on a transition
moment from, say, a scattering experiment can be translated into a
limit on a radiative decay time. In much of the literature this simple
connection has not been made; the search for neutrino decays and that
for dipole moments were strangely dealt with as separate and unrelated
eorts.
There are a number of interesting neutrino electromagnetic processes which I will not discuss in any detail because they either yield
very small rates or have not so far led to any new results. Among them
are the bremsstrahlung emission of photons in neutrino electron collisions e e (Mourao, Bento, and Kerimov 1990; Bernabeu et al.
1994). Another possibility is nuclear excitation due to neutrino dipole
moments (Dodd, Papageorgiu, and Ranfone 1991; Sehgal and Weber
1992) or the disintegration of deuterons (Akhmedov and Berezin 1992).
Also, Cherenkov radiation (Grimus and Neufeld 1993) or transition radiation (Sakuda 1994) of neutrinos with magnetic moments have been
studied in the literature.
7.5
7.5.1
Limits on Neutrino Dipole Moments

Scattering Experiments
In principle, there are a number of possibilities to search for direct

neutrino electromagnetic couplings in the laboratory. In practice, the
only method that has so far yielded signicant limits is a study of the
neutrino-electron scattering cross section that would receive a forwardpeaked contribution from a dipole moment.
276
Chapter 7
The best limits on e are based on the use of reactor neutrinos

as a source. The measurement of the e -e scattering cross section by
Reines, Gurr, and Sobel (1976) was interpreted by Kyuldjiev (1984)
to yield a bound of e < 1.51010 B . Since then, the reactor e
spectrum has been much better understood. Vogel and Engel (1989)
stressed that a literal interpretation of the old results by Reines, Gurr,
and Sobel (1976) would actually yield evidence for a dipole moment of
about 241010 B . There is, however, a more recent limit of
e < 2.41010 B
(7.28)
from the Kurchatov Institute (Vidyakin et al. 1992).

When interpreting this bound as a limit on the e - transition moment, recall that for an experimentally allowed mass in the 10 MeV
regime this limit would not apply as reactor neutrinos have relatively
low energies (below about 10 MeV). Therefore, it remains useful to consider the bounds from the neutrino beam at LAMPF with a e endpoint
energy of 52.8 MeV
e < 10.81010 B ,
< 7.41010 B
(7.29)
(Krakauer et al. 1990). A similar limit of < 8.51010 B was

obtained by Ahrens et al. (1990).
An improvement of the bound on e by an order of magnitude
or more can be expected from a new reactor experiment currently in
preparation (MUNU experiment, Broggini et al. 1990). However,
results will not become available before a few years from now.
The transition moments between and other sequential neutrinos
are bounded by the above experiments involving initial-state e s or
s or their antiparticles. The diagonal magnetic dipole moment,
however, is much less constrained because no strong sources are available in the laboratory; the -e cross section has never been measured.
However, the calculated ux produced in a proton beam dump from
the decay of Ds mesons can be used to derive an upper limit on the
-e cross section which can be translated into a bound
< 5.4107 B ,
(7.30)
(Cooper-Sarkar et al. 1992). Of course, in this range the electromagnetic cross section would far exceed a typical weak interaction one.
7.5.2
277
Spin-Flip Scattering in Supernovae
Neutrino scattering by photon exchange can also be important in astrophysical settings, notably if neutrinos are Dirac particles. The magnetic
or electric dipole coupling is such that it ips the helicity of relativistic
neutrinos, i.e. the nal state is r.h. for an initial l.h. neutrino. This
spin ip is of no importance in experiments where the electron recoil is
measured, but it can have dramatic consequences in supernovae where
l.h. neutrinos are trapped by the standard weak interactions. The spinip scattering by a electromagnetic dipole interaction would produce
wrong-helicity states that could freely escape unless they scattered
again electromagnetically. The SN 1987A neutrino signal indicates that
this anomalous cooling channel cannot have been overly eective, yield12
ing a constraint of around <
310 B on all Dirac diagonal or
transition moments in the sense of Eq. (7.25); see Sect. 13.8.3 for a
more detailed discussion.
One should keep in mind, however, that for dipole moments in this
range the spin precession in the strong macroscopic magnetic elds that
are believed to exist in and near SN cores could also cause signicant
left-right transitions. Notably, the back conversion of r.h. neutrinos
could cause a transfer of energy between widely separated regions of the
SN core, and might even help at the explosion (Sect. 13.8.3). The role
of relatively large neutrino dipole moments in SN physics has not been
elaborated in enough depth to arrive at reliable regions of parameters
that are ruled out or ruled in by SN physics and the SN 1987A neutrino
signal.
7.5.3
Spin-Flip Scattering in the Early Universe
Neutrino spin-ip scattering has important consequences in the early

universe as it can bring some or all of the wrong-helicity Dirac neutrino degrees of freedom into thermal equilibrium. The usual big bang
nucleosynthesis (BBN) argument previously mentioned in Sect. 7.1.5
allows one to exclude this possibility because even one additional thermally excited neutrino degree of freedom appears to be forbidden by the
spectacular agreement between the predicted and observed primordial
light-element abundances.
This argument was rst advanced by Morgan (1981a,b). Unfortunately, he used an unrealistically small cuto for the Coulomb divergence of the spin-ip scattering cross section, leading to an overestimate
of the eciency by which r.h. Dirac neutrinos can be brought into ther-
278
Chapter 7
mal equilibrium. A reasonable cuto by the Debye screening scale was

used by Fukugita and Yazaki (1987) who found
10
<
0.510 B ,
(7.31)
about a factor of 3.5 looser than Morgans original constraint.

This limit can be avoided for the diagonal magnetic moment
which would contribute to the e e+ annihilation process. If
the also had a mass in the 10 MeV regime the spin-ip excitation of
the r.h. degrees of freedom would be compensated by the annihilation
depletion of the and population before nucleosynthesis (Giudice
1990). A detailed analysis (Kawano et al. 1992) reveals that a larger
than about 0.7108 B is allowed in the mass range between a few and
about 30 MeV.
Like in a SN core, there could exist large magnetic elds in the
early universe that would allow for left-right transitions by the magnetic dipole induced spin precession (Sect. 8.4); for early discussions
of this possibility see Lynn (1981) and Shapiro and Wasserman (1981).
Arguments of this sort naturally depend on assumptions concerning the
primordial magnetic eld distribution; such elds may be required as
seeds for the dynamo mechanism to create present-day galactic magnetic elds. A quantitative kinetic understanding of the process of
populating the r.h. neutrinos requires a simultaneous treatment of the
neutrino spin-precession and scattering much along the lines of Chapter 9 where avor oscillations are studied in an environment where neutrinos scatter frequently. The most recent investigation of primordial
neutrino magnetic oscillations is Enqvist, Rez, and Semikoz (1995); see
their work for references to the previous literature. In certain plausible scenarios of primordial magnetic eld distributions neutrino Dirac
dipole moments as small as 1020 B seem to be in conict with BBN.
7.5.4
Search for Radiative Neutrino Decays
The search for radiative decays of reactor, beam, solar, supernova, and
cosmic neutrinos will be discussed at length in Chapter 12. For electron
neutrinos, the eective transition moment in the sense of Eq. (7.27) will
be found to be limited by
1
2
0.910 B (eV/m )
0.5105 (eV/m )2
B
<
1.510 B (eV/m )2
10
2.3
310
B (eV/m )
Reactors,
Sun,
SN 1987A,
Cosmic background,
(7.32)
279
where m is the mass of the decaying parent neutrino. Of these limits,

all except the cosmic one are based on measured neutrino uxes. For
nonelectron neutrinos, the cosmic and SN 1987A limits apply equally
because these sources emit neutrinos of all avors.
The SN 1987A constraints apply in this form only for m <
40 eV,
and for total lifetimes which in the laboratory exceed the transit time
between the SN and Earth. The cosmological limit assumes that the radiative channel dominates and as such it requires m <
30 eV; otherwise
the universe would be overclosed by neutrinos. Because me <
5 eV
these conditions are plausibly satised for e . For and one may
contemplate masses in excess of 30 eV if one simultaneously contemplates novel interactions which allow for invisible fast decays. Therefore, radiative decay limits for and must be derived as a function of the assumed mass and of the assumed total decay time. For
SN 1987A this exercise will be performed in Sect. 12.4.5, the results
are displayed in Fig. 12.17. For cosmic neutrinos, I do not know of a
published comparable contour plot.
7.5.5
Plasmon Decay in Stars
The last and most interesting constraint arises from the energy-loss
argument applied to globular cluster stars. The neutrino emissivity by
the plasma process would be too large unless
12
<
310 B .
(7.33)
This bound, which applies for m <

5 keV, has been derived in detail
in Sect. 6.5.6.
Chapter 8
Neutrino Oscillations
The phenomenon of neutrino oscillations in vacuum and in media as
well as in magnetic elds is studied. Experimental constraints on neutrino mixing parameters are reviewed.
8.1
Introduction
If neutrinos do not have novel interactions that allow them to decay

fast then they must obey the cosmological mass limit of m <
30 eV.
This is even true for although it could decay suciently fast into
the e+ e e channel if it had a mass in the 10 MeV range. However, the
absence of rays from SN 1987A in conjunction with the neutrino signal
(Sect. 12.5.2) and independently arguments of big-bang nucleosynthesis
(Fig. 7.2) exclude this option. If neutrino masses are indeed so small
then there is no hope for a direct experimental measurement at the
present time, with the possible exception of me which could still show
up in tritium decay or neutrinoless decay experiments as discussed
in Chapter 7.
Pontecorvo (1967) was the rst to realize that the existence of several neutrino avors (two were known at the time) allows even very
small masses to become visible.46 A weak-interaction eigenstate
which is produced, say, in the neutron decay n pe e is in general expected to be a mixture of neutrino mass eigenstates. The phenomenon of particle mixing (Sect. 7.2.1) is familiar from the quarks
Pontecorvos (1957, 1958) original discussion referred to oscillations in
analogy to the experimentally observed case of K K . For a historical overview
see Pontecorvo (1983). In this book I will not discuss oscillations any
furthersee Akhmedov, Petcov, and Smirnov (1993) for a recent reexamination of
Pontecorvos original oscillations.
46
280
281
and hence does not appear to be an exotic assumption. Whatever the

physical cause of particle masses, it seems unrelated to their gauge interactions! Expanding the neutrino state in plane waves, each mass
eigenstate propagates as ei(tki x) where k2i = 2 m2i . Therefore,
the dierent mass components develop phase dierences, causing the
original superposition which formed a e to turn partially into other
avors. Therefore, one can search for the disappearance of neutrinos
of a given avor from a beam, or one can search for the appearance of
wrong-avored states in a beam. The measured decit of solar e s
(Chapter 10) has long been attributed to the oscillation phenomenon
even though a denitive proof is still missing.
Neutrino oscillations eectively measure a phase dierence between
two components of a beam, much as the rotation of the plane of polarization of linearly polarized light represents a phase dierence between
the circularly polarized components of a beam in an optically active
medium. This method is sensitive to small dierences in the refractive
index of the two components. For example, the Faraday rotation effect can be used to measure very weak interstellar magnetic elds even
though the interstellar medium is quite dilute. Both for neutrinos and
photons, ne points of the dispersion relation have a signicant impact
on the oscillation eect.
Wolfenstein (1978) was the rst to recognize that the mediuminduced modication of the neutrino dispersion relations (Sect. 6.7.1)
is not an academic aair, but rather of immediate relevance for some
neutrino oscillation experiments. In Mikheyev and Smirnovs (1985)
seminal paper it was shown that oscillations can be resonant when a
beam passes through such a density gradient that the avor branches
of the dispersion relation cross. This Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein
(MSW) eect is very important in astrophysics because neutrinos are
naturally produced in the interior of stars and stream through a density
gradient into empty space.
An adiabatic crossing of the dispersion relations has the eect of
interchanging the avor content of the neutrino ux even if the mixing
angle is very small. This eect is one version of the oscillation solution
of the solar neutrino problem. For suitable parameters it is also signicant in supernovae where dierent-avored neutrinos are thought to be
produced with dierent energy spectra. The MSW eect could swap
the spectral characteristics of the neutrinos emerging from a newborn
neutron star, allowing for a number of fascinating novel eects.
If neutrinos had large magnetic dipole moments they could spinprecess in magnetic elds. This eect is completely analogous to avor
282
Chapter 8
oscillations, except that here the two helicity components rather than
the avor components get transformed into each other. Again, this is
a standard eect familiar from the behavior of electrons in magnetic
elds. In astrophysical bodies large magnetic elds exist, especially in
supernovae, so that magnetic helicity oscillations are potentially interesting. However, much larger magnetic dipole moments are required
than are predicted for standard massive neutrinos. Thus, avor oscillations have rightly received far more attention.
Presently I will develop the theoretical tools for neutrino oscillations, and summarize the current experimental situation. In Chapter 9
I will discuss the more complicated phenomena that obtain when oscillating neutrinos are trapped in a supernova core. The story of solar
neutrinos (Chapter 10) is inextricably intertwined with that of neutrino oscillations, especially of the MSW variety. Finally, oscillations
may also play a prominent role for supernova neutrinos and the interpretation of the SN 1987A signal (Chapter 11).
8.2
Vacuum Oscillations
8.2.1
Equation of Motion for Mixed Neutrinos
In order to derive a formal equation for the oscillation of mixed neutrinos I begin with the equation of motion of a Dirac spinor i which
describes the neutrino mass eigenstate i. It obeys the Dirac and thus
the Klein-Gordon equation (t2 2 + m2i ) i = 0. One may readily
combine all mass eigenstates in a single equation
(t2 2 + M 2 ) = 0,
where
m21
2
M 0
0
0
m22
0
0
m23
(8.1)
1

and 2 .
3
(8.2)
Eq. (8.1) may be written in any desired avor basis, notably in the
basis of weak-interaction eigenstates to which one may transform by
virtue of Eq. (7.8),
1
e
= U 2 .
3
(8.3)
The mass matrix transforms according to M 2 U M 2 U and is no

longer diagonal. (Note that U 1 = U because it is a unitary matrix.)
283
As usual one expands the neutrino elds in plane waves of the form
(t, x) = k (t) eikx for which Eq. (8.1) is
(t2 + k2 + M 2 ) k (t) = 0 .
(8.4)
In general one cannot assume a temporal variation eit because there

are three dierent branches of the dispersion relation with i2 = k2 +m2i .
A mixed neutrino cannot simultaneously have a xed momentum and
a xed energy!
In practice one has always to do with very relativistic neutrinos for
which k = |k| mi . In this limit one may linearize Eq. (8.4) by virtue
of t2 + k2 = (it + k)(it + k). For each mass eigenstate it i k
and one needs to keep the exact expression only in the second factor
where the dierence between energy and momentum appears. Thus
t2 + k2 2k(it + k), leading to the Schrodinger-type equation
)
it k = k k
M2
where k k +
.
2k
(8.5)
The vector originally consisted of neutrino Dirac spinors but it was

reinterpreted as a vector of (positive-energy) probability amplitudes.
For negative-energy states (antineutrinos) a global minus sign appears
in Eq. (8.5).
The Schrodinger equation (8.5) describes a spatially homogeneous
system with a nonstationary temporal evolution. In practice one usually deals with the opposite situation, namely a stationary neutrino
ux such as that from a reactor or the Sun with a nontrivial spatial
variation. Then it is useful to expand (t, x) in components of xed
frequency (x)eit , yielding
( 2 2 + M 2 ) (x) = 0.
(8.6)
In the relativistic limit and restricting the spatial variation to the

z-direction one obtains in full analogy to the previous case
(
iz = K
M2
.
where K
2
(8.7)
This equation describes the spatial variation of a neutrino beam propagating in the positive z-direction with a xed energy .
Ultimately one is not interested in amplitudes but in the observable
probabilities | |2 = with = e, , or . One may derive an
284
Chapter 8
equation of motion for these quantities which is most compact in terms

of a density matrix
ab = b a .
(8.8)
Then it k = [k , k ] or iz = [K , ] where [A, B] = AB BA

is a commutator of matrices. Therefore,
it = (2k)1 [M 2 , ] or iz = (2)1 [M 2 , ] ,
(8.9)
where the indices or k have been dropped.

A beam evolves from the z = 0 state or density matrix as
(z) = eiKz (0) or (z) = eiKz (0) eiKz .
(8.10)
An analogous result applies to the case of temporal rather than spatial

oscillations. In the weak-interaction basis eiKz will be denoted by W ,
W (z) (eiKz )weak = U (eiKz )mass U .
(8.11)
If the neutrino is known to be a e at the source (z = 0) its probability

for being measured as a e at a distance z (survival probability) is
|Wee (z)|2 .
One may be worried that the simple-minded derivation and interpretation of these results is problematic because the neutrino wave function
is never directly observed. What is observed are the charged leptons
absorbed or emitted in conjunction with the neutrino production and
detection. However, if one performs a fully quantum-mechanical calculation of the probability (or cross section) for the compound process of
neutrino production, propagation, and absorption, the naive oscillation
probability described by the elements of the W matrix factors out for
all situations of practical interest, and notably in the relativistic limit
(Giunti et al. 1993; Rich 1993).
8.2.2
Two-Flavor Oscillations
The neutrino mixing matrix U can be parametrized exactly as the

Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix in the quark sector in
Eq. (7.6). If one of the three two-family mixing angles is much larger
than the others (as for the quarks) one may study oscillations between
the dominantly coupled families as a two-avor mixing problem. Moreover, because so far all experimentswith the possible exception of
solar and certain atmospheric neutrino observationsyield only upper
limits on oscillation parameters one usually restricts the analysis to a
285
two-avor scenario. Of course, if one were to observe the appearance

of a certain avorrather than the disappearance of e as for solar
neutrinos or of in the atmospheric caseone would have to consider
the possibility that they arise from sequential transitions of the sort
e . Note that in the bottom-left entry of the approximate
expression for the CKM matrix Eq. (7.6) the term S12 S23 had to be
kept because it is larger than the direct term S13 . The neutrino mixing
angles could show a similar hierarchy.
With these caveats in mind we turn to the two-avor mixing case
where U has the 22 Cabbibo form Eq. (7.5),
U = cos I + i sin 2 ,
(8.12)
with the mixing angle , the 22 unit matrix I, and the Pauli matrix47
2 . The mass matrix may be written in the form
M 2 /2 = b0 12 B ,
(8.13)
where b0 = (m21 + m22 )/4. In the weak-interaction basis
sin 2
2
B=
(8.14)
0 ,
osc
cos 2
a vector which is tilted with regard to the 3-axis by twice the mixing
angle (Fig. 8.2). Further,
4
osc 2
(8.15)
m2 m21
is the oscillation length. Its meaning will presently become clear.
In this representation it is straightforward to work out the spatial
behavior of a stationary neutrino beam. From K = b0 + 21 B
one nds
[
(
)
(
)(
)]
z
z
cos 2 sin 2
W = ei(b0 )z cos
i sin
.
sin 2
cos 2
osc
osc
(8.16)
Assuming that the oscillations are among the rst two families, the
appearance probability for a and the e survival probability are for
an initial e
prob (e ) = |We |2 = sin2 (2) sin2 (z/osc ),
prob (e e ) = |Wee |2 = 1 prob (e ).
(8.17)
The oscillation behavior is shown in Fig. 8.1.

(
47
The Pauli matrices are 1 =
0
1
)
(
)
(
)
1
0 i
1 0
, 2 =
, and 3 =
.
0
i 0
0 1
286
Chapter 8
Fig. 8.1. Oscillation pattern for two-avor oscillations (neutrino energy ).
The avor oscillations described by Eq. (8.16) are fully analogous to

the rotation of the plane of polarization in an optically active medium
or to the spin precession in a magnetic eld. This analogy is brought
out more directly if one starts with the equation of motion for the
density matrix Eq. (8.9). Suppressing the index the matrices can be
expressed as
= 12 (1 + P ) and K = b0 + 12 B ,
(8.18)
and a similar representation for where B is expressed as a function

of k by virtue of k to lowest order for relativistic neutrinos.
The vector P is a flavor polarization vector. In the weak-interaction
basis |e |2 = 12 (1 + P3 ) and | |2 = 21 (1 P3 ) give the probability for
the neutrino to be measured as e or , respectively. P1 and P2 contain
phase information and thus reveal the degree of coherence between the
avor states. For a pure state |P| = 1 while in general |P| < 1. For
P = 0 one has a completely incoherent equal mixture of both avors.
In optics, P describes the degree of polarization of a light beam in
the Poincare sphere representation of the Stokes parameters (Poincare
1892; Born and Wolf 1959).
The equation of motion for the polarization vector in any avor
basis is found to be (Stodolsky 1987; Kim, Kim, and Sze 1988)
z P = B P or t P = B P.
(8.19)
Here, B plays the role of a magnetic eld and P that of a spin

vector. The precession of P for an initial e where P(0) = (0, 0, 1) is
shown in Fig. 8.2.
287
Fig. 8.2. Flavor oscillation as a spin precession. (After Stodolsky 1987.)
8.2.3
Distribution of Sources and Energies
If the neutrino source region is not point-like relative to the oscillation length, one has to average the appearance or survival probabilities
accordingly. If the source locations z0 are distributed according to a
normalized function f (z0 ) the appearance probability is
prob (e ) = sin2 2
dz0 f (z0 ) sin2
(z z0 )
.
osc
(8.20)
2
2
For example, consider a Gaussian distribution f (z0 ) = ez0 /2s /s 2
of size s for which
prob (e ) =
1
2
sin2 2 1 e2
2 (s/
2
osc )
cos(2z/osc ) .(8.21)
For s = 15 osc this result is shown in Fig. 8.3. For s = 0 Eq. (8.21) is
identical with Eq. (8.17) while for s osc it is 12 sin2 2 which reects
that the beam is an incoherent mixture: the relative phases between
dierent avor components have been averaged to zero.
No source is exactly monochromatic; usually the neutrino energies
are broadly distributed. With a point source and a normalized distribution g() one nds
(m22 m21 ) z
.
(8.22)
4
As an example let g() such
that = 2/osc follows a Gaussian
(0 )2 /2 2
distribution e
/ 2 of width and with 0 = 2/0 . Then
prob (e ) = sin2 2
prob (e ) =
1
2
d g() sin2
sin2 2 1 e
2 z 2 /2
cos(2z/0 )
(8.23)
1
which is shown in Fig. 8.4 for = 10
0 . For = 0 Eq. (8.23) reproduces
Eq. (8.17) while for z 1 it approaches 12 sin2 2.
288
Chapter 8
Fig. 8.3. Oscillation pattern for a Gaussian source distribution with s =

1
5 osc according to Eq. (8.21).
Fig. 8.4. Oscillation pattern for a mixture of neutrino energies with =

1
10 /0 according to Eq. (8.23).
These phenomena are well described in the picture of a precessing

polarization vector which represents a density matrix and thus is designed to deal with incoherent or partially coherent beams. Notably, for
a distribution of energies the polarization vector is P = d g() P .
Because the components P precess with dierent frequencies about a
common magnetic eld direction the component of P transverse to B
disappears as the P approach a uniform distribution on the precession
cone in Fig. 8.2. The projection of P on B, however, is conserved so
B
for t . If originally P = (0, 0, 1) for initial e s
that P (P B)
the geometry of Fig. 8.2 indicates that P3 cos2 2 for t and so
prob(e ) = 21 sin2 2.
8.2.4
289
Experimental Oscillation Searches
Because neutrino masses must be very small the oscillation length involves macroscopic scales. Numerically, it is
osc = 2.48 m
E 1 eV2
.
1 MeV m2
(8.24)
Therefore, the modulation of the avor content of a neutrino beam can

occur on large, even astronomical length scales.
There exists a large number of oscillation searches using terrestrial
neutrino sources (reactors, accelerators); for detailed references see Particle Data Group (1994). In Fig. 8.5 (curves af ) I show the most
restrictive limits on oscillations between the known neutrinos where
Fig. 8.5. Experimental limits on neutrino masses and mixing angles. Reactors, e disappearance: (a) Bugey 4 (Achkar et al. 1995), superseding the
G
osgen limits (Zacek et al. 1986); (b) Kurchatov Institute (Vidyakin et al.
1987, 1990, 1991). Accelerator experiments: (c) BNL Experiment 776, wideband beam, e and e appearance (Borodovsky et al. 1992). (d) BNL Experiment 734, measurement of e / ratio (Ahrens et al. 1985). (e) Fermilab
Experiment 531, appearance (Ushida et al. 1986); similar constraints were
reported by the CHARM II Collaboration (1993). (f) CDHS Experiment,
disappearance (Dydak et al. 1984). (g) Anticipated range of sensitivity
for the CHORUS and NOMAD experiments which are currently taking data
at CERN (DiLella 1993; Winter 1995).
290
Chapter 8
the analysis was always based on the assumption that two-avor oscillations dominate. The disappearance experiments, of course, also
constrain oscillations into hypothetical sterile neutrinos.
Even though the experimental results look very impressive, a glance
on the CKM matrix Eq. (7.6) reveals that one could not yet have expected to see oscillations in the e or channel if the
neutrino mixing angles are comparably small. It is very encouraging
that the NOMAD and CHORUS experiments which are currently taking data at CERN (DiLella 1993; Winter 1995) anticipate a range of
sensitivity (curve g in Fig. 8.5) which is promising both in view of the
possible cosmological role of a m in the 10 eV range and the small
mixing angles probed. Other future but less advanced projects for terrestrial oscillation searches were reviewed by Schneps (1993, 1995).
At the time of this writing the LSND Collaboration has reported a
signature that is consistent with the occurrence of e oscillations
(Athanassopoulos et al. 1995). If this interpretation is correct, the
corresponding m2 would exceed about 1 eV2 , while sin2 2 would be a
few 103 . The status of this claim is controversial at the present time
see, e.g. Hill (1995). No doubt more data need to be taken before one
can seriously begin to believe that neutrino oscillations have indeed
been observed.
8.2.5
Atmospheric Neutrinos
Besides reactors and accelerators, one may also use atmospheric neutrinos as a source to search for oscillations. Primary cosmic ray protons produce hadronic showers when interacting with atmospheric nuclei (A). Neutrinos are subsequently produced according to the simple
scheme
p + A n + /K + . . .
/K + ( ) + ( )
+ ( ) e+ (e ) + e ( e ) + ( ).
(8.25)
Therefore, one expects twice as many s as e s, and equally many
neutrinos as antineutrinos of both avors. At a detector, the neutrino ux is approximately isotropic except at energies below about
1 GeV where geomagnetic eects become important. Because the neutrinos come from anywhere in the atmosphere, from directly overhead
or from as far as the antipodes, oscillation lengths between about 10
291
Fig. 8.6. Limits on neutrino masses and mixing angles from atmospheric
neutrinos. (a) The shaded area is the range of masses and mixing angles
required to explain the e / anomaly at Kamiokande (Fukuda et al. 1994);
the star marks the best-t value for the mixing parameters. The hatched
areas are excluded by: (b) e / ratio at Frejus (Frejus Collaboration 1990,
1995; Daum 1994). (c) Absolute rate and (d) stopping fraction of upward going muons at IMB (Becker-Szendy et al. 1992). Also shown are the excluded
areas from the experimental limits of Fig. 8.5.
and 13000 km are available.48 The energy spectrum and absolute normalization of the ux must be determined by calculations and thus is
probably uncertain to within about 30% while the e / avor ratio
is likely known to within, say, 5%.
Several underground proton decay experiments have reported measurements of atmospheric neutrinos. The Frejus detector (an iron
calorimeter) saw the expected e / avor ratio and thereby excluded
the range of masses and mixing angles marked b in Fig. 8.6 for e -
and - oscillations (Frejus Collaboration 1990, 1995; Daum 1994).
Instead of measuring the neutrinos directly one may also study the
ux of secondary muons produced by interactions in the rock surround48
The eect of matter must be included for e - atmospheric neutrino oscillations. For a recent detailed analysis see Akhmedov, Lipari, and Lusignoli (1993).
292
Chapter 8
ing the detector. (Electrons from e interactions range out much faster
in the rock and so one expects mostly muons from s.) This method is
sensitive to the high-energy spectral regime of the atmospheric ux.
Moreover, one may select upward going muons which are produced from
s which traversed the entire Earth and thus have a large oscillation
length available. The IMB detector excludes range c by this method
(Becker-Szendy et al. 1992). Also, one may determine the fraction of
muons stopped within the detector to those which exit, allowing one to
constrain a spectral deformation caused by the energy dependence of
the oscillation length. Range d is excluded by this method according
to the IMB detector (Becker-Szendy et al. 1992).
However, several detectors see a substantial decit of atmospheric
s relative to e s, a nding usually expressed in terms of a ratio of
ratios, i.e. the measured over the expected ratio of e-like over -like
events (Fig. 8.7). While this procedure is justied because it is largely
free of the uncertain absolute ux normalization, one must be careful
at interpreting the signicance of the ux decit. The error of a measured ratio does not follow a Gaussian distribution; a representation
like Fig. 8.7 tends to overemphasize the signicance of the discrepancy
(Fogli and Lisi 1995).
Fig. 8.7. Measured ratio of the atmospheric /e uxes relative to the

expected value (ratio of ratios) in ve detectors. Where two results are
shown they refer to dierent signatures or data samples. (See Goodman
1995 for references.)
293
Apparently, the anomaly observed at the Kamiokande water Cherenkov detector (Hirata et al. 1992; Fukuda et al. 1994) can be explained in terms of oscillations for neutrino parameters in the shaded
area in Fig. 8.6; the best-t value is indicated by a star. These results
are a combined t for the sub-GeV and multi-GeV data as published
by the Kamiokande collaboration (Fukuda et al. 1994). The oscillation hypothesis appears to be buttressed by a zenith-angle variation of
the eect observed in Kamiokandes multi-GeV data sample although
the claimed signicance of this eect has been critiqued, e.g. by Fogli
and Lisi (1995) and by Saltzberg (1995).
The required large mixing angle as well as the exclusion regions
of the other experiments make it appear dubious that the anomaly is
caused by oscillations. Still, it is a serious eect that cannot be blamed
easily on problems with the Kamiokande detector. Also, the reliability
of some of the exclusion areas in Fig. 8.6 may be called into question,
notably because of their dependence on absolute ux normalizations.
The intuition against a large - mixing angle may be misguided.
In the future, it will be possible to test the relevant regime of mixing
parameters in long-baseline laboratory experiments (e.g. Schneps 1995).
At the time of this writing, the possibility that the atmospheric neutrino
anomaly may be revealing neutrino oscillations remains a lively-debated
possibility.
8.3
8.3.1
Oscillations in Media
Dispersion Relation for Mixed Neutrinos
The neutrino refractive index of a normal medium is extremely small

and so its only potentially observable eect occurs in neutrino oscillations. The refractive index is dierent for dierent avorsthe medium
is avor birefringentand so neutrinos from dierent families which
propagate with the same energy through the same medium acquire different phases. If in addition these avors mix, the medium-induced
phase shift between them shows up in the interference between the
mixed states. Without a medium the phase dierence between mixed
states arises from their mass dierence. Hence, medium eects will
be noticable only if the induced eective mass is of the same order
as the vacuum masses. Therefore, medium refraction is important for
neutrino oscillations in certain situations because the vacuum masses
are very small.
294
Chapter 8
The dispersion relation for a single avor in a medium was given

by Eq. (6.107). For three avors which mix according to Eq. (8.3) the
Klein-Gordon equation in Fourier space is
3Ye 1
G
n
F B
0
0
Ye 1
0
0
Ye 1
m21
k 2 U 0
0
0
e

0 U = 0,
m23
0
m22
0
(8.26)
where a possible neutrino background was ignored and Yn = 1 Yp =

1Ye was used. Also, the higher-order dierence between and was
ignored. This equation has nonzero solutions only if det{. . .} vanishes,
a condition that gives us the dispersion relation for the three normal
modes. For unmixed neutrinos where U is the unit matrix one recovers
Eq. (6.107) for each avor.
For all practical cases the neutrinos are highly relativistic so that
one may linearize this equation,
2
( k Me
/2k) = 0
(8.27)
2
where it is easy to read the matrix Me
from Eq. (8.26). Because to
2
lowest order = k one may equally use Me
/2 in order to derive the
dispersion relation, depending on whether one wishes to write as a
function of k or vice versa.
For two-avor mixing between e and or (mixing angle 0 ) the
eective mass matrix may be written in the same form as in vacuum
2
Me
/2 = b0 12 B ,
where b0 = (m21 + m22 )/4k +
(8.28)
2 GF nB (Ye 12 ) and
sin 2
sin 20
0
m22 m21
2

0 2 GF n e 0 .
B=
0 =
osc
2
cos 20
cos 2
1
(8.29)
This equation denes implicitly the mixing angle as well as the oscillation length osc in the medium in terms of the masses, the vacuum
mixing angle 0 , and the electron density ne .
295
Fig. 8.8. Mixing angle, oscillation length, and neutrino dispersion relation
as a function of the electron density. The medium was taken to have equal
numbers of protons and neutrons (Ye = 12 ), the ratio of neutrino masses was
taken to be m1 : m2 = 1 : 2, and sin2 20 = 0.15.
296
Chapter 8
Explicitly one nds for the mixing angle and the oscillation length
in the medium the following expressions,
sin 20
,
cos 20
sin 20
sin 2 =
,
2
[sin 20 + (cos 20 )2 ]1/2
tan 2 =
(8.30)
where
Ye
eV2
2 GF ne 2
7
=
1.5310
,
m22 m21
g cm3 MeV m22 m21
(8.31)
and
osc =
4
sin 2
.
2
m1 sin 20
m22
(8.32)
For m2 > m1 these functions are shown in Fig. 8.8; they exhibit a
resonance for cos 20 = .
The dispersion relation has two branches which in vacuum correspond to 1,2 = (k 2 m21,2 )1/2 . In the relativistic limit they are
1,2 k =
m21 + m22
+ 2 GF nB (Ye 12 )
4k
]1/2
m2 m21 [ 2
2
sin 20 + (cos 20 )2
,
4k
(8.33)
a result schematically shown in Fig. 8.8. The resonance of the mixing angle corresponds to the crossing point of the two branches of the
dispersion relation. Of course, the levels do not truly cross, but rather
show the usual repulsion.
Because the medium eect changes sign for antineutrinos, a resonance occurs between e and if m2 > m1 , while none occurs between
e and . If the mass hierarchy is the other way round, a resonance
occurs for e and , but not for e and .
8.3.2
Oscillations in Homogeneous Media
In a homogeneous medium the treatment of neutrino oscillations is

exactly as in vacuum except that one must use the eective medium
mixing angle and oscillation length given above. If the medium is sufciently dilute it will not aect the oscillations at all. This is the case
297
when the quantity of Eq. (8.31) is much smaller than unity. In the
opposite limit one nds for the mixing angle in the medium
m2 m21
sin 2 = 2
sin 20 .
2 GF ne 2
(8.34)
The oscillation length becomes

osc =
2
g cm3
= 1.63104 km
,
Ye
2 GF ne
(8.35)
independent of the neutrino masses or energy.

Typically the eect of the medium is, therefore, to suppress the
mixing angle and thus the possibility to observe oscillations. Of course,
for normal materials with a density of a few g cm3 and neutrino masses
in the eV range one needs TeV neutrino energies for the medium to be
relevant at all. For a review of the impact of oscillations in a medium
on neutrino experiments or the observation of atmospheric, solar, or
supernova neutrinos see, for example, Kuo and Pantaleone (1989).
8.3.3
Inhomogeneous Medium: Adiabatic Limit
In an inhomogeneous medium the oscillation problem is much more

complicated. Recall that the spatial variation of a stationary neutrino
beam in the z-direction is given by iz = K according to Eq. (8.7)
2
if one drops the index . The matrix K = Me
/2 is now a function
of z. Formally, the solution is (z) = W (0) with
(
W = S exp i
K(z ) dz
(8.36)
where S is the space-ordering operator. An explicit solution is not

available because the matrices K(z) generally do not commute for different z. Of course, for a constant K one recovers the previous result
W = eiKz .
In certain limits one may still nd simple solutions. The most interesting case of neutrinos moving through an inhomogeneous medium
is the emission from stars, notably the Sun, where they are produced
in a relatively high-density region and then escape into vacuum. The
density at the center of the Sun is about 150 g cm3 , the solar radius
6.961010 cm, yielding an extremely shallow density variation by terrestrial standards! Therefore, consider the adiabatic limit where the
density of the medium varies slowly over a distance osc which is the
characteristic length scale for the oscillation problem.
298
Chapter 8
This case is best understood for two-avor mixing if one studies

the (temporal) evolution of the neutrino avor polarization vector P.
=
Recall that it evolves according to the spin-precession formula P
B P where the magnetic eld is now a function of time. If B
varies slowly relative to the precession frequency the spin follows the
magnetic eld in the sense that it moves on a precession cone which is
attached to B. If the spin is oriented essentially along the magnetic
eld direction it stays pinned to that direction. Therefore, it can be
entirely reoriented by slowly turning the external magnet.
For the case of neutrino oscillations this means that in the adiabatic limit a state can be entirely reoriented in avor space, i.e. an
initial e can be turned almost completely into a even though the
vacuum mixing angle may be small. Consider 0 1, an initial density so large that the medium eects dominate, begin with a e , and
let m1 < m2 . This means that in Fig. 8.8 (lowest panel) begin on
the upper branch of the dispersion relation far to the right of the
crossover. Then let the neutrino propagate toward vacuum through
an adiabatic density gradient. This implies that it stays on the upper branch and ends up at ne = 0 (vacuum) as the mass eigenstate
of the upper eigenvalue m2 which corresponds approximately to a .
This behavior is known as resonant neutrino oscillations or MSW effect after Mikheyev, Smirnov, and Wolfenstein. Mikheyev and Smirnov
(1985) rst discovered this eect when they studied the oscillation of
solar neutrinos while Wolfenstein (1978) rst emphasized the importance of refraction for neutrino oscillations. A simple interpretation of
resonant oscillations in terms of an adiabatic level crossing was rst
given by Bethe (1986).
In order to quantify the adiabatic condition return to the picture
of a spin precessing around a magnetic eld. For avor oscillations
the precession frequency is 2/osc . The magnetic eld is tilted with
an angle 2 (medium mixing angle) against the 3-direction (Fig. 8.2)
and so its speed of angular motion is 2 d/dt. For spatial rather than
temporal oscillations the adiabatic condition is
|| /osc .
(8.37)
This translates into = 12 (sin2 2/ sin 20 ) ln ne while osc is given

by Eq. (8.32) and by Eq. (8.31). Thus, the adiabatic condition is
sin3 2 | ln ne | sin2 20 |m22 m21 |/2.
This condition must be satised along the entire trajectory.
(8.38)
299
If the neutrino crosses a density region such that a resonance occurs, this part of the trajectory yields the most restrictive adiabaticity
requirement. On resonance = cos 20 and sin 2 = 1. In this case one
denes an adiabaticity parameter
m22 m21 sin 20 tan 20
,
(8.39)
2
| ln ne |res
where the denominator is to be evaluated at the resonance point. The
adiabatic condition is 1. It establishes a relationship between vacuum mixing angles and neutrino masses for which resonant oscillations
occur.
8.3.4
Inhomogeneous Medium: Analytic Results
For practical problems, notably the oscillation of solar neutrinos on

their way out of the Sun, one may easily solve the equation iz =
K numerically for prescribed proles of the electron density and
neutrino production rates. The main features of such calculations, however, can be understood analytically because for certain simple density
proles one can nd analytic representations of Eq. (8.36) independently of the adiabatic approximation.
Consider the situation where a e is produced in a medium and
subsequently escapes into vacuum through a monotonically decreasing
density prole. Because in the adiabatic limit the production and detection points are separated by many oscillation lengths, the oscillation
pattern will be entirely washed out and one may use average probabilities for the avor content. Initially, the projection of the polarization
vector on the magnetic eld direction is cos 2 where is the medium
mixing angle at the production point. Because the component of P in
the B direction is conserved when B changes adiabatically, the nal average projection of P on the 3-axis is cos 20 cos 2. Then the survival
probability is prob(e e ) = 12 (1 + cos 20 cos 2). This result applies
in the adiabatic limit whether or not a resonance occurs.
Next, drop the adiabatic condition but assume that the production
and detection points are many oscillation lengths away on opposite
sides of a resonance so that the oscillation pattern remains washed out;
then it remains sucient to consider average probabilities. In this case
it is useful to write
prob(e e ) =
1
2
+ ( 21 p) cos 20 cos 2,
(8.40)
where the correction p to the adiabatic approximation is the probability

that the neutrino jumps from one branch of the dispersion relation to
300
Chapter 8
the other (Fig. 8.8, lowest panel) when it moves across the resonant
density region.
A linear density prole near the resonance region, which is always
a rst approximation, yields the Landau-Zener probability
p = e/2
(8.41)
which was rst derived in 1932 for atomic level crossings. The adiabaticity parameter was dened in Eq. (8.39); in the adiabatic limit
1 one recovers p = 0.
For a variety of other density proles and without the assumption
of a small mixing angle one nds a result of the form
e(/2) F e(/2) F
p=
,
1 e(/2) F
(8.42)
where F = F/ sin2 0 and F is an expression characteristic for a given

density prole. For a linear prole ne r one has F = 1 so that for
a small mixing angle one recovers the Landau-Zener probability. The
prole ne r1 leads to F = cos2 20 / cos2 0 . Of particular interest is
the exponential ne er/R0 which yields
F = 1 tan2 0 .
(8.43)
All of these results are quoted after the review by Kuo and Pantaleone
(1989) where other special cases and references to the original literature
can be found.
Going beyond the Landau-Zener approximation requires assuming
one of the above specic forms for ne (r) for which analytic results exist. Recently, Guzzo, Bellandi, and Aquino (1994) used a somewhat
dierent approach which is free of this limitation. They derived an
approximate solution to the equivalent of Eq. (8.36) by the method of
stationary phases for the space-ordered exponential. They found
(
p=
1
1 +
)2
sin2 (0 ) +
[
]
2
2
2
cos
(
)
+
cos
(
+
)
,
0
0
(1 + )2
(8.44)
where /16. It was assumed that a resonance occurs between

the production point (mixing angle ) and the detection point which is
taken to lie in vacuum (mixing angle 0 ). Eq. (8.44) can be used only
in the nonadiabatic regime as it works only for < 16/.
8.3.5
301
The Triangle and the Bathtub
The most important application of resonant neutrino oscillations is the

possible reduction of the solar e ux, an issue to be discussed more
fully in Chapter 10. Here, I will use the above simple analytic results to
discuss schematically the survival probability prob(e e ) of neutrinos
produced in the Sun.
To this end I use an exponential prole for the electron density,
ne = nc er/R0 , which is a reasonable rst approximation with R0 =
R /10.54 (Bahcall 1989). Then | ln ne | = R01 is a quantity independent of location so that there is no need to evaluate it specically on
resonance. Thus | ln ne |res = 31015 eV is independent of neutrino
parameters. Therefore, the adiabaticity parameter is
=
1
6
103 sin 20 tan 20
m2 MeV
.
meV2 E
(8.45)
An electron density at the center of nc = 1.61026 cm3 yields

c = 40
meV2 E
.
m2 MeV
(8.46)
The quantity was dened in Eq. (8.31).

It is further assumed that all neutrinos are produced with a xed
energy by a point-like source at the solar center. They will encounter
a resonance on their way out if c > cos 20 . In this case one may
calculate the jump probability p according to Eq. (8.42) with F from
Eq. (8.43) for the exponential prole. The survival probability is then
given by Eq. (8.40) with the mixing angle at the solar center
cos 2 =
cos 20 c
.
[(cos 20 c )2 + sin2 20 ]1/2
(8.47)
If c < cos 20 no resonance is encountered; the vacuum parameters

dominate throughout the Sun. In this case one may use p = 0.
In the framework of these approximations it is straightforward to
evaluate prob(e e ) as a function of m2 and sin2 20 . In Fig. 8.9
contours for the survival probability are shown for E = 1 MeV. Because the energy always appears in the combination m2 /2E one may
obtain an analogous plot for other energies by an appropriate vertical
shift. This kind of plot represents the well-known MSW triangle. The
dashed line marks the condition = 1 and thus divides the parameter plane into a region where the oscillations are adiabatic and one
302
Chapter 8
where they are not. The dotted line marks c = cos 20 and thus indicates for which neutrino parameters a resonance occurs on the way out
of the Sun.
Fig. 8.9. The MSW triangle for the simplied solar model discussed in the
text with E = 1 MeV.
Fig. 8.10. The MSW bathtub for the simplied solar model discussed in the
text with m2 = 3105 eV2 and sin2 20 = 0.01.
303
It is also instructive to look at a vertical cut through this contour

plot, except that it is more useful to represent it as a function of E for
a xed m2 rather than the reverse. Both possibilities are equivalent
because what appears is the combination m2 /2E . The result is the
MSW bathtub shown in Fig. 8.10 for m2 = 3105 eV2 and sin2 20 =
0.01 which is one set of parameters that might solve the solar neutrino
problem (Chapter 10).
The main point of Fig. 8.10 is that resonant neutrino oscillations
modify the spectrum of observable e s dierently for dierent energies.
Low-energy neutrinos remain entirely unaected, intermediate-energy
ones are strongly suppressed, and the eect on high-energy states varies
over a broad interval. There, the shape of the observable spectrum is
modied relative to the source spectrum.
8.3.6
Neutrino Oscillations without Vacuum Mixing
Neutrino oscillations in vacuum or in a medium arise because in the

2
weak-interaction basis the matrix of eective neutrino masses, Me
,
has o-diagonal elements which induce transitions between, say, an
initial e and a . The eect of the medium is to modify the diagonal
elements of this matrix, possibly such that dierent avor states become
degenerate, causing the eect of resonant oscillations. Conceivably,
2
oscillations could occur even if Me
= 0 in vacuum so that in the
standard model there are no o-diagonal terms.
2
The absence of o-diagonal medium contributions to Me
within
the standard model reects the absence of avor-changing neutral currents (Sect. 7.2). It cannot be excluded experimentally, however, that
for neutrinos such currents exist on some level, implying that a e , for
example, sometimes emerges as a from a collision with another particle. In the forward direction this would cause an o-diagonal refractive
index so that mixing and thus oscillations would be induced by the
medium (Valle 1987; Fukugita and Yanagida 1988). Certain supersymmetric extensions of the standard model with R-parity breaking predict
such eects (Guzzo, Masiero, and Petcov 1991; Kapetanakis, Mayr, and
Nilles 1992). Therefore, if neutrino oscillations indeed explain the solar
neutrino problem (Chapter 10) this does not inevitably imply neutrino
vacuum masses and mixingsit could also point to the existence of
avor-changing neutral currents. An analytic description of two-avor
oscillations for this case was given by Guzzo and Petcov (1991) while a
detailed parameter study for the solution of the solar neutrino problem
was provided by Barger, Phillips, and Whisnant (1991).
304
8.4
8.4.1
Chapter 8
Spin and Spin-Flavor Oscillations

Vacuum Spin Precession
According to Sect. 7.2 neutrinos may have magnetic dipole moments.

In particular, if neutrinos have masses they inevitably have small but
nontrivial electromagnetic form factors. Novel interactions can induce
large dipole moments even for massless neutrinos. In the presence of
magnetic elds such a dipole moment leads to the familiar spin precession which causes neutrinos to oscillate into opposite helicity states.
If a state started out as a helicity-minus neutrino, the outgoing particle is a certain superposition of both helicities. The wrong-helicity
(right-handed) component does not interact by the standard weak interactions, diminishing the detectable neutrino ux. As the Sun has
relatively strong magnetic elds it is conceivable that magnetic spin
oscillations could be responsible for the measured solar neutrino decit
(Werntz 1970; Cisneros 1971)see Sect. 10.7. Magnetic spin precessions could also aect supernova neutrinos, and in the early universe it
could help to bring the wrong-helicity Dirac neutrino degrees of freedom into thermal equilibrium. Presently I will focus on some general
aspects of neutrino magnetic spin oscillations rather than discussing
specic astrophysical scenarios.
In the rest frame of a neutrino the evolution of its spin operator S =
1
(Pauli matrices ) is governed by the Hamiltonian H0 = 2B0 S;

2
this follows directly from Eq. (7.23). Here, B0 refers to the magnetic
eld in the neutrinos rest frame as opposed to B in the laboratory
frame. The equation of motion of the spin operator in the Heisenberg
picture is then given by it S = [S, H0 ] or
S = 2B0 S,
(8.48)
which represents the usual precession with frequency 2B0 around the
magnetic eld direction. Equivalently, one may consider Eq. (7.23) for
the neutrino spinor which has the form of a Schrodinger equation.
Usually one will be concerned with very relativistic neutrinos so
that the magnetic eld B0 in the rest frame must be obtained from the
electric and magnetic elds in the laboratory frame E and B by virtue
of the usual Lorentz transformation
)
) + E v],
B0 = (B v
v + [
v (B v
(8.49)
the velocity unit vector, and

where v is the velocity of the neutrino, v
2 1/2
= (1 v )
= E /m the Lorentz factor with E the neutrino energy and m its mass. The spin precession as viewed from the laboratory
305
system, however, involves a time-dilation factor 1 so that the Hamiltonian for the spin evolution in the laboratory system is H = 1 B
or explicitly
[
)
(B v
) + E v .
H = (m/)(B v
v+v
(8.50)
If the spin is quantized along the direction of motion (helicity states)

and if there is only a magnetic eld in the laboratory (E = 0), the
Hamiltonian is
(
1 cos
H = B +i
e sin
ei sin
,
1 cos
(8.51)
with the magnetic eld direction relative to the neutrino direction of

motion and its azimuthal direction which may be chosen as = 0.
The bottom line is that very relativistic neutrinos ( ) spinprecess like nonrelativistic ones, except that the relevant magnetic eld
is the transverse component BT ; the eective laboratory Hamiltonian is
(
H = BT
0 1
.
1 0
(8.52)
Therefore, if one begins with left-handed neutrinos a complete precession into right-handed ones will always occur (assuming a sucient
path length), independently of the direction between the laboratory
magnetic eld and the neutrino direction of motion (Fujikawa and
Shrock 1980).
If there is only an electric eld in the laboratory frame, magnetic
oscillations will nevertheless occur because Eq. (8.50) implies that the
neutrino sees an eective magnetic eld BT = E v (Okun 1986). The
precession thus takes place in the plane of E and v.
Contrary to avor oscillations, the oscillation length does not depend on the energy. Therefore, a broad energy spectrum would not
cause a depolarization of the neutrino ux from an astrophysical source
(Sun, supernovae). Rather, neutrinos of all energies would spin-precess
in step with each other.
Because the precession frequency is 2BT the neutrinos will have
reversed their spin after a distance
1
2 osc
1010 B 1 G
= 5.361013 cm
,
2BT
BT
(8.53)
with B = e/2me the Bohr magneton. With a solar BT in the kG regime

the oscillation length is of order a solar radius R = 6.961010 cm. A
306
Chapter 8
substantial reduction of the left-handed solar neutrino ux then requires magnetic dipole moments of order 1010 B . Typical galactic
magnetic elds are of order 106 G with coherence scales of order kpc.
Therefore, neutrinos from a galactic source such as a supernova could
be ipped before reaching Earth if their dipole moment is of order
1012 B . These values are in the neighborhood of what is experimentally and observationally allowed so that there remains interest in the
possibility that magnetic spin oscillations could have a signicant impact on the neutrino uxes from the Sun or from supernovae.
8.4.2
Spin Precession in a Medium
The picture of magnetic spin oscillations thus developed is incomplete.

If neutrinos propagate in a medium as in the Sun they are subject to
medium-induced refractive eects which shift the energy of left-handed
states relative to right-handed ones which propagate as in vacuum because they are sterile. Therefore, including medium eects the eective
Hamiltonian for the evolution of the two helicity states of e is
(
H=
0
BT
BT
,
2GF (ne 12 nn )
(8.54)
where ne and nn are the electron and neutron densities, respectively.

Here, spin up refers to the direction of motion, i.e. to right-handed
states, spin down to left-handed ones. The two helicity states are
no longer degenerate, and the spin precession will no longer lead to
a complete reversal of the spin. One may write H = b + B so
that there is eectively a longitudinal magnetic eld, i.e. parallel to the
direction of motion or z-direction
BL =
GF (ne 21 nn )
1010 B (Ye 12 Yn )
= 66.6 kG
.
g cm3
2
(8.55)
Here, is the mass density and Ye,n the electron and neutron number
per baryon. If BL BT the precession is around a direction close to
the direction of motion, and so the spin reversal will always be far from
complete. Hence, the presence of the medium suppresses magnetic spin
oscillations (Voloshin, Vysotski, and Okun 1986).
8.4.3
Spin-Flavor Precession
If neutrinos were Majorana particles they could not have magnetic

dipole moments, but they could still possess transition moments between dierent avors. In this case the magnetic oscillation would be,
307
say, between a helicity-minus e to a helicity-plus which, because of

its assumed Majorana nature, is identical to a . Because typically the
e and masses will be dierent they must be included in the phase
evolution of the neutrinos. Thus, for relativistic states (momentum p)
one arrives at a two-level equation of motion of the form
(
it
m2e /2p
BT
BT
m2 /2p
)(
e
.
(8.56)
The transition magnetic moment thus leads to simultaneous spin and

avor oscillations (Schechter and Valle 1981). Moreover, neutrinos will
be converted to antineutrinos (and the reverse). If such spin-avor
oscillations occurred, say, in the Sun one might actually be able to
measure a ux of antineutrinos from that source.
A transition magnetic moment implies that the individual avor
lepton numbers are not conserved. Thus most likely there is also standard avor mixing which allows for, say, e oscillations. If the
mass eigenstates are m1 and m2 , respectively, and if the vacuum mixing
angle is , the four-level equation of motion in vacuum is
m c2
e
s

it = m 2
e
0
BT
m s2
m c2
BT
0
0
BT
m c2
m s2
BT
e
0

,
m s2 e
m c2
(8.57)
where m (m22 m21 )/4p, c2 cos 2, and s2 sin 2. Any of e ,

, e , and can oscillate into any of the others.
Including medium eects further complicates this matrix because
the energies of e and are shifted by dierent amounts, and each
is
from its antiparticle. With Ve =
shifted in 1the opposite directions
2GF (ne 2 nn ) and V = 2GF ( 12 nn ) the matrix becomes
m c2 + Ve
m s2
0
BT
m s2
m c2 + V
BT
0
0
BT
m c2 Ve
m s2
BT
. (8.58)
m s2
m c2 V
If there are density gradients (solar neutrinos!) one may have resonant
magnetic conversions between, say, e and where the barrier to spinprecessions caused by the mass dierence is compensated by matter
eects, i.e. one may have resonant spin-avor oscillations (Akhmedov
1988a,b; Barbieri and Fiorentini 1988; Lim and Marciano 1988).
For Dirac neutrinos, transitions to antineutrinos are not possible
and so one needs to consider oscillations separately in the four-level
308
Chapter 8
R
system (eL , L , eR , R ) and ( Le , L , R
e , ). Moreover, one may have
both diagonal and transition magnetic moments so that for neutrinos
the r.h.s. of the equation of motion is
m c2 + Ve
m s2
ee BT
e BT
m s2
m c2 + V
e BT
BT
ee BT
e BT
m c2
m s2
eL
e BT
BT L
m s2 eR
R
m c2
(8.59)
where the right-handed neutrinos do not experience a medium-induced

energy shift.
For certain values of the parameters the oscillations between two
states may dominate which are then described by a certain 2 2 submatrix. Then the general treatment is much like the avor mixing
problems studied earlier. In general, a much richer collection of solutions obtainsfor a review see Pulido (1992).
Electric transition moments can also play a role, and precessions
in electric elds may be important. Majorana neutrinos have either
electric or magnetic transition moments, but not both as long as CP
remains conserved. Still, even electric transition moments would lead
to spin-avor oscillations in macroscopic magnetic elds.
8.4.4
Twisting Magnetic Fields
The problem of spin oscillations is further complicated by the possibility

that the magnetic eld changes its direction along the neutrino trajectory, i.e. that it may be twisting (Aneziris and Schechter 1991). In
this case the equation of motion of a two-level spin-precession problem
is based on the Hamiltonian
(
BL
H=
BT ei
BT ei
,
BL
(8.60)
where the three parameters BL , BT , and vary along the neutrino

trajectory. The transverse eld strength BT is a physical magnetic
eld while the longitudinal one BL is an eective magnetic eld which
represents the neutrino mass dierence (spin-avor oscillations!) and
refractive medium eects. As long as BT maintains its direction along
the trajectory, the phase can be globally chosen to be zero.
If varies along the trajectory so that the neutrino experiences it to
be a function of time, it is useful to transform the equation of motion to
a coordinate system which corotates with BT so that in the new frame
one is back to the old situation of a xed direction for BT (Smirnov
309
1991). This transformation is achieved by = U where represents

a two-level wave function and
(
U=
ei/2
0
ei/2
(8.61)
so that the spin-up and down states acquire opposite, time-dependent

phases. However, because the transformation does not mix spin up with
spin down, the transition rate between the two levels is the same in both
coordinate systems. The equation of motion it = H involves the
Hamiltonian
(
BL
H =
BT
BT
BL
1 0
.
0 1
(8.62)
Put another way, the eective longitudinal magnetic eld in the rotating
frame is BL = BL 12 /
while BT remains unchanged. |BL | can be less
or larger than |BL | so that the transition rate between the two levels
can be increased or decreased by a twist. BL may even be cancelled
entirely, enabling resonant oscillations.
For a systematic discussion of the full four-level spin-avor problem
see, for example, Akhmedov, Petcov, and Smirnov (1993).
Chapter 9
Oscillations
of Trapped Neutrinos
In a supernova (SN) core or in the early universe neutrinos scatter on
the background medium and on each other. Therefore, oscillations of
mixed neutrinos are frequently interrupted, leading to avor equilibrium if there is enough time. A Boltzmann-type kinetic equation is
derived that accounts simultaneously for neutrino oscillations and collisions for arbitrary neutrino degeneracy. It is applied to a SN core,
yielding an estimate of the time scale to reach avor equilibrium. On
the basis of the SN 1987A neutrino observations a limit on the mixing
of sequential neutrinos with a hypothetical sterile avor is derived.
9.1
Introduction
So far oscillations were discussed in the context of beam experiments

where neutrinos of a known avor are produced at a certain location,
for example in a power reactor or in the Sun, then propagate over a
distance, and are then detected with a device that allows one to distinguish between dierent avors. It was assumed that there were no
interactions between the production and detection point, with the possible exception of decays, allowing one to treat neutrino oscillations as
a simple propagation phenomenon fully analogous to light propagation
in an optically active medium.
This approach is not adequate for the early universe and a young SN
core. In both cases there are frequent neutrino collisions which aect
the free evolution of the phases. The impact of these collisions can
be understood if one assumes for the purpose of illustration that one
310
Oscillations of Trapped Neutrinos
311
neutrino avor (say e ) scatters with a rate while the other (say )
does not. An initial e will begin to oscillate into . The probability
for nding it in one of the two avors evolves as previously discussed
and as shown in Fig. 9.1 (dotted line). However, in each collision the
momentum of the e component of the superposition is changed, while
the component remains unaected. Thus, after the collision the two
avors are no longer in the same momentum state and so they can no
longer interfere: each of them begins to evolve separately. This allows
the remaining e to develop a new coherent component which is made
incoherent in the next collision, and so forth. This process will come
into equilibrium only when there are equal numbers of e s and s.
This decoherence eect is even more obvious when one includes the
possibility of e absorption and production by charged-current reactions
e n pe. Because of oscillations an initial e is subsequently found
to be a with an average probability of 21 sin2 2 (mixing angle )
and as such cannot be absorbed, or only by the reaction n p
if it has enough energy. The continuous emission and absorption of
e s spins o a with an average probability of 12 sin2 2 in each
collision! Chemical relaxation of the neutrino avors will occur with
an approximate rate 21 sin2 2 where is a typical weak interaction
rate for the ambient physical conditions. An initial e population
turns into an equal mixture of e s and s as shown schematically
in Fig. 9.1 (solid line).
Fig. 9.1. Neutrino oscillations with collisions (solid line). In the absence
of collisions and for a single momentum one obtains periodic oscillations
(dotted line), while for a mixture of energies the oscillations are washed out
by dephasing (dashed line).
312
Chapter 9
A certain damping of avor oscillations occurs even without collisions when the neutrinos are not monochromatic because then dierent
modes oscillate with dierent frequencies. This dephasing eect was
shown in Fig. 8.4 and is repeated in Fig. 9.1 (dashed line). While the
dephasing washes out the oscillation pattern, it does not lead to avor
equilibrium: the probability for e ends at a constant of 1 12 sin2 2.
For the rest of this chapter damping of oscillations never refers to
this relatively trivial dephasing eect.
The interplay of collisions and oscillations leads to avor equilibrium
between mixed neutrinos. In a SN core the concentration of electron
lepton number is initially large so that the e form a degenerate Fermi
sea. The other avors and are characterized by a thermal distribution at zero chemical potential. However, if they mix with e they
will achieve the same large chemical potential. In a SN core heat and
lepton number are transported mostly by neutrinos; the eciency of
these processes depends crucially on the degree of neutrino degeneracy
for each avor. Therefore, it is of great interest to determine the time
it takes a non-e avor to equilibrate with e under the assumption
of mixing (Maalampi and Peltoniemi 1991; Turner 1992; Pantaleone
1992a; Mukhopadhyaya and Gandhi 1992; Raelt and Sigl 1993).
Moreover, if e mixes with a sterile neutrino species, conversion into
this inert state leads to the loss of energy and lepton number from the
inner core of a SN. The observed SN 1987A neutrino signal may thus
be used to constrain the allowed range of masses and mixing angles
(Kainulainen, Maalampi, and Peltoniemi 1991; Raelt and Sigl 1993;
see also Shi and Sigl 1994).
These applications are discussed in Sects. 9.5 and 9.6 below. A
simple estimate of the rate of avor conversion and the emission rate
of sterile neutrinos from a SN core requires not much beyond the approximate rate 12 sin2 2 . However, a proper kinetic treatment of the
evolution of a neutrino ensemble under the simultaneous action of oscillations and collisions is an interesting theoretical problem in its own
right. Notably, it is far from obvious how to treat degenerate neutrinos in a SN core because the dierent avors will suer dierent Pauli
blocking factors. Does this eect break the coherence between mixed
avors in neutral-current collisions?
The bulk of this chapter is devoted to the derivation and discussion of a general kinetic equation for mixed neutrinos (Dolgov 1981;
Rudzsky 1990; Raelt, Sigl, and Stodolsky 1993; Sigl and Raelt 1993).
This equation provides a sound conceptual and quantitative framework
for dealing with various aspects of coherent and incoherent neutrino
313
interactions with a medium, whether the neutrinos are degenerate or

not. As a free spin-o it will provide a proper formalism to deal with
the refractive eects of neutrinos propagating in a bath of neutrinos,
a problem that is of interest in the early universe where interactions
among neutrinos produce the dominant medium eect, and in the neutrino ow from a SN core where the density of neutrinos is larger than
that of nonneutrino background particles (Sect. 11.4).
Besides neutrino avor oscillations, magnetically induced spin or
spin-avor oscillations are also of potential interest because in supernovae and the early universe strong magnetic elds are believed to exist.
Spin relaxation (the process of populating the r.h. degrees of freedom by
the simultaneous action of spin oscillations and collisions) is a very similar problem to that of achieving chemical equilibrium between dierent
avors which is discussed here. Therefore, similar kinetic methods can
be applied (Enqvist, Rez, and Semikoz 1995 and references therein).
9.2
9.2.1
Kinetic Equation for Oscillations and

Collisions
Stodolskys Formula
The loss of coherence between mixed neutrinos in collisions cannot be

properly understood on the amplitude level because it is not the amplitudes, but only their relative coherence that is dampedthe avor
states decohere, they do not disappear. This is dierent from the
decay of mixed particles where one of the amplitudes can be viewed
as decreasing exponentially so that the total number of particles is
not conserved. A natural description of decoherence is achieved by a
density matrix as in Eq. (8.8); for a two-avor mixing problem it was
expressed in terms of a polarization vector P according to Eq. (8.18),
= 12 (1 + P ). In the weak interaction basis its diagonal elements are
the probabilities for measuring in, say, the e or state, respectively,
while the o-diagonal elements contain relative phase information.
In a two-level system, the length of the polarization vector measures
the degree of coherence: length 1 corresponds to a pure state, shorter
P s to some degree of incoherence, and length zero is the completely
mixed or incoherent state (Stodolsky 1987). In this latter case is
proportional to the unit matrix which is invariant under a transformation of basis. This state of chemical or avor equilibrium has no
o-diagonal elements in any basis.
314
Chapter 9
Even coherent or partially coherent density matrices can be diagonalized in some basis. The interactions with the background medium
will also be diagonal in some basis; for neutrinos, this is the weak interaction basis. If the density matrix and the interactions are diagonal in
the same basis, there is no decoherence eect. For example, a density
matrix diagonal in the weak interaction basis implies that there is no
relative phase information between, say, a e and a and so collisions
which aect e s and s separately have no impact on the density
matrix. However, a density matrix which is diagonal in the mass basis,
assumed to be dierent from the weak interaction basis, will suer a
loss of coherence in the same medium.
All told, the loss of coherence is given by a shrinking of the length
of P. More precisely, only the component PT is damped which represents the part transverse to the interaction basis, i.e. which in the
interaction basis represents the o-diagonal elements of . Thus, in the
presence of collisions the evolution of P is given by (Stodolsky 1987)
= V P DPT .
P
(9.1)
The rst part is the previous precession formula, except that here a
temporal evolution is appropriate since one has in mind the evolution
of a spatially homogeneous ensemble rather than the spatial pattern of
a stationary beam. The magnetic eld V is
2
V=
tosc
sin 2
0 ,
cos 2
(9.2)
where is the mixing angle in the medium and tosc the oscillation
period. They are given in terms of the neutrino masses and momentum, the vacuum mixing angle, and the medium density by Eqs. (8.30)
and (8.32) where strictly speaking the neutrino energy is to be replaced
by its momentum as we have turned to temporal rather than spatial
oscillations. The damping parameter D is determined by the scattering
amplitudes on the background.
The evolution described by Eq. (9.1) is a precession around the
magnetic eld V, combined with a shrinking of the length of P to
zero. This nal state corresponds to = 21 where both avors are
equally populated, and with vanishing coherence between them. For
1
D = t1
osc and sin 2 = 2 the evolution of the avors is shown in Fig. 9.1
(solid line). Ignoring the wiggles in this curve it is an exponential as
can be seen by multiplying both sides of Eq. (9.1) with P/P 2 which
315
leads to P /P = D (PT /P )2 with P = |P| and PT = |PT |. For a

small collision rate relative to the oscillation frequency one may use
the precession-averaged PT which is found by taking the transverse
part of the projection of P on V. Elementary geometry in Fig. 8.2
yields PT /P = cos 2 sin 2 so that P /P = D cos2 2 sin2 2. If
one neutrino interacts while the other is sterile (for example with
regard to charged-current absorption) D is half the collision rate of
the active avor (Stodolsky 1987). For small mixing angles one recovers
the previous intuitive relaxation rate 12 sin2 2 .
Equation (9.1) is based on a single-particle wave function picture
of neutrino oscillations and thus it is applicable if eects nonlinear in
the neutrino density matrices can be ignored. It does not allow one to
include the eect of Pauli blocking of neutrino phase space, which is
undoubtedly important in a SN core where the e Fermi sea is highly
degenerate. In this case it is rather unclear what one is supposed to
use for the damping parameter D. If e and scatter with equal
amplitudes, there is no damping at all because the collisions do not
distinguish between avors, preserving the coherence between them.
Does this remain true if e collisions are Pauli blocked by their high
Fermi sea while those of are not? Such and other related questions
can be answered if one abandons a single-particle approach to neutrino oscillations, i.e. if one moves to a eld-theoretic framework which
includes many-body eects from the start.
9.2.2
Matrix of Densities
Which quantity is supposed to replace the previous single-particle density matrix as a means to describe a possibly degenerate neutrino
ensemble? For unmixed neutrinos the relevant observables are timedependent occupation numbers fp for a given mode p of the neutrino eld. They are given as expectation values of number operators
np = ap ap where ap is a destruction operator for a neutrino in mode p
and ap the corresponding creation operator. The expectation value is
with regard to the state | of the entire ensemble. For several avors
it is natural to generalize the fp s to matrices p = (p) of the form49
Strictly speaking (p) is dened by aj (p)ai (p ) = (2)3 (3) (p p )ij (p) and
similar for (p). Therefore, the expectation values in Eq. (9.3) diverge because they
involve an innite factor (2)3 (3) (0) which is related to the innite quantization
volume necessary for continuous momentum variables. In practice, this factor always drops out of nal results so that one may eectively set (2)3 (3) (0) equal to
unity.
49
316
Chapter 9
(Dolgov 1981)
ij (p) = aj (p)ai (p)
and ij (p) = bi (p)bj (p) ,
(9.3)
where ai (p) and ai (p) are the destruction and creation operators for
neutrinos of avor i in mode p while b is for antineutrinos which otherwise are referred to by overbarred quantities. The reversed order of the
avor indices in the denition of (p) guarantees that both matrices
transform in the same way under a unitary transformation in avor
space. Also, for brevity | . . . | is always written as . . ..
The diagonal elements of p and p are the usual occupation numbers while the o-diagonal ones represent relative phase information.
In the nondegenerate limit, up to a normalization p plays the role of
the previously dened single-particle density matrix. Therefore, the
p s and p s are well suited to account simultaneously for oscillations
and collisions. In fact, one can argue that a homogeneous neutrino
ensemble is completely characterized by these matrices of densities
(Sigl and Raelt 1993). It remains to derive an equation of motion
which in the appropriate limits should reduce to the previous precession equation, to a Boltzmann collision equation, and to Stodolskys
damping equation (9.1), respectively.
9.2.3
Free Evolution: Flavor Oscillations
The creation and annihilation operators which appear in the denition

of p are the time-dependent coecients of a spatial Fourier expansion
of the neutrino eld [notation dp d3 p/(2)3 ]
(t, x) =
dp ap (t)up + bp (t)vp eipx .
(9.4)
More precisely, ap is an annihilation operator for negative-helicity neutrinos of momentum p while bp is a creation operator for positivehelicity antineutrinos. The Dirac spinors up and vp refer to massless negative-helicity particles and positive-helicity antiparticles, respectively; the spinor normalization is taken to be unity. For n avors,
ap and bp are column vectors of components ai (p) and bi (p), respectively. They satisfy the anticommutation relations {ai (p), aj (p )} =
{bi (p), bj (p )} = ij (2)3 (3) (p p ).
In the massless limit and when only left-handed (l.h.) interactions
are present one may ignore the right-handed (r.h.) eld entirely. However, in order to include avor mixing one needs to introduce a n n
317
mass matrix M which is nondiagonal in the interaction basis. Even

in this case the wrong helicity states will be ignored because in the
ultrarelativistic regime spin-ip reactions are suppressed by an approximate factor (m /2E )2 1. In this limit lepton number violating
eects from possible Majorana masses are also ignored.
In the absence of interactions satises the free Dirac equation, implying ap (t) = ap (0) exp(i0p t) and bp (t) = bp (0) exp(i0p t), where
(
0p p2 + M 2
)1/2
(9.5)
is a n n matrix of vacuum oscillation frequencies. In the mass basis

it has only diagonal elements which are the energies Ei = (p2 + m2i )1/2 .
Therefore, one may use
H0 =
dp
n [
ai (p)0ij (p)aj (p) + bj (p)0ij (p)bi (p)
(9.6)
i,j=1
as a free neutrino Hamiltonian.

In order to nd the evolution of p and p one needs to study the
equations of motion of the n n operator matrices
ij (p, t) aj (p, t)ai (p, t) and ij (p, t) bi (p, t)bj (p, t) . (9.7)
With a Hamiltonian H their evolution is given by Heisenbergs equation,
it = [
, H] ,
(9.8)
and similar for p . With H = H0 from Eq. (9.6) one nds

it p = [0p , p ] and it p = [0p , p ] .
(9.9)
Taking expectation values on both sides yields equations of motion

for p and p . For two avors one may use the representation 0p =
p0 + 21 Vp and p = 12 fp (1 + Pp ). Then Eq. (9.9) leads to the
= V P .
p = Vp Pp and P
precession formulas P
p
p
p
9.2.4
Interaction with a Background Medium
Interactions with a medium are introduced by virtue of a general interaction Hamiltonian Hint (B, ) which is a functional of the neutrino
eld and a set B of background elds; specic cases will be discussed
in Sects. 9.3 and 9.4 below. The equation of motion for p is found from
318
Chapter 9
Heisenbergs equation with H = H0 +Hint . Taking an expectation value

with regard to the initial state yields
[
p (t) = i 0p , p (t) + i
Hint (B(t), (t)), p (t)
(9.10)
and an analogous equation for p (t). These equations are exact, but
they are not a closed set of dierential equations for the p and p . To
this end one needs to perform a perturbative expansion.
To rst order one may set the interacting elds B(t) and (t) on the
r.h.s. of Eq. (9.10) equal to the free elds50 B0 (t) and 0 (t). Under the
assumption that the original state contained no correlations between
the neutrinos and the background the expectation value factorizes into
a medium part and a neutrino part. With Wicks theorem and ignoring
fast-varying terms such as b b it can be reduced to an expression which
contains only p s and p s. The result gives the forward-scattering or
refractive eect of the interaction.
To include nonforward collisions one needs to go to second order
in the perturbation expansion. At a given time t a general operator
(t) = (B(t), (t)) which is a functional of B and is to rst order
(t) = 0 (t) + i
t
0
0
dt Hint
(t t ), 0 (t) ,
(9.11)
0
where 0 and Hint
are functionals of the freely evolving elds B0 (t)
and 0 (t). Applying this general iteration formula to the operator
= [Hint (B, ), p ] which appears on the r.h.s. of Eq. (9.10) one
arrives at
p (t) = i 0p , p (t) + i
t
0
dt
0
Hint
(t), 0p
]
[
0
0
Hint
(t t ), Hint
(t), 0p
]]
, (9.12)
and similar for p (t). The second term on the r.h.s. is the rst-order
refractive part associated with forward scattering. The second-order
term contains both forward- as well as nonforward-scattering eects.
50
These free operators are the solutions of the equations of motion in the absence
of Hint . However, internal interactions of the medium such as nucleon-nucleon
scattering are not excluded. Moreover, (0) = 0 (0) etc. are taken as initial
conditions for the interacting elds. Also, the mass term is ignored in the denition
of 0 ; its eect is included only in the rst term on the r.h.s. of Eq. (9.10), the
vacuum oscillation term. Therefore, the free creation and annihilation operators
vary as a0j (p, t) = aj (p, 0)eipt etc. for all avors with p = |p|. This implies that
0 (p), which are constructed from the free as and bs, are
the operators 0 (p) and
time independent.
319
Because all operators on the r.h.s. of Eq. (9.12) are free the expectation values in the rst- and second-order term factorize between the
neutrinos and the medium. This leads one to equations for p (t) and
p (t) which on the r.h.s. involve only p (t) and p (t) as well as
0p
and 0p besides expectation values of B operators.
The interactions described by Hint are taken as individual, isolated
collisions where the neutrinos go from free states to free states as in
ordinary scattering theory. The duration of one collision (the inverse
of a typical energy transfer) is assumed to be small relative to the
time scale over which the density matrices vary substantially, i.e. small
relative to the oscillation time and the inverse collision frequency. Physically this amounts to the restriction that the neutrino collision rate is
small enough that multiple-scattering eects can be ignored. Further,
it is assumed that the medium is not changed much by the interactions
with the neutrino ensemble, allowing one to neglect evolution equations
for the medium variables which can thus be taken to be externally prescribed, usually by conditions of thermal equilibrium. If the medium
is not stationary it is assumed that the time scale of variation is large
compared to the duration of typical neutrino-medium collisions.
One may then choose the time step of iteration t in Eq. (9.12)
both small relative to the evolution time scale and large relative to the
duration of one collision. Under these circumstances the time integral
can be extended to innity while setting p (t) equal to p (0) =
0p .
This leads to
[
p (0) = i 0p , p (0) + i
1
2
0
Hint
(0), 0p
dt
]
[
0
0
Hint
(t), Hint
(0), 0p
]]
, (9.13)
+
and similar for p . Here, 0 dt . . . was replaced by 12
dt . . ..
The dierence between these expressions corresponds to a principlepart integral which leads to a second-order correction to the refractive
term which is ignored. In the form of Eq. (9.13) the time integral leads
to energy conservation in individual collisions.
An explicit evaluation of the r.h.s. of Eq. (9.13) for a given interaction model yields the desired set of dierential equations for the p s
and p s at time t = 0. It will be valid at all times if the correlations
built up by neutrino collisions are forgotten before the next collision occurs. This assumption corresponds to molecular chaos in the
derivation of the usual Boltzmann equation.
320
9.3
9.3.1
Chapter 9
Neutral-Current Interactions
Hamiltonian
In order to make Eq. (9.13) explicit one must use a specic model for
the interactions between neutrinos and the medium. To this end I begin
with fermions which interact by virtue of an eective neutral-current
(NC) Hamiltonian,
HNC
GF 3
d x Ba (x) (x)Ga (1 5 )(x) .
=
2 a
(9.14)
Here, Ba typically is also a bilinear of the form a a or a 5 a

with a Dirac eld a which describes fermions of the medium. It is
assumed that all neutrino avors scatter on a given species a in the
same way apart from overall factors which are given as a hermitian
n n matrix Ga of dimensionless coupling constants. In the absence of
avor-changing neutral currents it is diagonal in the weak interaction
basis.
As a concrete example consider the e and avors in a medium
of ultrarelativistic electrons which may be classied into a l.h. and a
= 21 e (1 5 )e . With the
r.h. species, a = L or R, so that BL,R
standard-model couplings given in Sect. 6.7.1 one nds in the weak
interaction basis GL = 2 sin2 W + 3 and GR = 2 sin2 W .
For the calculations it is convenient to write Eq. (9.14) in momentum space,
HNC
GF
=
dp dp Ba (p p ) p Ga (1 5 )p ,
2 a
(9.15)
where Ba () = d3 x Ba (x)eix is the Fourier transform of Ba (x)

and p = ap up + bp vp in terms of the annihilation and creation
operators of Eq. (9.4).
A special case of NC interactions are those among the neutrinos
themselves with a Hamiltonian that is quartic in . In momentum
space these self-interactions are given by
GF
dp dp dq dq (2)3 (3) (p + q p q )
HS =
2
q GS (1 5 )q p GS (1 5 )p .
(9.16)
In the standard model with three sequential neutrino families GS is the

3 3 unit matrix. For the evolution of a normal and a hypothetical
sterile avor one would have GS = diag(1, 0).

9.3.2
321
Neutrino Refraction
As a rst simple application one may recover neutrino refraction by

a medium that was previously discussed in Sect. 6.7.1. An explicit
evaluation of the second term of Eq. (9.13) with Hint = HNC yields
i = [0p , p ] +
na [Ga , p ] ,
(9.17)
where na Ba P /P0 where P is the neutrino four momentum and

thus P/P0 their four velocity. In an isotropic medium the spatial parts
of Ba vanish so that na is the number density of fermions a. If the
medium is unpolarized, axial currents do not contribute.
In the standard model with the coupling constants of Appendix B
one nds for an isotropic, unpolarized medium of protons, neutrons,
and electrons,
[
]
i p = (0p + 2 GF N ), p ,
[
]
(9.18)
i p = (0p 2 GF N ), p ,
where N = diag(ne , 0, 0) in the avor basis (electron density ne ). For
two avors this is equivalent to the previous precession formula. Notably, the and oscillation frequencies are shifted in opposite directions relative to the vacuum energies.
Neutrino-neutrino interactions make an additional contribution to
the refractive energy shifts, i.e. to the rst-order term in Eq. (9.13).
After the relevant contractions one nds51 (Sigl and Raelt 1993)
Sp
2 GF
dq GS (q q )GS + GS Tr (q q )GS
]}
.
(9.19)
Sp is given by the same formula with q and q interchanged. The

trace expression implies the well-known result that neutrinos in a bath
of their own avor experience twice the energy shift relative to a bath
of another avor.
The early universe is essentially matter-antimatter symmetric so
that higher-order terms to the refractive index must be included as
discussed in Sect. 6.7.2; see also Sigl and Raelt (1993). In stars,
If the neutrino ensemble is not isotropic one has to include a factor (1 cos pq )
under the integral, where pq is the angle between p and q.
51
322
Chapter 9
neutrinos are important only in young SN cores where one may ignore
antineutrinos. With the total neutrino matrix of densities
dp p ,
(9.20)
and with GS = 1 in the standard model,

the neutrino contribution
S
to the refractive energy shift is p = 2 GF . The trace term was
dropped because it does not contribute to the commutator in the equation of motion. The diagonal entries of are the neutrino densities.
However, in the presence of mixing and oscillations also has odiagonal elements, i.e. there are o-diagonal refractive indices as rst
realized by Pantaleone (1992b).
In a SN core the complete rst-order equation of motion for p is
then
[
]
[
]
i p = 0p , p + 2 GF (N + ), p ,
(9.21)
which is intrinsically nonlinear. Interestingly, if one integrates both
sides over dp one obtains an equation for which is linear as the neutrino term drops out from the commutator. Therefore, even though
individual modes of the neutrino eld oscillate dierently in the presence of other neutrinos, the instantaneous rate of change of the overall
avor polarization is as if they were absent.
In a SN core the refractive eects are dominated by nonneutrino
particles, notably by electrons. However, above the neutrino sphere
the ow of neutrinos itself represents a particle density exceeding that
of the background medium (Sect. 11.4). Also, the medium of the early
universe is dominated by neutrinos so that self-interactions and the
corresponding nonlinearities of the neutrino avor oscillations must be
carefully included. For recent studies of primordial neutrino oscillations
see Samuel (1993), Kostoleck
y, Pantaleone, and Samuel (1993), and
references to the earlier literature given there.
9.3.3
Kinetic Terms
The refractive term (rst order) of Eq. (9.13) is just a sum over dierent
medium components, whereas the collision term (second order) in general contains interference terms between dierent target species. However, if they are uncorrelated, corresponding to Ba Bb = Ba Bb
for a = b, these interference terms only contribute to second-order
forward-scattering eects which are neglected. The collision term is
then an incoherent sum over all target species so that in the following
one may suppress the subscript a for simplicity.
323
After a lengthy but straightforward calculation one arrives at the

NC collision term (Sigl and Raelt 1993)
p,coll =
dp WP ,P Gp G(1 p ) WP,P p G(1 p )G
1
2
+ WP ,P (1 p )G(1 p )G WP,P p Gp G + h.c. ,

(9.22)
where P and P are neutrino four momenta with physical (positive) energies P0 = |p| and P0 = |p |. The nonnegative transition probabilities
WK ,K = W (K , K) are Wick contractions of medium operators of the
form
W (K , K) = 18 G2F S (K K) N (K , K) ,
(9.23)
where K and K correspond to neutrino four-momenta with K0 and K0

positive or negative. The medium structure function is
S ()
dt ei0 t B (t, )B (0, ) ,
(9.24)
where the energy transfer 0 can be both positive and negative. In the
ultrarelativistic limit the neutrino tensor can be written as
N = 12 (U U + U U U U g i U U ),
(9.25)
where U K/K 0 and U K /K 0 are the neutrino four velocities.

Therefore, N is an even function of K and K . Note that the denition Eq. (9.25) diers slightly from the corresponding Eq. (4.17).
The rst two terms of the collision integral Eq. (9.22) are due to
neutrino scattering o the medium. The positive term represents gains
from scatterings p p while the negative one is from losses by the
inverse reaction. The third and fourth expressions account for pair
processes, i.e. the creation or absorption of p p by the medium. The
pair terms are found by direct calculation or from the scattering ones
by crossing,
P P
and p (1 p ) .
(9.26)
For example, the reaction p X X p transforms to X X p p

under this operation where X and X represent medium congurations.
The collision integral for p is found by direct calculation or by
applying the crossing operation Eq. (9.26) to all neutrinos and antineutrinos appearing in Eq. (9.22). The neutrino gain terms then transform
to the antineutrino loss terms and vice versa.
324
Chapter 9
Equation (9.22) and the corresponding result for p were derived

by Sigl and Raelt (1993) whose exposition I have closely followed. In
the nondegenerate limit where (1 p ) 1 it agrees with a kinetic
equation of Dolgov (1981) and Barbieri and Dolgov (1991). Moreover,
a similar equation was derived by Rudzsky (1990) which can be shown
to be equivalent to Eq. (9.22) in the appropriate limits.
The relatively complicated collision term that follows from the neutrino-neutrino Hamiltonian Eq. (9.16) has been worked out by Sigl and
Raelt (1993). However, in a SN core the collisions of neutrinos with
each other are negligible relative to interactions with nucleons and electrons.
In the limit of a single neutrino avor, or several unmixed avors,
the role of p is played by the usual occupation numbers fp while the
matrix G is unity, or the unit matrix. Then Eq. (9.22) is
fp,coll =
dp WP ,P fp (1 fp ) WP,P fp (1 fp )
+ WP ,P (1 fp )(1 f p ) WP,P fp f p (9.27)

which is the usual Boltzmann collision integral. The main dierence
to Eq. (9.22) is the appearance there of nonabelian Pauli blocking
factors which involve noncommuting matrices of neutrino occupation
numbers and coupling constants.
9.3.4
Recovering Stodolskys Formula
The damping of neutrino oscillations becomes particularly obvious in

the limit where a typical energy transfer 0 in a neutrino-medium interaction is small relative to the neutrino energies themselves. This
would be the case for heavy and thus nonrelativistic background
fermions. Then pair processes may be ignored and neutrinos change
their direction of motion in a collision, but not the magnitude of their
momentum, which also implies W (P, P ) W (P , P ). If the neutrino ensemble is isotropic one then has p = p under the integral
in Eq. (9.22). For the matrix structure of the collision term this leaves
2Gp G GGp p GG = [G, [G, p ]] which puts the nature of the
collision term as a double commutator in evidencesee also Eq. (9.13).
One may dene a total scattering rate for nondegenerate neutrinos of
momentum p by virtue of
p =
dp W (P , P ) .
(9.28)
325
In the present limit this yields a collision integral

p,coll = 12 p [G, [G, p ]] ,
(9.29)
where terms nonlinear in p have disappeared even though the neutrinos may still be degenerate.
Eq. (9.29) is more transparent in the case of two-avor mixing where
one may write p = 12 fp (1 + Pp ) and G = 12 (g0 + G ). The
total occupation number fp is conserved while the polarization vector
is damped according to
p,coll = 1 p G (G Pp ).
P
2
(9.30)
The r.h.s. is a vector transverse to G, allowing one to write

p,coll = 1 p |G|2 Pp,T .
P
2
(9.31)
Thus one naturally recovers Stodolskys damping term Eq. (9.1) with
D = 12 p |G|2 . For e and and if one writes G = diag(ge , g ) in
the weak interaction basis D = 21 p (ge g )2 . This representation
reects that the damping of neutrino oscillations depends on the difference of the scattering amplitudes: D is the square of the amplitude
dierence, not the dierence of the squares. If one avor does not
scatter at all, D is half the scattering rate of the active avor.
Collisions thus lead to chemical equilibrium as discussed in the introduction to this chapter and as shown in Fig. 9.1. However, the
simple exponential damping represented by Stodolskys formula can be
reproduced only in the limit of vanishing energy transfers in collisions,
an assumption which amounts to separating the neutrino momentum
degrees of freedom from the avor ones. In a more general case the evolution is more complicated. In particular, collisions usually lead to a
transient avor polarization in an originally unpolarized ensemble if the
momentum degrees of freedom were out of equilibrium. Still, the neutrinos always move toward kinetic and chemical equilibrium under the
action of the collision integral Eq. (9.22) in the sense that the properly
dened free energy never increases (Sigl and Raelt 1993).
9.3.5
Weak-Damping Limit
Even for two-avor mixing the general form of the collision integral
Eq. (9.22) remains rather complicated. However, for the conditions
of a SN core one may apply two approximations which signicantly
simplify the problem. First, one is mostly concerned with the evolution
326
Chapter 9
of e s because initially they have a large chemical potential and thus

are far away from chemical equilibrium with the other avors. Their
high degree of degeneracy implies that e s may be ignored and with
them all pair processes. Therefore, the evolution of e s mixed with one
other avor (standard or sterile) is given by
p = i[p , p ] +
1
2
dp WP P Gp G(1 p )
WP P p G(1 p )G + h.c. .
(9.32)
The matrix of oscillation frequencies includes vacuum and rst-order

medium contributions. With the momentum-dependent oscillation period tosc it is
p = (2/tosc ) 21 vp
with vp (sp , 0, cp ).
(9.33)
Here,
sp sin 2p
and cp cos 2p
(9.34)
with the momentum-dependent mixing angle in the medium p .

The second approximation for the conditions of a SN core is the
weak-damping limit or limit of fast oscillations. It is easy to show that
for the relevant physical conditions 2/tosc is typically much faster than
the scattering rate. Therefore, it is justied to consider density matrices
ep averaged over a period of oscillation. While the p s are given by
four real parameters which are functions of time, the ep s require only
two, for example the occupation numbers of the two mixed avors. It
is straightforward to show that in the weak interaction basis
(
ep =
fpe
0
0
fpx
1
t
2 p
(fpe
fpx )
0 1
,
1 0
(9.35)
where tp tan 2p = sp /cp , fpe is the occupation number of e , not of

electrons, and fpx refers to a standard or sterile avor x .
One way of looking at the weak-damping limit is that between collisions neutrinos are best described by propagation eigenstates, i.e.
in a basis where the ep are diagonal. Then the matrix of coupling constants G is no longer diagonal and so avor conversion is understood as
the result of avor-changing neutral currents where avor refers to
the propagation eigenstates. However, because in general the eective
mixing angle is a function of the neutrino momentum one would have
to use a dierent basis for each momentum, an approach that complicates rather than simplies the equations. Therefore, it is easiest and
327
physically most transparent to work always in the weak interaction

basis.
In order to derive an equation of motion for ep one evaluates the
collision term in Eq. (9.32) by inserting ep s under the integral. Expanding the result in Pauli matrices leads to an expression of the form
1
(a + Ap ). In general, the polarization vector Ap produced by the
2 p
collision term is not parallel to vp = (sp , 0, cp ) because the collision
term couples modes with dierent mixing angles. However, the assumed
fast oscillations average to zero the Ap component perpendicular to vp .
Therefore, the r.h.s. of Eq. (9.32) is of the form 21 [ap +(vp Ap ) (vp )].
With a matrix of coupling constants in the weak basis of
(
)
ge 0
(9.36)
G=
0 gx
the collision integral Eq. (9.32) becomes explicitly
fpx =
1
4
dp w(px px ) (4 s2p )gx2 + (2 s2p )tp tp ge gx

[
+ w(pe px ) s2p gx2 s2p tp tp ge gx
+ w(px pe ) s2p ge2 (2 s2p )tp tp ge gx

[
]}
+ w(pe pe ) s2p ge2 + s2p tp tp ge gx ,
(9.37)
where
w(pa pb ) WP P fpb (1 fpa ) WP P fpa (1 fpb )
(9.38)
(Raelt and Sigl 1993). The equation for fpe is the same if one exchanges
e x everywhere. In the absence of mixing sp = tp = 0, leading to
the usual collision integral for each species separately.
If x is neither nor but rather some hypothetical sterile species
its coupling constant is gx = 0 by denition. In this case the collision
integral simplies to
fpx = 14 s2p ge2
dp WP P fpe (2 fpe fpx )
WP P (fpe + fpx )(1 fpe ) .
(9.39)
If the e stay approximately in thermal equilibrium, detailed balance

yields
fpx = 14 s2p ge2 dp WP P fpe (1 fpx ) WP P fpx (1 fpe ) .
(9.40)
If in addition the mixing angle is so small that the x freely escape one
may
set fpx = 0 on the r.h.s. so that the integral expression becomes
dp WP P fpe .
328
9.3.6
Chapter 9
Small Mixing Angle
In practice the mixing angle is usually small, allowing for substantial

further simplications. In this limit the approach to avor equilibrium
is much slower than that to kinetic equilibrium for each avor separately
(x is taken to be one of the active avors or ). Therefore, each
avor is characterized by a Fermi-Dirac distribution so that it is enough
to specify the total number density nx rather than the occupation
numbers of individual modes. Integrating Eq. (9.37) over all modes,
using detailed balance to lowest order in s2p , and with tp = sp one nds
for the evolution of the x number density
n x =
1
4
dp dp WP P (gx sp ge sp )2 fpe (1 fpx )
(ge sp gx sp )2 fpx (1 fpe ) , (9.41)

and a similar equation for n e . Together with the condition of equilibrium, n p = e e , that of charge neutrality, np = ne , and the
conservation of the trapped lepton number, d(ne + ne + nx )/dt = 0,
these equations represent dierential equations for the chemical potentials x (t) and e (t) if the temperature is xed.
9.3.7
Flavor Conversion by Neutral Currents?
Next I turn to the conceptually interesting question whether avor

conversion (or the damping of neutrino oscillations) is possible by NC
collisions alone. Considering only standard avors the matrix of coupling constants G is then proportional to the unit matrix. In this case
Stodolskys damping formula in the form Eq. (9.29) gives p,coll = 0.
This formula applies in the limit when the neutrino energies do not
change in collisions (a medium of heavy fermions). If one lifts this
restriction the situation is more complicated, but it simplies again
for weak damping and a small mixing angle. Then one may apply
Eq. (9.41) with ge = gx = 1,
n x =
1
4
dp dp WP P (sp sp )2 fpe (1 fpx ) fpx (1 fpe ) .(9.42)
If in a collision |p| = |p | and thus sp = sp one recovers the previous

result n x = 0. However, if the mixing angle is a function of the neutrino
momentum, NC collisions do lead to avor conversion and thus to the
damping of oscillations.
Of course, if only true NC interactions existed, the mixing angle
in the medium would be xed at its vacuum value and so no avor
329
conversion could occur. The deviation of from its vacuum value in

a medium is entirely from charged-current interactions with electrons,
even though they may be written in an eective NC form. The coherent
neutrino energy shifts by an electron background are enough to allow
true NC collisions with, say, neutrons to achieve avor equilibrium!
9.4
9.4.1
Charged-Current Interactions
Hamiltonian
Besides neutrino scattering or pair processes one must also include

charged-current (CC) reactions where neutrinos are absorbed or produced by the medium (converted into or from charged leptons) such
that the total lepton number of the neutrino ensemble changes by one
unit. The corresponding interaction Hamiltonian can be written in the
form
HCC
GF
=
2
d3 x (x)(x) + h.c. ,
(9.43)
where the neutrino eld is, again, a column vector in avor space with
the entries , = e, , in the standard model. Further, is a row of
Dirac operators representing the medium. In the interaction basis
carries the lepton number corresponding to the avor . For example,
in a medium of nucleons and electrons the eld e corresponding to the
electron lepton number can be written for standard-model couplings as
e = (1 5 )e n (CV CA 5 )p ,
(9.44)
where p , n , and e are the proton, neutron, and electron Dirac elds,
respectively, while CV = 1 and CA = 1.26 are the dimensionless CC
vector and axial-vector nucleon coupling constants.
9.4.2
Kinetic Terms
One may now insert HCC into Eq. (9.13) in order to derive the explicit
CC collision integral for the evolution of p and p . The operators
violate the lepton number L corresponding to avor . Therefore,
= 0 at all times if the medium is in an eigenstate of L ( = e, ,
, or additional exotic avors). This assumption implies that the CC
interaction Eq. (9.43) does not contribute to refractive eects given by
the rst-order term in Eq. (9.13).
330
Chapter 9
In the second-order term Hint appears quadratic so that one obtains

expressions like k . However, because the medium is assumed to
be in an eigenstate of L they do not contribute for = k. Thus,
in the nal result the contributions of dierent avors can be added
incoherently.
The rates of production P

and absorption A of a are functions
of the energy-momentum transfer to the medium,
P
=
A =
1
2
G2F
1
2
G2F
dt ei0 t (, t) (, 0) ,
dt ei0 t Tr (, 0) (, t)
(9.45)
These expressions are dened for both positive and negative energy
transfer 0 because PP
plays the role of an absorption rate for antineutrinos with physical (P0 > 0) four momentum while AP plays
that of a production rate. Put another way, A and P

represent the
rate of absorption or production of lepton number of type , independently of the sign of 0 .
It is useful to dene a avor matrix of production rates which in
the weak basis has the form
Pe
1
P 0
2
0
P
0
0 .
(9.46)
An analogous denition pertains to A . Then one nds for the CC

collision integrals (Sigl and Raelt 1993)
p,CC = {PP , (1 p )} {AP , p } ,
p,CC = {AP , (1 p )} {PP , p } ,
(9.47)
where {, } is an anticommutator. The kinetic term for p is related to

that for p by the crossing relation Eq. (9.26).
The r.h.s. of Eq. (9.47) for p is the dierence between a gain and a
loss term corresponding to the production or absorption of a p . For a
single avor they take on the familiar form PP (1 fp ) and AP fp where
(1 fp ) is the usual Pauli blocking factor.
9.4.3
Weak-Damping Limit
The meaning of Eq. (9.47) becomes more transparent if one makes various approximations which are justied for the conditions of a SN core.
As discussed in Sect. 9.3.5 one may ignore the antineutrino degrees
331
of freedom, and one may use the weak-damping limit where neutrino
oscillations are much faster than their rates of collision or absorption.
Then one nds for two avors (Raelt and Sigl 1993)
fpx = (1 fpx ) PPx fpx AxP
[
+ 14 s2p (2 fpx fpe )(PPe PPx ) (fpx + fpe )(AeP AxP ) ,

(9.48)
where fpe and fpx are the occupation numbers for e and x as in
Sect. 9.3.5. The corresponding equation for e is found by exchanging e x everywhere.
For x = avor conversion can build up a nonvanishing muon density in a SN core because they are light enough to be produced initially
when the electron chemical potential is on the order of 200300 MeV.
For x = or some sterile avor, the direct production or absorption
is not possible, AxP = PPx = 0. This simplies Eq. (9.48) considerably,
[
fpx = 14 s2p (2 fpx fpe ) PPe (fpx + fpe ) AeP .
(9.49)
If neither e nor are occupied because, for example, the medium

is transparent to neutrinos so that they escape after production, one
has fpx = 12 s2p PPe so that the production rate of x is that of e times
1
sin2 2p as one would have expected.
2
In a SN core where normal neutrinos are trapped Eq. (9.49) is
more complicated as backreaction and Pauli blocking eects must be
included. It becomes simple again if s2p 1, because then the production of x causes only a small perturbation of equilibrium. Therefore,
one may use the detailed-balance condition (1 fpe )PPe fpe AeP = 0.
Inserting this into Eq. (9.49) leads to
[
fpx = 14 s2p (1 fpx ) PPe fpx AeP ,
(9.50)
so that now the x follow a Boltzmann collision equation with rates

of gain and loss given by those of e times 14 sin2 2p . If the x are
sterile they escape without building up so that their production rate is
1
sin2 2p that of e .
4
332
9.5
9.5.1
Chapter 9
Flavor Conversion in a SN Core

Rate Equation
As a rst application of the formalism developed in the previous sections consider two-avor mixing between e and another active neutrino
species x = or (vacuum mixing angle 0 ). In a SN core immediately after collapse electron lepton number is trapped and so the e s
have a large chemical potential on the order of 200 MeV. The trapped
energy and lepton number diuses out of the SN core and is radiated
away within a few seconds. Will x achieve equilibrium with e on this
time scale and thus share the large chemical potential? For the avor this would also imply the production of muons by the subsequent
charged-current absorption of so that the lepton number would be
shared between e, , e , and .
If the mixing angle in the medium were not small, avor conversion
would occur about as fast as it takes to establish equilibrium. In
this case a detailed calculation is not necessary so that one may focus
on the limit of small mixing angles. In addition the oscillations are
fast which allows one to use Eqs. (9.41) and (9.50). Moreover, the
medium properties are assumed to be isotropic so that the production
and absorption rates P e and Ae of e s depend only on their energy E.
Also, the transition rate WP P for the scattering of a neutrino with four
momentum P to one with P may be replaced by an angular average
which depends only on the energies E and E . Altogether one nds a
rate of change for the x density of
n x =
1
4
1
4
dp s2p (1 fpx ) PEe fpx AeE
a
a
a
2 e
x
dp dp WEE
(gx sp ge sp ) fp (1 fp )
(gea sp gxa sp )2 fpx (1 fpe ) , (9.51)

where fpe and fpx are the occupation numbers of e and x which are
given by Fermi-Dirac distributions because kinetic equilibrium was assumed for both avors. Also, 14 s2p = 14 sin2 2E = E2 for small mixing
angles.
A summation over dierent species a of medium fermions was restored; gea and gxa are dimensionless eective NC coupling constants of
e and x to fermion species a. For a = n or p these constants are
the same for all active neutrino species. Electrons as scattering targets
are very relativistic so that they may be classied into a l.h. and a
333
r.h. species. The scattering with e and x is then described by the

eective NC Hamiltonians
GF
HL,R = e (1 5 )e GL,R (1 5 ),
(9.52)
2 2
where is again a neutrino column vector in avor space. Further,
)
(
2 sin2 W + 1
0
,
GL =
0
2 sin2 W 1
(
GR =
2 sin2 W
0
0
,
2 sin2 W
(9.53)
where sin2 W 41 will be used. Hence the eective NC coupling constants are dierent for e and x interacting with l.h. electrons while
they are the same for r.h. ones.
The e Fermi sea is very degenerate. With regard to the neutrino
distributions one may thus use the approximation T = 0 so that neutrino occupation numbers are 1 below their Fermi surface, and 0 above.
Because the chemical potential e of the e population exceeds x , and
because neutrinos can only down-scatter in the T = 0 limit, the term
proportional to fpx (1 fpe ) vanishes. Moreover, the detailed-balance
requirement (1 fpe )PEe = fpe AeE implies PEe = 0 for E > e where
fpe = 0. Then altogether
n x
E2 PEe E 2 E a (gxa E gea E )2 E 2 E 2

+
dE
WEE
.
=
dE
2 2
4 4
x
x
a
(9.54)
Because for degenerate neutrinos n = 3 /6 2 Eq. (9.54) can be written

as a dierential equation for x .
According to Eq. (8.30) the mixing angle in a medium which is
dominated by protons, neutrons, and electrons is given by
sin 20
tan 2E =
,
(9.55)
cos 20 E/E
where the density-dependent resonance energy is
m2
E
,
2 2 GF ne
with the electron density ne . For E = e one nds
E
(68 keV)2
4/3
14 ,
=
Ye Y1/3
e
2
E
m
(9.56)
(9.57)
where 14 is the density in units of 1014 g cm3 and as usual Yj gives the
abundance of species j relative to baryons. The approximate parameter
334
Chapter 9
range where resonance is important is shown in Fig. 9.3 as diagonal

shaded band.
For conditions near resonance there is no need for a detailed calculation because then the mixing angle is large. Therefore, one may
focus on the limiting cases where m2 is either so small or so large that
E2 1,
{
|E | = 0
if E /E 1 (large m2 ),
E /E
if E /E 1 (small m2 ).
(9.58)
Thus, for large m2 the x production rate is
n x = 02
PEe E 2 E a (gxa gea )2 E 2 E 2

WEE
+
dE
,
dE
2 2
4 4
x
x
a
e
(9.59)
while for small m2 it is

(
n x =
9.5.2
0 m2
2 2GF ne
)2
PEe
+
dE
2 2
x
e
dE
a
a
2
a (gx E ge E)
.
WEE
4 4
(9.60)
Neutrino Interaction Rates
In order to evaluate these integrals one rst needs the production rate
PEe of e s with energy E due to the CC reaction p + e n + e .
The leptons are taken to be completely degenerate, the nucleons to
be completely nondegenerate. Because they are also nonrelativistic
the absorption of an e produces a e of the same energy. Therefore,
PEe = E np where np is the proton density and E = (CV2 +3CA2 )G2F E 2 /
is the CC scattering cross section for electrons of energy E. Here,
CV = 1 and CA = 1.26 are the usual vector and axial-vector weak
couplings. Altogether one nds
PEe =
CV2 + 3CA2 2 2
GF E np .
(9.61)
In practice this rate is reduced by various factors. First, Pauli blocking

of nucleons cannot be neglected entirely. Second, the degeneracy of
electrons is not complete. Third, the axial-vector scattering rate may
be suppressed in a medium at nuclear densities (Sect. 4.6.7).
For NC scattering, nucleons may be neglected entirely. In Eq. (9.59)
their contribution vanishes identically because ge = gx . In Eq. (9.60) it
is suppressed because they are relatively heavy so that E E.
335
For l.h. electrons the coupling strengths are dierent, and they are
relativistic so that recoil eects are not small. However, they are degenerate so that their contribution is expected to be smaller than the ep
process. It is not entirely negligible, however, especially if the nucleon
contribution is partly suppressed by many-body eects. The transition
rates were worked out in detail by Raelt and Sigl (1993) for entirely
degenerate leptons. They found
G2F 2e (E E )E
,
3
E2
G2 2 (E E )E
F e
,
3
E 2
R
WEE

L
WEE
(9.62)
a result which is the lowest-order term of an expansion in powers of

E/e (electron chemical potential e ).
9.5.3
Time Scale for Flavor Conversion
Given enough time the s will reach the same number density as the
e s. Therefore, it is most practical to discuss the approach to chemical
equilibrium in terms of a time scale
d
ln
dt
ne nx
ne
(9.63)
If were a constant independent of nx /ne the dierence between the

number densities would be damped exponentially.
Collecting the results of the previous section one then nds easily
for the case of a large m2 of Eq. (9.59)
[
02
3G2F
np 2e (CV2 + 3CA2 ) Fp + e Fe ,
5
e
(9.64)
where Fp and Fe give the contributions of protons (CC process) and

electrons (eective NC process). They are functions of x which is
parametrized by
x /e .
(9.65)
One nds (Fig. 9.2, left panel)

Fp = (1 5 )/(1 3 ),
Fe = ( 56 + 12 + 41 2 +
1 3
) (1
12
)3 /(1 3 ),
(9.66)
336
Chapter 9
Fig. 9.2. Dependence of the avor relaxation rate on = x /e for the

case of a large m2 Eq. (9.66) and a small m2 Eq. (9.69). Fe is
the contribution of electron targets (e e) while Fp is from protons
(ep ne ).
and numerically
3G2F
np 2e = 1.0109 s1
5
Yp
14
10 g cm3
)5/3 (
e
e
)2
(9.67)
which sets the time scale for avor conversion.

For the case of a small m2 one nds from Eq. (9.60) and from
the production and scattering rates of the previous section
[
02
(m2 )2
(CV2 + 3CA2 ) Fp + e Fe ,
8np
e
(9.68)
where Fp = 1 and
Fe =
9 1
137
40
+ 43 (1 + 4 ) log + 53 + 3
8
(1 3 )
3
101 4
120
15 5
(9.69)
(Fig. 9.2, right panel). Numerically,

(m2 )2
= 1.4102 s1
8np
1014 g cm3
Yp
)(
(m2 )1/2
1 keV
)4
(9.70)
This time scale is independent of Fermis constant because a factor G2F

2
from the scattering rate cancels against G2
F from E .
337
Fig. 9.3. Contour plot for log( 02 ) with in seconds according to Eqs. (9.64)
2 = 4, and / = 1. (Adapted
and (9.68), taking Fe = 0, Fp = 1, CV2 +3CA
e
e
from Raelt and Sigl 1993.)
From Fig. 9.2 it is clear that eective NC scattering on electrons

slightly accelerates the initial rate of avor conversion, but it does not
dramatically aect the overall time scale for achieving equilibrium. This
time scale is crudely estimated by ignoring Fe entirely in Eqs. (9.64)
and (9.68) and by setting Fp = 1 and CV2 + 3CA2 = 4. With e e
one then nds results for 02 shown as contours in Fig. 9.3. The diagonal band refers to the resonance condition of Eq. (9.57); there avor
equilibrium would be established on a time scale nearly independent of
the vacuum mixing angle. However, the detailed behavior in this range
of parameters has not been determined.
Armed with these results it is straightforward to determine the range
of masses and mixing angles where x would achieve avor equilibrium
and thus would eectively participate in equilibrium ep n. The
initially trapped lepton number escapes within a few seconds. Therefore, <
1 s is adopted as a criterion for x to have any novel impact
on SN cooling or deleptonization. The relevant density is about three
times nuclear while Yp 0.35 so that Yp = 31014 g cm3 is adopted.
Otherwise the same parameters are used as in Fig. 9.3. Then one nds
{
sin 20 >
0.02 (keV2 /m2 )2

21010
2
for m2 <
(100 keV)
2
for m2 >
(100 keV)
(9.71)
as a requirement for x to reach chemical equilibrium. This range of

parameters is shown as a hatched region in Fig. 9.4.
338
Chapter 9
Fig. 9.4. In the hatched parameter range or would achieve chemical

equilibrium with e in a SN core within about one second after collapse.
The cosmological mass limit of about 30 eV prevents or from

playing any novel role in the cooling or deleptonization of a SN core.
However, only a very small mixing angle is required to achieve equilibrium if one of the neutrinos deed either standard particle physics
or standard cosmology and had a mass in the keV range or above. Of
course, if the mass were of Dirac type the cooling eect from the production of spin-ipped neutrinos would be too large to be compatible
with the SN 1987A neutrino signal, yielding a bound on Dirac neutrino
masses in the 10 keV range (Sect. 13.8.1). It is in this context that avor conversion was rst discussed by Maalampi and Peltoniemi (1991),
Turner (1992), and Pantaleone (1992a).
9.6
Sterile Neutrinos and SN 1987A
If a hypothetical sterile neutrino x existed, it would be produced in

the inner core of a SN by virtue of its assumed mixing with e . The x
would escape directly from the inner SN core, carrying away energy and
lepton number. If this process occurred too fast the observed neutrino
signal of SN 1987A would have been unduly shortened, allowing one
to exclude a certain range of x masses and mixing angles with e
(Kainulainen, Maalampi, and Peltoniemi 1991).
For small mixing angles one may use Eqs. (9.40) and (9.50) as a
starting point for the rate of change of the x occupation numbers fpx .
339
Because the x are assumed to escape freely one may set fpx = 0 on
the r.h.s. of these equations. Moreover, for the x coupling constants
one may use gx = 0 because it is sterile. For an isotropic medium
and taking an angular average of the scattering rate as in the previous
section one nds
(
fpx
PEe
1 2
s
4 p
(gea )2
dp
WEa E
fpe
(9.72)
A summation over dierent target species for eective NC scattering

was restored. Taking the e s to be completely degenerate one has
fpe = 1 for E = |p| < e and fpe = 0 otherwise so that
(
fpx
PEe
1 2
s
4 p
(gea )2
E 2 WEa E
dE
2 2
With this result and

n L =
dE fpx
and
Q =
(9.73)
dE fpx E
(9.74)
the volume loss rates for lepton number and energy can be easily determined.
2
Turn rst to the case m2 >
(100 keV) so that one may use the
vacuum mixing angle in a SN core. One must now include both the CC
process ep nx as well as the NC process e N N x which is not
suppressed because for a sterile x there is no destructive interference
eect. For nondegenerate nucleons and using CV2 + 3CA2 4 for both
CC and NC processes one easily nds from the results of Sect. 9.5.2
n L = 14 sin2 20
2G2F
nB (Yp + 14 ) 5e ,
5 3
(9.75)
and the same for Q with 15 5e 16 6e . Electrons as NC scattering

targets may be neglected because of their degeneracy. Lepton number
is thus lost at a rate
Y L = sin2 20 1 (Ye + 14 ) Y5/3
,
e
(9.76)
where
1 = 35 (36)1/3 G2F nB = 7.71010 s1 15 .
5/3
5/3
(9.77)
Here, Yp = Ye , YL nL /nB , and Y nB = n = 3 /6 2 was used, and

15 is in units of 1015 g cm3 .
340
Chapter 9
Because Ye is about YL /4, lepton number and energy are lost at

about a rate of sin2 20 1010 s1 . Because the SN 1987A signal lasted
for several seconds, a conict with these observations is avoided if
10
sin2 20 <
(9.78)
10
(Kainulainen, Maalampi, and Peltoniemi 1991; Raelt and Sigl 1993).
If mx >
1 MeV the assumed mixing with e allows for decays x
+
e e e and x e e e+ . The resulting signal from the SN 1987A
x ux (Sect. 12.4.7) does not allow for a dramatic improvement of
the bound Eq. (9.78). However, the decay argument does exclude the
possibility of a mixing angle so large that even the sterile x would
be trapped by virtue of its mixing with e .
2
The case of m2 <
(100 keV) is complicated because neutrinos in a
certain energy range below their Fermi surface encounter a e -x mixing
resonance. This implies that during the SN infall phase a large amount
of lepton number can be lost. The impact on the equation of state
can be strong enough to prevent a subsequent explosion. Shi and Sigl
2
8
2
(1994) found that this argument requires sin2 20 <
10 keV /m for
2 >
2
m (1 keV) . They found additional constraints from the anomalous contribution to the cooling by x emission.
These are all limits on the mixing of a sterile neutrino with e , the
only case that has been studied in the literature. Historically, this is
related to the now forgotten episode of the 17 keV neutrino which for
some time seemed to exist and which could have been a sterile neutrino
mixed with e . However, similar limits can be derived for -x or -x
mixing. The main dierence is that the nonelectron neutrinos would
not normally obtain a chemical potential so that only a thermal and
population can be converted. A typical temperature is 30 MeV or
more, the average energy of a thermal population of relativistic fermions
is about 3T >
100 MeV, so there will be a signicant thermal muon
population (m = 106 MeV). Thus sterile states can be produced in
charged-current muon scatterings in analogy to the above discussion
of x production involving electron scattering. The resulting limit on
the mixing angle may be slightly weaker than in the e -x case, but it
will be of the same general order of magnitude.52 For -x mixing the
situation is dierent in that there are no thermally excited leptons.
Still, any reaction that produces pairs can also produce x and x
particles.
52
This remark is relevant in the context of recent speculations about the existence
of a 34 MeV sterile neutrino (Barger, Phillips, and Sarkar 1995) as an explanation of
an anomaly observed in the KARMEN experiment (KARMEN Collaboration 1995).
Chapter 10
Solar Neutrinos
The current theoretical and experimental status of the Sun as a neutrino source is reviewed. Particle-physics interpretations of the apparent decit of measured solar neutrinos are discussed, with an emphasis
on an explanation in terms of neutrino oscillations.
10.1
Introduction
The Sun, like other hydrogen-burning stars, liberates nuclear binding

energy by the fusion reaction
4p + 2e 4 He + 2e + 26.73 MeV
(10.1)
which proceeds through a number of dierent reaction chains and cycles (Fig. 10.2). With a total luminosity of L = 3.851033 erg s1 =
2.41039 MeV s1 , the Sun produces about 1.81038 s1 neutrinos, or
at Earth (distance 1.501013 cm) a ux of 6.61010 cm2 s1 . While
this is about a hundred times less than the e ux near a large nuclear power reactor it is still a measurable ux which can be used for
experimentation just like the ux from any man-made source.
The most straightforward application of the solar neutrino ux is
a search for radiative decays by measurements of x- and -rays from
the quiet Sun. Because of the long decay path relative to laboratory
experiments one obtains a limit which is about 9 orders of magnitude
more restrictive (Sect. 12.3.1).
A more exciting application is a search for neutrino oscillations.
In fact, the current measurements of the solar neutrino ux are neither compatible with theoretical predictions nor with each other (solar
neutrino problem); all discrepancies disappear with the assumption of
341
342
Chapter 10
neutrino oscillations. At the present time, however, this interpretation

is not established beyond reasonable doubta nal verdict can be
expected from the new experiments currently in preparation. They may
be able to discover a characteristic distortion of the neutrino spectrum,
or they may actually measure the wrong-avored neutrinos that were
produced by oscillations from the e originating in the Sun.
Contrary to the e ux from a power reactor, the solar neutrino
spectrum arises from a small number of specic reactions (Fig. 10.1).
The main contribution (91%) is from the reaction p + p d + e+ + e
with a maximum neutrino energy 0.420 MeV (pp neutrinos). Second
at about 7% of the ux are the beryllium neutrinos from the electroncapture reaction e + 7 Be 7 Li + e with a xed energy 0.862 MeV.
Finally, very small fraction ( 104 ) are the boron neutrinos from
8
B 8 Be + e+ + e . Still, they are of major importance because
their large energies of up to 15 MeV allow for a less dicult detection
procedure than is required for the soft part of the spectrum.
The rst solar neutrino experiment is based on the nuclear reaction
e + 37 Cl 37 Ar + e . With a threshold of 0.814 MeV it picks up
both beryllium and boron neutrinos, although the argon production
rate is dominated by the latter. The target consists of about 4105
liters (615 tons) of perchloroethylene (C2 Cl4 ) in a huge tank which
is located in the Homestake Mine in South Dakota (U.S.A.), about
1.5 km underground for protection against the cosmic-ray background.
After an exposure of a few months to the solar neutrino ux a few
argon atoms have been produced (about 0.4 atoms per day). They
are chemically extracted and counted by their subsequent decays (halflife 35.0 days).
When this pioneering experiment rst produced data (Davis, Harmer, and Homan 1968) there appeared a decit relative to the theoretically expected ux, a discrepancy which has persisted ever sincethe
experiment is still taking data today! On the theoretical side, the ever
rened predictions of Bahcall and his collaborators (e.g. Bahcall 1989)
were instrumental at establishing the notion that this discrepancya
factor of around 3was to be taken seriously. However, in spite of the
acknowledged experimental care of Davis and his collaborators, doubt
has always lingered about the reliability of the data because this detector has never been subject to an on-o test as the Sun is the only
available neutrino source powerful enough to cause a detectable signal.
On the solar side, the boron neutrino ux depends crucially on the
reaction rate p + 7 Be 8 B + with a cross section that is relatively
poorly known.
Solar Neutrinos
343
Fig. 10.1. Solar neutrino ux at Earth according to the Bahcall and

Pinsonneault (1995) solar model. Upper panel: Continuum spectra in
cm2 s1 MeV1 , line spectra in cm2 s1 . Solid lines are the sources of
dominating experimental signicance. Above: Range of sensitivity of current and near-future solar neutrino experiments. Lower panel: Cumulative
spectrum integrated from a given energy to innity.
The situation changed radically when the Kamiokande detector,

originally built to search for proton decay, began in 1987 to measure the solar neutrino ux by virtue of the elastic scattering reaction
e + e e + e which is detected by the Cherenkov light emitted by
the kicked electron. With a threshold of about 9 MeV (later 7 MeV) it
is exclusively sensitive to the boron neutrino ux. Because of its direc-
344
Chapter 10
tional sensitivity it is a true neutrino telescope and for the rst time
established that indeed neutrinos are coming from the direction of the
Sun. It is perplexing, however, that the measured ux is less suppressed
relative to solar-model predictions than that found in the Homestake
experiment. This is the reverse from what would be expected on the
grounds that 37 Cl is sensitive to boron and beryllium neutrinos.
The situation changed yet again when the experiments SAGE (Soviet-American Gallium Experiment) and GALLEX began to produce
data in 1990 and 1991, respectively. They are radiochemical experiments using the reaction e + 71 Ga 71 Ge + e which has a threshold
of 233 keV. Therefore, these experiments pick up the dominant pp neutrino ux which can be calculated from solar models with a precision of
a few percent unless something is radically wrong with our understanding of the Sun. Therefore, a substantial decit of measured pp neutrinos
would have been a smoking gun for the occurrence of neutrino oscillations. While the rst few exposures of SAGE seemed to indicate
a low ux, the good statistical signicance of the data that have since
been accumulated by both experiments indicate a ux which is high
enough so that no pp neutrinos are reported missing, but low enough
to conrm the existence of a signicant problem with the high-energy
part of the spectrum (beryllium and boron neutrinos).
With four experiments reporting data, which represent three dierent spectral responses to the solar neutrino ux, the current attention
has largely shifted from a comparison between experiments and theoretical ux predictions to a model-independent analysis which is based
on the small number of possible source reactions each of which produces
neutrinos of a well-dened spectral shape. This sort of analysis currently indicates a lack of consistency among the experiments which can
be brought to perfect agreement if neutrinos are assumed to oscillate.
Even though the attention has currently shifted away from theoretical solar neutrino ux predictions it should be noted that in recent
years there has been much progress in a quantitative theoretical treatment of the Sun. Independently of the interest in the Sun as a neutrino
source it serves as a laboratory to test the theory of stellar structure
and evolution. Particularly striking advances have been made in the
eld of helioseismology. There are two basic vibration patterns for the
Sun, one where gravity represents the restoring force (g-modes), and
normal sound or pressure (p) modes. The former are evanescent in
the solar convection zone (depth about 0.3 R from the surface) and
have never been unambiguously observed. The oscillation period of the
highest-frequency g-modes would be about 1 h.
Solar Neutrinos
345
There exist vast amounts of data concerning p-modes (periods between 2 min and 1 h) which can be measured from the Doppler shifts
of spectral lines on the solar surface. The main point is that one can
establish a relationship between the multipole order of the oscillation
pattern and the frequency. Because dierent vibration modes probe the
sound speed at dierent depths one can invert the results to derive an
empirical prole for the sound speed in the solar interior. The agreement with theoretical expectations for the square of the sound speed
is better than about 0.3% except in the inner 0.2 R which are not
probed well by p-modes (Christensen-Dalsgaard, Prott, and Thompson 1993; Dziembowski et al. 1994). Such results make it very dicult
to contemplate the possibility that the Sun is radically dierent from
a standard structure. On the other hand, these results are not precise
enough to reduce the uncertainty of solar neutrino predictions which
arise from the uncertainty of the opacity coecients.
The dierences between the solar neutrino predictions of dierent
authors are minimal when identical input parameters are used. Therefore, the expected error resulting from solar modelling is very small,
except that some key input parameters remain uncertain. The dominant source of uncertainty for the boron neutrino ux is the cross
section for the reaction p + 7 Be 8 B + which appears as a multiplicative factor for the solar ux prediction and thus is unrelated to
solar modelling.
A more astrophysical uncertainty are the opacity coecients. Although they are thought to be well known for the conditions in the
deep solar interior, even a relatively small error translates into a nonnegligible uncertainty of the boron ux prediction because of its steep
temperature dependence. Crudely, a 10% error of the opacity coecients translates into a 1% error of the central solar temperature and
then into a 20% uncertainty of the boron ux. Indeed, a measurement of the solar neutrino ux was originally envisaged as a method to
measure precisely the inner temperature of the Sun.
The Sun as a neutrino source naturally has received much attention
in the literature because of its outstanding potential to nally conrm
the existence of neutrino oscillations in nature. Because this book is
not primarily on solar neutrinos I will limit my discussion to what I
consider the most important features of this unique neutrino source,
and the role it plays for particle physics. A lot of key material can be
found in Bahcalls (1989) book on solar neutrinos, in the more recent
Physics Report on the solar interior by Turck-Chièze et al. (1993), and
on the Sun in general in the book by Stix (1989).
346
Chapter 10
Fig. 10.2. Reaction chains PPIPPIII and CNO tri-cycle. Nuclear reactions,
including decays, are marked with a bullet (). Average (av) and maximum
(max) energies in MeV are given for the neutrinos. For photons (wavy
arrows) numbers in brackets refer to the total energy of a cascade; otherwise
it is the energy of a monochromatic line.
Solar Neutrinos
347
10.2
Calculated Neutrino Spectrum
10.2.1
Individual Sources
A hydrogen-burning star like the Sun liberates nuclear binding energy

by helium fusion from hydrogen which proceeds by virtue of the pp
chains and the CNO cycle (Fig. 10.2). The energy-generation rate for
the CNO cycle is a much steeper function of temperature whence it
dominates in hot stars. For a 2% mass fraction of CN elements, typical
for population I stars like the Sun, the crossover temperature is at
about 1.8107 K (Clayton 1968). The central temperature of the Sun
is about 1.56107 K and so the CNO reactions contribute only about
1% to the total energy budget. In fact, of the CNO tri-cycle shown in
Fig. 10.2, in practice only the rst loop (the CN cycle) is of importance
in the Sun as the branching rates into the second or even third loop are
extremely low.
In the Sun, the pp chains terminate in about 85% of all cases via
PPI, i.e. by the fusion of two 3 He nuclei. In this case the only neutrinoproducing reactions are pp (pp de+ e ) and pep (pe p de ), the
latter occurring very rarely. In about 15% of all cases the termination is via PPII where 7 Be is formed from 4 He + 3 He. Because of the
small energy dierence between the ground states of the 7 Be and 7 Li
Table 10.1. Source reactions for solar neutrinos.
Reaction
Q (a )
[MeV]
pp 2 H e+ e
pe p 2 H e
3
He p 4 He e+ e
7
Be e 7 Li e
7
Be e 7 Li e
8
B 8 Be e+ e
13
N 13 C e+ e
15
O 15 N e+ e
17
F 17 O e+ e
Total
0.420
1.442
18.77
0.862
0.384
15
1.199
1.732
1.740
a Maximum
b Bahcall
c
c
c
c
c
c
Flux at Earthb
[cm2 s1 ]
Uncertaintyb
[%]
5.91010
1.4108
1.2103
4.6109
5.2108
6.6106
6.2108
5.5108
6.5106
6.51010
+1
1
+1
2
Factor 6
+6
7
+6
7
+14
17
+17
20
+19
22
+15
19
+1
1
e energy for continuum (c) sources.

and Pinsonneault (1995).
348
Chapter 10
nuclei, the usual weak decay by e+ e emission is not possible and so the
conversion proceeds by electron capture, leading to the emission of an
almost monochromatic neutrino. In about 10% of all cases the capture
reaction goes to the rst excited state (478 keV) of 7 Li so that there are
two neutrino lines.
Instead of an electron, 7 Li very rarely captures a proton and forms
8
B which subsequently decays into 8 Be, a nucleus unstable against spontaneous ssion into 4 He + 4 He. This PPIII termination occurs in about
0.02% of all cases, too rare to be of importance for nuclear energy generation. Its importance arises entirely from the high energy of the 8 B
neutrinos which are the ones least dicult to measure.
The neutrino-producing reactions are summarized in Tab. 10.1 with
their maximum energies, and with the resulting neutrino ux at Earth
found in the solar model of Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1995).
Apart from small screening and thermal broadening eects, the
spectral shape for each individual source is independent of details of
the solar model. The pp, 13 N, 15 O, and 17 F reactions are allowed or
superallowed weak transitions so that their spectra are
[
dN/dE = A (Q + me E ) (Q + me E )2 m2e
]1/2
E2 F ,
(10.2)
where Q is the maximum e+ kinetic energy and also the maximum

e energy, A is a normalization constant, and F is a function of Ee+
which takes the e+ nal-state interactions into account. For the low-Z
nuclei under consideration this correction is small for most of the neutrino spectrum. With F = 1 the normalization constants are given in
Tab. 10.2. In Fig. 10.3 the normalized spectra from the pp and the 15 O
processes are shown where the pp spectrum was taken from the tabulation of Bahcall and Ulrich (1988). Using Eq. (10.2) instead would cause
a change so small that it would be nearly hidden by the line width of
the curve in Fig. 10.3.
Table 10.2. Normalization of the spectrum Eq. (10.2) with F = 1.
Source
pp
13
N
15
O
Q [MeV]
A [MeV5 ]
0.420
1.199
1.732
193.9
3.144
0.668
Solar Neutrinos
349
Fig. 10.3. Normalized spectra of neutrino source reactions in the Sun.
It is much more dicult to obtain the spectrum from 8 B decay because the nal-state 8 Be nucleus is unstable against spontaneous ssion
into two particles. Even though several states of 8 Be contribute to
the transition, it is dominated by the 2.9 MeV excitation and so the
neutrino spectrum can be determined with relatively little ambiguity
by folding Eq. (10.2) with the experimental spectrum (Kopysov and
Kuzmin 1968). A more recent and more detailed analysis was performed by Bahcall and Holstein (1986). An analytic approximation to
their tabulated spectrum is
dN/dE = 8.52106 (15.1 E )2.75 E2 ,
(10.3)
where the neutrino energies are in MeV. This normalized spectrum

is also shown in Fig. 10.3 where, again, the dierence between the
tabulated values and the analytic approximation would be hidden by
the line width (maximum deviation less than 0.02 in units of the vertical
axis in Fig. 10.3).
Neutrinos from the hep reaction extend to the highest energies of
all solar sources, but their overall ux is very small and very uncertain
because of large uncertainties in the low-energy 3 He p cross section
see Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1992) for a detailed discussion. The
tabulated spectrum (Bahcall and Ulrich 1988) can be represented by
dN/dE = 2.33105 (18.8 E )1.80 E1.92 ,
(10.4)
where the quality of the t is equally good as that for the 8 B neutrinos.
350
Chapter 10
In principle, any of the neutrino-producing reactions in the Sun

with a nal-state positron can also occur with an initial-state electron
such as pe p d e instead of pp de+ e . In most cases, however,
the electron-capture process is strongly suppressed relative to positron
emission because of an unfavorable phase-space factor, or equivalently
because of the relatively small electron density. (For a general comparison between these two reaction channels see Bahcall 1990.) The
only exception is pep which yields a nonnegligible contribution because
the Q value of the pp reaction and thus the available positron phase
space are rather small. Another exception are the beryllium neutrinos because positron emission is inhibited entirely by the small energy
dierence between the ground states of 7 Be and 7 Li.
The shapes of the neutrino spectra from the individual source reactions are determined entirely by the matrix element and phase space
of the microscopic reactions apart from small broadening eects by the
thermal motion of the reaction participants. As typical thermal energies in the Sun are 1 keV the spectral modication by such eects
is entirely negligible. (For a detailed discussion of this point see Bahcall 1991.) The high-energy part of the solar neutrino spectrum between
about 215 MeV is dominated by the boron neutrinos (Fig. 10.1), i.e.
by a single source reaction. Therefore, this energy range is a clean
example to test the spectral shape. The conrmation of the expected
spectral shape above 7 MeV by the Kamiokande II detector excludes
Fig. 10.4. Normalized spectra of the thermally and Doppler broadened beryllium neutrino lines where E0 is the corresponding laboratory energy (Bahcall
1994). The line shapes involve an integral over a solar model.
Solar Neutrinos
351
a certain range of neutrino masses and mixing angles (Sect. 10.3.4).

Of course, the Superkamiokande detector with its much improved sensitivity and lower threshold could still detect a deviation; this would
be a clear indication for neutrino oscillations or other neutrino-related
novel phenomena.
For the neutrino lines from e + 7 Be 7 Li + e (861.8 keV) and
e + 7 Be 7 Li + e (384.3 keV) thermal broadening eects are of some

interest because they dominate the line shape. A detailed discussion
is found in Bahcall (1994) who calculated the observable spectra at
Earth shown in Fig. 10.4 where E0 is the energy of the transition in
the laboratory. The peak of the lines is shifted to higher energies by
0.43 and 0.19 keV, respectively, while the average energy is shifted by
an even larger amount because of the asymmetric form. Perhaps in
some next-century detector this line shape could be used to measure
the central temperature of the Sun.
10.2.2
Standard Solar Models
In order to calculate the expected solar neutrino ux at Earth one

needs to construct a model of the Sun. A standard solar model is
obtained by solving the stellar structure equations discussed in Sect. 1.2
in several time steps to evolve it to the solar age of 4.5109 yr. At this
point it must produce the observed present-day luminosity of the Sun
of 1 L = 3.851033 erg s1 (it is about 30% brighter than a zero-age
model). This agreement is enforced by tuning the unknown presolar
helium abundance Yinitial to the required value which is usually found
to be about 27%.
Another present-day boundary condition is the measured solar radius of 1 R = 6.961010 cm which is adjusted by the mixing-length
parameter which enters the standard treatment of convection. In the
Sun, the outer layers (depth about 0.3 R ) are found to be convective;
in lower-mass main-sequence stars convection reaches deeper, in highermass ones it disappears entirely near the surface while the central region
becomes convective. The Sun calibrates the mixing-length parameter
which is then used in evolutionary calculations of other stars.
In order to calculate a standard solar model one needs a variety of
calculated or measured input information, notably the photon opacities, the equation of state, nuclear cross sections with an appropriate
screening prescription, diusion coecients, a prescription to treat convection, the abundances of metals (elements heavier than helium), and
the solar age, luminosity, and radius. Because of the large number
352
Chapter 10
of details that have to be minded it is sometimes dicult to compare

exactly the solar models of dierent workers. However, wherever a
detailed comparison has been performed, dierent results for such output quantities as predicted neutrino uxes usually can be understood
in terms of dierent choices regarding some of the input physics (e.g.
Bahcall and Pinsonneault 1992; Turck-Chièze and Lopes 1993). Thus,
there is very little ambiguity in solar modelling for a common choice of
input physics.
Nonstandard solar models are ones where standard input parameters have been chosen outside the range of recognized uncertainties (for
example the opacities), or which include entirely new physical eects
such as strong magnetic elds, fast rotation in the deep interior, nonstandard nuclear reaction rates (involving free quarks, for example),
energy transfer by a nonstandard mechanism (e.g. by trapped massive
weakly interacting particles), and others. Some such possibilities can
be excluded by the helioseismologically determined sound-speed prole
of the Sun. I will not discuss nonstandard solar models any further
for an overview see Bahcall (1989). Naturally, it is always possible that
a new nonstandard eect is recognized which could be important for
the solar structure and neutrino uxes.
One standard physical eect that has made its way into standard
solar models only recently is the gravitational settling of helium and
metals. This eect leads to a stronger concentration of helium in the
central region than is caused by nuclear burning alone so that the
present-day Sun is more evolved. Consequently, the central temperature is slightly higher, leading to an increased ux of boron neutrinos. The settling of metals leads to an increased opacity, causing
a further increase of the temperature and of the neutrino uxes by
a similar amount. Solar models with gravitational settling of helium
signicantly improve the already good agreement with the helioseismologically inferred sound-speed prole (Christensen-Dalsgaard, Prott,
and Thompson 1993) while the settling of metals does not seem to have
a strong additional impact on the p-mode frequencies (Prott 1994).
Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1992) were the rst to include helium settling in a standard solar model; in their 1995 paper they included metal
settling as well. They nd that the compound eect is to change the 8 B
ux by +36%, the 7 Be ux by +14%, and the pp ux by 1.7%. Similar changes (+31%, +13%, and 1.7%) were found by Prott (1994)
while Kovetz and Shaviv (1994), who included only helium settling,
obtained smaller eects relative to the corresponding case of Bahcall
Solar Neutrinos
353
While helium and metal diusion increases the neutrino uxes, the
changes are roughly within the claimed errors of previous standard solar
model predictions. Many improvements of input physics over the years
have left the neutrino ux predictions of Bahcall and his collaborators
surprisingly stable over 25 years (Bahcall 1989, 1995). Bahcall (1994)
has compiled the central temperature predictions from a heterogeneous
set of 12 standard solar models without diusion calculated by dierent
authors since 1988. The temperature predictions are almost uniformly
distributed on the interval 15.4015.72 106 K, i.e. these authors agree
with each other on the value 15.56106 K within 1%.
Thus, in spite of dierences in detail there exists a broad consensus
on what one means with a standard solar model. Therefore, the neutrino uxes of the Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1995) model with element
diusion (Tab. 10.1 and Fig. 10.1) can be taken to be representative.
The general agreement on a standard solar model does not guarantee, of
course, that there might not exist problems related to incorrect standard assumptions or incorrect input parameters common to all such
models.
10.2.3
Uncertainties of Standard Neutrino Predictions
a) Opacities
In order to compare the neutrino ux predictions with the experimental
measurements one needs to develop a sense for the reliability of the
calculations. Naturally, it is impossible to quantify the probability
for the operation of some hitherto unknown physical eect that might
spoil the predictions; an error analysis can only rely on the recognized
uncertainties of standard input physics. Very detailed error analyses
can be found for the standard solar models of Bahcall and Pinsonneault
(1992) and of Turck-Chièze and Lopes (1993).
As for solar modelling, the dominating uncertainty arises from the
radiative opacities which largely determine the temperature prole of
the Sun. A reduction of the Rosseland mean opacity in the central
region by 10% reduces the temperature by about 1%.
There is not a one-to-one correspondence between the central solar
temperature Tc and the neutrino uxes because it is not possible to
adjust Tc and leave all else equal. Conversely, one must modify some
input parameters and evolve a self-consistent solar model. Still, if one
allows all input parameters to vary according to a distribution determined by their measured or assumed uncertainties one nds a strong
354
Chapter 10
correlation between Tc and the neutrino uxes which allows one to understand the impact of certain modications of a solar model on the
neutrino uxes via their impact on Tc . Bahcall (1989) found
1.2
T
Neutrino Flux Tc8
Tc18
for pp,
for 7 Be,
(10.5)
for 8 B.
It is noteworthy that the pp ux decreases with increasing Tc because

of the constraint imposed by the solar luminosity. One concludes that
a 1% uncertainty in Tc translates roughly into a 20% uncertainty of the
boron ux.
There are two sources of uncertainty for the opacity. First, for an
assumed chemical composition, the actual opacity calculation which involves complicated details of atomic and plasma physics. Second, there
is the uncertain metal content in the central region of the Sun (Z/X).
Because iron retains several bound electrons even for the conditions
at the solar center it contributes substantially to the Rosseland mean
opacity; removing iron entirely would reduce it by 2530%.
For a recent calculation and detailed discussion of solar opacities see
Iglesias and Rogers (1991a). In view of the relatively small deviations
between dierent opacity calculations for the relevant conditions TurckChièze and Lopes (1993) as well as Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1992)
agree that the radiative opacities are likely calculated with a precision
of better than a few percent.53
The actual amount of heavy elements in the Sun, notably iron, is
determined by spectroscopic measurements in the photosphere, and by
the abundance in meteorites which are assumed to represent the presolar material. The results from both methods seem to agree essentially
on a common valuesee Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1995) for a summary of the recent status. They believe that the uncertainty in the
8
B ux caused by the uncertainty of Z/X is about 8%. Of course, in
the central regions of the Sun the metal abundance is also determined
by gravitational settling as discussed above. The uncertainty of the 8 B
ux inherent in the treatment of gravitational settling is thought to
be 8% as well.
53
However, most recently Tsytovich et al. (1995) have claimed that relativistic
corrections to the electron free-free opacity as well as a number of other hitherto
ignored eects reduce the standard total opacity by as much as 5%.
Solar Neutrinos
355
Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1995) then nd that the opacity-related

uncertainty of the 8 B neutrino ux is about 12%. For the 7 Be ux
the errors are thought to be roughly half as large, in agreement with
Eq. (10.5). However, as stressed by Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1995),
the interpretation as an eective 1 error is misleading as the main
source of uncertainty is of a systematic and theoretical nature. Previously, these authors had stated theoretical 3 errors; in that sense
an opacity-related uncertainty of the 8 B ux of about 30% was found
in Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1992). Turck-Chièze and Lopes (1993)
adopted 15% without a commitment to a specic number of sigmas.
None of these errors can be interpreted in a strict statistical sense.
Rather, they give one an idea of what the workers in that eld consider
a plausible range of possibilities.
b) Beryllium-Proton Reaction
A dominating uncertainty for the important ux of boron neutrinos
arises from the cross section 7 Be + p 8 B + which plays no role
whatsoever for the energy generation in the Sun because the PPIII
termination of the pp chain is extremely rare. Therefore, a modication
of this cross section has no impact on the structure of the Sun and
thus no other observable consequence but to modify the high-energy
neutrino ux.
The cross section for this reaction is parametrized for low energies
in the usual form with an astrophysical S-factor
(E) = S(E) E 1 e2(E) ,
(10.6)
with the Sommerfeld parameter

= Z1 Z2 e2 v 1 .
(10.7)
Here, Z1,2 e are the charges of the reaction partners, v their relative
velocity, and E their CM kinetic energy. The S-factor is expected to
be essentially constant at low energies unless there is a resonance near
threshold.
The six classical measurements of the 7 Be + p 8 B + reaction
are referenced in Tab. 10.3. In the Sun, the most eective energy range
is around E = 20 keV, far in the tail of the thermal distributions of
the reaction partners, but still far below the lowest laboratory energies
of around 120 keV in the experiments of Kavanagh et al. (1969) and
Filippone et al. (1983). Therefore, one must extrapolate the factor
356
Chapter 10
Table 10.3. Extrapolation of S17 to E = 0 for measurements of 7 Be p 8 B

according to Johnson et al. (1992).
Experiment
S17 (0) [eV b]
Kavanagh et al. (1960) 15 6

Parker (1966, 1968)
27 4
Kavanagh et al. (1969) 25.2 2.4
Vaughn et al. (1970)
19.4 2.8
Wiezorek et al. (1977) 41.5 9.3
Filippone et al. (1983) 20.2 2.3
S17 down to the astrophysically interesting regime. The most recent
comprehensive reanalysis was performed by Johnson et al. (1992) who
found the values listed in Tab. 10.3. They tend to be smaller by around
10% relative to previous extrapolations which did not take into account
that for laboratory energies there is a contribution from d-waves in the
entrance channel. Johnson et al. used two dierent interaction models
for the extrapolation which yielded identical results within 2%. This
does not necessarily imply that the theoretical extrapolation is known
with this precision; for example, Riisager and Jensen (1993) suggest
much smaller values for S17 (0).
As stressed by Johnson et al. (1992) it is problematic to combine the
results of Tab. 10.3 to a world average because they show systematic
discrepancies. In fact, the data of the two low-energy experiments
(Kavanagh et al. 1969; Filippone et al. 1983) agree very well with each
other over a wide range of energies with a systematic oset by a factor
1.34. A similar oset exists between the high-energy data of Parker
(1966, 1968) and Vaughn et al. (1970) with a factor 1.42 (Gai 1995).
Because it is unknown which of the experiments is right (if any)
Johnson et al. (1992) combined the data according to a prescription
adopted by the Particle Data Group (1994) for such cases. It amounts
to the usual weighted average, but increasing the error by a certain factor derived from the statistical signicance of the discrepancies. Johnson et al. then arrive at a world average
S17 (0) = (22.4 2.1) eV b.
(10.8)
Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1992, 1995) used this value, i.e. they used
a 1 uncertainty of 9%. Turck-Chièze and Lopes (1993) used (22.4
1.3stat 3.0syst ) eV b, i.e. they adopted an uncertainty of 15%.
Solar Neutrinos
357
Xu et al. (1994) have discussed a unique relationship between S17 (0)

and the nuclear vertex constant of the overlap wave function for the
virtual decay 8 B 7 Be+p; the nuclear vertex constant can be predicted
from other nuclear data. These authors calculation of S17 (E) agrees
remarkably well with the data points of Filippone et al. (1983) at low
energies, and with Vaughn et al. (1970) at higher energies; these are
the experiments which gave a low S17 (0). Xu et al. (1994) nd an even
lower value of S17 (0) 17.6 eV b.
On the other hand, Brown, Csoto, and Sherr (1995) studied the
relationship between the Coulomb displacement energy for the A = 8,
J = 2+ , T = 1 state and S17 . They found a high value S17 (20 keV) =
(26.5 2.0) eV b.
The S17 (0) factor was recently determined from the Coulomb dissociation of 8 B, i.e. by the Primako-type process 8 B 7 Be + p in
the electric eld of a 208 Pb nucleus (Motobayashi et al. 1994). These
authors nd a very low preliminary value of S17 (0) = (16.7 3.2) eV b.
Langanke and Shoppa (1994) think that the true value may be significantly lower still if allowance is made for a possible E2 amplitude in
the Primako reaction. However, this possibility is heavily disputed by
Gai and Bertulani (1995); see also the reply by Langanke and Shoppa
(1995).
All of these new results are somewhat preliminary at the present
time. Independently of their ultimate status it is evident that the S17
factor must be considered the weakest link in the prediction of the
boron neutrino ux.
10.3
Observations
10.3.1
Absorption Reactions for Radiochemical Experiments
The longest-running solar neutrino experiment is the Homestake chlorine detector which is based on a reaction proposed by Pontecorvo
(1948) and Alvarez (1949),
e + 37 Cl 37 Ar + e
(threshold 0.814 MeV).
(10.9)
The two other data-producing radiochemical experiments use gallium

as a target according to the reaction
e + 71 Ga 71 Ge + e
(threshold 0.233 MeV).
(10.10)
Because of its low threshold, the gallium experiments can pick up the
solar pp neutrino ux. The absorption cross sections as a function of
358
Chapter 10
neutrino energy are shown in Fig. 10.5 according to the tabulation of

Bahcall and Ulrich (1988).
Fig. 10.5. Neutrino absorption cross section on

Bahcall and Ulrich (1988).
37 Cl
and
71 Ga
according to
Because the absorption cross sections are steeply increasing functions of energy while the predicted solar neutrino spectrum (Fig. 10.1)
steeply decreases, the low ux of boron neutrinos yields the dominant
contribution to the expected counting rate for chlorine, and a sizeable
contribution to gallium. This is illustrated in Fig. 10.6 where the predicted counting rates from solar neutrinos, integrated between energy
E and innity, are shown as a function of E . These plots correspond
to the lower panel of Fig. 10.1 if the dierential ux is weighted with
the relevant absorption cross section. It is customary to express the
absorption rate per nucleus in solar neutrino units
1 SNU = 1036 s1 ,
(10.11)
not to be confused with 1 SNu, the supernova unit, which quanties

the rate of supernova occurrences in a galaxy. Because one measures
a fully integrated ux one only needs the absorption cross sections
folded with the spectra of the individual source reactions. For 37 Cl and
71
Ga they are given in Tab. 10.4. Multiplying the predicted uxes with
these cross sections and applying a factor 1036 gives the absorption rate
in SNUs.
Solar Neutrinos
359
Table 10.4. Spectrally averaged absorption cross sections on 37 Cl and 71 Ga

for dierent solar source reactions according to Bahcall (1989), except for
8 B neutrinos on 37 Cl which is according to Garcia et al. (1991). The unit is
1046 cm2 .
37
71
Cl
Ga
pp
pep
0
11.8
16
215
2.4 10,900
73.2 24,300
Be
13
1.7
61.8
15
6.8
116
Fig. 10.6. Absorption rate by 37 Cl and 71 Ga of the solar neutrino ux at

Earth, integrated from a given neutrino energy to innity. The predicted
ux is according to Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1995), the absorption cross
sections according to Bahcall and Ulrich (1988)see Fig. 10.5.
360
10.3.2
Chapter 10
Chlorine Detector (Homestake)
Solar neutrino observations were pioneered by the chlorine detector of

Davis (1964) which is located in the Homestake Gold Mine at Lead,
South Dakota (U.S.A.). The target consists of about 615 tons of perchloroethylene (C2 Cl4 ), a cleaning uid, from which argon is extracted
every few months by an intricate chemical procedure. Because 37 Ar
has a half-life of 35.0 days the amount of neutrino-produced 37 Ar begins to saturate after a couple of months whence a longer exposure
time is not warranted. The extracted argononly a few atoms in a
small amount of carrier gasis then viewed by a proportional counter
which registers the Auger electrons which are ejected when 37 Ar decays by electron capture. The introduction in 1970 of an electronic
system which analyzes the pulse rise time greatly enhanced the sensitivity. Therefore, usually only the results after 1970 are quoted, beginning with run 18. Except for a period from May 1985 to October 1986 where the experiment was down due to successive electrical
failures of the circulation pumps, data have been taken continuously
since 1967.
The known backgrounds for the experiment are cosmic-ray produced
37
Ar atoms which correspond to (0.290.08) SNU, and an average neutron background corresponding to (0.13 0.13) SNU. Because these
average backgrounds as well as the backgrounds of the proportional
Fig. 10.7. Distribution of the counting rates of 99 runs (18117). The

black bars represent the data shown in Fig. 10.7, the shaded histogram the
expected distribution (adapted from Lande 1995). The absorption rate in
SNU is obtained by multiplying the argon production rate by 5.31.
Solar Neutrinos
361
Table 10.5. Predicted absorption rate (in SNU) by 37 Cl for dierent solar
source reactions. BP92 give theoretical 3 uncertainties.
Diusion
BP95 He, metals
BP92
He
BP92
TL93
pp
pep
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
1.2
1.2
1.2
1.1
Be
7.2
6.2
5.5
4.6
13
0.1
0.1
0.1
0.1
15
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.2
Total
9.3+1.2
1.4
8.0 3.0
7.2 2.7
6.4 1.4
BP92 = Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1992).

TL93 = Turck-Chièze and Lopes (1993).
Fig. 10.8. Solar neutrino ux at the Homestake experiment (e 37 Cl

for the past quarter century. The shaded band indicates the 1
uncertainty of the global best-t average neutrino ux (Lande 1995).
37 Ar e)
counters must be subtracted, the counting rate attributed to solar neutrinos in a given run is sometimes found to be formally negative. In
those cases, a zero counting rate is adopted. The distribution of counting rates for 99 runs (18117) is shown in Fig. 10.7. The global average
given in Eq. (10.12) is based on a maximum-likelihood analysis which
includes the background. It would not be correct to average the data
points with individual background subtractions to obtain a global average signal.
362
Chapter 10
The recognized systematic errors are 1.5% for the extraction efciency, 3% for the proportional counter eciency, 3% for the cosmic-ray background, 5% for the neutron background, and 2% for the
proportional counter background, which amounts to a total of 7%
or 0.18 SNU.
The measured counting rate for the individual runs at Homestake
is shown in Fig. 10.8. The current global best-t average for the solar
neutrino ux measurement, derived from runs 18124 is (Lande 1995)
(2.55 0.17stat 0.18syst ) SNU = (2.55 0.25) SNU
(10.12)
where the errors were combined in quadrature. The average argon

production rate per day in the detector is obtained by dividing the
SNUs by 5.31 so that it is found to be 0.48 37 Ar/day. Eq. (10.12) is
to be compared with the predictions from dierent solar models shown
in Tab. 10.5.
10.3.3
Gallium Detectors (SAGE and GALLEX)
The gallium experiments involve far more complicated chemical extraction procedures for the neutrino-produced 71 Ge which is not a noble
gas. The Soviet-American (now Russian-American) Gallium Experiment (SAGE) used at rst 27 tons, later 55 tons of metallic gallium
while the European GALLEX collaboration uses 100 tons of an aqueous gallium chloride solution, corresponding to 30.3 tons of gallium.
The SAGE experiment is located in the Baksan Neutrino Observatory
in Mount Andyrchi, Caucasus Mountains (Russia) while GALLEX is
located in the Gran Sasso tunnel near Rome (Italy). SAGE has been
taking data since January 1990, GALLEX since May 1991. The current results of SAGE were published by Abdurashitov et al. (1994)
and Gavrin (1995), those of GALLEX by the GALLEX Collaboration
(1994, 1995b) and Kirsten (1995).
The half-life of 71 Ge is 11.43 days so that one needs only about
a three-week exposure, allowing for frequent extractions. SAGE has
already accumulated a total of 21 analyzed runs, GALLEX a total
of 39. In Fig. 10.9 the individual counting rates are shown as well
as the global best-t averages and the distribution of counting rates
in 25 SNU bins. For the SAGE data, formally negative rates after
background subtraction are forced to zero. In both cases, recognized
background signals of 78 SNU were subtracted. The average counting
Solar Neutrinos
363
rates attributed to solar neutrinos are found to be (in SNU)

SAGE:
GALLEX:
74 + 13/12stat + 5/7syst = 74 14,

77 9stat + 4/5syst = 77 10,
(10.13)
where systematic and statistical errors were added in quadrature. These

results are to be compared with the predictions from standard solar
models shown in Tab. 10.6.
Fig. 10.9. Solar neutrino ux at the gallium detectors (e 71 Ga 71 Ge e).

The shaded bands indicate a 1 uncertainty of the global best-t average
neutrino uxes (statistical and systematic errors added in quadrature). In
the SAGE data, formally negative uxes are forced to zero. In the right
panels, the bin size is 20 SNU.
364
Chapter 10
Table 10.6. Predicted absorption rate (in SNU) by 71 Ga for dierent solar
source reactions. BP92 give theoretical 3 uncertainties.
BP95
BP92
BP92
TL93
Diusion
pp
pep
He, metals
He
69.7
70.8
71.3
71.1
3.0
3.1
3.1
3.0
37.7 16.1
35.8 13.8
32.9 12.3
30.9 10.8
Be
13
3.8
3.0
2.7
2.4
15
6.3
4.9
4.3
3.7
Total
137+8
7
131.5+21
17
127+19
16
122.5 7

The GALLEX experiment was subjected to an on-o test by

virtue of a laboratory e source strong enough to outshine the Sun
in its local neutrino ux (GALLEX collaboration 1995a). To this end
a container with activated chromium was inserted in the center of the
tank containing the target uid. The relevant isotope is 51 Cr which
decays to 51 V with a half-life of 27.71 d by electron capture. The e
spectrum consists of four monoenergetic lines of energies 426 keV (9%),
431 keV (1%), 746 keV (81%), and 751 keV (9%). The dominating line
is very close to the solar beryllium line. An analysis of the rst seven
exposures reveals a ratio between the measured and expected counting
rate of 1.04 0.12. At the present time, four further extractions are
still being analyzed. Meanwhile, the source is being reactivated at the
Siloe nuclear reactor in Grenoble (France) in order to perform further
exposures.
The GALLEX collaboration has interpreted the source experiment
as a global test of their detector eciency. Most recently, Hata and
Haxton (1995) have advocated a somewhat dierent view. They argue
that the gallium absorption cross section for the 746 keV line is poorly
known because of excited-state contributions which have not been directly measured, and which are more uncertain than had been acknowledged in the previous literature. According to Hata and Haxton the
source experiment should not be taken as measuring, say, the GALLEX
extraction eciency but rather as measuring the excited-state contributions to the absorption cross section for beryllium neutrinos.
Solar Neutrinos
10.3.4
365
Water Cherenkov Detector (Kamiokande)
A water Cherenkov detector like the one located in the Kamioka metal
mine (Gifu prefecture, Japan) is a large body of water, surrounded
by photomultipliers which register the Cherenkov light emitted by relativistic charged particles. Solar neutrinos are detected by virtue of
their elastic scattering on the electrons bound in the water molecules,
+ e e + .
(10.14)
This process has no signicant threshold, although in practice the detection of the electrons is background-limited to relatively large energies.
The Kamiokande detector began its measurement of solar neutrinos
in January 1987 with an eective analysis threshold of about 9 MeV
which was reduced to about 7 MeV in mid 1988. The much larger
Superkamiokande detector, which is scheduled to begin data-taking in
April 1996, will have a threshold of about 5 MeV.
In contrast with the radiochemical detectors which are eectively
based on the charged-current reaction e + n p + e, the elastic
scattering on electrons is sensitive to all (left-handed) neutrinos and
antineutrinos. The cross section is given by the well-known formula
(e.g. Commins and Bucksbaum 1983)
[
de
G2 me E
me
= F
A + B (1 y)2 C y
,
(10.15)
dy
2
E
where GF is the Fermi constant and the coecients A, B, and C are
tabulated in Tab. 10.7. Further,
E E
Te
2E
y
=
and 0 < y <
,
(10.16)
E
E
2E + me
where E and E are the initial- and nal-state neutrino energies while
Te is the kinetic energy of the nal-state electron.
Table 10.7. Coecients in Eq. (10.15) for elastic neutrino electron scattering.
Flavor A
e
e
,
,
(CV
(CV
(CV
(CV
B
+ CA + 2)2
CA )2
+ CA )2
CA )2
(CV
(CV
(CV
(CV
CV = 12 + sin2 W 0.04,
C
CA )2
+ CA + 2)2
CA )2
+ CA )2
CA = 21 .
(CV + 1)2 (CA + 1)2

(CV + 1)2 (CA + 1)2
CV2 CA2
CV2 CA2
366
Chapter 10
For E > 5 MeV, i.e. for energies above the detection threshold
of Kamiokande and Superkamiokande, the total cross section is well
approximated by
E
G2F me E
2.4
(A + 13 B) = 9.51044 cm2
1
2
10 MeV
6.2
1
7.1
for e ,
for e ,
for , ,
for , .
(10.17)
Of course, for a ux of e s such as that from a supernova collapse, the

dominant signal in a water Cherenkov detector is from the chargedcurrent process e + p n + e+ (Chapter 11).
The e elastic scattering cross section is strongly forward peaked
for E me . One easily nds
d
me
(1 + me /E )2 cos
d
=4
,
2
2
2
d cos
E [(1 + me /E ) cos ] dy
(10.18)
where d/dy was given in Eq. (10.15) with

y=
2 (me /E ) cos2
.
(1 + me /E )2 cos2
(10.19)
Here, is the angle between the direction of motion of the nal-state

electron relative to the incident neutrino; one nds 0 cos 1. For
E = 5 MeV and 10 MeV this cross section is shown in Fig. 10.10,
normalized to unity for = 0. The electron keeps the direction of the
1/2
incident neutrino within <
(2me /E ) .
In a water Cherenkov detector, the direction of the charged particles can be reconstructed from the ring of Cherenkov light hitting
the photomultipliers. Therefore, the direction of the incident neutrino
is known within an uncertainty which is determined by the angular
distribution of Fig. 10.10, and by the random motion of the electron
due to multiple scattering in the Coulomb elds of the medium constituents. At an electron energy of 10 MeV, the Kamiokande detector has an angular resolution of about 28 for the direction of the
electron. For this energy, the electron keeps the neutrino direction
within about 18 so that the uncertainty is dominated by the electron
Coulomb scattering.
Apart from these eects which blur the reconstruction of the incident neutrino direction, a water Cherenkov detector is an imaging
Solar Neutrinos
367
Fig. 10.10. Dierential scattering cross section for e e ee according to

Eq. (10.18), normalized to unity for = 0, where is the angle between the
incident neutrino and nal-state electron.
device and thus a true neutrino telescope. Thus, for the rst time
the Kamiokande detector actually proved that neutrinos are coming
from the direction of the Sun. The rst main publication of these
results was by Hirata et al. (1991) from a data sample of 1040 live detector days, taken between 1987 and 1990; an update including data
until July 1993 (a total of 1670 live detector days) was given by Suzuki
(1995). The angular distribution of the registered electrons relative to
the direction of the Sun is shown in Fig. 10.11. Even though there
remains an isotropic background, probably from radioactive impurities
in the water, the solar neutrino signal beautifully shows up in these
measurements.
In elastic neutrino-electron scattering, the energy distribution of the
kicked electrons is nearly at so that the spectral shape of the incident
neutrino ux is only indirectly represented by the measured electron
spectrum. In Fig. 10.12 the electron recoil spectrum is shown for an
incident spectrum of 8 B neutrinos. A water Cherenkov detector can
resolve the energy of the charged particles from the intensity of the
measured light which for low-energy electrons is roughly proportional
to the energy. Therefore, the electron recoil spectrum from the interaction with solar neutrinos can be resolved at Kamiokande. The measured
shape relative to the theoretically expected one is shown in Fig. 10.13,
arbitrarily normalized at E = 9.5 MeV (Suzuki 1995). Within statistical uctuations the agreement is perfect.
368
Chapter 10
Fig. 10.11. Angular distribution of the solar neutrino events at Kamiokande

for 1670 live detector days (January 1987July 1993), according to Suzuki
(1995). There remains an isotropic background, probably from radioactive
impurities in the water.
Fig. 10.12. Normalized spectra of 8 B neutrinos and of recoil electrons (kinetic

energy Te ) from the elastic scattering process e e ee .
Even though the Sun is thought to produce only e s one may speculate that some of them are converted into e s on their way to Earth
by spin-avor oscillations in magnetic elds (Sect. 8.4) or by matterinduced majoron decays (Sect. 6.8). The e s would cause a signal by
the reaction e p ne+ with an isotropic angular distribution. The
remaining measured isotropic background shown in Fig. 10.11 can thus
Solar Neutrinos
369
Fig. 10.13. Measured over expected spectrum of recoil electrons from solar
neutrinos at Kamiokande, arbitrarily normalized to unity at E = 9.5 MeV
(Suzuki 1995).
Fig. 10.14. Limit on a solar e ux relative to 8 B solar e s from the isotropic

background shown in Fig. 10.11. The data used for this result extend until
August 1992 (Suzuki 1993).
be used to constrain the e ux. At dierent energies a 90% CL upper limit on the solar e ux relative to 8 B solar neutrinos is shown
in Fig. 10.14 according to Suzuki (1993). The best relative limit is
at E = 13 MeV where the e ux is less than 5.8% of 8 B solar e s
at 90% CL. If the cause of the isotropic background could be reliably
identied these upper limits could be improved accordingly.
370
Chapter 10
Table 10.8. Predicted ux of 8 B neutrinos at Earth. For BP92, the uncertainty is a theoretical 3 error.
Model
Diusion
BP95
BP92
BP92
TL93
He, metals
He
B Flux [106 cm2 s1 ]

6.6+0.9
1.1
5.7 2.4
5.1 2.2
4.4 1.1

Fig. 10.15. Measured 8 B solar neutrino ux at Kamiokande (Suzuki 1993).

The shaded band gives the average with 1 statistical and systematic errors
added in quadrature.
Next, one may determine the absolute ux of solar 8 B neutrinos.

As a function of time it is shown in Fig. 10.15. Assuming that the
spectrum is indeed that of 8 B neutrinos, the measured ux from the
data of January 1987 until July 1993 is (units 106 cm2 s1 )
2.89 + 0.22/0.21stat 0.35syst = 2.89 0.41
(10.20)
where the errors were added in quadrature. This measurement is to be

compared with the predictions shown in Tab. 10.8
1990
1991
1987
(1996)
(1996)
(1997)
SAGE
GALLEX
Kamiokande II
Superkamiok.
SNO
BOREXINO
(?)
(?)
(?)
(1996)
(?)
(?)
0.814
Scintillator
x e e x (b )
D2 O Cherenkov
e d p p e
x e e x (b )
x d p n x (b )
H2 O Cherenkov
x e e x (b )
...
0.25
(1.44)
5
2.225
Be
...
...
all
not pp
Thresh. Solar
[MeV]
ux
Radiochemical
0.233
71
71
e Ga Ge e
...
...
Radiochemical
e 37 Cl 37 Ar e
Detection
109 cm2 s1
5.2+0.3
0.4
...
...
6.6+0.9
1.1
137+8
7
...
74 14 SNU
77 10 SNU
2.89 0.41
106 cm2 s1
9.3+1.2
1.4
...
...
4.4 1.1
123 7
...
6.4 1.4
Prediction
BP95 TL93
2.55 0.25
SNU
Measurementc
b = , , or .
c Statistical and systematic 1 errors added in quadrature.
brackets anticipated.
x
e
BP95 = Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1995), with helium and metal diusion.
TL93 = Turck-Chièze and Lopes (1993), no diusion.
a In
1967
Homestake
(?)
Operationa
from
until
Experiment
Table 10.9. Current and near-future solar neutrino experiments.
Solar Neutrinos
371
372
10.3.5
Chapter 10
Summary
The main features and results of the solar neutrino experiments discussed in this section, and of near-future experiments to be discussed
in Sect. 10.9, are summarized in Tab. 10.9. More technical aspects can
be found in the original papers quoted in this section and in previous
papers by the referenced authors. Overviews of many experimental aspects can be found in Bahcall (1989), Davis, Mann, and Wolfenstein
(1989), and Koshiba (1992). The two theoretical predictions shown
are somewhat extreme in that TL93 yields lowish neutrino uxes when
compared with BP92 (no diusion), while BP95 with the inclusion of
helium and metal diusion is presently at the upper end of what is
being predicted on the basis of standard solar models. It is clear, of
course, that including diusion would also increase the TL93 uxes.
10.4
Time Variations
10.4.1
Day-Night Eect
It is commonly assumed that the Sun is in a stationary state so that

the solar neutrino ux should be constant in time. One may still expect certain temporal variations of the measured ux. Between day
and night the line of sight between the Kamiokande detector and the
Sun intersects with dierent parts of the Earth. If neutrinos oscillate, for certain masses and mixing angles the Earths matter would
alter the oscillation pattern such that the counting rate at Kamiokande
would be expected to vary between day and night. The day rate is
found to be 0.90 0.10stat 0.12syst times the average, the night rate
1.04 0.10stat 0.12syst , i.e. there is no signicant dierence (Suzuki
1995). The radiochemical detectors with their long exposure times cannot resolve a possible day-night dierence.
10.4.2
Seasonal Variation
Because of the ellipticity of the Earths orbit the distance to the Sun
varies during the year from a minimum of 1.4711013 cm in January
to a maximum of 1.5211013 cm in July, i.e. it varies by 1.67% from
its average during the year. Therefore, the solar neutrino ux varies
by 3.3% from average between January and July. This eect is too
small to be observed by any of the present-day experiments.
This variation can be amplied if neutrinos oscillate. Notably, if
the vacuum oscillation length of the monochromatic 7 Be neutrinos is
Solar Neutrinos
373
of order the annual distance variation, the 7 Be ux measured in the

chlorine and gallium detectors could vary between zero and its predicted
full rate. Moreover, at dierent times of the year the neutrinos have
to traverse on average a dierent amount of terrestrial matter which
could aect neutrino oscillations and thus lead to an annual variation.
There is no evidence for such an eect in any of the detectors.
GALLEX reports a counting rate of (82 15stat ) SNU for October
March and (78 14stat ) SNU for AprilSeptember, i.e. there is no signicant dierence (GALLEX collaboration 1994).
A semiannual variation could be caused by nonstandard neutrino interactions with the solar magnetic eld (Sect. 10.7). The solar equatorial plane is at an angle of 7 15 relative to the Earths orbital plane (the
ecliptic). Around 7 June and 8 December, the solar core is viewed from
Earth through the solar equator where the magnetic eld is thought
to be weaker than at higher latitudes. The Kamiokande II data (1040
live detector days in 19871990) were subdivided into three-months
periods which include (rate I ) or exclude (II ) the intersection points,
respectively. The relative dierence in counting rate was found to be
(I II )/(I + II ) = 0.06 0.11stat 0.02syst , i.e. there was no indication for a time variation (Hirata et al. 1991). The Homestake data
also do not show any evidence for a semiannual variation.
10.4.3
Correlation with Solar Cycle at Homestake
The Sun shows a prominent magnetic activity cycle which is thought

to be due to dynamo action within the convective surface layers, driven
by the nonuniform rotation of the Sun (Stix 1989). One of the bestknown manifestations of this activity is the cycle of sunspots, measured
by their total number appearing on the solar disk.54 A given solar cycle lasts for about 11 years from one minimum of sunspot number to
the following; the rst recorded cycle begins with the minimum around
A.D. 1755. Sunspots are caused by magnetic ux tubes which break
through the surface; they are thought to be manifestations of a subsurface toroidal magnetic eld with opposite directions between the
southern and northern hemisphere. In addition, the Sun has a poloidal
(dipole) eld. The elds reverse polarity after 11 years so that the full
magnetic cycle lasts 22 years.
54
In the following, the number of sunspots refers to the international sunspot

index according to the Z
urich system where both spots and spot groups are counted
and averaged from the reports of many solar observatories. The sunspot index is
regularly published in Solar Geophysical Data.
374
Chapter 10
The solar neutrino measurements of the chlorine experiment seem

to anticorrelate with solar activity as rst suggested by Subramanian
(1979) and Bazilevskaya, Stozhkov, and Charakhchyan (1982). These
latter authors also noted a correlation with the primary cosmic proton
ux which, however, is known to correlate with the solar magnetic
cycle because the solar magnetic eld aects the ux of charged cosmic
rays hitting the Earth. The cosmic-ray ux is not expected to aect
the chlorine experiment directly; the average cosmic-ray induced 37 Ar
production rate is about 0.055 day1 , compared with an average solar
neutrino signal of 0.48 day1 . Figure 10.16 shows the temporal variation
from 19701989 of the Homestake argon production rate, the integral
number of sunspots, and the neutron counts at the McMurdo station in
Antarctica. The latter are indicative of the primary cosmic-ray proton
ux with energies above 0.4 GeV.
While a certain degree of anticorrelation between the number of
sunspots and the argon production rate is plainly visible in Fig. 10.16,
there are two important questions: How signicant is the eect? If it
is signicant, what are its physical origins?
As for the latter question, the only plausible explanation55 that has
been put forth over the years is the hypothesis that neutrinos possess a
small magnetic moment which allows them to spin-precess into sterile
right-handed states in the presence of magnetic elds (Voloshin and
Vysotski 1986; Voloshin, Vysotski, and Okun 1986a,b), and variations
of this scheme which allow for simultaneous spin and avor oscillations
(Sect. 10.7). In this case one would expect some degree of a semiannual
variation as explained above, but none is found in the Homestake data.
The issue of statistical signicance was addressed on the basis of the
19701989 data by Filippone and Vogel (1990), Bieber et al. (1990),
and Bahcall and Press (1991). These latter authors argued for rankordering as a statistical method because of the likely nonlinear relationship (if any) with indicators of solar activity, and because of the possibly
non-Gaussian nature of the experimental errors. They produced pairs
of an observed argon production rate and the corresponding sunspot
index. Next, the Homestake data and sunspot indices were replaced by
the ordinal rank in their respective data sets, i.e. the smallest value has
rank 1, the second-largest rank 2, and so forth. In order to discover
correlations they applied two standard rank statistical tests, the Spear55
The refractive term in the MSW conversion probability from convective currents
could play a role and could be coupled to solar activity (Haxton and Zhang 1991).
However, extreme conditions are required to explain the observed eect.
Solar Neutrinos
375
Fig. 10.16. 37 Ar production rate at Homestake, integral number of sunspots,

and neutron counts at McMurdo (Antarctica) which are indicative of the
primary cosmic-ray proton ux above 0.4 GeV; annual bins each. In the
center panel, the number of the solar cycle is also indicated. (Adapted from
Bieber et al. 1990.)
man rank-order correlation coecient and Kendalls tau (e.g. Press

et al. 1986). They found a moderate statistical signicance level of
1.3% (Spearman) and 0.9% (Kendall) for the argon-production rate to
be correlated with the sunspot index.56
Most recently, a correlation between the 19701991 argon production rate and the solar activity cycle was investigated by Oakley et al.
(1994). They used the Mt. Wilson 150-ft. tower magnetograms as an
indicator for the solar magnetic surface ux, both for the full solar disk
56
The signicance level gives approximately the probability that a random shufing of the data gives an equally good or better (anti)correlation. A signicance
level smaller than 1% is considered highly signicant.
376
Chapter 10
and for the central 14 14 which is the region most signicant for the
neutrino ight path to us. The disk-centered magnetic-eld cycle lags
full-disk indicators by about 1 y. Oakley et al. (1994) found a signicance level of 0.001% for an anticorrelation between the Homestake rate
and the disk-centered magnetic ux. Including the ux from increasingly higher latitudes reduced the signicance level of the correlation.
With only high-latitude magnetic information the correlation was lost.
Another test of time variation is a comparison as in Fig. 10.7 between the expected and measured distribution of argon production
rates. A time variation would broaden the measured distribution (black
histogram) relative to the expectation for a constant neutrino ux
(shaded histogram). A certain degree of broadening is certainly compatible with Fig. 10.7, but a precise statistical analysis does not seem
to be available at the present time. At any rate, the rank-ordering result does not specify the amplitude of a time varying signal relative to a
constant base rate while the width of the distribution in Fig. 10.7 would
be sensitive mostly to this amplitude. Therefore, the two methods yield
rather dierent information concerning a possible time variation.
The gallium experiments have not been running long enough to say
much about a time variation on the time scale of several years. Also,
there does not seem to be a signicant time variation in the Kamiokande
data between 1987 and 1992 which covers a large fraction of the current solar cycle No. 22. Notably, there is no apparent (anti)correlation
with sunspot number (Suzuki 1993). However, a correlation with diskcentered magnetic indicators may yield a dierent resultaccording to
the analysis of Oakley et al. (1994) the use of a disk-centered indicator
with its inherent time-lag relative to full-disk spot counts is crucial for
the strong anticorrelation at Homestake.
The constancy of the Kamiokande rate, if conrmed over a more
extended period, severely limits a conjecture that the nuclear energy
generating region in the Sun was not constant (e.g. Raychaudhuri 1971,
1986). Because the Kamiokande detector is mostly sensitive to the
boron neutrinos with their extreme sensitivity to temperature, they
would be expected to show the most extreme time variations if the
solar cycle was caused by processes in the deep interior rather than by
dynamo action in the convective surface layers.
10.4.4
Summary
There is no indication for a day-night variation of the solar neutrino

ux at Kamiokande and none for a seasonal variation at Kamiokande,
Solar Neutrinos
377
GALLEX, or Homestake. The Homestake argon production rate appears to be strongly anticorrelated with solar disk-centered indicators
of magnetic activity, with no evidence for a long-term variation at
Kamiokande. However, the period covered there (19871992) may be
too short, and the Kamiokande rate has not been correlated with diskcentered indicators. No homogeneous analysis of both Kamiokande and
Homestake data relative to solar activity exists at the present time.
It is very dicult to judge what the apparent Homestake anticorrelation with solar activity means. Is there an unrecognized background
which correlates with solar activity such as cosmic rays? Is there a
long-term drift in some aspect of the experiment which then naturally
correlates with other causally unrelated long-term varying phenomena
such as solar activity? Is it all some statistical uke? Or is it an indication of nonstandard neutrino properties, notably magnetic dipole moments which spin precess in the solar magnetic eld into sterile states?
This latter possibility will be elaborated further in Sect. 10.7.
10.5
Neutrino Flux Decits
10.5.1
Boron Flux
Even if one ignores for the moment a possible time variation of the
Homestake neutrino measurements there remain several solar neutrino
problems. All of the solar neutrino ux measurements discussed in
Sect. 10.3 exhibit a decit relative to theoretical predictions. The simplest case to interpret is that of Kamiokande because it is sensitive only
to the boron ux. In this case the most uncertain input parameter is
the cross section for the reaction p7 Be 8 B which enters the ux prediction as a multiplicative factor, independently of other details of solar
modelling. As discussed in Sect. 10.2.3, the astrophysical S-factor for
this reaction depends on theoretical extrapolations to low energies of
experimental data which themselves seem to exhibit relatively large systematic uncertainties. Therefore, one may turn the argument around
and consider the solar neutrino ux measurement at Kamiokande as
another determination of S17 (0).
According to Eq. (10.20) the measured ux is 2.89 (1 0.14) in
units of 106 cm2 s1 while the prediction is 4.4(10.21)S17 (0)/22.4
for TL93 (Turck-Chièze and Lopes 1993) where S17 is understood in
units of eV b. For the BP95 (Bahcall and Pinsonneault 1995) it is
6.6 (1 0.15) S17 (0)/22.4 where I have used an average symmetric
378
Chapter 10
error for simplicity. This yields

{
S17 (0)/eV b =
14.7 3.7 TL93,

9.8 2.0 BP95,
(10.21)
to be compared with the world average 22.4 2.1 (Sect. 10.2.3). While
the discrepancy is severe, one would still be hard-pressed to conclude
with a reasonable degree of certainty that the solar neutrino problem
is not just a nuclear physics problem.
10.5.2
Beryllium Flux
The Kamiokande solar neutrino problem may be explained by a low

S17 (0) factor, perhaps in conspiration with lower-than-standard opacities that cause the central solar temperature to be lower than expected.
In this case the spectral shape would remain unchanged, leading to an
unambiguous prediction for the neutrino signal that must be caused by
8
B neutrinos in the chlorine and gallium detectors. This contribution
may be subtracted from the Homestake and SAGE/GALLEX data, respectively, to obtain a measurement of the remaining neutrino sources
(Tab. 10.10)see Kwong and Rosen (1994). Moreover, the predicted pp
and pep signals in these detectors do not seem to involve any signicant
uncertainties so that they may be subtracted as well, eectively leading
to a measurement of the ux of 7 Be and CNO-neutrinos (Tab. 10.10).
These uxes are then found to be formally negative; they are consistent
with zero within the experimental measurement errors.
These remaining uxes inferred from the chlorine and gallium experiments are to be compared with the predictions for the 7 Be and CNO
neutrinos. In Tab. 10.10 the predictions of BP95 are shown; those of
TL93 and other authors are similar. Bahcall (1994b) has compiled the
predictions for the 7 Be ux from a heterogeneous set of 10 solar models
by dierent authors whose predictions agree to within 10%there is
a broad consensus on the standard value of this ux. Therefore, the
errors of the predictions are much smaller than the experimental ones,
leaving one with a very signicant discrepancy between the predicted
and observed ux both at Homestake and at SAGE/GALLEX, even if
one were to ignore the CNO contributions entirely.
In the analysis of Hata and Haxton (1995) which uses the GALLEX
source experiment as a constraint on the gallium absorption cross section, it is found that at the 99% CL the measured 7 Be ux is less
than 0.3 of the BP95 prediction. This high signicance of the beryllium problem relies on the assumption that all solar neutrino experi-
Solar Neutrinos
379
Table 10.10. Measured vs. predicted 7 Be and CNO neutrino uxes (in SNU).
Homestake GALLEX/
(37 Cl)
SAGE (71 Ga)
Measurements:
Total
8
B (inferred from
Kamiokande)
pp + pep
(calculated)
Remainder
2.55 0.25
3.15 0.44
77 10
71
0.20 0.01
74 1
0.8 0.5
4 10
1.24
0.48
1.72
37.7
10.1
47.8
BP95 prediction:a
7
Be
CNO
Total
a Bahcall
ments are correct within the acknowledged uncertainties. If one ignored

Homestake the 99% CL limit would be at 0.5 of the BP95 prediction.
Therefore, the new solar neutrino problem consists in the measured absence of the beryllium neutrino ux. This is a far more serious
decit than that of the boron ux which has been measured to be a
signicant fraction of its expected value, and for which the prediction
is very uncertain anyway.
10.5.3
An Astrophysical Solution?
The beryllium problem is very signicant because its predicted ux is

closely related to that of the boron ux. A glance at the solar reaction
chains (Fig. 10.2) reveals that both uxes start with 7 Be,
7
Be + e 7 Li + e ,
Be + p 8 B 8 Be + e+ + e .
(10.22)
Therefore, the ux ratio of 7 Be/8 B neutrinos essentially measures the

branching ratio between the electron and proton capture on 7 Be, admittedly averaged over slightly dierent regions of the solar core. The
380
Chapter 10
boron and beryllium uxes respond very dierently to a modication

of the solar central temperature (Eq. 10.5). Because the boron ux
has been measured, even at a reduced strength, it is not possible to
explain the missing beryllium neutrinos by a low solar temperature unless one is willing to contemplate simultaneously an extremely reduced
temperature and an extremely enhanced S17 factor.
Many authors57 have recently investigated the question of the signicance of the solar neutrino problem, and if it can be solved by a
plausible, or even implausible, combination of erroneous nuclear cross
sections, solar opacities, and so forth. The consensus is that an astrophysical solution is not possible, even if one ignores part of the experimental data. There is no obvious uncertain input quantity into
solar modelling or the ux predictions that could be tuned to obtain
the measured uxes. Therefore, something mysterious is wrong with
the calculation of the solar neutrino uxes and/or the solar neutrino
experiments.
However, if our understanding of the solar neutrino source and of
the detection experiments is not totally wrong, an attractive alternative
is to contemplate the option that something happens to the neutrinos
as they propagate from the solar core to us.
10.6
10.6.1
Which Data to Use?
The idea to test the hypothesis of neutrino oscillations by means of

the solar neutrino ux goes back to Pontecorvo (1957, 1958, 1967) and
Maki, Nakagawa, and Sakata (1962). After the rst measurements
in 1968 it was revived by Gribov and Pontecorvo (1969) as well as
Bahcall and Frautschi (1969). If some of the e s produced in the Sun
transformed into e s, into other sequential neutrinos ( , ), or into
hypothetical sterile states s , the measurable ux at Earth would be
depleted. Even the Kamiokande detector which responds to and
because of the possibility of neutral-current -e scattering would show
a reduced ux because of the smaller cross section. The measured ux
57
These include Bludman, Kennedy, and Langacker (1992a,b); Bludman et al.

(1993); Bahcall and Bethe (1993); Castellani, DeglInnocenti, and Fiorentini
(1993); Castellani et al. (1994b); Hata, Bludman, and Langacker (1994); Shi and
Schramm (1994); Shi, Schramm, and Dearborn (1994); Kwong and Rosen (1994);
Bahcall (1994b); Berezinski (1994); DeglInnocenti, Fiorentini, and Lissia (1995);
Parke (1995); Hata and Haxton (1995); Haxton (1995).
Solar Neutrinos
381
decits in all detectors may give us the rst indication for neutrino
oscillations and thus for nonvanishing neutrino masses and mixings.
Because of the statistically high signicance of the anticorrelations
with solar activity of the Homestake results it is not entirely obvious
how to proceed with a quantitative test of the oscillation hypothesis
which can cause only a day-night or semiannual time variation. In the
present section a possible long-term variability of the solar neutrino
ux or its detection methods is ignored, i.e. the apparent anticorrelation with solar activity at Homestake is considered to be a statistical
uctuation. In Sect. 10.7 a possible explanation in terms of neutrino
interactions with the solar magnetic eld is considered.
One may take the opposite point of view that the variability at
Homestake is a real eect, and that it is not related to neutrino magnetic moments because that hypothesis requires fairly extreme values
for the dipole moments and solar magnetic elds (Sect. 10.7). An interpretation of the data in terms of neutrino oscillations then becomes
dicult because one admits from the start that unknown physical effects are either operating in the Sun, in the intervening space, or in
the detectors. One could argue perhaps that the apparent variability
of the Homestake data in itself was evidence that something was wrong
with this experiment. In this case one could still test the hypothesis
of neutrino oscillations under the assumption that the signal recorded
at Homestake was spurious in which case one must discard the entire
data set, not only parts of it as has sometimes been done. Ignoring
the Homestake data does not solve the solar neutrino problem, but its
signicance is reduced.
Still, as no one has put forth a plausible hypothesis for a specic
problem with the Homestake experiment it is arbitrary to discard the
data. Admittedly, it is also arbitrary to consider the time variation
spurious even though standard statistical methods seem to reveal a
highly signicant anticorrelation with solar activity.
10.6.2
Vacuum Oscillations
A formal treatment of vacuum neutrino oscillations was presented in

Sect. 8.3. If the observer is many oscillation lengths away from the
source, and if the neutrinos are produced with a broad spectrum of energies from an extended source, one will observe an incoherent mixture
of the mass eigenstates. If one considers two-avor oscillations e a
with a = , , or some hypothetical sterile avor, the e ux is reduced by a factor 1 12 sin2 2 (vacuum mixing angle ). Therefore,
382
Chapter 10
one needs a large mixing angle to achieve a substantial suppression of

the measurable ux. If one includes the possibility of three-avor oscillations one can achieve, in principle, a maximum e reduction by a
factor 13 .
In this picture the e ux is reduced by the same factor for all energies, contrary to what is indicated by the observations. Therefore, one
needs an oscillation length of order the Earth-Sun distance (astronomical unit 1 AU = 1.4961013 cm) because in this case the oscillation
pattern is not completely smeared out. Then one may measure a dierent ux suppression for dierent energies; the wiggles in the reduction
factor as a function of neutrino energy can be resolved (Fig. 10.17).
For two-avor oscillations the relationship Eq. (8.15) between neutrino energy E , the mass-square dierence m2 , and the oscillation
length osc can be written as
m2 = 1.661010 eV2
1 AU E
.
osc 10 MeV
(10.23)
Therefore, the neutrino masses are very small if these long-wavelength

oscillations are the explanation for the observed ux decits.
Fig. 10.17. Survival probability of solar e s for m2 = 0.81010 eV2

and sin2 2 = 0.8, parameters which reconcile all measurements with the
standard solar ux predictions. The solid line is for the minimum annual
distance to the Sun of 1.4711013 cm (January), the dashed line for the
maximum distance 1.5211013 cm (July). The right panel is an enlarged
section around the line of beryllium neutrinos. Between January and July,
their ux is suppressed by very dierent amounts.
Solar Neutrinos
383
The e survival probability as a function of energy is shown in

Fig. 10.17 for m2 = 0.81010 eV2 and sin2 2 = 0.8. The Sun is
treated as a point-like source because the extension of its neutrinoproducing core is minute relative to the oscillation length of order the
Earth-Sun distance. The solid line is for the minimum, the dashed line
for the maximum annual distance to the Sun. The nearly monochromatic beryllium neutrinos (E = 0.862 MeV) easily retain their phase
relationship because they are distributed in energy only over a width
of about 2 keV (Fig. 10.4). Therefore, one would expect a pronounced
annual ux variation which is not observed, thereby reducing the allowed range of masses and mixing angles where long-wavelength oscillations could solve the solar neutrino problem. The analysis of Barger,
Phillips, and Whisnant (1992) and more recently of Krastev and Petcov
(1994) reveals that there remain a few small parameter pockets with
sin2 2 around 0.81 and m2 around 0.60.91010 eV2 . Krastev
and Petcov (1994) also conclude that oscillations into sterile neutrinos
are slightly disfavored.
While the spectral deformation of the 8 B neutrino spectrum is quite
dramatic, the spectrum of recoil electrons smears out most of this eect
(Fig. 10.18). Notably, above the Kamiokande detection threshold of
about 7 MeV the expected distortion is too small to be detected and
Fig. 10.18. Spectrum of 8 B neutrinos and of recoil electrons. Dotted lines:

Standard spectrum from Fig. 10.12. Solid lines: Surviving e spectrum after
oscillations (suppression factor from Fig. 10.17) and modied electron recoil
spectrum. For oscillations into , one would have to include their neutralcurrent scattering on electrons with a cross section about 16 that of e .
384
Chapter 10
so the spectral shape measured at Kamiokande (Fig. 10.13) does not

further constrain the vacuum oscillation hypothesis.
Barger, Phillips, and Whisnant (1992) as well as Krastev and Petcov (1994) gave precise condence contours in the sin2 2-m2 -plane
where the solar neutrino problems are solved. However, some of the
input information involves large systematic uncertainties so that it is
well possible that, for example, a revised S17 factor would shift the
allowed regions beyond their stated condence contourssee, for example, Berezhiani and Rossi (1995). The main message is that there remain parameters in the quoted range where vacuum oscillations (just
so oscillations) could reconcile all solar ux measurements with the
standard ux predictions, except for the apparent anticorrelation of
the Homestake data with solar activity.
10.6.3
Resonant Oscillations (MSW Eect)
The solar neutrino problem has become tightly intertwined with the issue of neutrino oscillations thanks to the work of Mikheyev and Smirnov
(1985) who showed that even for small mixing angles one can achieve
a large rate of avor conversion because of medium-induced resonant
oscillations. This MSW eect was conceptually and quantitatively
discussed in Sect. 8.3.
For a practical application to the solar neutrino problem two main
features of the MSW eect are of great relevance. One is the bathtubshaped suppression function of Fig. 8.10 which replaces a constant
reduction factor (short-wavelength vacuum oscillations) or the wiggly
shape of Fig. 10.17 (long-wavelength vacuum oscillations). It implies
that e s of intermediate energy can be reduced while low- and highenergy ones are left relatively unscathed. This is what appears to be indicated by the observations with the beryllium neutrinos more strongly
suppressed than the pp or boron ones.
Another important feature are the triangle-shaped suppression contours in the sin2 2-m2 -plane for a xed neutrino energy (Fig. 8.9).
Each experiment produces its own triangular band of neutrino parameters where its measured rate is reconciled with the standard ux prediction. As the signal in dierent detectors is dominated by neutrinos
of dierent energies, these triangles are vertically oset relative to one
another and so there remain only a few intersection points where all
experimental results are accounted for. Therefore, as experiments with
three dierent spectral responses are now reporting data the MSW solution to the solar neutrino problem is very well constrained.
Solar Neutrinos
385
The allowed ranges from the dierent experiments as well as the

combined allowed range are shown in Fig. 10.19 according to the analysis of Hata and Haxton (1995). They used the Bahcall and Pinsonneault (1995) solar model with helium and metal diusion and its uncertainties. The black areas represent the 95% CL allowed range if one
includes all the experimental information quoted in Sect. 10.3, including the GALLEX source experiment. The center of the allowed area
for the Large-Angle Solution is roughly
sin2 2 = 0.6,
m2 = 2105 eV2 ,
(10.24)
while for the Nonadiabatic Solution or Small-Angle Solution it is

sin2 2 = 0.6102 ,
m2 = 0.6105 eV2 .
(10.25)
Both cases amount essentially to the same neutrino mass-square dierence. Other recent and very detailed analyses are by Fiorentini et al.
(1994), Hata and Langacker (1994), and Gates, Krauss, and White
(1995) who nd similar results. In detail, their condence contours
dier because they used other solar models or a dierent statistical
analysis.
A certain region of parameters (dotted area in Fig. 10.19) can be
excluded by the absence of a day/night dierence in the Kamiokande
counting rates which are expected for the matter-induced back oscillations into e when the neutrino path intersects with part of the Earth
at night. (Even though the detector is deep underground in a mine
the overburden of material during daytime is negligible.) The excluded
range of masses and mixing angles is independent of solar modelling as
it is based only on the relative day/night counting rates.
Except for the Kamiokande day/night exclusion region one should
be careful at taking the condence contours in a plot like Fig. 10.19 too
seriously. The solar model uncertainties are dominated by systematic
eects which cannot be quantied in a statistically objective sense. One
of the main uncertain input parameters is the astrophysical S-factor
for the reaction p 7 Be 8 B . Speculating that all or most of the
missing boron neutrino ux is accounted for by a low S17 has the eect
of reducing the best-t sin2 2 of the small-angle solution by about a
factor of 3 while the large-angle solution disappears, at least in the
analysis of Krastev and Smirnov (1994). The best-t m2 , however,
386
Chapter 10
Fig. 10.19. Allowed range of neutrino masses and mixing angles in the neutrino experiments if the ux decit relative to the Bahcall and Pinsonneault
(1995) solar model is interpreted in terms of neutrino oscillations. The experimental data include all summarized in Sect. 10.3. (Plot adapted from
Hata and Haxton 1995.)
is rather stable against variations of S17 (Krastev and Smirnov 1994;

Berezinsky, Fiorentini, and Lissia 1994).
Another approach is to allow S17 to oat freely when performing a
maximum-likelihood analysis, i.e. to t it simultaneously with the neutrino parameters from all solar neutrino experiments (Hata and Langacker 1994). The best-t value is found to be 1.43+0.65
0.42 times the standard 22.4 eV b. Of course, the 95% CL range for the best-t neutrino
parameters is now much larger, allowing any sin2 2 between about
103 and 0.8. Notably the range of allowed large-angle solutions is
vastly increased.
In summary, the hypothesis of neutrino oscillations can beautifully
explain almost all experimental results to date. Only the curious anticorrelation of the Homestake data with solar activity remains unaccounted for. It is interpreted as a statistical uctuation.
Solar Neutrinos
10.7
387
Spin and Spin-Flavor Oscillations
If the anticorrelation between disk-centered magnetic indicators of solar activity and the event rate at Homestake is taken seriously, the only
plausible explanation put forth to date is that of magnetically induced
neutrino spin or spin-avor transitions that were discussed in Sect. 8.4.
It was rst pointed out by Voloshin and Vysotski (1986) that the varying magnetic-eld strength in the solar convective surface layers could
cause a time-varying depletion of the left-handed solar neutrino ux.
A rened discussion was provided by Voloshin, Vysotski, and Okun
(1986a,b) after whom this mechanism is called the VVO solution to
the solar neutrino problem.
Strong magnetic elds may also exist in the nonconvective interior
of the Sun. In principle, they could also cause magnetic oscillations
and thus reduce the solar neutrino ux (Werntz 1970; Cisneros 1971).
However, the amount of reduction would not be related to the magnetic
activity cycle which is conned to the convective surface layers with an
approximate depth of 0.3R 21010 cm = 200,000 km. The oscillation length is given by Eq. (8.53) so that over this distance a complete
spin reversal is achieved for
BT 31010 B kG,
(10.26)
where B = e/2me is the Bohr magneton and BT is the magneticeld strength perpendicular to the neutrino trajectory. Because the
magnetic eld is mainly toroidal, the condition of transversality is automatically satised.
Magnetic spin oscillations in vacuum do not have any energy dependence and so the solar neutrino ux would be reduced by a common
factor for the entire spectrum. However, a large conversion rate is
only achieved if the spin states are nearly degenerate which is not the
case in media where refractive eects change the dispersion relation of
left-handed neutrinos. In the context of spin-avor oscillations, degeneracy can be achieved by a proper combination of medium refraction
and mass dierences (resonant spin-avor oscillations). In this case
the diagonal elements of the neutrino oscillation Hamiltonian involve
energy-dependent terms of the form (m22 m21 )/2E , causing a strong
energy dependence of the conversion probability. Therefore, the measured signals in the detectors as well as the time variation at Homestake
and the absence of such a variation at Kamiokande can all be explained
by a suitable choice of neutrino parameters and magnetic-eld proles
388
Chapter 10
of the Sun.58 The simple estimate Eq. (10.26) remains approximately

valid. A neutrino mass-square dierence m22 m21 below about 105 eV2
is required because of the small matter densities encountered in the convective layers.
The bounds on neutrino dipole and transition moments discussed
12
in Sect. 6.5.6 yield <
310 B so that a magnetic-eld strength
>
B 100 kG is required in the solar convection zone. Typical eld
strengths measured in sunspots where the ux breaks through the surface are of a few kG. While this may not be representative of the largescale toroidal eld, several general arguments suggest that 10 kG is a
generous upper limit (Shi et al. 1993). If there were much stronger
elds they would have to be conned to ux ropes which would not
be eective at inducing neutrino spin oscillations. Therefore, the spin
oscillation scenario would require anomalously large magnetic elds, in
conict with the arguments presented by Shi et al., or dipole moments
in excess of what is allowed by the bounds of Sect. 6.5.6. Even smaller
dipole moments than 31012 B require novel neutrino interactions.
The solar magnetic eld is believed to consist of two opposite ux
tori, separated by the solar equatorial plane. In the course of a year the
line of sight from Earth to the solar core varies between 7 15 solar
latitude and so the neutrinos measured here traverse a eld conguration which varies in the course of a year. The predicted semiannual
ux variation (Voloshin, Vysotski, and Okun 1986a), however, has not
been conrmed by any of the experiments.
In the spin-avor oscillation scenario involving Majorana neutrinos
the Sun would be a source for antineutrinos, some of which could be
e s by a combination of spin-avor (e ) and avor ( e )
oscillations. However, the Kamiokande data already yield restrictive
limits on a solar e ux (Barbieri et al. 1991; see also Fig. 10.14).
In summary, the magnetic spin oscillation scenario requires new neutrino interactions to generate large magnetic dipole moments, and new
astrophysics to allow for suciently strong magnetic elds in the solar convection zone. Neither a semiannual variation of the ux nor e s
have been observed; each would have been a smoking gun for the occurrence of this eect. Therefore, one is led to disfavor the magnetic spin
oscillation scenario. Then, of course, one is back to a statistical uctuation as an explanation for the time structure of the Homestake data.
58
Recent detailed investigations were performed by Akhmedov, Lanza, and Petcov

(1993, 1995), Krastev (1993), Nunokawa and Minakata (1993), Guzzo and Pulido
(1993), and Pulido (1993, 1994). For a review of earlier works see Pulido 1992.
Solar Neutrinos
10.8
389
Neutrino Decay
A decit of solar neutrinos measured at Earth can be related to neutrino

decay. However, the in-ight decay of neutrinos does not provide the
required deformation of the spectrum because the decay rate in the
laboratory system involves a Lorentz factor m /E so that low-energy
neutrinos decay faster. If e is a mixture of mass eigenstates only the
heavier one decays. It is possible that the heavy admixture decays fast
so that the spectrum is reduced by a constant factor. Even this extreme
case does not provide a good t to the data. A detailed analysis of
dierent cases was performed by Acker and Pakvasa (1994) who found
that the in-ight decay solution was ruled out at the 98% CL, even
when allowing for the solar model uncertainties.59
Neutrino decays can yield a solar e ux which is, in principle,
measurable. Such a ux can be produced if neutrinos are Majorana
particles, and if they couple to majorons (Sect. 15.7). Some fraction
of + decays ip the helicity of the neutrino so that the is
eectively a . Thus after an MSW conversion e , one could
have decays , e + (Raghavan, He, and Pakvasa 1988). Even
without oscillations one can have matter-induced decays of the form
e e + as discussed in Sect. 6.8. Detailed predictions for the
e ux for this type of scenario were worked out by Berezhiani et al.
(1992) and by Berezhiani, Moretti, and Rossi (1993). The Kamiokande
detector has already produced limits on solar e s (Fig. 10.14), with
much better limits to be expected from Superkamiokande. However,
in view of other limits on the neutrino-majoron coupling Berezhiani,
Moretti, and Rossi (1993) found that it seemed unrealistic to hope for
a detectable solar e signal.
Malaney, Starkman, and Butler (1994) showed that in decays of
the form + boson, nal-state stimulation eects (neutrino
lasing) could enhance the decay rate. However, the best-motivated
case is that of majoron decays which involve a 5 coupling. The shape
of the resulting majoron spectrum is such that the crucial emission of
low-momentum bosons and thus the lasing eect is suppressed whence
Acker and Pakvasas conclusions remain valid. For models involving
scalar or vector bosons a detailed new analysis is required.
At the present time it looks rather unconvincing that the solar neutrino problem is related to some form of neutrino decays.
59
See Acker and Pakvasa (1994) for references to earlier discussions of neutrino
decay as a potential solution to the solar neutrino problem.
390
Chapter 10
10.9
Future Experiments
10.9.1
Superkamiokande
If some form of neutrino oscillations are the explanation for the measured solar ux decits relative to standard predictions, how are we
ever going to know for sure? One needs to measure a signature which
is characteristic only for neutrino oscillations. The most convincing
case would be a measurement of the wrong-avored neutrinos, i.e.
the or appearance rather than the e disappearance. Other clear
signatures would be a deformation of the 8 B spectrum or a diurnal or
seasonal ux variation.
The latter cases can be very well investigated with the Superkamiokande detector which is scheduled to begin its operation in April of
1996. It is a water Cherenkov detector like Kamiokande, with about
20 times the ducial volume. With about twice the relative coverage
of the surface area with photocathodes and a detection threshold as
low as 5 MeV it will count about 30 events/day from the solar boron
neutrino ux, as opposed to about 0.3 events/day at Kamiokande.
Fig. 10.20. Expected signal at night relative to the average daytime signal in a water Cherenkov detector as a function of the angle between the
Sun and the detector nadir. The large-angle example is for sin2 2 = 0.7
and m2 = 1105 eV2 , the small-angle case for sin2 2 = 0.01 and
m2 = 0.3105 eV2 . Also shown are the existing Kamiokande measurements and the expected Superkamiokande error bars after 1 month and 1 year
of running, respectively. (Adapted from Suzuki 1995.)
Solar Neutrinos
391
The small- and large-angle MSW solutions suggested by Fig. 10.19

would cause a day/night variation of the solar neutrino signal as indicated in Fig. 10.20. The expected signal is shown in bins for the angle
between the Sun and the nadir of the detector, i.e. in bins of the intersection length of the neutrino ight path with the Earth. Also shown
are the current Kamiokande measurements, and the expected error bars
after 1 month and 1 year of Superkamiokande running time, respectively. Shortly after Superkamiokande starts taking data one should be
able to decide whether the large-angle MSW solution applies!
The MSW solutions would also cause a spectral distortion of the recoil electron spectrum from the primary boron neutrinos. The expected
spectral shape relative to the standard one, arbitrarily normalized at an
electron kinetic energy of Te = 10 MeV, is shown in Fig. 10.21 for several values of the assumed mixing angle. After several years of running,
Superkamiokande should be able to identify clearly the small-angle solution if it applies.
If Superkamiokande measures neither a spectral distortion nor a
day/night eect, the deciency of the boron ux probably would have
Fig. 10.21. Spectral distortion of the recoil electrons from the primary boron
neutrinos in a water Cherenkov detector. The ratio relative to the standard
spectrum is arbitrarily normalized at an electron kinetic energy of Te =
10 MeV. For the large-angle example (solid line) the assumed mass-square
dierence is m2 = 2105 eV2 , for the small-angle examples (broken lines)
it is m2 = 0.6105 eV2 . The anticipated error bars after 5 years of
running Superkamiokande are also indicated for two energies. (Adapted
from Krastev and Smirnov 1994.)
392
Chapter 10
to be attributed to a small astrophysical S17 factor. In this case, the explanation for the deciency of beryllium neutrinos could not be resolved
by this detector.
10.9.2
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO)
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), also scheduled to take up

operation in 1996, is a heavy-water Cherenkov detector which is expected to be able to measure the appearance of wrong-avored neutrinos if the MSW eect solves the solar neutrino problems (Sudbury
Neutrino Observatory Collaboration 1987; Lesko et al. 1993). The SNO
detector consists of 1000 tons of heavy water (D2 O) in a spherical acrylic
vessel of 12 m diameter, immersed in an outer vessel of ultrapure light
water (H2 O), surrounded by about 9600 photomultiplier tubes of 20 cm
diameter each. The detector is located 2000 m underground in the
Creighton mine, an operating Nickel mine, near Sudbury in Ontario
(Canada). Neutrinos can be detected by three dierent reactions in
this detector: by electron elastic scattering + e e + and by the
deuterium dissociation reactions e +d p+p+e and +d p+n+.
The electron elastic scattering reaction is analogous to the Kamiokande and Superkamiokande detectors: the recoiling electron is measured by the detection of its Cherenkov light. The eective detection
threshold is expected to be at 5 MeV as in Superkamiokande. This
reaction is sensitive to both e and , , albeit with a reduced cross
section for the latter (Eq. 10.17).
The charged-current deuterium dissociation e d ppe has a threshold of 1.44 MeV, i.e. the nal-state electron kinetic energy is essentially
Te = E 1.44 MeV. The electron is detected by its Cherenkov light;
the eective energy resolution is about 20%. The angular distribution
relative to the incident neutrino is given by 1 13 cos . The cross
section for this reaction is large. For an incident spectrum of boron
neutrinos one expects 9 times more electron counts above 5 MeV than
from electron elastic scattering; above 9 MeV even 13 times as many.
One can search for neutrino oscillations by a spectral distortion of
the electron spectrum, similar to Fig. 10.21 for Superkamiokande. In
fact, the spectral distortion is more pronounced as it is not washed out
by a broad nal-state distribution of electron energies. Also, one can
search for a day/night eect.
The most important detection reaction, however, is the neutralcurrent deuteron disintegration d pn which has the same cross
section for all avors and so it measures the total (left-handed) neutrino
Solar Neutrinos
393
ux above its threshold of 2.2 MeV, independently of the occurrence of

oscillations. The main problem here is the measurement of the nalstate neutron by the detection of rays from the subsequent neutron
capture, or by a neutron detector array in the heavy water. Ultrapure
water, acrylic, and other materials are needed to prevent an excessive
radioactive background that would spoil this measurement. One anticipates to obtain the full unsuppressed 8 B ux with a precision of
about 1% after 5 years of operation. The measured ratio between the
charged-current and neutral-current deuterium disintegration will give
an immediate measure of the electron survival probability and thus of
the occurrence of neutrino oscillations.
If spin or spin-avor oscillations occur such that a sizeable e ux
is produced, it can be detected by the reaction e + d n + n + e+
which produces three detectable particles (Balantekin and Loreti 1992).
Of course, a possible e ux is already constrained by Kamiokande
(Fig. 10.14), and can be detected or constrained by Superkamiokande.
Suggestions for solar model independent methods of analyzing future solar neutrino data were made, for example, by Spiro and Vignaud
(1990), Bilenky and Giunti (1993, 1994), and Castellani et al. (1994).
10.9.3
BOREXINO
Superkamiokande and SNO are both limited to a measurement of the

boron neutrino ux because of their relatively high detection thresholds.
If the boron ux is partly or mostly suppressed by a low S17 factor or
a low central solar temperature instead of neutrino oscillations these
experiments may have diculties at identifying oscillations which would
still be indicated by the missing beryllium neutrino ux. Therefore, it is
interesting that another experiment (BOREXINO60 ) is being prepared
which would be sensitive dominantly to the beryllium neutrinos.
The main detection reaction is elastic -e scattering as in the lightwater Cherenkov detectors. However, the kicked electron is detected by
virtue of scintillation light rather than Cherenkov radiation, the former
60
The name of this experiment is derived from BOREX (boron solar neutrino
experiment), a proposed detector that was to use 11 B as a target (Raghavan, Pakvasa, and Brown 1986; see also Bahcall 1989). For a practical implementation it
was envisaged to use a boron loaded liquid scintillator (e.g. Raghavan 1990); because of the relatively small size of this detector the Italian diminutive BOREXINO
(baby BOREX) emerged. Ultimately, the idea of using a borated scintillator was
dropped entirely, leaving boron only in the name of the experiment. Confusingly,
then, BOREXINO is unrelated to a boron target, and also unrelated to the solar
boron neutrinos because the experiment is designed to hunt the beryllium ones.
394
Chapter 10
yielding about 50 times more light at the relevant energies below about
1 MeV. Naturally, as a target one needs to use an appropriate scintillator rather than water. The advantage of a lowered threshold is bought
at the price of losing all directional information. However, because of
the good energy resolution the monochromatic beryllium neutrinos at
862 keV should be clearly detectable as a distinct shoulder in the energy
spectrum of the recoil electrons. Optimistically, a scintillation detector
could have a threshold as low as E = 250 keV.
The main challenge at implementing this method is to lower the
radioactive contamination of the scintillator, its vessel, and the surrounding water bath to an unprecedented degree of purity. For example, the allowed mass fraction of 238 U of the scintillator is less than
about 1016 g/g. The feasibility of this method is currently being studied at the CTF (Counting Test Facility) experiment, located in the
Gran Sasso underground laboratory. Assuming a positive outcome,
BOREXINO would be built, consisting of 300 tons of scintillator, surrounded by 3000 tons of water. Optimistically, data taking with this
facility could commence in 1997.
10.9.4
Homestake Iodine Detector
Currently, a modular 100-ton iodine detector is under construction in

the Homestake mine. It is similar to the Homestake chlorine detector,
except that it uses the 127 I 127 Xe transition to measure the e ux. It
has an eective threshold of 0.789 MeV, similar to the chlorine detector.
However, for a standard solar neutrino ux the detection rate should
be about four times higher if the cross section calculations are correct.
The currently built detector should take up operation in mid-1995. It
may be expanded at a later time after running experience has been
obtained, and after the neutrino cross sections have been measured
(Bahcall et al. 1995; Engel, Krastev, and Lande 1995).
10.9.5
Summary
The hypothesis of neutrino avor oscillations is strongly supported by

the results of all existing solar neutrino experiments. With the new
generation of detectors which will begin to take up operation in 1996
it looks plausible that nonstandard neutrino properties can be rmly
established on the basis of the solar neutrino ux before the millenium ends.
Chapter 11
Supernova Neutrinos
The general physical picture of stellar collapse and supernova (SN)
explosions is described with an emphasis on the properties of the observable neutrino burst from such events. The measurements of the
neutrino burst from SN 1987A are reviewed. Its lessons for particle
physics are deferred to Chapter 13 except for the issue of neutrino
masses and mixings. Future possibilities to observe SN neutrinos are
discussed.
11.1
Stellar Collapse and Supernova Explosions
11.1.1
Stellar Collapse
A massive star (M >

8 M ) inevitably becomes unstable at the end
of its life. It collapses and ejects its outer mantle in a SN explosion
as briey described in Sect. 2.1.8. Within fractions of a second the
collapsing core forms a compact object at supranuclear density which
radiates its gravitational binding energy Eb 31053 erg within a few
seconds in the form of neutrinos. Gamow and Schoenberg (1940, 1941)
were the rst to speculate that neutrino emission would be a major
eect in the collapse of a star. The only direct observation of neutrinos
from such an event occurred on 23 February 1987 when the blue supergiant Sanduleak 69 202 in the Large Magellanic Cloud exploded in
what became known as SN 1987A. The neutrinos, and possibly other
low-mass particles, emitted from a collapsing star are the main topic of
this chapter, with SN 1987A playing a primary role.
Before an evolved massive star collapses, its core is a degenerate
conguration made up of iron-group elements. They cannot release
nuclear energy by fusion as they are already the most tightly bound
395
396
Chapter 11
nuclei so that no further nuclear burning stage can be ignited. The

precollapse inner iron white dwarf has a mass of about 1.5 M , a
central density of about 3.7109 g cm3 , a central temperature of about
0.69 MeV, and a number fraction of electrons per baryon of Ye 0.42
(Brown, Bethe, and Baym 1982). As the mass of this object grows
and its radius shrinks it reaches its Chandrasekhar limit: relativistic
electrons cannot support a self-gravitating body.
In practice, a thermal pressure contribution cannot be neglected.
The collapse is triggered when the temperature has become so high
that the photodissociation of iron commences, + 56 Fe 13 + 4n, a
reaction which consumes 124.4 MeV of energy. This energy loss reduces
the thermal contribution of the electron pressure. Therefore, compression yields a lesser pressure increase than would occur in the absence
of photodissociation. A star near its Chandrasekhar mass is close to
a point where the increased gravitational pull caused by a small contraction is no longer overcompensated by a large enough push from
the corresponding pressure increase. Therefore, a small reduction of
the adiabatic index ( ln p/ ln )s is enough to cause an instability. Once the collapse has begun, pressure support is also lost by
the capture of electrons on heavy nuclei which amounts to the reaction
e + p n + e . It converts electrons to neutrinos which escape freely.
The inner part of the core (M 0.6 M ) has 34 . Its collapse is
homologous, i.e. it maintains its relative density prole (Goldreich and
Weber 1980). The collapse velocity is proportional to the radius with
v/r = 400 700 s1 , yet it remains subsonic and so this part of the core
is in good communication with itself. The nearly free fall of the outer
part is supersonic.
At a certain density the neutrinos will no longer be able to stream
freely from the core. When their diusion time exceeds a dynamical
collapse time scale they will be trapped (Mazurek 1974, 1975, 1976;
Sato 1975). Neutral-current scatterings on large nuclei are particularly
eective at trapping neutrinos because the cross section is coherently
enhanced (Freedman 1974).61 One nds a trapping density of around
1012 g cm3 for 10 MeV neutrinos (Brown, Bethe, and Baym 1982). The
neutrino trapping radius as a function of time is shown as a dotted line
in Fig. 11.1.
61
Neutrinos with 10 MeV energies cannot resolve the nucleus, causing it to act
as a single scattering center. Because the neutral-current interaction with protons
is reduced by a factor 1 4 sin2 W (weak mixing angle W ) with sin2 W 0.23
(Appendix B), the elastic scattering cross section of a nucleus scales with the square
of the neutron number.
Supernova Neutrinos
397
Fig. 11.1. Schematic picture of the core collapse of a massive star (M >
8 M ), of the formation of a neutron-star remnant, and the beginning of a

SN explosion. There are four main phases numbered 14 above the plot:
1. Collapse. 2. Prompt-shock propagation and break-out, release of prompt
e burst. 3. Matter accretion and mantle cooling. 4. Kelvin-Helmholtz
cooling of protoneutron star. The curves mark the time evolution of several
characteristic radii: The stellar iron core (RFe ). The neutrino sphere (R )
with diusive transport inside, free streaming outside. The inner core
(Ric ) which for t <
0.1 s is the region of subsonic collapse, later it is the
settled, compact inner region of the nascent neutron star. The SN shock
wave (Rshock ) is formed at core bounce, stagnates for several 100 ms, and
is revived by neutrino heatingit then propagates outward and ejects the
stellar mantle. The shaded area is where most of the neutrino emission
comes from; between this area and R neutrinos still diuse, but are no
longer eciently produced. (Adapted from Janka 1993.)
Neutrino trapping has the eect that the lepton number fraction
YL is nearly conserved at the value Ye which obtains at the time of
trapping. However, electrons and electron neutrinos still interconvert
( equilibrium), causing a degenerate e sea to build up. The core of
a collapsing star is the only known astrophysical site apart from the
early universe where neutrinos are in thermal equilibrium. It is the
only site where neutrinos occur in a degenerate Fermi sea as the early
universe is thought to be essentially CP symmetric with equal numbers
of neutrinos and antineutrinos to within one part in 109 . When neutrino
trapping becomes eective, the lepton fraction per baryon is YL 0.35,
398
Chapter 11
not much lower than the initial iron-core value, i.e. not much of the
lepton number is lost during infall. The conditions of chemical and
thermal equilibrium dictate that neutrinos take up only a relatively
small part (about 14 ) of the lepton number (Appendix D.2). A typical
YL prole after collapse is shown in Fig. 11.2
The collapse is intercepted when the inner core reaches nuclear density (0 31014 g cm3 ), a point where the equation of state stiens.
Because the inner core collapse is subsonic, the information about the
central condition spreads throughout, i.e. the collapse of the entire homologous core slows down. However, this information cannot propagate
Fig. 11.2. Snapshots of the proles of temperature T and lepton number

fraction YL in the collapsed core of a massive star. The indicated times are
in seconds after collapse. The shaded arrows in the upper panel indicate
the motion of the temperature maximum. For a soft equation of state the
maximum temperature can be up to about 70 MeV. (Adapted from Burrows
and Lattimer 1986.)
Supernova Neutrinos
399
beyond the sonic point at the edge of the inner core which now encompasses about 0.8 M . As material continues to fall onto the inner core
at supersonic velocities a shock wave builds up at the sonic point which
is at the edge of the inner core, not at its center. As more material
moves in, more and more energy is stored in this shock wave which
almost immediately begins to propagate outward into the collapsing
outer part of the iron coresee the thick solid line in Fig. 11.1. Assuming that enough energy is stored in the shock wave it will eventually
eject the stellar mantle outside of what was the iron core. The rebound
or bounce of the collapse turns the implosion of the core into an
explosion of the outer stara SN occurs.
This bounce and shock scenario of SN explosions was rst proposed by Colgate and Johnson (1960) and then elaborated by a number
of authors (see Brown, Bethe, and Baym 1982 and references therein).
In practice, however, the story of SN explosions appears to be more
complicated than this prompt explosion scenario. Neutrino losses
and the dissociation of the iron material through which the shock wave
propagates dissipate much of the shocks energy so that in typical calculations it stalls and eventually recollapses. It is currently believed that
the energy deposition by neutrinos revives the shock wave, leading to
the delayed explosion scenario detailed in Sect. 11.1.3 below.
11.1.2
Deleptonization and Cooling
After core bounce and the formation of a shock wave the next dramatic step in the evolution of the core is when the outward propagating
shock breaks through the neutrino sphere, i.e. the shell within which
neutrinos are trapped, most eectively by the coherent scattering on
heavy nuclei. As the passage of the shock wave dissociates these nuclei, it is easier for neutrinos to escape. Moreover, the protons newly
liberated from the iron nuclei allow for quick neutronization by virtue
of e + p n + e , causing a short e burst which is often called the
prompt e burst or deleptonization burst (phase No. 2 in Figs. 11.1
and 11.3). However, the material which is quickly deleptonized encompasses only a few tenths of a solar mass so that most of the leptons
remain trapped in the inner core (Fig. 11.2).
At this stage, the object below the shock has become a protoneutron star. It has a settled inner core within the radius where the
shock wave rst formed and which consists of neutrons, protons, electrons, and neutrinos (lepton fraction YL 0.35). The protoneutron
star also has a bloated outer part which has lost a large fraction of
400
Chapter 11
Fig. 11.3. Schematic neutrino lightcurves during the phases of (1) core
collapse, (2) shock propagation and shock breakout, (3) mantle cooling and
accretion, and (4) Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling. (Adapted from Janka 1993.)
its lepton number during the e burst at shock break-out. This outer
part settles within the rst 0.51 s after core bounce, emitting most
of its energy in the form of neutrinos. Also, more material is accreted
while the shock wave stalls. As much as a quarter of the expected total
amount of energy in neutrinos is liberated during this phase (No. 3 in
Figs. 11.1 and 11.3).
Meanwhile, the stalled shock wave has managed to resume its outward motion and has begun to eject the overburden of matter. Therefore, the protoneutron star after about 0.51 s can be viewed as a star
unto itself with a radius of around 30 km which slowly contracts and
cools by the emission of (anti)neutrinos of all avors, and at the same
time deleptonizes by the loss of e s. After 510 s it has lost most
of its lepton number, and slightly later most of its energy. This is
the Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling phase, marked as No. 4 in Figs. 11.1
and 11.3. Afterward, the star has become a proper neutron star whose
small lepton fraction is determined by the condition of a vanishing
neutrino chemical potential (Appendix D.2), and whose further cooling
history has been discussed in Sect. 2.3.
Immediately after collapse the protoneutron star is relatively cold
(see the t = 0 curve in Fig. 11.2). Half or more of the energy to be radiated later is actually stored in the degenerate electron Fermi sea with
typical Fermi momenta of order 300 MeV. The corresponding degener-
Supernova Neutrinos
401
ate neutrino sea has its Fermi surface at around 200 MeV. The lepton
number prole (lower panel of Fig. 11.2) has a step-like form, with the
step moving inward very quickly when the shock breaks through the
neutrino sphere. The quick recession of the lepton prole during the
rst 0.5 s represents deleptonization during the mantle cooling phase.
After this initial phase, however, the bloated outer part of the star
has settled; it is more dicult for neutrinos to escape from this compact
object. Still, the steep gradient of lepton number drives an outward diffusion of neutrinos which move toward regions of lower Fermi momentum and thus, of lower degeneracy energy. Therefore, they downscatter, releasing most of the previous electron and neutrino degeneracy
energy as heat. Hence near the edge of the lepton number step the
medium is heated eciently. In Fig. 11.2 it is plainly visible that the
temperature maximum of the medium is always in the region of the
steepest lepton number gradient.62 Therefore, the medium rst heats
near the core surface, and then the temperature maximum moves inward until it has reached the center. At this time the core is entirely
deleptonized; it continues to cool, the temperature maximum at the
center drops to obscurity.
The neutrino radiation leaving the star has typical energies in the
10 MeV range, compared with a 200 MeV neutrino Fermi energy in the
interior. Therefore, the loss of lepton number by itself is associated
with relatively little energy. Put another way, only a small excess of e
over e is needed to carry away the lepton number. The total energy
is carried away in almost equal parts by each (anti)neutrino avor.
11.1.3
Supernova Explosions
How do supernovae explode? For some time it was thought that the
outer layers of the star were ejected by the momentum transferred from
the outward neutrino ow which is released after the core collapse (Colgate and White 1966). This scenario had to be abandoned after the
discovery of neutral-current neutrino interactions which trap these particles so that they are released only relatively slowly. With the demise
of the neutrino explosion scenario the earlier suggestion of Colgate and
Johnson (1960) of a hydrodynamic shock wave driving the explosion became the standard, the so-called prompt explosion scenario or direct
mechanism. It continued to malfunction, however, because in numerical calculations the shock tended to stall because of energy dissipation
62
I thank David Seckel for explaining this point to me which is not usually stressed
in the pertinent literature.
402
Chapter 11
associated with the dissociation of the remaining iron shell it had to

work through before it could y. Recall that the shock wave forms
relatively deep inside of the collapsing iron core of the progenitor star.
A possible solution is the delayed mechanism (Wilson 1983; Bethe
and Wilson 1985) where the shock wave lingers at a constant radius for
a few 100 ms and then takes o again (Fig. 11.1), powered both by the
accretion of material and by the energy deposition of the neutrino ow.
In this regard the dilute hot region ( of order 106 108 g cm3 , T of
order 1 MeV) below the stalled shock plays a major role at absorbing
neutrino energy.63 Unfortunately, it is not certain that the neutrino
ux can deposit enough energy to revitalize the shock as the energy
transfer is relatively inecient. However, if one adjusts the amount of
neutrino energy transfer to a value above a rather well dened threshold
one obtains beautiful explosions (Fig. 11.4). It should be noted that
the spectacular explosion of a SNwhich at the peak of its lightcurve
outshines an entire galaxyis only a dirt eect relative to the release
of neutrino energy which equals the gravitational binding energy of
the newborn neutron star of about GN M/R 31053 erg with M
1.4 M and R 10 km. The total energy released in the kinetic energy
of the ejecta and in electromagnetic radiation is a few64 1051 erg, on the
order of 1% of the total neutron-star binding energy. Therefore, on
energetic grounds alone there is no problem at tapping the neutrino
ux for explosion energy.
A variety of schemes are currently being discussed to achieve a successful shock revival. It is thought that convection may play a major
role at transporting energy to the surface of the bloated protoneutron
star which has formed after the break-out of the shock (e.g. Burrows
and Lattimer 1988; Wilson and Mayle 1988; Mayle and Wilson 1993;
Burrows and Fryxell 1992, 1993; Janka and M
uller 1993b). It may be
that this mechanism can boost the eective neutrino luminosity for a
few hundred milliseconds, enough in some calculations to trigger an
explosion (see however Bruenn and Mezzacappa 1994). At any rate,
in the absence of a fundamental treatment of convection this method
is essentially one way of parametrizing the initial amount of neutrino
heating below the shock.
63
Goodman, Dar, and Nussinov (1987) proposed that the pair-annihilation process e+ e might be the dominant mode of energy transfer. However, Cooperstein, van den Horn, and Baron (1987) critizised the neutrino emission parameters
of that study while Janka (1991) found that a proper treatment of the phase space
renders this process less ecient than had been originally thought.
64
This unit is sometimes referred to as 1 foe, for ten to the fifty one ergs.
Supernova Neutrinos
403
Convection is also important at transporting energy within the dilute region between the protoneutron star and the stalling shock wave
(Herant, Benz, and Colgate 1992; Herant et al. 1994; Janka and M
uller
1993a, 1994, 1995a,b; Sato, Shimizu, and Yamada 1993; Burrows,
Fig. 11.4. Unsuccessful (upper panel) and successful (lower panel) SN explosion. In each case, the location of several mass shells is shown as a function
of time. The thick shaded line indicates the location of the shock. The only
dierence between the two cases is the adjusted neutrino luminosity from a
central source; it was chosen as L = 2.101052 erg s1 (upper panel) and
L = 2.201052 erg s1 (lower panel), respectively. In the upper case, which
is just below threshold for a successful explosion, the shock displays an interesting oscillatory behavior. (Curves courtesy of H.-T. Janka, taken from
Janka and M
uller 1993a.)
404
Chapter 11
Fig. 11.5. Entropy contours between neutron star and shock wave in a 2dimensional calculation of a SN explosion. The entropy per nucleon is shown
in contours at equal steps of 0.5 kB between 5 and 16 kB , and in steps of 1 kB
between 16 and 23 kB . This snapshot represents model T2c of Janka and
M
uller (1995b) at t = 377 ms after bounce. (Original of the gure courtesy
of H.-T. Janka.)
Supernova Neutrinos
405
Hayes, and Fryxell 1995). For the rst time 2- and 3-dimensional calculations have become possible. They reveal a large-scale convective
overturn (Fig. 11.5) which helps at revitalizing the shock because it
brings hot material from depths near the neutrino sphere quickly up
to the region immediately behind the shock, and cooler material down
to the neutrino sphere where it absorbs energy from the neutrino ow.
Successful explosions can be obtained for amounts of neutrino heating
where 1-dimensional calculations did not succeed. The sharp transition
between failed and successful explosions as a function of neutrino heating that was found in 1-dimensional calculations (Fig. 11.4) is smoothed
out, but neutrino heating still plays a pivotal role at obtaining a successful and suciently energetic explosion.
In summary, then, the current standard picture of SN explosions is
a modication and synthesis of the Colgate and Johnson (1960) shockdriven and the Colgate and White (1966) neutrino-driven explosions.
At the present time there may still remain a quantitative problem at
obtaining enough neutrino energy deposition behind the shock wave to
guarantee a successful and suciently energetic explosion. It remains
to be seen if this scenario withstands the test of time, or if a novel
ingredient will have to be invoked in the future.
11.1.4
Nucleosynthesis
The universe began in a hot big bang which allowed for the formation
of nuclei from the protons and neutrons originally present in thermal
equilibrium with the ambient heat bath. The primordial abundances
froze out at about 2224% helium, the rest hydrogen, and a small
trace of other light elements such as lithium. The present-day distribution of elements was bred from this primeval mix mostly by nuclear
processes in stars; they eject some of their mass at the end of their lives
(Chapter 2), returning processed material to the interstellar medium
from which new stars and planets are born.
However, the normal stellar burning processes can produce elements
only up to the iron group which have the largest binding energy per
nucleon. Thus, the heavy elements must have been produced by different processes at dierent sites. It has long been thought that nuclei with A >
70 were predominantly made by neutron capture, notably the s- and r- (slow and rapid) processes (Burbidge et al. 1957;
Cameron 1957; Clayton 1968; Meyer 1994). The site for the occurrence of the r-process has remained elusive for the past three decades,
although many dierent suggestions have been made. The crux is that
406
Chapter 11
one needs to produce the heavy elements in the observed proportions,

and with a total amount compatible with a plausible galactic history.
It has long been held that the r-process elements were made in SN
explosions; in this case one needs a yield of about 104 M of heavy
elements per SN.
Perhaps the rst realistic scenario that appears to meet these requirements is r-process nucleosynthesis in the hot bubble between a
protoneutron star and the escaping shock wave in a core-collapse SN
explosion at a time of a few seconds after core bounce (Woosley and
Homann 1992; Meyer et al. 1992; Woosley et al. 1994; Witti, Janka,
and Takahashi 1994; Takahashi, Witti, and Janka 1994; Meyer 1995).
The material in this region is very dilute because of the successful explosion, yet very hotaround 109 K or 100 keV in the region where the
r-process is thought to occur. This hot bubble is not entirely empty
because of a neutrino-driven stellar wind. Therefore, one is talking
about a high-entropy environment (a few hundred kB per baryon), i.e.
a large number of photons per baryon (a few ten). For such conditions the required neutron/proton ratio is achieved even for electron fractions of Ye 0.40 typical for the material outside of a collapsed SN core.
This scenario appears to be qualitatively and quantitatively almost
perfect except that the necessary combination of entropy, electron fraction Ye , and expansion time scale do not seem to be quite born out by
current numerical calculations. Whatever the explanation of this problem, it is fascinating that both the occurrence of a successful and suciently energetic SN explosion as well as the occurrence of the r-process
in the high-entropy environment of the hot bubble seem to depend
crucially on the neutrino energy transfer which thus plays a dominant
role in this scenario. One may expect that r-process nucleosynthesis will
turn into a tool to calibrate the neutrino ux from a nascent neutron
star, and perhaps into a tool to study nonstandard neutrino properties (for a rst example see Sect. 11.4.5). In eect, the distribution and
quantity of r-process elements gives us a measure of SN neutrino uxes,
independent of direct observations! This is not unlike big-bang nucleosynthesis where the primeval light-element abundances have been an
extremely useful tool to study the properties of the primordial neutrino
heat bath (Kolb and Turner 1990). At the present time, of course, a
quantitative understanding of SN nucleosynthesis in conjunction with a
quantitative understanding of SN explosions is a eld in its infancyit
remains to be seen if it grows up to be as beautiful as big-bang nucleosynthesis.
Supernova Neutrinos
407
11.2
Predicted Neutrino Signal
11.2.1
Overall Features
One of the most important aspects of SN physics relevant to particle

astrophysics is the immense ux of neutrinos liberated after the core
collapse. This ux has been measured from SN 1987A, and with luck
will be measured again from a galactic SN in the future. Therefore,
it is important to understand the neutrino signal to be expected from
this sort of event.
On a crude level of approximation one can understand the main features of the overall neutrino signal on the basis of very simple physical
principles. The overall amount of energy to be expected is given by the
binding energy of the compact star that formed after collapse
3 G N M2
Eb
= 1.601053 erg
5 R
M
M
)2 (
10 km
.
R
(11.1)
It is reasonable to expect the energy to be equipartitioned among the

dierent neutrino avors and so to expect about 16 Eb in each of the six
standard (anti)neutrino degrees of freedom. (Here and in the following
Newtonian physics is used; general relativistic corrections to energies,
temperatures, etc. as viewed from a distant observer can be as large as
several 10% due to gravitational redshifts.)
Neutrinos are trapped in the interior of the high-density neutron
star. Therefore, they are emitted from the relatively well dened surface
at a radius of 1020 km, depending on the mass and the nuclear equation of state. As long as the material near the surface is nondegenerate
it must support itself against the local gravitational eld by normal
thermal pressure. One may apply the virial theorem (Chapter 1) which
informs us that the average kinetic energy of a typical nucleon near
the neutron-star surface must be half of its gravitational potential, i.e.
2Ekin GN M mN /R (nucleon mass mN ). With a neutron-star mass
of M = 1.4 M and a radius R = 15 km one nds Ekin 25 MeV
or T = 23 Ekin 17 MeV. Therefore, thermal neutrinos emitted from
the neutron-star surface are characterized by a temperature of order
10 MeV.
The duration of neutrino emission is a multiple of the neutrino diffusion time scale over the dimension of the neutron-star radius,
tdi R2 /,
(11.2)
where is a typical mean free path. A typical neutral-current weak
408
Chapter 11
scattering cross section on nonrelativistic nucleons is given by

G2F E2 / = 1.71042 cm2 (E /10 MeV)2 .
(11.3)
Nuclear density (0 31014 g cm3 ) corresponds to a nucleon density

of about 1.81038 cm3 so that 300 cm for 30 MeV neutrinos. This
yields a diusion time scale tdi = O(1 s).
In summary, one expects an energy of about 0.51053 erg to be
emitted in each (anti)neutrino degree of freedom over a time scale of
order 1 sec with typical energies of order several 10 MeV.
11.2.2
Energies and Spectra
These global properties of the expected neutrino signal are broadly

conrmed by detailed numerical calculations of neutrino transport.65
However, there are a number of important ne points to keep in
mind. First, the nonelectron neutrino degrees of freedom , and ,
have smaller opacities; their energies are too low for charged-current
reactions of the sort + p n + + because of the large masses of the
and leptons. These avors decouple at higher densities and temperatures than e and e and so they are emitted with higher average
energies. Equally important, e s have lower energies than e s because
the opacities are dominated by e + n p + e and e + p n + e+ ,
respectively, and because there are fewer protons than neutrons. Typically one nds (Janka 1993)
1012 MeV
for e ,
1417
MeV
for e ,
E =
2427 MeV for

, and , ,
(11.4)
i.e. typically Ee 23 E e and E 53 E e for the other avors.

The number uxes of the nonelectron avors are smaller than those
of e because the energy is found to be approximately equipartitioned
between the avors: the total Ee + e lies between 13 and 12 of Eb . Similarly, the number ux of e is larger than that of e (the lepton number
is carried away in e s!) so that, again, the energy is approximately
equipartitioned between e and e . The total E e is found to lie between
1
and 14 of Eb . The SN 1987A observations were almost exclusively sen6
sitive to the e ux. The total E e inferred from these measurements
65
See, e.g., Burrows and Lattimer (1986); Bruenn (1987); Mayle, Wilson, and
Schramm (1987); Burrows (1988); Janka and Hillebrandt (1989a,b); Myra and
Bludman (1989); Myra and Burrows (1990). For reviews see Cooperstein (1988)
and Burrows (1990a,b).
Supernova Neutrinos
409
must then be multiplied with a factor between 4 and 6 to obtain an

estimate of Eb .
Even though the emission of neutrinos is a quasithermal process
their energies are not set at the neutrino sphere which is dened
to be the approximate shell from where they can escape without substantial further diusion. Of course, even the notion of a neutrino
sphere is a crude concept because of the E2 dependence of the scattering cross section on nonrelativistic nucleons which implies that there is
a separate neutrino sphere for each energy group. The scattering with
nucleons does not allow for much energy transfer apart from recoil effects. What is relevant for determining the neutrino energies is their
energy sphere where they last exchanged energy by the scattering on
electrons, by pair processes, and by charged-current absorption. Naturally, this region lies interior to the neutrino spheresee the shaded
areas in Fig. 11.1 as opposed to the dotted line which represents the
neutrino sphere.
The concept of an energy sphere (where neutrinos last exchanged
energy with the medium) and of a transport sphere (beyond which
they can stream o without further scattering) helps to explain the
apparent paradox that the spectrum is, say, twice as hard as that
of e , yet the same amount of energy is radiated. Both uxes originate
from the same radius of about 15 km so that the Stefan-Boltzmann
law (L R2 T 4 ) would seem to indicate that the ux should carry
16 times as much energy. However, the place to which the StefanBoltzmann law should be applied is the energy sphere, yet the neutrinos
cannot escape from there because the ow is impeded by neutral-current
scattering on an overburden of nucleons. One may crudely think of the
energy sphere being covered with a skin that does not allow the radiation to stream o except through some holes. Thus the eectively
radiating surface is smaller than 4R2 . (For a more technical elaboration of this argument see Janka 1995a.)
Evidently, neutrino transport is a rather complicated problem, especially in the transition region between diusion and free escape. The
most accurate numerical way to implement it would be a Monte Carlo
integration of the Boltzmann collision equation (Janka and Hillebrandt
1989a,b). In practice, this is not possible because of the constraints
imposed by the limited speed of present-day computers so that a variety of approximation methods are used to solve this problem. While
there is broad agreement on the general features of the expected neutrino signal, there remain dierences between the predicted spectra and
lightcurves of dierent authors.
410
Chapter 11
Apart from the highly nontrivial problem of neutrino transport,

the expected signal depends on a variety of physical assumptions such
as the nuclear equation of state which determines the stellar equilibrium conguration and the amount of energy that is liberated, on the
properties of the progenitor star (notably the iron core mass), on the
duration of the accretion phase while the shock stalls, on the treatment
of convection during the rst few 100 ms, and others.
In the Monte Carlo integrations of Janka and Hillebrandt (1989a,b)
the neutrino spectra at a given time are found to be reasonably well
described by the Fermi-Dirac shape
dL
E3
,
dE
1 + eE /T
(11.5)
where T is an eective neutrino temperature and an eective degeneracy parameter. This ansatz allows one to t the overall luminosity by
a global normalization factor as well as the energy moments E and
E2 ; ner details of the spectrum are probably not warranted anyway.
Throughout the emission process, e decreases from about 5 to 3, e
from about 2.5 to 2, and , , , from 2 to 0. This eective degeneracy
parameter is the same for , and , , in contrast with a real chemical
potential which changes sign between particles and antiparticles.
Fig. 11.6. Normalized neutrino spectral distribution according to a MaxwellBoltzmann distribution and a Fermi-Dirac distribution with an eective degeneracy parameter = 2, typical for the Monte Carlo transport calculations of Janka and Hillebrandt (1989a,b). The temperatures are T = 13 E
(Maxwell-Boltzmann) and T = 0.832 13 E (Fermi-Dirac with = 2).
Supernova Neutrinos
411
Figure 11.6 shows a normalized Maxwell-Boltzmann spectrum and

a Fermi-Dirac spectrum with = 2, both for the same average energy E . This choice implies T = 13 E (Maxwell-Boltzmann) and
T = 0.832 13 E (Fermi-Dirac with = 2). What is shown in each
case is the normalized number spectrum, i.e. dN /dE E2 eE /T
(Maxwell-Boltzmann) and E2 /(1 + eE /T ) (Fermi-Dirac). It is apparent that for a xed average energy the Fermi-Dirac spectrum is
pinched, i.e. it is suppressed at low and high energies relative to the
Maxwell-Boltzmann case.
The most important dierence between the two cases is the suppressed high-energy tail of the pinched spectra which causes a significant reduction of neutrino absorption rate. This may be important
for neutrino detection in terrestrial detectors as well as for neutrinoinduced nuclear reactions in the SN mantle and envelope. However,
for the sparse SN 1987A signal the dierences would not have been
overly dramatic. Therefore, in view of the many other uncertainties
at predicting the spectrum most practical studies of neutrino emission
and possible detector signals used simple Maxwell-Boltzmann spectra,
or Fermi-Dirac spectra with a vanishing chemical potential which dier
from the former only in minor detail.
11.2.3
Time Evolution of the Neutrino Signal
The schematic time evolution of the (anti)neutrino luminosities of the

dierent avors was shown in Fig. 11.3. The prompt e burst has relatively high energies (Ee 15 MeV), but the total energy content of
a few 1051 erg renders it negligible relative to the integrated luminosity
of the subsequent emission phases.
The average energies and luminosities of the other avors rise during
the rst few 100 ms while the shock stalls, matter is accreted, and the
initially bloated outer region of the protoneutron star contracts. The
temperature of the region near the edge of the lepton number step
rises substantially during this epoch (Fig. 11.2). During the rst 0.5 s
somewhere between 10% and 25% of the total binding energy is radiated
away; the remainder follows during the Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling phase
of the settled star.
Detailed parametric studies of the Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling phase
were performed by Burrows (1988), and more recently by Keil and
Janka (1995). In these works the expected SN 1987A detector signal
was studied as a function of the assumed nuclear equation of state
(EOS), the mass of the collapsed core at bounce, the amount of post-
412
Chapter 11
bounce accretion, and the temperature prole of the core after collapse.
As expected, a soft EOS leads to a large amount of binding energy
and thus to large integrated neutrino luminosities; a large core mass
or large postbounce accretion rate has a similar eect. A soft EOS
leads to relatively high temperatures during deleptonization, causing
large neutrino opacities and thus long emission time scales. If the EOS
is too soft, or the core mass too large, the nal conguration is not
stable and collapses, presumably to a black hole. This must not occur
too early to avoid conict with the duration of the observed SN 1987A
Fig. 11.7. Luminosity and temperature of the e ux from the protoneutron

star model 55 of Burrows (1988) which is based on a sti equation of state,
an initial baryonic core mass of 1.3 M , and an accretion of 0.2 M within
the rst 0.5 s. The dotted line in the upper panel indicates a t1 behavior,
in the lower panel it indicates et/4 with 10 s. The neutrino spectral
distribution was taken to be thermal.
Supernova Neutrinos
413
signal (Sect. 11.3). However, in some cases studied by Keil and Janka
(1995) with an EOS including hyperons this nal collapse occurs so
late (at 8 s after bounce in one example) that black-hole formation is
dicult to exclude on the basis of the SN 1987A observations, notably
as no pulsar has yet been found there.
Needless to say, with so many parameters to play it is not dicult
to nd combinations of EOS, core mass, accretion rate, and initial
temperatures which t the observed SN 1987A signal well within the
statistical uncertainties of the observations. An example is model 55
of Burrows (1988) which is based on a sti EOS, an initial baryonic
core mass of 1.3 M , and an accretion of 0.2 M within the rst 0.5 s.
The evolution of the eective e luminosity and temperature is shown
in Fig. 11.7. After about 1 s the decay of the temperature is t well by
an exponential et/4 with 10 s while the decay of the luminosity
is poorly t by an exponential; it decays approximately as t1 after 1 s.
For later reference, the time-integrated ux (uence) of this model is
shown in Fig. 11.8.
It must be stressed that the cooling behavior (decrease of the average e energy) shown in Fig. 11.7 may not be generic at early times.
Initially the star is quite bloated, and relatively cold. Therefore, the
Fig. 11.8. Expected e uence (time-integrated ux) from SN 1987A, assuming a distance of 50 kpc, and taking Burrows (1988) model 55 neutrino
luminosity shown in Fig. 11.7. The solid line is for an assumed MaxwellBoltzmann energy spectrum for a given average neutrino energy, the dashed
line for a Fermi-Dirac spectrum with a degeneracy parameter = 2 as
in Fig. 11.6.
414
Chapter 11
initial neutrino ux may be characterized by a decreasing radius (decreasing ux), yet increasing temperature. For an overview of various
model calculations see Burrows (1990b). One should be careful not to
take details of the time evolution of the temperature and luminosity of
any specic calculation too seriously.
11.3
SN 1987A Neutrino Observations
11.3.1
Supernova 1987A
Sheltons (1987) sighting of a supernova (SN 1987A) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way at a
distance from us of about 50 kpc (165,000 ly), marked the discovery
of the closest visual SN since Keplers of 1604. It was close enough
that several underground detectors which were operational at the time
were able to measure the neutrino ux from the core collapse of the
progenitor star, the blue supergiant Sanduleak 69 202. The observed
neutrinos were registered within a few seconds of 7:35:40 UT (universal
Fig. 11.9. Early optical observations of SN 1987A according to the IAU

Circulars, notably No. 4316 of February 24, 1987. The times of the IMB,
Kamiokande II (KII) and Baksan (BST) neutrino observations (23:07:35)
and of the Mont Blanc events (23:02:53) are also indicated. The solid line
is the expected visual brightness, the dotted line the bolometric brightness
according to model calculations. (Adapted, with permission, from Arnett
et al. 1989, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 27,
c 1989, by Annual Reviews Inc.)
Supernova Neutrinos
415
time) on 23 February 1987 while the rst evidence for optical brightening was found at 10:38 UT on plates taken by McNaught (1987)see
Fig. 11.9.
The main neutrino observations come from the Irvine-MichiganBrookhaven (IMB) and the Kamiokande II water Cherenkov detectors,
facilities originally built to search for proton decay, while a less signicant measurement is from the Baksan Scintillator Telescope (BST).
A likely spurious observation is from the Mont Blanc Liquid Scintillator Detector (LSD). It preceded the other observations by about 5 h,
with no contemporaneous signal at Mont Blanc with the other signals,
and no contemporaneous signal at the other detectors with the Mont
Blanc event. The Mont Blanc detector was built to search for neutrinos
from core collapse supernovae, except that it was optimized for galactic events within a distance of about 10 kpc. The neutrino output of
a normal SN in the LMC could not have caused an observable signal
at Mont Blanc; the reported events probably represent a background
uctuation.
Koshiba (1992) has given a lively account of the exciting and initially somewhat confusing story of the neutrino measurements and their
interpretation. Early summaries of the implications for astrophysics
and particle physics of the neutrino and electromagnetic observations
were written, for example, by Schramm (1987), Arnett et al. (1989),
and Schramm and Truran (1990). A more recent review of SN 1987A
is McCray (1993). A nontechnical overview was provided in a book by
Murdin (1990).
For the present purposes the bottom line is that SN 1987A broadly
conrmed our understanding of SN physics as outlined in Sect. 11.1.
A remaining sore point is the lack of a pulsar observation in the SN
remnant so that one may continue to speculate that a black hole has
formed in the collapse.
11.3.2
Neutrino Observations
In the IMB and Kamiokande water Cherenkov detectors neutrinos are

measured by the Cherenkov light emitted by secondary charged particles, e for the relatively low-energy (anti)neutrinos emitted from a
stellar collapse. The IMB detector is now defunct while Kamiokande
continues to measure, for example, solar neutrinos until the much larger
Superkamiokande detector will take up operation in 1996. In the Baksan Scintillator Telescope (BST) one measures the scintillation light
produced by charged secondary particles.
416
Chapter 11
The relevant neutrino interaction processes in water are elastic scattering on electrons (Sect. 10.3.4), and the charged-current reactions
e p n e+ and e 16 O 16 F e (Arafune and Fukugita 1987; Haxton
1987). The cross section for the e p reaction is given by
=
(
)
G2F
cos2 C CV2 + 3CA2 pe Ee (1 + )
= 9.41044 cm2 (1 + ) pe Ee /MeV2 ,
(11.6)
where GF is the Fermi constant and cos2 C 0.95 refers to the Cabibbo
angle. The charged-current vector and axial-vector weak coupling constants are CV = 1 and CA = 1.26, and incorporates small corrections
from recoil, Coulomb, radiative and weak magnetism corrections (Vogel 1984). Further, pe and Ee refers to the positron momentum and
energy. Ignoring recoil eects, the latter is Ee = E mn + mp
E 1.3 MeV; the threshold is 1.8 MeV because the minimum Ee is me .
A general expression for the e 16 O cross section is much more complicated. A simple approximation, taking only the 2 state of the 16 F
nucleus, is
1.11044 cm2 (E /MeV 13)2
(11.7)
(Arafune and Fukugita 1987).
Fig. 11.10. Total cross sections for the measurement of neutrinos in a water
Cherenkov detector according to Eqs. (10.17), (11.6), and (11.7). The curves
refer to the total cross section per water molecule so that a factor of 2 for
protons and 10 for electrons is already included.
Supernova Neutrinos
417
All of the relevant cross sections per water molecule are shown in
Fig. 11.10 as a function of E . The curves incorporate a factor of 2 for
proton targets (two per H2 O), and a factor of 10 for electrons (ten per
H2 O). Above its threshold, the e 16 O cross section rises very fast; it is
then the dominant detection process for e s. Still, the e p reaction is
the absolutely dominant mode of observing SN neutrinos.
The BST detector is lled with an organic scintillator based on
white spirit Cn H2n+2 with n 9. The dominant detection reaction is
also e p ne+ . In addition, elastic scattering on electrons is possible,
and the process e 12 C 12 N e occurs for Ee >
30 MeV.
The trigger eciencies relevant for the three detectors are shown
as a function of the e energy in Fig. 11.11. Analytic t formulae to
these curves were given by Burrows (1988) for IMB and Kamiokande.
IMB reports a dead time of 13% during the SN burst (Bratton et al.
1988); the IMB curve includes a factor 0.87 to account for this eect.
The ducial volume of Kamiokande II relevant for the SN 1987A observations was 2,140 tons, for IMB 6,800 tons, and for BST 200 tons. It
corresponds to a target of 1.431032 protons at Kamiokande, 4.61032
at IMB, and 1.881031 at BST.
With the e p cross section of Eq. (11.6) and the eciency curves
of Fig. 11.11 one may compute a prediction for the number of events
Fig. 11.11. Trigger eciency for electron (positron) detection at the

Kamiokande (Hirata et al. 1988) and IMB (Bratton et al. 1988) water Cherenkov detectors, and the Baksan scintillator telescope (Alexeyev et al. 1988),
relevant for the SN 1987A neutrino observations. In the IMB curve a factor
0.87 is included to account for their reported dead time of 13%.
418
Chapter 11
per energy interval due to the dominant e p reaction in the detectors.

For Kamiokande and IMB an example is shown in Fig. 11.12, based
on Burrows (1988) model 55 ux calculation which was tuned to t
the data. The predicted uence at Earth per unit energy was shown
in Fig. 11.8 where a distance of 50 kpc was adopted. The solid lines
are for the case when the instantaneous e spectra are assumed to be
Maxwell-Boltzmann. Of course, the time-integrated ux is then no
longer thermal as it is a superposition of Maxwell-Boltzmann spectra
at dierent temperatures. The solid line leads to a total expectation
of 13.1 events at Kamiokande and 6.3 at IMB. The dashed lines correspond to spectra which are instantaneously pinched (Fig. 11.6) with
a degeneracy parameter = 2. Again, the time-integrated spectra are
not necessarily pinched. This case leads to 11.6 events at Kamiokande
and 3.9 at IMB.
Fig. 11.12. Expected number of events per energy interval at Kamiokande

and IMB from the SN 1987A e ux on the basis of the e p ne+ reaction.
The ux prediction is based on Burrows (1988) model 55 which was tuned to
t the SN 1987A data. The distance is taken to be 50 kpc, and the detector
eciency curves of Fig. 11.8 are used. The dashed lines refer to neutrino
spectra which are instantaneously pinched as in Fig. 11.6.
Water Cherenkov detectors, as opposed to scintillation ones, are

imaging devices in that they can resolve the direction of the electron
(positron) because of the directionality of the emitted Cherenkov light.
The main limitation is multiple Coulomb scattering of low-energy e
in the medium. A typical path length in water is only a few cm so that
hard collisions are relatively unlikely. The rms angular deviation due
Supernova Neutrinos
419
to multiple scattering varies from about 34 at Ee = 5 MeV to 22 at

20 MeV (Hirata 1991).
The direction of motion of the charged lepton relative to the incident neutrino is well preserved in e collisions (Sect. 10.3.4) so that the
main limitation to a reconstruction of the primary neutrino direction is
multiple Coulomb scattering. For the e p reaction, the angular distribution is isotropic, apart from a small (about 10%) backward asymmetry
(e.g. Boehm and Vogel 1987). The e 16 O reaction yields a distribution
approximately proportional to 1 13 cos , i.e. it is also nearly isotropic
with a backward bias (Haxton 1987). As a SN is expected to produce all
(anti)neutrino avors in about equal numbers, the signal is dominated
by the isotropic e p reaction.
Table 11.1. Neutrino burst at the Kamiokande detector (Hirata et al. 1988).
The time is relative to the rst event at 7:35:35 0:01:00 UT, 23 Feb. 1987.
The energy refers to the detected e , not to the primary neutrino.
Event
Time
[s]
1
2
3
4
5
6a
7
8
9
10
11
12
13a,b
14a,b
15a,b
16a,b
0.000 18 18 20.0 2.9

0.107 40 27 13.5 3.2
0.303 108 32 7.5 2.0
0.324 70 30 9.2 2.7
0.507 135 23 12.8 2.9
0.686 68 77 6.3 1.7
1.541 32 16 35.4 8.0
1.728 30 18 21.0 4.2
1.915 38 22 19.8 3.2
9.219 122 30 8.6 2.7
10.433 49 26 13.0 2.6
12.439 91 39 8.9 1.9
17.641
. . . 6.5 1.6
20.257
. . . 5.4 1.4
21.355
. . . 4.6 1.3
23.814
. . . 6.5 1.6
a Usually
attributed to background.
after Loredo and Lamb (1995).
b Quoted
Angle
[degree]
Energy
[MeV]
420
Chapter 11
Table 11.2. Neutrino burst at the IMB detector (Bratton et al. 1988).
The time is relative to the rst event at 7:35:41.374 0:00:00.050 UT, 23
Feb. 1987. The energy refers to the detected e , not to the primary neutrino.
Event Time
[s]
Angle
[degree]
Energy
[MeV]
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
80 10
44 15
56 20
65 20
33 15
52 10
42 20
104 20
38 7
37 7
28 6
39 7
36 9
36 6
19 5
22 5
0.000
0.412
0.650
1.141
1.562
2.684
5.010
5.582
Table 11.3. Neutrino burst at the Baksan detector (Alexeyev et al. 1987,
1988). The time is relative to the rst event at 7:36:06.571+02.000
54.000 UT, 23
Feb. 1987. The energy refers to the detected e , not to the primary neutrino.
Event
Time
[s]
Energy
[MeV]
0a
1
2
3
4
5
0.000
5.247
5.682
6.957
12.934
14.346
17.5 3.5
12.0 2.4
18.0 3.6
23.3 4.7
17.0 3.0
20.1 4.0
a Usually
The energy of the electron (positron) can be reconstructed from

the total amount of Cherenkov or scintillation light emitted. For small
energies it is roughly proportional to the number of photomultipliers hit
in a given event. Because of the reaction threshold and recoil eects,
the energy of the primary neutrino in the e p ne+ reaction is about
2 MeV larger than the measured e+ energy. For the rare e collisions,
Supernova Neutrinos
421
the nal-state electron energy distribution is broad so that one can infer
only a lower limit to the energy.
The measured events at the Kamiokande (Hirata et al. 1987, 1988),
IMB (Bionta et al. 1987; Bratton et al. 1988), and BST (Alexeyev et al.
1987, 1988) detectors are summarized in Tabs. 11.1, 11.2, and 11.3.
The absolute timing at IMB is accurate to within 50 ms while at
Kamiokande only to within 1 min. At BST, the clock exhibited an
erratic behavior which led to an uncertainty of +2/54 s. Within the
timing uncertainties the three bursts are contemporaneous and may
Fig. 11.13. SN 1987A neutrinos at Kamiokande, IMB, and Baksan. The

energies refer to the secondary positrons, not the pimary neutrinos. In the
shaded area the trigger eciency is less than 30%. The detector clocks have
unknown relative osets; in each case the rst event was shifted to t = 0. In
Kamiokande and Baksan, the events marked with open circles are usually
422
Chapter 11
thus be simultaneously attributed to SN 1987A. The events are shown

in the t-E-plane in Fig. 11.13 and for the Cherenkov detectors in the
cos -E-plane in Fig. 11.14 where is the angle relative to the opposite
direction of the SN, i.e. relative to the direction of the neutrino ux.
In principle, the bursts of events observed in the detectors could be
due to rare background uctuations rather than due to SN 1987A. The
Kamiokande group has performed a detailed analysis of this possibility
by analyzing the multiplicity of events in 10 s time intervals, i.e. the
number of chance events in an arbitrarily chosen 10 s time interval.
They found a probability of about 0.6107 that the observed burst is
a random uctuation of a constant background.
However, there are time-correlated backgrounds, notably the spallation of oxygen induced by primary muons which can cause clusters of
events with large multiplicities; the Kamiokande group found one clus-
Fig. 11.14. SN 1987A neutrinos at Kamiokande and IMB, excluding the ones
which likely are due to background.
Supernova Neutrinos
423
ter of 53 events! Therefore, any cluster following a high-energy muon

would be very suspicious. Performing a cut on the data for this background leaves no burst with multiplicity 3 or larger in several data sets
of several hundred days each (Hirata 1991). Therefore, it is extremely
unlikely that the event cluster 1012 in the Kamiokande data has been
caused by background.
The BST detector has a relatively large background rate. Event
clusters of multiplicity 5 or more within 9 s occur about once per day.
Thus the probability for such a background cluster to fall within a
minute of the IMB and Kamiokande events is about 5104 .
11.3.3
Analysis of the Pulse
Many authors have studied the distribution of energies and arrival times
of the reported events. Probably the most signicant work is that of
Loredo and Lamb (1989, 1995) who performed a maximum-likelihood
analysis, carefully including the detector backgrounds and trigger efciencies. Loredo and Lamb also gave detailed references to previous
works, and in some cases oered a critique of the statistical methodology employed there. Their more extensive 1995 analysis supersedes
certain aspects of the earlier methodology and results.
Because of the small number of neutrinos observed, a relatively
crude parametrization of the time-varying source is enough. Among a
variety of simple single-component emission parametrizations, Loredo
and Lamb (1989, 1995) found that an exponential cooling model was
preferred. It is characterized by a constant radius of the neutrino
sphere, R, and a time-varying eective temperature
T (t) = T0 et/4 ,
(11.8)
so that is the decay time scale of the luminosity which varies with
the fourth power of the temperature according to the Stefan-Boltzmann
law. It should be noted, however, that numerical cooling calculations
do not yield exponential lightcurves. For example, the model shown in
Fig. 11.7 displays an exponential decline of the eective temperature,
but a power-law decline of the neutrino luminosity. Other calculations
even yield early heating and a constant temperature for some time (see
Burrows 1990b for an overview).
Of course, for the time-integrated spectrum the exponential cooling
law is just another assumption concerning the overall spectral shape.
For example, one easily nds that the average e energy of the timeintegrated spectrum is E e = 2.36 T0 if Fermi-Dirac distributions with
424
Chapter 11
= 0 are taken for the instantaneous spectra. The time-integrated

spectrum of the exponential cooling model looks quite similar to the
time-integrated spectrum shown in Fig. 11.8.
Loredo and Lamb also used (R/10 km) (50 kpc/D) g 1/2 as a t
parameter where D is the distance to SN 1987A and g a statistical
weight factor which is unity if only left-handed, massless or low-mass
neutrinos of the three sequential avors are emitted. The registration
time of the rst neutrino in each detector is taken as a free parameter
relative to the arrival time of the rst neutrinos. In the 1995 analysis, Loredo and Lamb included the Baksan signal without event 0
which is attributed to background because it precedes the main bunch
by 5 s.
The following six parameters are then allowed to oat freely in order
to achieve a maximum-likelihood result: T0 , , , to (IMB), to (KII),
and to (BST). All best-t oset times are found to be zero. The other
best-t values are = 4.02, = 4.37 s, and T0 = 3.81 MeV. This
initial temperature of the exponential cooling model corresponds to an
average neutrino energy of the time-integrated ux of E e = 9.0 MeV.
In Fig. 11.15, the 68% and 95% credible regions are shown in the T0 - plane where T0 has been translated into E e which is of greater direct
relevance.
Fig. 11.15. Two-dimensional marginal distribution for the parameters and

E e = 2.36 T0 of the exponential cooling model. (Curves courtesy of Tom
Loredo, taken from Loredo and Lamb 1995.)
Supernova Neutrinos
425
Given these parameters one infers that the number of expected

Kamiokande events is 16.9 plus 5.6 background, 4.0 events at IMB,
and 1.8 plus 1.0 background at Baksan. The inferred best-t neutrinosphere radius is 40.2 km, and the inferred total emitted e energy is
0.841053 erg which corresponds to a total binding energy of the neutron star of 5.021053 erg if exact equipartition of the energy among
the neutrino avors is assumed.
The inferred average neutrino energy, the luminosity-decay time
scale, radius of the source, and total energy emitted all agree reasonably
well with what one expects from a core collapse SN, even though E e
is somewhat low, the radius and inferred binding energy somewhat
large. Of course, all of the inferred quantities carry large uncertainties
because of the sparse data.
Loredo and Lamb (1995) have also considered two-component cooling schemes where the neutrino signal is modelled to consist of KelvinHelmholtz cooling, plus a low-energy component which mimics the neutrinos emitted by the accreting matter during the stalled-shock phase
in the delayed-explosion scenario. With more parameters they naturally nd a better t to the data. More interestingly, the inferred
Fig. 11.16. Two-dimensional marginal distribution for the parameters and

E e = 2.13 T0 of the Kelvin-Helmholtz component of the Loredo and Lamb
(1995) best-t two-component cooling model. The parameters and T0 are
those of a displaced power law as described in the text. (Curves courtesy of
Tom Loredo, taken from Loredo and Lamb 1995.)
426
Chapter 11
neutrino-sphere radius of 18 km and the inferred total binding energy

of 3.081053 erg correspond much better to theoretical expectations.
Perhaps this nding can be taken as a hint that the delayed-explosion
scenario with a signicant matter accretion phase is favored by the SN
1987A data over a prompt-explosion picture.
In Loredo and Lambs best-t two-component model the KelvinHelmholtz signal is described by a displaced power law cooling model
with a neutrino sphere of xed radius R and thermal neutrino emission
with T (t) = T0 /(1 + t/3 ). It turns out that the luminosity, which is
proportional to T 4 , follows a surprisingly similar curve to the exponential et/ so that the parameter has practically the same meaning
as before. E e for the time-integrated ux is given by 2.13 T0 , very
similar to 2.36 T0 for the exponential. In Fig. 11.16 the 68% and 95%
credible regions are shown in the T0 - -plane. While the best-t value
is not too dierent from the single-component exponential model of
Fig. 11.15, the 95% credible region is much larger, including the lowest
values of the typical theoretical E e predictions quoted in Eq. (11.4).
11.3.4
Neutrino Mass and Pulse Duration
Zatsepin (1968) was the rst to point out that the e burst expected
from stellar collapse oers a possibility to measure or constrain small
neutrino masses. Because a neutrino with mass m travels slower than
the speed of light its arrival at Earth will be delayed by
(
t = 2.57 s
D
50 kpc
) (
10 MeV
E
)2 (
m
10 eV
)2
(11.9)
Because the measured e s from SN 1987A were registered within a few

seconds and had energies in the 10 MeV range, the me mass is limited
to less than about 10 eV.
A detailed study must proceed along the lines of the maximumlikelihood analysis of Loredo and Lamb (1989, 1995) quoted in the
previous section where the detector background is included, and such
parameters as the unknown oset times between the detectors are left
unconstrained. Including the possibility that some of the registered
events are due to background is particularly important because the
neutrino mass limit is very sensitive to the early low-energy events at
Kamiokande which have a relatively high chance of being due to background. Loredo and Lamb (1989) found a vanishing best-t neutrino
mass and a 95% CL upper limit of me < 23 eV. This bound is less
restrictive than limits found by previous authors on the basis of less
Supernova Neutrinos
427
thorough statistical analyses. In their 1995 paper, Loredo and Lamb

have not studied neutrino mass limits which likely would change somewhat because of corrections to their previous approach.
An analysis by Kernan and Krauss (1995) on the basis of a similar
method yields a limit 19.6 eV at 95% CL. Apparently, the reduction
of the limit is due to their inclusion of the 13% dead-time eect in
the IMB detector. The dierence to the Loredo and Lamb (1989) limit
illustrates that changing a relatively ne point of the analysis procedure
can signicantly change a so-called 95% CL limit. Therefore, instead
of quoting a specic condence limit it is at present more realistic to
state qualitatively that a violation of the mass limit
m e <
20 eV
(11.10)
would have caused a signicant and perhaps intolerable modication of

the SN 1987A signal.
This limit is weaker than the current bounds from the tritium
decay endpoint spectrum (Sect. 7.1.3). Therefore, the above analysis
can be turned around in the sense that the observed neutrino signal
duration is probably representative of the duration of neutrino emission
at the source. The observed long time scale of Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling
which is indicated by the late IMB and Kamiokande events cannot be
blamed on neutrino dispersion eects. In this context it is interesting
to observe that Loredo and Lamb (1989) also performed a maximumlikelihood analysis with me held xed at their 95% CL upper limit
23 eV. The best-t time scale in an exponential cooling model changed
from 4.15 to 2.96 s. Therefore, even assuming a large value for me did
not allow one to contemplate a signicantly shorter Kelvin-Helmholtz
cooling phase than implied by massless neutrinos.
11.3.5
Anomalies in the Signal?
The distribution of the Kamiokande and IMB events shows a number of

puzzling features. The least worrisome of them is a certain discrepancy
between the neutrino energies observed in the two detectors which point
to a harder spectrum at IMB. The maximum-likelihood analysis in the
exponential cooling model of Loredo and Lamb (1989) was also performed for the two detectors separately. The 95% condence volumes
projected on the T0 -Eb -plane are shown in Koshiba (1992); a similar result is found in Janka and Hillebrandt (1989b). There is enough overlap
between the condence contours to allow for a joint analysis. Still, the
best-t value for Kamiokande lies outside the 95% CL volume of IMB.
428
Chapter 11
Including the pinching eect discussed in Sect. 11.2.2 would enhance

the discrepancy between the signals in the two detectors. Either way,
the IMB detector with its high energy threshold is mostly sensitive to
the high-energy tail of the neutrino spectrum. Therefore, the IMBinferred E e depends sensitively on the assumed spectral shape and
is thus a poor indicator of the true average energies.
A more conspicuous anomaly is the 7.3 s gap between the rst 9
and last 3 events at Kamiokande. Ideas proposed to explain the alleged
pulsed structure of the signal range from the occurrence of a phase
transition in the nuclear medium (pions, quarks) to a secondary collapse
to a black hole. It should be noted, however, that the gap is partially
lled in by the IMB and Baksan data, thus arguing against a physical
cause at the source. The random occurrence of a gap exceeding 7 s with
three or more subsequent events can be as high as several percent, but
naturally it is sensitive to the expected late-time signal (Lattimer and
Yahil 1989).
The most signicant and thus the most troubling anomaly is the
remarkable deviation from isotropy of the events in both detectors, in
conict with the expected signature from e p ne+ which actually
predicts a slight (about 10%) backward bias. LoSecco (1989) found
a probability of about 1.5% that the combined Kamiokande and IMB
data set was drawn from an isotropic distribution. Kielczewska (1990)
analyzed the expected signal from standard SN cooling calculations
and found agreement only at the 0.8% CL with the measured angular distribution. The combined set of IMB plus those Kamiokande
data which are above the IMB threshold, i.e. the combined set of
high-energy events is consistent with isotropy only at the 0.07% level
(van der Velde 1989); the four relevant events at Kamiokande are all
very forward.
The IMB collaboration claims that their reconstruction of the event
direction was not seriously impeded by the outage of about a quarter of
their phototubes due to the failure of a high-voltage supply. They conducted a detailed calibration of their detector to investigate this point
(Bratton et al. 1988). Therefore, one must accept that the forwardpeaked angular distribution shown in Fig. 11.14 is not a problem of the
detectors or the event reconstruction.
A forward-peaked distribution is expected from e elastic scattering
which has a much lower cross section than the e p process (Fig. 11.8).
One expects far less than one event due to e scattering from the cooling phase, although the rst Kamiokande event has sometimes been
interpreted as being a scattering event due to the prompt e burst.
Supernova Neutrinos
429
The forward events in both detectors have relatively large energies

compared with the isotropic ones at Kamiokande,66 contrary to what
would be expected from e e where some of the energy is carried
away by the secondary neutrino. Assuming a larger-than-standard ux
of e s with larger-than-standard energies (LoSecco 1989) does not solve
the problem because above 3035 MeV the process e 16 O 16 F e
takes over (Fig. 11.8) which has a backward bias.
Anomalously large uxes of , or , are dicult to arrange on
energetic groundsthe binding energy of the neutron star is limited.
Even allowing for extreme values of Eb and extreme temperature dierences between (anti)electron neutrinos and the other avors improves
the agreement only marginally; one can achieve an agreement at the
5% CL with the observed angular distribution (Kielczewska 1990). The
simple problem with elastic e scattering to explain the data is that
this process is too strongly forward peaked, especially for high-energy
neutrinos, hence it does not t the data very well either. This is especially true for the IMB events which are selected for high energies by
the detector threshold, and yet are very broadly distributed around the
forward direction.
A very speculative idea was put forth by van der Velde (1989) who
proposed the existence of a new neutral boson X which could produce photons when interacting with nucleons. These MeV photons
would look very similar to charged particles in the detectors. In the
forward direction, the X cross section on 16 O would be coherently enhanced, causing the observed forward bias for high-energy events while
low-energy ones would naturally follow a more isotropic distribution.
However, the opposite process + 4 He 4 He + X would then contribute to the energy-loss of horizontal-branch stars (Raelt 1988b).
The resulting bound on the interaction cross section (Tab. 2.5), valid
at an energy of about 10 keV, excludes van der Veldes scenario unless
increases with energy at least as E 2 , a scaling which could bring it
up to the requisite level for E in the 10 MeV range, relevant for the SN
detection. The Primako conversion of axions or similar particles on
oxygen is much too inecient in view of the restrictive limits on the
axion-photon interaction strength.
In summary, the angular and energy distributions of the IMB and
Kamiokande events appear to indicate a low-energy isotropic and a
66
The Kamiokande events have an obvious correlation between energy and direction. The application of Spearmans rank-ordering test (e.g. Press et al. 1986)
gives a condence level of 0.06% where event No. 6 was excluded as background.
Therefore, the Kamiokande data alone show a fairly signicant angular anomaly.
430
Chapter 11
high-energy forward component; they are not t well by the assumed

dominant detection process e p ne+ which is supposed to yield an
isotropic positron distribution with no directional correlation with energy. Elastic e scattering, however, does not t the data well either
because it is too forward peaked, and anyhow it is disfavored by a small
cross section unless the ux of , or , was extremely high.
However, because no plausible and/or viable nonstandard cause for
the observed events has been proposed one has settled for the interpretation of a statistical uctuation for the apparent anomalies. After all,
it is dicult to imagine a small sample drawn from any distribution
without some anomalies which are easy to overinterpret. Still, if a
reasonable alternative to the standard interpretation of the signal were
to come forth this topic would have to be reconsidered.
11.4
11.4.1
Overview
The expected neutrino signature from a stellar collapse and conversely

the inferred protoneutron star properties from the SN 1987A neutrino
signal both depend on the assumption that nothing happens to the
neutrinos on their way to us. One simple modication of the expected
signal is a dispersion of the e burst caused by a nonvanishing me in
the 10 eV range (Sect. 11.3.4). Dispersion eects could also be caused
by novel interactions with the galactic magnetic eld, dark matter, the
neutrino background, or simply by decays. All of these scenarios require
relatively exotic particle-physics assumptions which can be constrained
by the SN 1987A signal (Chapter 13). The assumption of small neutrino masses and mixings, however, ts into the standard model with
minimal extensions, and may already be implied by the solar neutrino
observations (Sect. 10.6). Therefore, it is prudent not to ignore the
possible impact of oscillations on SN neutrinos.
The most obvious consequence is that the prompt e burst could oscillate into another avor which then would be much harder to observe
because of the reduced -e cross section for non-e avors (Fig. 11.10).
Notably, if the solar e ux is depleted by resonant oscillations one may
expect the same in the SN mantle and envelope where a large range of
densities and density gradients is available. It will turn out, however,
that the small-angle MSW solution to the solar neutrino problem leaves
an observable e burst (Sect. 11.4.2).
Supernova Neutrinos
431
Another interesting possibility is a partial swap e , and e

, by oscillations. Because the energy spectrum of the non-e avors is
much harder than that of e or e , a number of interesting consequences
obtain. First, the detected e s could have larger average energies than
expected. Conversely, the SN 1987A-implied emission temperature and
neutron-star binding energy could be an overestimate of the true values.
It will turn out that one seriously needs to worry about these eects,
for example, if the large-angle MSW solution or the vacuum solution
to the solar neutrino problem obtain, or if the atmospheric neutrino
anomaly is caused by oscillations (Sect. 11.4.3).
Even more importantly, a swap e or e would cause
a more ecient energy transfer from the neutrino ux to the matter
behind the stalled shock after core bounce but before the nal explosion. As enhanced neutrino heating actually appears to be required to
obtain successful and suciently energetic explosions, neutrino oscillations may help to explode supernovae! This scenario works only if
the spectral swap occurs inside of the stalled shock wave. In view of
the relevant medium densities, resonant transitions obtain for neutrino
masses in the cosmologically interesting range of 10100 eV. A mixing
8
angle as small as sin2 2 >
310 would be enough (Sect. 11.4.4).
Hardening the e spectrum by a swap with or , however, can
suppress r-process nucleosynthesis just outside of the nascent neutron
star a few seconds after core bounce. Normally the e spectrum is
harder than the e spectrum, driving equilibrium in the hot bubble to the required neutron-rich phase. The oscillation scenario can
cause the reverse. For this eect the oscillations would need to occur close to the protoneutron star surface and so again a relatively
large neutrino mass-square dierence is required which falls into the
cosmologically interesting range. However, the required mixing angle
5
is larger (sin2 2 >
10 ), leaving ample room for, say, small e -
mixing angles where s with cosmologically relevant masses could
help explode supernovae without disturbing r-process nucleosynthesis (Sect. 11.4.5).
Finally, neutrino oscillations could allow the non-e avors to participate in equilibrium in the inner core and thus build up their own
degenerate Fermi seas. This possibility has been studied in Sect. 9.5
where it turned out that a signicant avor conversion obtains only
for large neutrino masses (keV range and above). Such large masses
are cosmologically forbidden unless neutrinos decay fast into invisible
channels, a hypothesis that would require novel neutrino interactions
beyond masses and mixings (Sect. 12.5.2).
432
Chapter 11
11.4.2
Prompt e Burst
The prompt e burst from a core collapse SN can be detected, in principle, by the forward-peaked signal from the elastic e e ee scattering
in a water Cherenkov detector. In the Kamiokande SN 1987A observations, the rst event could have been caused by the prompt e burst,
but naturally one event contains no statistically signicant information.
It could have been caused by e p ne+ and simply happen to point
in the forward direction. Therefore, the main interest in the prompt e
burst is the possibility that it could be observed from a future galactic
SN by the Superkamiokande or SNO detectors which would yield statistically signicant signatures. A possible oscillation of the e burst
into other avors would reduce the number of forward events because
of the reduced -e scattering cross section of non-e avors (Fig. 11.10).
If the neutrino mass hierarchy is normal where the lightest mass
eigenstate is the dominant e admixture, the medium-induced neutrino
refractive index in the stellar mantle and envelope can cause a mass
inversion and thus level crossing between, say, e and in analogy
to the solar MSW eect. Therefore, one may expect resonant avor
conversion of the prompt e burst in a collapsing star as shown by a
number of authors;67 I follow the analysis of Notzold (1987).
When the shock wave breaks through the neutrino sphere and liberates the prompt e burst, the overlaying part of the progenitor star
has not yet noticed the collapse of its core so that the density prole is
given by that of the progenitor star. The electron density is reasonably
well approximated by a simple power law for which Notzold (1987) used
ne 1034 cm3 r73 ,
(11.11)
where r7 r/107 cm. Note that 107 cm = 100 km is the approximate

radius of the shell from where the e s originate. According to the
discussion in Sect. 6.7.1 the electron
an energy shift
density causes 3
between e and or of V = 2GF ne = 1.310 eV r73 . Comparing this with the energy shift m2 /2p of neutrinos with momentum
p one nds an eective medium-induced eect of m2e = 2p V =
3104 eV2 p10 r73 where p10 = p /10 MeV.
However, because the prompt e burst itself constitutes a large local
e density, the neutrino-induced refractive index may be more important than the standard electron-induced contribution. The total num67
Mikheev and Smirnov (1986), Arafune et al. (1987a,b), Lagage et al. (1987),
Minakata et al. (1987), Notzold (1987), Walker and Schramm (1987), Kuo and
Pantaleone (1988), Minakata and Nunokawa (1988), and Rosen (1988).
Supernova Neutrinos
433
ber of e s in the burst is of order 1056 , its duration of order 50 ms. Thus,
while it passes it represents a e density of about 1032 cm3 r72 which
9
exceeds the local electron density for r >
10 cm. However, the phasespace distribution of the neutrinos is locally far from isotropic and so
the energy shift involves a factor 1 cos where is the angle between the test neutrino and a background neutrino; the average is
to be taken over all background neutrinos (Sect. 9.3.2). A typical angle
between two neutrinos moving within the burst at the same location
is given by the angle subtended by the neutrino sphere as viewed from
the relevant radial position, i.e. R/r with R the radius of the neutrino sphere. For a large r one thus nds 1 cos 2 (R/r)2 .
Then, with R 107 cm the eective neutrino density is approximately
1032 cm3 r74 , a value which is always smaller than the electron density
Eq. (11.11). Therefore, in the present context one may ignore neutrinoneutrino interactions. This will not be the case for the issue of r-process
nucleosynthesis (Sect. 11.4.5).
One may proceed to determine the MSW triangle as in Fig. 8.9
for solar neutrinos, except that there an exponential electron density
prole was used while now Eq. (11.11) pertains. Notzold (1987) found
a conversion probability in excess of 50% if
2
9
m2 sin3 2 >
410 eV E /10 MeV,
(11.12)
2
4
assuming that m2 <
310 eV E /10 MeV so that a resonance can
occur outside of the neutrino sphere. The region in the m2 -sin2 2plane (mixing angle ) with a conversion probability exceeding 50% for
E = 20 MeV is shown as a shaded area in Fig. 11.17, together with
the MSW solutions to the solar neutrino problem. For orientation, the
Kamiokande-allowed range for solar neutrinos is also indicated.
The solar small-angle MSW solution would seem to have a small
impact on the prompt e burst from a collapsing star. Thus, the rst
Kamiokande SN 1987A event may still be interpreted as a prompt e ,
and one may well observe nearly the full e burst from a future SN.
It is interesting that the MSW triangle for the prompt e burst
reaches to relatively large neutrino masses. In the 330 eV regime neutrino masses would play an important cosmological role as dark matter
and for the formation of structure in the universe. Such massive neutrinos likely would mix with e . Unless the mixing angle is very small
the appearance of an unoscillated prompt e burst from a stellar collapse would be in conict with a cosmological role of massive neutrinos
(Arafune et al. 1987b).
434
Chapter 11
Fig. 11.17. MSW triangle for the prompt e burst from a stellar collapse. In
the shaded area the conversion probability exceeds 50% for E = 20 MeV,
assuming the electron density prole of Eq. (11.11). The MSW solutions
to the solar neutrino problem and the Kamiokande allowed range for solar
neutrinos are indicated (see Fig. 10.19).
11.4.3
Cooling-Phase e s
Neutrino oscillations would cause a partial swap e , and e

, so that the measured e ux at Earth could be a mixture of the
original e and or source spectra (Wolfenstein 1987). The energy
spectra of the neutrinos emitted during the Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling
phase are avor dependent (Eq. 11.4); typically, one nds E =
(1.3 1.7) E e . From the SN 1987A measurements one infers a low
value of roughly E e 10 MeV. While the lowest typical predictions
are about 14 MeV, this discrepancy is not a serious problem. However,
it is probably not tolerable that a signicant fraction of the observed
events were due to oscillated s.
One may contemplate an inverted mass hierarchy where the predominant mass component of e is larger than that of, say, . In this
case one would obtain resonant oscillations and thus a complete spectral
swap in the shaded triangle of mixing parameters shown in Fig. 11.17.
Even if E is only 1.3 E e this would be in contradiction with the
soft e energies observed from SN 1987A. Therefore, an inverted mass
scheme looks excluded for a large range of masses and mixings.
Supernova Neutrinos
435
A normal mass hierarchy prevents a level crossing among antineutrinos. Still, if the large-angle or the vacuum solution to the solar neutrino problem obtain, the mixing angle would be so large that
the spectral swapping could still be uncomfortably large. Smirnov,
Spergel, and Bahcall (1994) have considered in detail the probability
for swapping the e with the or spectrum. For vacuum oscillations, relevant for small m2 , the fractional exchange of the spectra
is p = 21 sin2 2 (vacuum mixing angle ) with a maximum of p = 0.5,
i.e. the observed spectrum could be as much as an equal mixture of the
primary ones. In general, medium refractive eects must be included,
although for a large range of m2 one may still take p to be independent of energy. Contours for p in the sin2 2-m2 -plane are shown in
Fig. 11.18. In the shaded area (A) the Earth eect is important so that
the amount of conversion is energy dependent and diers between the
Fig. 11.18. Contours for the swap fraction p between the e and the
or uxes from the protoneutron star cooling phase. The matter eect of
the stellar envelope and of the Earth are included. In (A) the Earth eect is
important; in this area p is an average over neutrino energies while otherwise
it does not depend on the energy. In (B) the exact contours depend on the
detailed matter distribution of the stellar envelope. Black areas indicate
the approximate mixing parameters which would explain the solar neutrino
problem. (Adapted from Smirnov, Spergel, and Bahcall 1994.)
436
Chapter 11
two detectors. In this case the contours refer to an average value p.

In the shaded area (B) the contours are not independent of the detailed
matter distribution in the stellar envelope.
In Fig. 11.18 the large-angle MSW and the vacuum oscillation solutions of the solar neutrino problem are indicated. If either one of them
is correct the measurable e spectrum in a detector is a substantial mixture of dierent-avor source spectra. Smirnov, Spergel, and Bahcall
(1994) argued on the basis of a joint analysis between the SN 1987A
signals at the Kamiokande and IMB detectors that p < 0.170.27 at
the 95% CL, depending on the assumed primary neutrino spectra. If
p were any larger, the expected spectra would be much harder than
has been observed. This analysis excludes the vacuum oscillation solution to the solar neutrino problem. Kernan and Krauss (1995) arrive
at the opposite conclusion that all mixing angles are permitted by the
SN 1987A signal, and that sin2 2 = 0.45 is actually a favored value.
11.4.4
Shock Revival
The swap fraction of the e with the more energetic or spectrum discussed in the previous section is always very small unless the
mixing angle is very large because of the assumed normal mass hierarchy which prevents resonant conversions. By the same token a swap
of the e with the or spectrum will be resonant for certain mixing parameters and so it can be almost complete even for very small
mixing angles. If the resonance is located between the neutrino sphere
and the stalling shock wave after bounce, but before the nal explosion, the shock would be helped to rejuvenate because the higher-energy
, s are more ecient at transferring energy once they have converted
into e s (Fuller et al. 1992). Of course, approximately equal luminosities in all avors have been assumed.
A typical density prole for a SN model 0.15 s after bounce is shown
in Fig. 11.19; the step at a radius of about400 km is due to the shock
front. A resonance occurs if m2 /2E
ne . On the right scale
= 2GF1/2
of the plot the quantity mres ( 2GF ne 2E )
is shown for E =
10 MeV and Ye = 0.5. A resonance occurs inside of the shock wave
only for neutrino masses in the cosmologically interesting regime of
order 10 eV and above. Fuller et al. (1992) have performed a detailed
numerical calculation of the additional heating eect for (m2 )1/2 =
40 eV; they found a 60% increase of the energy of the shock wave.
The conversion probability between neutrinos is large if the adiabaticity parameter dened in Eq. (8.39) far exceeds unity. Accord-
Supernova Neutrinos
437
Fig. 11.19. Typical density prole for a SN model at 0.15

s after the core
bounce (Fuller et al. 1992). The right-hand scale is mres = ( 2GF ne 2E )1/2
which indicates the resonance value for (m2 )1/2 for E = 10 MeV, assuming
an electron number fraction of Ye = 0.5.
ing to the Landau-Zener formula Eq. (8.41) the swap probability is

1 e/2 . It exceeds 86% if one requires > 4/ or
sin2 2 >
8 E
| ln ne |res ,
m2
(11.13)
where the vacuum mixing angle was assumed to be small. For

(m2 )1/2 = 40 eV the density scale height at the resonance region is
| ln ne |1
res 50 km so that
8
sin2 2 >
10 E /10 MeV.
(11.14)
Therefore, unless the mixing angle with e is very small a cosmologically

interesting neutrino mass for, say, the may help to explode supernovae! According to the discussion in Sect. 11.4.2 this would imply that
the prompt e burst would also oscillate. Then the rst Kamiokande
event could not be associated with the prompt e burst.
11.4.5
R-Process Nucleosynthesis
a) Basic Picture
A partial swap of the e cooling ux with the more energetic or
ux can prevent the synthesis of heavy nuclei by the r-process neutron
438
Chapter 11
capture. As discussed in Sect. 11.1.4, the hot bubble between the settled protoneutron star and the escaping shock wave at a few seconds
after core bounce might be an ideal high-entropy environment for this
process for which no other site is currently known that could reproduce
the observed galactic heavy element abundance and isotope distribution. Naturally, the r-process can only occur in a neutron-rich medium
(Ye < 12 ). The p/n ratio in the hot bubble is governed by the reactions e n pe and e p ne+ . Because the neutrino number density
is much larger than the ambient e+ e population the proton/neutron
fraction is governed by the neutrino spectra and uxes. The system
is driven to a neutron-rich phase because normally the e s are more
energetic than the e s. They emerge from deeper and hotter regions of
the star because their opacity is governed by the same reactions, and
because the core is neutron rich, yielding a larger opacity for e .
If an exchange e , occurs outside of the neutrino sphere the
subsequent e ux is more energetic than the e ux which did not
undergo a swap. (A normal mass hierarchy has been assumed.) Even
a partial swap of a few 10% is enough to shift the medium to a protonrich state, i.e. to Ye > 21 , to be compared with the standard values of
0.350.46. Therefore, the occurrence of such oscillations would be in
conict with r-process nucleosynthesis in supernovae (Qian et al. 1993).
Fig. 11.20. Density prole for a SN model at 6 s after the core bounce,
typical for
the hot bubble phase (Qian et al. 1993). The right-hand scale
is mres = ( 2GF ne 2E )1/2 which indicates the resonance value for (m2 )1/2
for E = 10 MeV, assuming Ye = 0.5. (Note that out to a few km above the
neutrino sphere Ye 0.5.)
Supernova Neutrinos
439
The approximate parameter range for which this eect is important

can be estimated from the density prole of a typical SN core a few
seconds after bounce (Fig. 11.20). Again, one expects resonant conversions for the cosmologically interesting neutrino mass range as in the
above shock revival scenario. However, the present eect reaches down
to m of about 3 eV; for smaller masses the oscillations would occur at
radii too large to have an impact on nucleosynthesis.
With regard to the required mixing angle there is an important difference to the previous case because the neutron star has already settled
so that the neutrino sphere is now at a radius of about 11 km rather
than at 50 km. Therefore, the relevant length scales in Fig. 11.20 are
reduced relative to Fig. 11.19 which corresponds to a postbounce but
preexplosion conguration. For example, at mres 40 eV the density
scale height is now | ln ne |1
res 0.3 km, about two orders of magnitude smaller than before so that the lower limit on sin2 2 is about
two orders of magnitude larger than it was for the shock revival scenario. From a more detailed analysis Qian et al. (1993) found the
hatched area in Fig. 11.21 where Ye would be driven beyond 0.5 and so
this area would be in conict with r-process nucleosynthesis in supernovae.
Fig. 11.21. Mass dierence and mixing angle of e with or where a spectral swap would be ecient enough to help explode supernovae (schematically after Fuller et al. 1992), and where it would prevent r-process nucleosynthesis (schematically after Qian et al. 1993; Qian and Fuller 1994).
440
Chapter 11
b) Impact of Neutrino-Neutrino Interactions

The discussion so far has been relatively simplistic because the role of
neutrino-neutrino interactions has been ignored. During the hot-bubble
phase the neutrino refractive index caused by other neutrinos is not necessarily negligible (Pantaleone 1995; Qian and Fuller 1995). In terms of
the neutrino luminosity the number ux and thus the density of neutrinos of a given species at a radius r is given by n = L E 1 (4r2 )1 .
Moreover, as in the discussion in Sect. 11.4.2 one must include an average of the factor (1 cos ) to account for the anisotropy of the neutrino phase space distribution (angle between test and background
neutrino). At a given distance r the neutron star (neutrino sphere
radius R) subtends an angle given by sin R = R/r. For a radially
moving test neutrino one nds (for a more rigorous treatment see e.g.
Qian and Fuller 1995)
1 cos =
1
cos R
1
2
(1 cos ) d cos
(R/r)2
d cos
cos R
(11.15)
which for large r approaches 14 (R/r)2 . Therefore, the eective neutrino

density n 1 cos varies as r4 at large distances.
The electrons and positrons
cause a refractive energy shift between
e and, say, of V = 2GF (ne ne+ ) while the eect of the
neutrinos is
V 2GF (ne n e n + n )1 cos
)
(
L
L
2GF 1 cos
Le
L e
+
.
4r2
Ee E e E E
(11.16)
The tau-avored neutrino contribution has not been included because
it cancels exactly between and . The same is true for the muavored terms before oscillations have taken place. For a test-neutrino
of momentum p one nds numerically
2p V 420 eV2 (10 km/r)2 1 cos
p
51
10 erg s1
L
L
L e
Le
+
.
Ee E e E E
(11.17)
A few seconds after bounce typical values might be Ee = 11 MeV,

E e = 16 MeV, and E = E = 25 MeV, the luminosities can
Supernova Neutrinos
441
be taken to be the same at 31051 erg s1 each, and R = 11 km. For

these conditions the estimated contributions to V from electrons and
neutrinos are shown in Fig. 11.22 as a function of radius.
As long as no swap has occurred the neutrinos do not play a major
role because the contribution of cancels exactly against . Further,
the dierence between e and e is smaller than the electron contribution, and it has the same sign whence it simply causes a slightly larger
eective matter density.
However, on resonance a relatively large number of e s exchange
avor with s so that the neutrino contribution changes sign. Moreover, on resonance the vacuum m2 by denition cancels against the
medium-induced contribution. Therefore, switching on the neutrino
term shifts the resonance position for given vacuum mixing parameters.
Also, in a self-consistent treatment one needs to consider the full non-
Fig. 11.22. Mass splitting between e and (equivalently ) of momentum p = 10 MeV caused by the regular medium (the electrons), and
by dierent neutrino avors according to Eq. (11.17). For the electrons the
density prole of Fig. 11.20 was used with Ye = 0.5; in a real SN core Ye is
much lower near the neutrino sphere so that the thick line would increase
less steeply toward the neutrino sphere than shown here. For the neutrinos,
a luminosity in each degree of freedom of 31051 erg s1 was assumed, the
average energies were taken to be Ee = 11 MeV, E e = 16 MeV, and
E = E = 25 MeV, and the neutrino-sphere radius is 11 km. The
signs of the contributions relative to electrons are: + for e and , for
e and . The contribution of cancels exactly against unless a swap
e has taken place.
442
Chapter 11
linear equations of motion for the neutrino density matrix which causes
an o-diagonal refractive index as discussed in Sect. 9.3.2. Qian and
Fuller (1995) have performed an approximately self-consistent analysis
of this problem. All told, they found that the neutrino-neutrino interactions have a relatively small impact on the parameter space where avor
conversion disturbs the r-process. Within the overall precision of these
arguments and calculations, their nal exclusion plot is nearly identical with the schematic picture shown in Fig. 11.21. Qian and Fullers
ndings are corroborated by a study performed by Sigl (1995a).
c) Summary
In summary, there remains a large range of mixing angles where neutrino oscillations between e and or with a cosmologically interesting mass could help to explode supernovae, and yet not disturb
r-process nucleosynthesis. If one assumes a mass hierarchy with e
dominated by the lightest, by the heaviest mass eigenstate, the cosmologically relevant neutrino would be identied with . It is inter3
<
esting that the relevant range of mixing angles, 3104 <
310 ,
overlaps with the mixing angle among the rst and third family quarks
which is in the range 0.0020.005 (Eq. 7.6). Therefore, a scenario
where a massive plays a cosmologically important role, helps to explode supernovae, and leaves r-process nucleosynthesis unscathed does
not appear to be entirely far-fetched. This scenario leaves the possibility open that the MSW eect solves the solar neutrino problem by
e - oscillations.
11.4.6
A Caveat
All existing discussions of neutrino avor oscillations in SNe were based

on spherically symmetric, smooth density proles. However, there
can be signicant density variations, convection, turbulence, and so
forth. Therefore, it is clear that many of my statements about mediuminduced oscillation eects are provisional. Further studies will be required to develop a more complete picture of SNe and their neutrino
oscillations as 3-dimensional events.
A rst study of SN neutrino oscillations with an inhomogeneous density prole was recently performed by Loreti et al. (1995). They added
a random density eld to the standard smooth prole and studied the
impact on neutrino oscillations. They found that the shock-revival scenario involving MSW oscillations can be signicantly aected in the
Supernova Neutrinos
443
sense that less additional energy is transferred because the stochastic

density eld can prevent a complete swap of the neutrino spectra. On
the other hand, for the r-process prevention a complete swap is not
necessary. Therefore, the mixing parameters for which r-process nucleosynthesis is prevented by oscillations is not signicantly changed, even
if the amplitude of the stochastic density component is as large as 1%.
11.5
Neutrino Propulsion of Neutron Stars
Shortly after the discovery of pulsars (neutron stars) it became clear

that they tend to have the largest peculiar velocities of all stellar populations. Recent determinations of pulsar proper motions by radiointerferometric methods (Bailes et al. 1990; Fomalont et al. 1992; Harrison, Lyne, and Anderson 1993) and by interstellar scintillation observations (Cordes 1986) reveal typical speeds of a few 100 km s1 . Taking into account selection eects against high-velocity pulsars, Lyne
and Lorimer (1994) argued that the mean pulsar velocity at birth was
450 90 km s1 . Associating certain pulsars and SN remnants would
indicate velocities of up to 2000 km s1 (Frail and Kulkarni 1991; Caraveo 1993; Stewart et al. 1993) while the interaction of PSR 2224+65
with its local environment produces a nebula which reveals a transverse
velocity of at least 800 km s1 (Cordes, Romani, and Lundgren 1993).
Therefore, the distribution of pulsar peculiar speeds appears to
have a mean of 400500 km s1 with the largest measured values of
10002000 km s1 . Recall that the galactic rotation velocity is about
200 km s1 , the escape velocity about 500 km s1 . Therefore, the fastest
pulsars will eventually escape from the galaxy. In most cases the migration is away from the galactic disk in agreement with the picture
that pulsars are born in the disk where massive stars can form from
the interstellar gas. However, there seem to be a few puzzling cases of
pulsars which move toward the disk, apparently having formed in the
galactic halo.
Massive stars probably do not form with much larger velocities than
other stars and so pulsars are likely accelerated in conjunction with the
SN collapse that produced them or during their early evolution. One
suggestion for an acceleration mechanism holds that large neutron-star
kick velocities are related to the breakup of close binaries, notably
during the SN explosion of the second binary member (Gott, Gunn,
and Ostriker 1970; Dewey and Cordes 1987; Bailes 1989; see also the
review by Bhattacharya and van den Heuvel 1991).
444
Chapter 11
Another possibility is that the SN explosion itself is not spherically symmetric and thus imparts a kick velocity on the neutron star
(Shklovski 1970). Indeed, as discussed in Sect. 11.1.3 SN explosions
likely involve large-scale convective overturns below and above the neutrino sphere which could lead to an explosion asymmetry of a few
percent, enough to accelerate the compact core to a speed of order
100 km s1 , but not enough to account for the typically observed pulsar
velocities (Janka and M
uller 1994).
An interesting acceleration mechanism was proposed by Harrison
and Tademaru (1975) who considered the rotation of an oblique magnetic dipole which is o-center with regard to the rotating neutron star.
The radiation of electromagnetic power is then asymmetric relative to
the rotation axis and so a substantial accelerating force obtains, enough
to cause velocities of several 100 km s1 . The velocity reached should
not depend on the magnitude of the magnetic dipole moment while its
direction should correlate with the pulsar rotation axis. These predictions do not seem to be borne out by the data sample of Anderson
and Lyne (1983) although the more recent observations may be less
disfavorable to the electromagnetic rocket engine. The correlation
between peculiar velocity and pulsar magnetic moment may now be less
convincing (Harrison, Lyne, and Anderson 1993; Itoh and Hiraki 1994).
Another intriguing mechanism rst proposed by Chuga (1984) relies
on the asymmetric emission of neutrinos (neutrino rocket engine).
Recall that the total amount of binding energy released in neutrinos is
about 31053 erg; because neutrinos are relativistic they carry the same
amount of momentum. If the neutron-star mass is taken to be 1 M ,
and if all neutrinos were emitted in one direction, a recoil velocity of
0.17 c = 5104 km s1 would obtain. Thus an asymmetric emission of
1.5% would be enough to impart a kick velocity of 800 km s1 .
Neutrino emission deviates naturally from spherical symmetry if
large-scale convection obtains in the region of the neutrino sphere.
Janka and M
uller (1994) believe that 500 km s1 is a generous upper
limit on the kick velocity that can be achieved by this method. For a
reliable estimate one needs to know the typical size of the convective
cells as well the duration of the convective phase in the protoneutron
star. To this end one needs to perform a fully 3-dimensional calculation.
No such results are available at the present time.
An asymmetric neutrino emission would also obtain in strong magnetic elds because the opacity is directional for processes involving
initial- or nal-state charged leptons, i.e. URCA processes of the type
e + p n + e or e+ + n p + e . The rates for such processes in the
Supernova Neutrinos
445
presence of magnetic elds were discussed by a number of authors.68

Because of the left-handedness of the weak interaction both neutrinos
and antineutrinos would be emitted preferentially in the same direction
singled out by the magnetic eld. Its eects become substantial only for
eld strengths near and above the critical strength m2e /e = 4.41013 G.
In order to obtain neutron-star kick velocities of several 100 km s1
it appears that magnetic elds several orders of magnitude larger are
required which, however, may possibly exist in some SN cores after
collapse. Also, the asymmetric emission of neutrinos may be aided by
the formation of a pion condensate and perhaps other processes (Parfenov 1988, 1989). Certain special eld congurations seem to allow
for signicantly anisotropic neutrino emission (Bisnovatyi-Kogan and
Janka 1995).
It remains to be seen if suciently anisotropic neutrino emission can
be established as a generic property of a protoneutron stars KelvinHelmholtz cooling phase. Meanwhile, the neutrino rocket engine remains a fascinating speculation for accelerating neutron stars.
11.6
Future Supernovae
The neutrino observations from SN 1987A gave us a wealth of information in the sense that they conrmed the broad picture of neutrino
cooling of the compact object formed after collapse. The data were
much too sparse, however, to distinguish between, say, dierent equations of state or dierent assumptions concerning neutrino transport, or
to detect or signicantly constrain neutrino masses and mixing parameters. Some worry is caused by the apparent anomalies of the SN 1987A
data, notably the angular distribution of the secondary charged particles. No doubt it would be extremely important to observe a SN
neutrino signal with greater statistical signicance, or from a greater
distance. What is the prospect for such an observation?
SN neutrinos can be observed in a number of underground detectors which are operational now or in the near future, or which have only
been proposed. An extensive overview was given by Burrows, Klein,
and Gandhi (1992). Of the experiments which will become operational
within the foreseeable future, the upcoming Superkamiokande water
Cherenkov detector (Sect. 10.9) would yield by far the largest num68
OConnell and Matese (1969a,b); Matese and OConnell (1969); Ivanov

and Shulman (1980, 1981); Dorofeev, Rodionov, and Ternov (1984); Loskutov
(1984a,b); Cheng, Schramm, and Truran (1993).
446
Chapter 11
ber of events. Its ducial mass for the detection of SN neutrinos is

about 32,000 t, to be compared with 2,140 t for Kamiokande, i.e. it has
a target mass about 15 times larger. Thus one may be able to recognize a neutrino signal from a SN perhaps as much as 4 times farther
away than the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is out to about 200 kpc.
However, the closest large galaxy is M31 (Andromeda) at a distance
of about 700 kpc, allowing Superkamiokande (and all other near-future
detectors) to observe SNe only in our own galaxy and in the Large and
Small Magellanic Clouds.
The rate at which SNe occur in our Galaxy as well as in the LMC
is rather uncertain. From observations in other galaxies the rate of
core-collapse SNe in the Milky Way is estimated to be about 7.3 h2
per century with h the Hubble parameter in units of 100 km s1 Mpc1
(van den Bergh and Tammann 1991). Thus, for a low h of order 0.5
one may expect only about 2 such events per century. Roughly the
same number was found in a more recent study by Tammann, Loer,
and Schroder (1994). The record of historical SNe, on the other hand,
suggests a signicantly larger number. Thus it is optimistic, but not
entirely implausible, to hope for an observation within a decade of
Superkamiokande running time. The rate for the LMC is thought to
be about 0.5 per century (Tammann, Loer, and Schroder 1994)one
cannot reasonably expect another SN there within our lifetime.
To reach beyond the limits of our own galaxy and the LMC one
would need much more sensitive (much bigger) detectors. It would not
be enough to go as far as Andromeda because this galaxy appears to
have an anomalously low SN rate (van den Bergh and Tammann 1991).
In order to achieve a SN rate of at least 1 per year one may need to use
the Virgo cluster of galaxies at about 15 Mpc (300 times the distance to
the LMC) although it may be enough to reach to the nearby starburst
galaxies M82 and NGC 253 within about 4 Mpc which have a very high
SN rate because of their high rate of star formation (Becklin 1990).
However, a recent estimate of the SN rate for each of these galaxies is
only about 1 per 10 years (van Buren and Greenhouse 1994).
A novel detection scheme (Cline et al. 1990) that may allow one
to build big enough detectors is based on the neutral-current reaction
+ (Z, N ) (Z, N 1) + n + which can have a much enhanced
cross section in some nuclei due to collective eects; one would detect
the nal-state neutron. The necessary detector volume can be achieved
by using natural deposits of minerals which contain the relevant target
nuclei. Naturally, the main concern would be to reduce sources of
background in order to isolate the feeble signal from a distant SN.
Supernova Neutrinos
447
An even more ambitious goal would be to measure the cosmic e

background ux from all past SNe in the universe. For energies below
around 10 MeV this ux is swamped by many orders of magnitude by
that from the nuclear power plants on Earth. Above a few 10 MeV the
atmospheric neutrino ux would dominate and so there is only a small
window where the cosmic SN ux might be detectable. However, even a
moderately sized (200 tons) scintillation detector located on the moon
would have a chance of measuring this ux because these backgrounds
do not exist there (Mann and Zhang 1990).
Returning to Earth one may speculate about what could be learned
if a galactic SN were indeed observed at Superkamiokande. For the purpose of argument a distance of 10 kpc (5 times closer than the LMC)
is assumed. (Recall that the solar system is at a distance of about
8 kpc from the galactic center.) Then one expects at Superkamiokande
about 4000 events from the reaction e p ne+ , compared with 270
at Kamiokande, and with 12 measured there from SN 1987A (Totsuka
1990). This would be enough to determine a statistically very signicant and very detailed neutrino lightcurve.
Interestingly, one expects about 13 events within the rst few ms
from the prompt e burst. Its presence would indicate that the e s
have not oscillated, say, into s as would be expected for a cosmologically interesting mass (Sect. 11.4.2), thus excluding a large range
of masses and mixing angles (Fig. 11.17). Moreover, the prompt burst
could not have been dispersed by a neutrino mass and so a me bound of
order 1 eV could be derived. A number of other conclusions tentatively
reached for SN 1987A could be armed (Sect. 13.2). The nonobservation of the prompt burst, on the other hand, would be more dicult
to interpret as its absence could have a variety of causes ranging from
neutrino oscillations to some aw in the standard picture of SN collapse.
The e lightcurve which would last, say, 10 s would not allow one to
extract interesting bounds on me relative to the ones already obtained
from SN 1987A and from laboratory experiments. From Eq. (11.9) one
concludes that for a distance D 10 kpc one is sensitive to masses in
the 100 eV range.
In Superkamiokande one would expect to see about 40 events for
each + and + from the elastic -e scattering process. Because
the nal-state electrons are strongly forward peaked one can separate
them from the isotropic e p ne+ signal. Therefore, a or mass
would manifest itself through late forward events. Seckel, Steigman,
and Walker (1991) found that from the signal in water Cherenkov detectors one could be sensitive to a mass down to about 75 eV. Of
448
Chapter 11
course, masses so large and larger are excluded from cosmologysuch

neutrinos would have to be unstable. In order to obey the cosmological limits neutrinos emitted at a distance of 10 kpc would decay before
reaching Earth if their mass exceeds a few 10 keV. Thus, the observation of a galactic SN would allow one, at best, to probe the mass
<
window 100 eV <
m 30 keV. A similar conclusion was reached by
Acker, Pakvasa, and Raghavan (1990) who considered the signature in
the proposed BOREX detector.
It may be possible, however, to probe a somewhat smaller mass
for, say, the down to the cosmologically interesting range of 30 eV
if one takes advantage of all aspects of the observed neutrino signal
(Krauss et al. 1992). Because the late part of the neutrino lightcurve
is expected to be similar for e and the other avors one can hope
to extract the behavior of the source from the e signal. Then one
would be more sensitive to modications of the lightcurve caused by
dispersion eects. However, in order to identify the s one would have
to use energy cuts (e s and s have dierent spectra!) in addition to
angular cuts. In the analysis of Krauss et al. (1992) the possibility of
e oscillations was not included which would weaken the range of
accessible masses because of the modied energy spectra. Of course,
the r-process nucleosynthesis argument of Sect. 11.4.5 would indicate
that MSW oscillations did not take place late even if they took place
early and rendered the prompt e burst unobservable.
Still, a mass relevant for the dark matter content of the universe
as well as for scenarios of structure formation may be much lower than
30 eV. Therefore, on the basis of current analyses the prospect of being
able to recognize a cosmologically relevant or in the neutrino
signal of a galactic SN appears relatively dim.
A far more positive view was taken by Cline et al. (1994) who argued that masses down to 15 eV may be accessible by the simultaneous
operation of Superkamiokande and their previously proposed (Cline
et al. 1990) Supernova Burst Observatory (SNBO) which is based on
neutral-current reactions alone. This would obviate the need to separate the charged-current e n pe+ detection at Superkamiokande
from the neutral-current reaction e e by angular and energy cuts.
One could use the Superkamiokande e signal to monitor the SN neutrino lightcurve, notably its sharp onset, and relate it to the onset of
the neutral-current events at SNBO which would be washed out for
a cosmologically interesting mass of, say, the . One must hope that
SNBO will become a real project in the near future.
Chapter 12
Radiative Particle Decays
from Distant Sources
If neutrinos, axions, or other low-mass particles had radiative decay
channels, the decay photons would appear as x- or -ray uxes from
stellar sources where these particles can be produced by nuclear or
plasma processes. This chapter is devoted to limits on such decays,
including decays into charged leptons, that are based on observational
limits on photon or positron uxes from stellar sources, notably the Sun
and supernova 1987A. For comparison, laboratory and cosmological
limits are also reviewed.
12.1
Preliminaries
This book is largely about the properties of electrically neutral particles

whose electromagnetic interactions are correspondingly weak. However,
because they can virtually dissociate into charged states, they will still
interact with photons through higher-order amplitudes. The focus of
the present chapter is the possibility of radiative decays of the form
(neutrinos) or a (axions), but also e+ e and
e+ e . Cowsik (1977) was the rst to recognize that the huge
path lengths available in the astrophysical environment allow one to
obtain much more restrictive limits on such decays than from laboratory experiments. For example, the absence of single-photon counts in
a detector near a ssion reactor indicates a bound69 /me > 22 s/eV
69
In this chapter will always denote the partial neutrino decay time into radiation while tot is the total decay time if hypothetical invisible channels are included.
1
Then 1 = B tot
with the branching ratio B .
449
450
Chapter 12
on the process e . The corresponding limit based on a comparison between the measured solar neutrino ux and the measured limit
on x- or -rays from the quiet Sun is 7109 s/eV, almost 9 orders of
magnitude more restrictive. Moreover, this method is fully analogous
to a laboratory experiment as it is based on a measured neutrino ux
and a measured upper limit photon ux. To a lesser degree this remark also applies to the even better SN 1987A constraints which are
applicable to all neutrino avors.
In addition, less directly established particle uxes can be used such
as those from the stars in the galactic bulge or from all hydrogenburning stars or supernovae in the universe. Even more indirectly, one
may study the impact of the radiative decay of the cosmic background
sea of neutrinos or axions which are predicted to exist in the framework
of the big-bang theory of the early universe.
Usually, the bounds on thus obtained are presented as limits on the radiative decay time . Even if one does not aim at an immediate theoretical interpretation, however, the signicance of is limited
because it represents a combination of the nal-state phase-space volume and the matrix element. The latter can be expressed in terms
of an eective transition moment e as in Eq. (7.12) of Sect. 7.2.2.
This moment characterizes the interaction strength independently of
phase-space eects, providing a much more direct link between the experimental results and an underlying theory.
A heavy neutrino h with mh > 2me 1 MeV can decay into
e e+ e . This channel is often included in the notion of radiative decays because relativistic charged leptons cause experimental signatures
similar to rays. If this decay proceeds by virtue of a mixing amplitude
Ueh between h and e the rate is given by Eq. (7.9). Therefore, it is
characterized by |Ueh | in a phase-space independent way.
If e is a mixture of dierent mass eigenstates, any e source such
as a power reactor or the Sun produces all components. If their mass
dierences are small one needs to consider in detail the phenomenon of
neutrino oscillations as in Chapter 8. However, if the oscillation length
is much smaller than the distance between the detector and the source,
the neutrino ux can be considered an incoherent mixture of all mass
2
eigenstates; at a reactor this is the case for m2 >
1eV . The ux of
heavy neutrinos from a e source is then given by
Fh (E ) = |Ueh |2 (E ) Fe (E ) .
(12.1)
The velocity (E ) = (1 m2h /E2 )1/2 enters from the phase space of
nonrelativistic neutrinos in the production process. From e sources
451
one can then derive limits on Ueh for any h , even a hypothetical sterile
one, if mh >
1 MeV because it is the same mixing amplitude that allows
for its production in the source and for its h e e e+ decay.
In the following I will discuss radiative lifetime limits from dierent
sources approximately in the order of available decay paths, from laboratory experiments (a few meters) to the radius of the visible universe
(about 1010 light years).
12.2
Laboratory Experiments
12.2.1
Spectrum of Decay Photons
Perhaps the simplest neutrino source to use for laboratory experiments

is a nuclear power reactor which produces a strong e ux from the weak
decays of the uranium and plutonium ssion products. If a detector
is placed at a certain distance from the reactor core one may assume
that the local neutrino ux F (E ) is known (units cm2 s1 MeV1 ).
As a rst step one then needs to compute the expected ux F (E ) of
photons from the decay . The result will also apply to stationary stellar sources such as the Sun while for the short neutrino burst
from SN 1987A one needs to derive a separate expression (Sect. 12.4).
Because the decay is a dipole transition, the general form of the
photon angular distribution in the rest frame of the parent neutrino is
dN /d cos = 12 (1 cos ),
(12.2)
where is the angle between the spin polarization vector and the
photon momentum. For Majorana neutrinos the decay is isotropic,
independently of their polarization, and thus = 0. Similarly for
axion decays, a , as these particles have no spin so that in their
rest frame no spatial direction is favored. For polarized Dirac neutrinos
the possible parameter range is 1 1.
The decay photon has an energy = m m /2 in the rest frame of
the parent neutrinosee Eq. (7.12). If it is emitted in a direction
with regard to the laboratory direction of motion, the energy in the
laboratory frame is E = (E + p cos )/m . Hence,
E = 21 m E (1 + cos ),
(12.3)
where = p /E = (1 m2 /E2 )1/2 is the neutrino velocity. For a lefthanded parent neutrino the spin is polarized opposite to its momentum
so that cos = cos and dN /d cos = 21 (1 + cos ). For a very
452
Chapter 12
relativistic parent neutrino = 1 and so the normalized photon energy

distribution corresponding to Eq. (12.2) is
dN
1
=
dE
m E
E
1 + 2
,
m E
0 < E < m E .
(12.4)
The decays of Majorana neutrinos or axions ( = 0) produce a boxshaped spectrum while for = 1 it is triangle shaped (Fig. 12.1).
Fig. 12.1. Photon spectrum from the decay of a relativistic neutrino (energy E ) according to Eq. (12.4).
A fraction (m /E )(d / ) of neutrinos decay before reaching the

detector if the laboratory lifetime is large compared with the decay
path d . Here, is the rest-frame radiative decay time and E /m
the time dilation factor. Integrating over the neutrino source spectrum
then yields
(
m dE
E
F (E ) =
d
1 + 2
m E
E /m m
F (E )
. (12.5)
E2
Most sources emit either antineutrinos (for example e s from a ssion

reactor) or neutrinos (for example e s from the Sun). In these cases
Eq. (12.5) gives us directly the expected ux as a function of the assumed value for . However, there are some examples for simultaneous
and sources. In those cases one needs to know which value of to
use for if a certain value for has been assumed.
Under very general assumptions the laws of particle physics are
invariant under a simultaneous transformation which takes particles
into antiparticles (charge conjugation C), reects all spatial coordinates
(parity transformation P), and inverts motions (time reversal T). In this
case the CPT theorem states that the masses and total decay times of
453
corresponding particles and antiparticles are the same. However, the

partial decay rates into specic channels need not be identical, and
indeed, K and K show such CP-violating decays: A transformation
under CP leads to a mirror world which is dierent from the one we
live in. Therefore, in the most general case one may only assume that
and have the same total lifetimes while their radiative decay rates
may be dierent.
However, it is common to analyze the available data under the assumption of CP conservation for all neutrino interactions. For the
radiative decay of a polarized in its rest frame, the CP-mirrored decay is one where a polarized with the same spin decays into and
of reversed momenta.70 Therefore, and of the same polarization
are characterized by opposite values for in Eq. (12.2). In the source,
however, the s and s are produced by weak interactions which violate parity maximally. If they are relativistic they both have negative
(left-handed) chiralities which means that the s have negative and the
s positive helicities. Thus, relative to their momentum left-handed
s and s show the same distribution of decay photons so that in
Eq. (12.5) one must use the same for both.
12.2.2
Electron Neutrinos from Reactors
Fission reactors are superb neutrino sources. At a thermal power of

2800 MW, for example, one expects about 51020 e /s. At a distance
of 30 m this corresponds to a ux of about 41012 cm2 s1 , almost a
hundred times larger than the solar e ux of about 6.61010 cm2 s1 .
Reactor e s emerge from many weak decays of the products of the
neutron induced ssion of 235 U and 239 Pu while the ssion of 238 U and
241
Pu contributes less than 10% to the total rate. The spectral distribution can be inferred from a measurement of the corresponding spectra
together with the reasonably well-known distribution of the end point
energies of the ssion products (von Feilitzsch et al. 1982; Schreckenbach et al. 1985). The distribution of e energies per ssion of 235 U and
239
Pu is shown in Fig. 12.2 with a total of about 6 e s per ssion.
An early, relatively crude, but often-quoted (Particle Data Group
1994) limit on the decay e was derived by Reines, Sobel, and
Gurr (1974) on the basis of the upper limit ux in a scintillation detector near the Savannah River reactor (U.S.A.). A weaker but more reli70
A parity transformation P inverts all polar vectors, e.g. momenta, currents,

or electric elds, while it leaves axial vectors unchanged, e.g. angular momenta,
magnetic moments, or magnetic elds.
454
Chapter 12
Fig. 12.2. Spectrum of reactor e s per ssion of 239 Pu and 235 U (von Feilitzsch et al. 1982; Schreckenbach et al. 1985). The width of the lines gives
the total error of the spectra.
able bound was inferred by Vogel (1984) from data taken at the Gosgen
reactor (Switzerland). The most recent analysis is, again, based on
data taken with a scintillation counter at Gosgen (Oberauer, von Feilitzsch, and Mossbauer 1987). From a comparison of the reactor on
with the reactor o photon counts for several energy channels in the
MeV range and using the experimentally established neutrino spectrum
(Fig. 12.2), these authors found the 68% CL lower limits on the e radiative decay times of /me > 22 s/eV for = 1, 38 s/eV for = 0,
and 59 s/eV for = +1. It was assumed that is massless so that
m = 1 in Eq. (12.5). With Eq. (7.12) the = 1 constraint translates
into a bound on the eective electromagnetic transition moment of
e < 0.092 B m2
eV ,
(12.6)
not a very restrictive limit even if e saturates its upper mass bound of
about 5 eV.
Even this weak limit would cease to apply if e and became
nearly degenerate. Therefore, Bouchez et al. (1988) performed an experiment where they searched for optical decay photons at the Bugey
reactor (France). They excluded a certain region in the parameter
plane spanned by /me and m . Their greatest sensitivity was approximately at m = 2105 where they found /me >
0.04 s/eV.
7
2
<
With Eq. (7.12) this is e 10 B /meV which, unfortunately, is irrelevant as a constraint. Hence, for nearly degenerate neutrinos there
455
is no meaningful limit on e from decay experiments. This example

highlights the importance of separating the intrinsic coupling strength,
or the magnitude of the matrix element, from phase-space eects in the
interpretation of such results.
12.2.3
Heavy Neutrinos from Reactors
Considering the decay of e into a dierent neutrino species implies

entertaining the notion of the nonconservation of the electron lepton
number, forcing one to contemplate the possibility of neutrino avor
mixing as well. Therefore, reactors will be sources for other avors
and notably of heavy neutrinos according to Eq. (12.1). The photon
ux from radiative h decays can now be calculated as before, except
that the dwelling time for nonrelativistic h s in the decay volume is
increased by 1 so that the velocity cancels between this factor and
Eq. (12.1). However, the photon spectrum shown in Fig. 12.1 must
be modied for the decays of nonrelativistic neutrinos because < 1
in Eq. (12.3). Therefore, the overall expression for F (E ) becomes
somewhat more involved.
As long as mh <
1 MeV one may treat the h ux as relativistic.
Then the radiative decay limits are the same as for e , except that
they are diminished by the reduced neutrino ux. Thus, the bound
Eq. (12.6) translates into
e < 0.921013 B |Ueh |1 m2
MeV .
(12.7)
With mh up to an MeV this bound has a lot more teeth than the one
on electron neutrinos.
For mh > 2me 1 MeV the decays h e e+ e will become
kinematically possible and probably dominate. The scintillation counters that were used to search for decay photons near a power reactor
are equally sensitive to electrons and positronsfor many purposes
relativistic charged particles may be treated almost on the same footing as rays. Therefore, the same Gosgen data have been analyzed
to constrain the mixing amplitude Ueh (Oberauer, von Feilitzsch, and
Mossbauer 1987; Oberauer 1992). Even more restrictive limits were
obtained from data taken at the Rovno reactor (Fayons, Kopeykin,
and Mikaelyan 1991), and most recently at the Bugey reactor (Hagner
et al. 1995). Note that in this method the same mixing probability
|Ueh |2 appears in Eq. (12.1) to obtain the h ux from a e source, and
in Eq. (7.9) to obtain the decay probability. Hence, the expected e+ e
ux is proportional to |Ueh |4 .
456
Chapter 12
In Fig. 12.3 the excluded range of masses and mixing angles71 is

shown together with similar constraints from other neutrino sources.
The reactor bounds are weaker than those from the Sun and SN 1987A,
but they remain important because of the short decay path involved!
If one accepts the big-bang nucleosynthesis bounds (Sect. 7.1.5) the
total lifetime must be so short that it would not escape from the mantle
of a SN before decaying, and perhaps not even from the Sun.
12.2.4
Neutrinos from a Beam Stop
Another powerful laboratory source for both e s and s is a beam

stop where neutrinos are produced from the decay of stopped pions,
+ + and the subsequent decay of stopped muons, + e+ e .
In a recent experiment of this sort (Krakauer et al. 1991), the neutrino intensity was 4.31013 /s with a total of 8.521019 . In these
decays the has a xed energy of (m2 m2 )/2m = 29.8 MeV
while the other normalized spectra are (3/Y 4 )(3Y 2E )E2 for
and (12/Y 4 )(Y E )E2 for e with Y 21 m = 52.8 MeV. For e ,
the 90% CL radiative lifetime limit as a function of the anisotropy
parameter is /me > (15.9 + 9.8 + 0.32 ) s/eV, somewhat less
restrictive than the reactor results.
For and one obtains slightly dierent limits because of the
dierent source spectra. Under the assumption of CP invariance the
radiative lifetimes for and are the same. In this case the combined
limit is /m > (36.3 + 21.65 + 0.752 ) s/eV while the individual
limits are about half this value. In terms of an eective transition
moment the most conservative case ( = 1) yields
e < 0.11 B m2
eV .
(12.8)
For the admixture of other mass eigenstates this result may be translated in a fashion analogous to the discussion of reactor neutrinos.
Beam-stop neutrinos from meson decays may also be used to constrain the e+ e decays of heavy admixtures. Because of the larger
amount of available energy one may probe higher masses for h while
the reactor bounds drop out above a few MeV because of the relatively
soft spectrum. In Fig. 12.3 the most restrictive such constraints are
summarized.
It is customary to display |Ueh |2 when constraining the mixing parameters of
heavy, decaying neutrinos while one shows sin2 2eh for light, oscillating neutrinos
as in Chapter 8. For easier comparison I always use the mixing angle. Recall that
|Ueh | = sin eh so that for small mixing angles sin2 2eh = 4|Ueh |2 .
71
457
Fig. 12.3. Bounds on e -h mixing from the absence of h e e+ e decays.

Meson decays: (a,b) Leener-Rosier et al. (1986) and (c) Bryman et al. (1983).
Reactor neutrinos: (d) Hagner et al. (1995). Absence of reactor neutrino
oscillations: (e) Zacek et al. (1986). Absence of solar positrons: Toussaint
and Wilczek (1981); see also Sect. 12.3.2.
These results are based on e sources which produce h by their

mixing which also leads to the subsequent h e e+ e decay. Of the
known sequential neutrinos h can be identied only with 3 , the dominant mass component of with an allowed mass of up to 24 MeV.
If one makes this identication, stronger limits are obtained from direct 3 sources. One example is the beam stop at the Big European Bubble Chamber (BEBC) where a strong ux of charmed strange
mesons72 Ds was produced which subsequently can decay as Ds
besides the dominant hadronic modes (WA66 Collaboration 1985). According to Babu, Gould, and Rothstein (1994) who quote a private
communication from the WA66 collaboration, a model-independent
constraint from the BEBC experiment is /m3 > 0.15 s/MeV or
e < 1.1103 B m2
eV .
(12.9)
Another constraint is e+ e /m3 > 0.18 s/MeV. As a constraint on

the mixing amplitude, |Ue3 |2 < 1.6105 m6
MeV , it is weaker than those
shown in Fig. 12.3. However, as it is based on a direct ux it is valid
even if the decays are not induced by mixing but by exotic intermediate
states (Babu, Gould, and Rothstein 1993).
72
The Ds used to be called F as in the quoted reference.
458
Chapter 12
12.3
Particles from the Sun
12.3.1
Electron Neutrinos
Like a terrestrial power reactor, the Sun is a prolic neutrino source except that it emits e s rather than e s. The expected spectrum as well
as the relevant measurements were discussed in Chapter 10. Suce
it to recall that the solar neutrino ux is now experimentally established without a shred of doubt. There remain signicant discrepancies
between the predicted and measured spectral shape of the spectrum
which may be explained by neutrino oscillations. However, the solar
neutrino problem is a ne point in the context of the present discussion because the following results depend mostly on the low-energy
pp ux.
One may proceed exactly as in the previous section in order to translate the solar neutrino spectrum shown in Fig. 10.1 into an expected
ux of x- and -rays from the Sun. In Fig. 12.4 I show this ux at Earth
for /me = 10 s/eV (about the laboratory lifetime limit) and for the
values 1 for the anisotropy parameter . The spectrum as shown is
based on the calculated neutrino ux. The shoulders corresponding to
other than the pp neutrinos likely would have to be reduced somewhat.
The magnitude of the photon ux is enormous because the decay path
d is the entire distance to the Sun of 1.51013 cm = 500 s.
The quiet Sun is a signicant source of soft x-rays from the quasithermal emission of the hot corona at T 4.5106 K. The ux measurements of Chodil et al. (1965) are marked as open diamonds in
Fig. 12.4. The ux of decay photons in Fig. 12.4 would outshine the
solar corona by some 4 orders of magnitude! Moreover, the corona
spectrum falls o sharply at larger energies. In the hard x- and soft
-ray band very restrictive upper limits exist on the emission of the
quiet Sun that are shown in Fig. 12.4. They are based on balloonborne detectors own many years ago (Frost et al. 1966; Peterson et al.
1966). These upper limits are still far above the estimated albedo (radiation from cosmic rays hitting the surface of the Sun), leaving much
room for improvement. Alas, the quiet Sun is not an object of great
interest to -ray astronomers and so more recent measurements do not
seem to exist.
In order to respect these measured upper limit photon uxes one
must shift the decay spectrum in Fig. 12.4 down by about 8 orders of
magnitude (thin solid line in Fig. 12.4). This yields a lower radiative
9
liftime limit for e of /me >
710 s/eV (Cowsik 1977; Raelt 1985).
459
Fig. 12.4. Spectrum of photons from the solar neutrino decay e for
the indicated values of the anisotropy parameter . Measurements of the
x-ray emission of the solar corona (open diamonds) according to Chodil et
al. (1965). Upper limit x- and -ray uxes according to Frost et al. (1966)
and Peterson et al. (1966). Estimated albedo according to Peterson et al.
(1966). Thin solid line: Maximally allowed photon spectrum from neutrino
decay. (Figure adapted from Raelt 1985.)
With Eq. (7.12) this translates into

e < 5106 B m2
eV .
(12.10)
It must be stressed, again, that the recent progress in solar neutrino

astronomy has placed this result on the same footing as a terrestrial
experimentthe magnitude of the solar neutrino ux and its main
spectral features are now experimentally established!
460
Chapter 12
This bound is diminished if e and are nearly degenerate so that

in Eq. (7.12) m 1. The structure of the photon ux as a function of
m in Eq. (12.5) is such that for m < 1 the spectrum can be obtained,
in a doubly logarithmic representation such as Fig. 12.4, by shifting
it to the left and upward by the amount | log m | each, the shape
itself remaining unchanged (Raelt 1985). The excluded regime in the
plane of /me and m is shown in Fig. 12.5 (left panel). Again, it
is more appropriate to express these limits in terms of e and m by
virtue of Eq. (7.12), leading to Fig. 12.5 (right panel). As expected, for
xed me the limits on e quickly degrade with small m .
Fig. 12.5. Excluded parameters for e from the Sun for nearly degenerate neutrino masses (adapted from Raelt 1985).
A limit on /me similar to the solar one can be obtained from

the central bulge of the galaxy. Within 2.5 kpc it contains a luminosity
of about 21010 L and thus a neutrino luminosity similarly enhanced.
With its distance of (8.70.6) kpc it is about 2109 times farther away
from us, leading to a much smaller local neutrino ux than that from
the Sun. However, the neutrino decay path is also 2109 times larger.
Even though the neutrino ux scales with the inverse of the distance
squared from the source, the ux of decay photons scales only with the
inverse distance! Therefore, the local ux of decay photons would be
larger than the solar one by perhaps a factor of ten. The measured hard
x- and soft -ray ux from the central region of the galaxy is similar
in magnitude to the upper limit solar ux so that one obtains a similar
constraint on radiative decays. Because no dramatic improvement is
expected a detailed analysis is not warranted. However, a substantial
improvement is achieved by considering all hydrogen-burning stars in
the universe as a source (Sect. 12.6).

12.3.2
461
Heavy Neutrino Admixtures
In full analogy to the case of reactor experiments the solar bound

Eq. (12.10) can be reinterpreted as a limit on radiative decays of heavy
e admixtures. To this end one interprets meV = mh /eV and introduces
the factor |Ueh |1 on the r.h.s. of Eq. (12.10). It must be stressed, however, that this simple procedure is only applicable to mh <
30 keV
because the main part of the solar neutrino spectrum is relatively soft.
<
In the remaining range of interest, 30 keV <
mh 1 MeV, the h ux is
partly suppressed. Moreover, a large fraction of it will be nonrelativistic or only moderately relativistic so that the ux of decay photons will
have a nonnegligible angular divergence. The detectors used to derive
the constraints shown in Fig. 12.4 had a limited forward aperture of
about 0.15 sr, relevant in the energy range 18185 keV (Peterson et al.
1966), and 1 sr, relevant in the energy range 163774 keV (Frost et al.
1966). Therefore, a certain part of the photon ux that would have
come from angles relatively far away from the Sun would have been cut
out, weakening the bounds on radiative decays of h .
For mh > 2me one would, again, expect the decay h e e+ e
to dominate. For mh up to about 14 MeV one may use the 8 B neutrinos from the Sun as a source spectrum. The ux of interplanetary
positrons from cosmic ray secondaries is measured to be approximately
104 cm2 s1 sr1 MeV1 at kinetic energies of about 5 MeV. Interpreting this ux as an upper limit to possible decay positrons from
solar neutrinos, Toussaint and Wilczek (1981) derived
210
5
|Ueh |2 <
210
3106
(mh = 2 MeV),
(mh = 5 MeV),
(mh = 10 MeV).
(12.11)
Because they used the theoretically expected rather than the experimentally measured solar 8 B neutrino ux I have discounted their original numbers by a factor of 3. These bounds are included in Fig. 12.3;
in the applicable mass range they are more restrictive than those from
laboratory experiments. They are valid only if the h ux is not diminished by invisible decay channels on its way between Sun and Earth, i.e.
the total h (laboratory) lifetime must exceed about 500 s. Because in
the mass range of a few MeV the time dilation factor for about 10 MeV
neutrinos is not large, the bounds apply for total h lifetimes exceeding
about 100 s. Such long-lived MeV-mass neutrinos are in conict with
the big-bang nucleosynthesis constraints shown in Fig. 7.2.
462
12.3.3
Chapter 12
New Particles
Besides neutrinos, stars can also produce other weakly interacting particles by both plasma and nuclear processes. With a temperature of
about 1.3 keV in the solar center the former reactions would produce a
relatively soft spectrum and so I focus on nuclear reactions where MeV
energies are available. If the new particle is a boson and if it couples
to nucleons, it will substitute for a photon with certain relative rates r
in reactions with nal-state -rays. A short glance at the nuclear reaction chains shown in Fig. 10.2 reveals that a particularly useful case is
p + d 3 He + with E = 5.5 MeV. This reaction occurs about 1.87
times for every 4 He nucleus produced by fusion in the Sun and so it
must occur about 1.71038 s1 . A certain fraction of the particles produced will be reabsorbed or decay within the Sun. If their probability
for escaping is p the Sun emits r p 1.71038 s1 of the new objects.
If the new particle is a scalar boson a it will have a decay channel
a 2. Because this decay is isotropic in as rest frame the spectrum
of decay photons is box-shaped (Fig. 12.1) with an upper endpoint of
5.5 MeV. If a fraction q of the particles decays between the Sun and
Earth the local ux is r p q 2.21010 cm2 s1 MeV1 . The upper limit
photon ux shown in Fig. 12.4 at 5.5 MeV is 0.8103 cm2 s1 MeV1
(Peterson et al. 1966). From there, Raelt and Stodolsky (1982) found
the general upper bound r p q < 41014 . They also calculated r, p,
and q for the specic case of standard axions and were able to derive
a strong limit on the properties of this hypothetical particle. Together
with many laboratory constraints (Particle Data Group 1994) standard
axions are now entirely excluded, the main motivation to consider invisible axions instead (Chapter 14).
12.4
Supernova 1987A
12.4.1
Decay Photons from Low-Mass Neutrinos
The most signicant constraints on radiative particle decays from stellar

sources can be derived on the basis of the neutrino burst from supernova
(SN) 1987A. The neutrino observations and their interpretation were
discussed in Chapter 11. For the present purpose it is enough to know
that the neutrinos arrived in a short burst lasting a few seconds with
a total emitted energy per avor of about 11053 erg = 6.21058 MeV.
For e the measured spectral distribution is consistent with a thermal
463
emission at Te 4 MeV so that the uence73 of s plus s per avor

was about
F = 1.41010 cm2 (4 MeV/T ) ,
(12.12)
taking E = 3T . Approximately the same result is thought to apply

to and with about 1.31.7 times the temperature, although for
those avors there is no direct measurement.
Because SN 1987A occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)
at an approximate distance of dLMC = 50 kpc = 1.51023 cm an enormous decay path was available for the neutrinos from this measured
source. A very restrictive upper limit photon ux was provided by the
gamma ray spectrometer on the solar maximum mission (SMM) satellite which was operational at the time of the neutrino signal and did
not register any excess counts above the normal background. In order to use this result one needs to compute the expected signal from
neutrino decay. Because one is dealing with a short neutrino burst the
previous results for stationary sources do not apply directly: the time
structure of the expected photon burst must be taken into account.
This is easy when the mass of the parent neutrino is below about
40 eV; the pulse dispersion is then not much larger than the duration
of the observed e burst. Because for low-mass neutrinos the decay
photons have essentially the same time structure as the neutrino burst
one considers the uence for a time interval of about 10 s around the
rst neutrino arrival. The non-e avors could be heavier if they violate
the cosmological mass limit of a few 10 eV. Then the photon pulse will
be correspondingly stretched, a case to be studied in Sect. 12.4.4 below.
If the neutrino masses are not degenerate so that in Eq. (12.5)
m = 1 the expected dierential uence is
F (E )

m
= F
dLMC
dE
E
1 + 2
E
(E )
,
E2
(12.13)
where (E ) F (E )/F is a normalized spectrum (units MeV1 ).

For this expression CP conservation was assumed so that s and s are
characterized by the same values of and as discussed in Sect. 12.2.1.
73
With uence one means the time-integrated ux. In this book I use the symbol F for a dierential particle ux (cm2 s1 MeV1 ), the symbol F for a uence
(cm2 ), and F = dF/dE for a dierential uence which includes spectral information (cm2 MeV1 ).
464
Chapter 12
Fig. 12.6. Expected uence of photons from the decay of low-mass

SN neutrinos according to Eq. (12.15) with m / = 1015 eV/s and the
indicated neutrino temperatures. The shaded bands for each temperature
are for the range 1 +1 with the harder edge corresponding to
= +1. Also shown are the upper limits from the GRS channels taken from
the 10 s column of Tab. 12.1.
Because details of the spectral form are not known it is easiest to

use a Boltzmann distribution as a generic case,
(E ) =
E2 eE /T
.
2T3
(12.14)
Then one nds explicitly74

F (E ) = F
]
m dLMC [
(1
)
e
+
2
E
()
,
1
2T2
(12.15)
where E /T . In Fig. 12.6 this spectrum is shown for T = 4 and

8 MeV with m / = 1015 eV/s. The envelopes of the shaded bands
in Fig. 12.6 correspond to = 1 where for each temperature the
harder edge corresponds to = +1.
The observational constraints give a limiting uence for certain
energy bands. Thus one needs the expected uence for a given energy
74
The exponential integral function is dened as En (x) =

that En () = 0 while for n > 1 En (0) = (n 1)1 .
dt ex t /tn . Note
465
range (E,1 , E,2 ) for which one nds by integration of Eq. (12.15)
F,1,2
} 1
m dLMC {
(1 ) e + 2 [ E2 () + E3 ()] ,
= F
2T
2
(12.16)
where the expression in braces is meant to be taken as a dierence

between the two limits for . For 1 = 0 and 2 = it is equal
to 1, independently of , as it must because the angular distribution of
photon emission leaves the total number of decay photons unchanged.
12.4.2
SMM Observations
The gamma ray spectrometer (GRS) on the SMM satellite consists of

seven NaI detectors surrounded on the sides by a CsI annulus and at
the back by a CsI detector plate (Forrest et al. 1980). The three energy
bands shown in Tab. 12.1 have been analyzed for -ray emission from
SN 1987A (Chupp, Vestrand, and Reppin 1989; Oberauer et al. 1993).
At the detection time of the rst neutrino event at IMB (7:35:41.37 UT)
the GRS was observing the Sun. A time interval of 223.232 s until it
went into calibration mode was used to search for a photon signal above
background in each energy band. The background was determined by
analyzing the rates measured during an interval of 151.6 s before the
rst neutrino event. In Fig. 12.7 the recorded number of events per
2.048 s is shown in each band as a function of time. No excess counts
were found in any of them and the distributions of the rates are in good
agreement with a Gaussian shape.
Because the GRS was observing the Sun, -rays associated with
the neutrino burst would have hit the instrument almost exactly from
the side and so they had to traverse about 2.5 g cm2 of spacecraft aluminum before being recognized in one of the detectors. This eect
has been included to calculate the eective detector areas which allow
one to convert counts into a -ray uence. In Tab. 12.1 the corresponding 3 limits are shown for the time until 223.232 s after the rst
neutrino arrival (Oberauer et al. 1993). In order to constrain low-mass
neutrinos, only a time interval of 10 s around the burst is of interest;
the corresponding limits are also given (Chupp, Vestrand, and Reppin 1989). The uence limits (cm2 ) can be expressed as limits on an
average dierential uence (cm2 MeV1 ) by dividing with the width
E of a given channel. For the 10 s column they are shown as dotted
histograms in Fig. 12.6 while for 223.2 s they are shown in Fig. 12.13.
466
Chapter 12
Fig. 12.7. Event rates measured in the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS)
of the Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) satellite encompassing the observed
neutrino burst of SN 1987A (the dashed line is for the rst neutrinos observed
in the IMB detector). The time interval for each bin is 2.048 s. The rates to
the left of the dashed line are used to determine the background while the
ones to the right would include photons from neutrino decay. (Figure from
Oberauer et al. 1993 with permission.)
Table 12.1. GRS 3 upper uence limits.
Channel Energy Band Fluence Limit [cm2 ]

[MeV]
(10 s)a
(223.2 s)b
1
2
3
a Chupp,
4.16.4
1025
25100
0.9
0.4
0.6
6.11
1.48
1.84
Vestrand, and Reppin (1989)

et al. (1993)
b Oberauer
For the 10 s and 223.2 s time intervals one can compute an average
ux limit (cm2 s1 ) for each channel. Then one expects that for the
longer time interval it is more restrictive by the ratio of (t)1/2 , i.e. by
(10 s/223.2 s)1/2 = 0.21. This expectation is approximately borne out
by the data in Tab. 12.1, conrming their consistency.

12.4.3
467
Radiative Decay Limit: Low-Mass Neutrinos
We are now armed to derive a radiative lifetime limit for low-mass

neutrinos (m <
40 eV) by comparing the expected uence according to
Eqs. (12.12) and (12.16) for channels 1, 2, and 3 with the observational
upper limits given in Tab. 12.1 for a 10 s time interval surrounding
the observed SN 1987A e burst. Depending on the assumed neutrino
spectral distribution which was parametrized by T and the anisotropy
parameter , dierent channels give the most restrictive limits. These
are shown in Fig. 12.8 as a function of T for = 0, 1.
For normal neutrinos the relevant temperature range is between
4 and 8 MeV. In Fig. 12.8 a much larger range is shown because one
may also consider the emission of sterile neutrinos or axions from the
deep interior of a SN core where temperatures of several 10 MeV and
Fermi energies of several 100 MeV are available (Sect. 12.4.6).
For Dirac neutrinos the most conservative case is = 1 where
<
for 4 MeV <
T 8 MeV the bound is approximately constant at
15
/m > 0.810 s/eV. Therefore, it applies equally to e and lowmass and . For Majorana neutrinos ( = 0) the limit is more
restrictive by a factor of 23, depending on the assumed T . With
Eq. (7.12) the most conservative overall limit75 ( = 1) translates into
e < 1.5108 B m2
eV .
(12.17)
It applies if the total laboratory lifetime exceeds the time of ight of

5.71012 s from the LMC to us. With a typical E = 20 MeV one must
5
require tot /m >
310 s/eV in the neutrino rest frame.
If the total lifetime is shorter than this limit all neutrinos decay
before they reach the Earth. Therefore, one can only derive a limit on
the branching ratio B of the radiative channel. One easily nds that
Eq. (12.13) is to be replaced by
F (E )
= F B
dE (1 + 2 E /E ) (E )/E . (12.18)
Therefore, using the same Boltzmann source spectrum the photon spectrum is slightly harder. Going through the same steps as before one
nds the upper limits on B as a function of the assumed T and
75
Somewhat stronger constraints found in the literature were based on a less detailed analysis, notably with regard to the spectral dependence and the dependence
on . Published results are /m > 0.831015 s/eV (von Feilitzsch and Oberauer
1988), 1.71015 (Kolb and Turner 1989), 6.31015 (Chupp, Vestrand, and Reppin
1989), and 2.81015 (Bludman 1992).
468
Chapter 12
5
>
Fig. 12.8. Lower limit on /m for m <
40 eV and tot /m 510 s/eV
(most neutrinos pass the Earth before decaying).
Fig. 12.9. Upper limit on the radiative branching ratio B for m <
40 eV
5
<
and tot /m 510 s/eV (most neutrinos decay between SN 1987A and
Earth).
shown in Fig. 12.9. The most conservative case yields approximately

B < 31010 . As a bound on an eective transition moment this is
1/2
e < 0.7105 B m2
,
eV (meV /s )
(12.19)
where s = tot /s. Of course, if tot became so short that the neutrinos
would decay while still within the envelope of the progenitor even this
469
weak limit would not apply. This is the case for lab <
Renv 100 s
(envelope radius Renv of the progenitor star) and so with E 20 MeV
5
one needs to require tot /m >
10 s/eV.
12.4.4
Decay Photons from High-Mass Neutrinos
For high-mass neutrinos with m >

40 eV a calculation of the photon
uence is more involved because of the dispersion of the neutrino burst
and the corresponding delay of the decay photons. The parent neutrino
travels with a velocity = (1 m2 /E2 )1/2 1 m2 /2E2 so that it
arrives at Earth with a time delay of about (m2 /2E2 ) dLMC relative
to massless ones; here, dLMC = 50 kpc = 5.11012 s is our distance
to the LMC where SN 1987A had occurred. With T 6 MeV for
or an average neutrino energy is 3T 20 MeV, spreading out
the arrival times of massive neutrinos over an approximate interval of
102 s (m /eV)2 . As the radiative decay may occur anywhere between
the LMC and here, the arrival times of the decay photons will be spread
out by a similar amount even though the photons themselves travel
with the speed of light. Thus for m <
40 eV all decay photons fall
within about a 10 s time window around the arrival time of the rst
e ; the results of Sect. 12.4.3 apply to this case. For m <
200 eV
they fall within the 223.2 s interval for which GRS uence limits exist.
Therefore, one may easily scale the previous limits to this case by using
the 223.2 s uence limits in Tab. 12.1 instead of the 10 s ones. Of course,
for a given neutrino mass there would be an optimum time window for
which uence limits could be derived on the basis of the original data.
For larger masses only a certain portion of the photon pulse falls
into the 223.2 s window. In order to calculate this fraction, I follow
Oberauer et al. (1993) and begin with the simple case where all neutrinos are emitted at the same time with a xed energy E . The radiative decay occurs at a time tD after emission and thus at a distance
dD = tD from the source (neutrino velocity ), and the photon is emitted at an angle lab relative to the neutrino momentum (Fig. 12.10).
It has to travel a distance d until it arrives here; elementary geometry yields d = [d2LMC d2D (1 cos2 lab )]1/2 dD cos lab . Therefore,
relative to the rst (massless) neutrinos the photons are delayed by
t = tD + d dLMC . This delay has two sources: The parent moves
with a speed less than that of light, and the photon is emitted at an
angle so that a detour is taken from the LMC to us. For ultrarelativistic parents both eects disappear as the relativistic transformations
squeeze all laboratory emission angles into the forward direction.
470
Chapter 12
Fig. 12.10. Geometry of the radiative neutrino decay.
The photons which arrive rst are the ones from decays near the
source. Then the limit dD dLMC leads to d = dLMC dD cos lab and
t = tD (1 cos lab ). With cos lab = ( + cos )/(1 + cos ) where
is the angle of photon emission in the parent frame one nds
t=
tD
,
+ x)
2 (1
(12.20)
where = E /m is the neutrino Lorentz factor and x cos . Therefore, photons detected between t and t + dt result from decays at
tD = 2 (1 + x) t during an interval dtD = 2 (1 + x) dt. (Recall
that t is measured after the rst massless neutrinos arrived while tD
is measured after emission at the source.) The number of parent neutrinos diminishes in time as etD /tot with tot the total decay time.
Therefore, the number of photons traversing a spherical shell of radius
dLMC per unit time is
(1 + x) (1+x) t/tot
N (t) =
e
,
(12.21)
where as before is the radiative decay time.

Photons produced before the parent has left the envelope of the
progenitor star (radius Renv ) cannot be detected at Earth. If this
absorption eect is to be included, Eq. (12.21) will involve a step
function76 (dD Renv ) with dD = tD = 2 (1 + x) t. Put another way, photons emitted at an angle in the rest frame will rst
arrive at a time t0 = Renv [ 2 (1 + x)]1 . The progenitor of SN 1987A
has been unambiguously identied as the blue supergiant Sanduleak
69 202 (Schramm and Truran 1990). From its surface temperature
(15,000 K), its luminosity (51038 erg/s) and the distance to the LMC
one can infer its radius to be Renv 31012 cm = 100 s. Using this
76
The step function is dened by (z) = 0 for z < 0 and (z) = 1 for z > 0.
471
value, t0 is shown in Fig. 12.11 as a function of the neutrino velocity

for several values of x = cos . The absorption eect is negligible
except for nonrelativistic neutrinos or for backward emission which, in
the laboratory frame, corresponds to very soft photon energies.
Fig. 12.11. Arrival time t0 of rst decay photons from a parent neutrino
with velocity , taking the envelope radius of the source to be Renv = 100 s.
The curves are marked with the respective values of x = cos , the direction
of photon emission in the neutrino rest frame.
In the parent frame the photons (energy ) follow a normalized

distribution f (, x) which yields d3 N (t, , x) = N (t) f (, x) dt d dx
with N (t) from Eq. (12.21). The usual relativistic transformations
lead to a laboratory photon energy of E = (1 + x) . Transforming
from ddx to ddE and integrating over the unobserved rest-frame
energy yields
(
)
d2 N
1 E
f (, x) E t/tot
E t
=
d
e
,
dE dt
+
2
Renv
(12.22)
where = E [(1 )]1 and x = (E / 1)/. The photon ux
at Earth is obtained by multiplication with the neutrino uence F of
Eq. (12.12) and integration over a suitable spectrum (E ) of neutrino
energies.
If the neutrinos are suciently long-lived (the exact meaning of
this is quantied below) the exponential can be ignored. If one also
ignores the absorption eect by the progenitor star (Renv = 0), the
472
Chapter 12
time structure of Eq. (12.22) reduces to (t), i.e. its spectral form is
time independent except that it begins at t = 0. This is somewhat
surprising because the energy of a photon in the laboratory frame is
related to the angle of emission in the neutrino rest frame which in
turn determines the detour taken from the source to us (Fig. 12.10).
However, the rst photons come from decays immediately at the source
and so any angle of emission leads to the same initial arrival time.
It must be stressed that the expression Eq. (12.22) depends on the
assumption of decays not too far from the source (dD dLMC ) and so
only the head of the photon pulse is correctly described while its tail
would require including decays even close to the Earth. Strictly speaking, the photon burst never ends because even if the parent neutrinos
have passed the Earth, some photons will be received from backward
emission. However, because one is interested in neutrino masses so
large (m >
200 eV) that the photon burst is much longer than the
GRS measurement window, it is enough to account for the head of the
photon pulse.
12.4.5
Radiative Decay Limits: High-Mass Neutrinos
As a rst explicit case for the distribution of photon energies and emission angles I take the two-body decay with a massless daughter neutrino and with the dipole angular distribution of Eq. (12.2) with
x = cos = cos for a left-handed parent. This amounts to
f (, x) = 12 (1 + x) ( 21 m )
(12.23)
in Eq. (12.22). Because of the function it is trivial to integrate,

d2 N
1 2E
=
dE dt
m p
2E E
1+
p
et/ (t tenv ), (12.24)
where

m
tot ,
2E
tenv
m2
Renv .
2E p
(12.25)
Moreover, the ux vanishes if the chosen value for E does not fall
between 12 (E p ), or equivalently, unless
E > E + m2 /4E ,
(12.26)
a condition on the minimum required neutrino energy.

For the simplest case when the neutrinos are relativistic (p = E ),
long-lived (et/ = 1), and absorption eects by the progenitor can be
473
ignored (tenv = 0) the spectrum is shown in Fig. 12.12 for the anisotropy
parameters = 0, 1. Note the dierence to the triangular shape of
Fig. 12.1 for a stationary source. High-energy photons are now enhanced because lower-energy ones correspond to larger emission angles
in the parent frame and so they take a larger detour from the source
to us (Fig. 12.10). Hence, their ux is spread out over a larger time
interval even though photons of all energies begin to arrive at the same
time if tenv = 0.
Fig. 12.12. Photon spectrum from the decay of a short burst of relativistic
neutrinos, energy E , according to Eq. (12.24) taking p = E and et/ = 1
(relativistic and long-lived parent), and ignoring absorption eects by the
progenitor (tenv = 0).
In order to compare with the GRS uence limits one needs to integrate the expected ux between t = 0 and t = tGRS = 223.2 s.
The function in Eq. (12.24) is accounted for by using tenv as a lower
limit of integration. Integrating also over the neutrino source spectrum
F (E ) yields
F
[
]
tGRS
2E
2E E
= F
dE
1+
I,
m Emin
p
p
(12.27)
where
I
etenv / etGRS /
.
tGRS /
(12.28)
For suciently long-lived parents ( tGRS ) the exponentials can

be expanded and I = (tGRS tenv )/tGRS . The lower limit of integration is set by the condition Eq. (12.26) and by the requirement that
tenv < tGRS , i.e. that I > 0. This condition may be expressed as
p > (m2 /2E ) (Renv /tGRS ).
474
Chapter 12
The two-body decay is mostly interesting for m <

2me , a limit in
which one may safely ignore all nonrelativistic corrections, including
the progenitor absorption eect. In this case
I=
1 etGRS /
,
tGRS /
(12.29)
which is unity for >

tGRS . With typical photon energies of 3T
20 MeV and tGRS = 223.2 s this requirement translates into m tot >
1010 eV s.
In the relativistic limit and with I = 1 one can easily integrate
Eq. (12.27) with the Boltzmann spectrum Eq. (12.14) and nds
F = F
]
tGRS [
(1 ) + (1 + ) 2 e ,
m
(12.30)
where = E /T . This spectrum is shown in Fig. 12.13 for T = 4

and 8 MeV with m = 1018 eV s. The envelopes of the shaded bands
in Fig. 12.13 correspond to = 1 where for each temperature the
harder edge corresponds to = +1. The expected uence for each
GRS channel of Tab. 12.1 is found by integration. The GRS uence
limits then yield the lower bounds on m shown in Fig. 12.14.
Fig. 12.13. Expected uence of photons from the decay of high<

mass but relativistic SN neutrinos, 200 eV <
m 1 MeV, according to
18
Eq. (12.30) with m = 10 eV s and the indicated neutrino temperatures.
The shaded bands for each temperature are for the range 1 +1 with
the harder edge corresponding to = +1. Also shown are the upper limits
from the GRS channels taken from the 223.2 s column of Tab. 12.1.
475
<
Fig. 12.14. Lower limit on m for 200 eV <
m 1 MeV, assuming
10
m tot >
10 eV s.
For Dirac neutrinos the most conservative case is = 1 and the

temperature range relevant for and is between 6 and 8 MeV. This
yields an approximately temperature independent bound of m >
71018 eV s. For Majorana neutrinos ( = 0) the limit is about77
m > 121018 eV s. The most conservative case ( = 1) translates with Eq. (7.12) into
e < 1.61010 B m1
eV ,
(12.31)
10
assuming m tot >
10 eV s. Note the dierent dependence on meV
relative to the low-mass result Eq. (12.17).
If m tot violates this condition because it is below 1010 eV s means
that the neutrinos decay so fast that the photon burst eectively ends
before the GRS integration time tGRS is over. Then the photon burst is
again short even though the neutrino mass is large. In this case one
can state a limit on B as in Sect. 12.4.3. If tot is only slightly shorter
8
so that m tot <
410 eV s, all photons arrive within tGRS = 10 s
and one may directly apply Eq. (12.19), originally derived for small
neutrino masses. For the narrow region where the photon burst ends
between 10 and 223.2 s this bound must be discounted by about a
factor of 2 because of the less restrictive uence limits for the larger
integration time.
77
The result here is after Oberauer et al. (1993) which is similar to 61018 eV s
of Bludman (1992) but substantially more restrictive than 0.841018 eV s of Kolb
and Turner (1989). These works all refer to the isotropic case ( = 0).
476
Chapter 12
Fig. 12.15. Nonrelativistic correction of the expected photon uence for

the GRS channels of Tab. 12.1 according to Eq. (12.32) with Renv = 100 s,
tGRS = 223.2 s, and T = 6 MeV.
So far the nonrelativistic corrections for a neutrino mass in the

10 MeV mass range have been ignored. As an example I consider the
photon uence of Eq. (12.27) in the limit of a large where the exponentials in Eq. (12.28) can be expanded. The Boltzmann spectrum
for nonrelativistic neutrinos should include an extra factor = p /E .
Then for = 0 the uence is78
F (E )
with
)
(
tGRS
E eE /T
m2 Renv
= F
dE
, (12.32)
E
m Emin
T3
2p tGRS
Emin = max m 1 +
m Renv
2E tGRS
)2 1/2 (
, E +
m2
. (12.33)
4E
Relative to the massless case, the integral expression is suppressed if

m >
T . A straightforward numerical integration then yields the suppression of the expected uence for each GRS channel as shown in
78
Strictly speaking, the uence of massive neutrinos must be calculated by determining their neutrino sphere which is dierent from the massless case. This
problem was recently tackled by Sigl and Turner (1995) by solving the Boltzmann
collision equation by means of an approximation method known from calculations
of particle freeze-out in the early universe. However, because only masses of up
to 24 MeV are presently considered, a precise treatment of the neutrino spectrum
changes the resulting limits only by a small amount.
477
Fig. 12.15. (The overall factor m1

of Eq. 12.32 is not included, of
course.) Up to neutrino masses of about 10 MeV one may essentially

ignore the nonrelativistic corrections while for larger masses one has to
worry about them. However, because this discussion applies to standard neutrinos, the largest relevant mass is about 24 MeV and so the
nonrelativistic corrections never overwhelm the result.
12.4.6
Summary of Limits
In order to summarize the decay limits I begin in Fig. 12.16 with the relevant regimes of m and tot . Above the upper dotted line the neutrinos
live long enough so that most of them pass the Earth before decaying
while below the lower dotted line they decay within the envelope of
the progenitor star. In the areas 1 and 5 the photon burst is short
<
<
(t <
10 s), in 2 and 4 it is intermediate (10 s t 223.2 s),
and in 3 it is long (223.2 s <
t ). The exact boundaries as well as
the relevant constraints are summarized in Tab. 12.2. In Fig. 12.17 the
limits on e are summarized as a contour plot.
If one restricts possible neutrino decays to the radiative channel one
has tot = which depends only on e and m . Then one may use
directly the upper limits on e given in Tab. 12.2 for the areas 13,
depending on the assumed mass. Put another way, the conditions on
tot are then automatically satised.
These limits certainly apply to e as the e burst from SN 1987A has
been measured. The uxes of the other avors were only theoretically
implied. If they have only standard weak interactions they must have
been emitted approximately with the same eciency as e . Large dipole
moments, however, imply large nonstandard interactions: The same
electromagnetic interaction vertex that allows for radiative decays also
allows for scattering on charged particles by photon exchange! For
MeV energies, for example, the scattering cross section on electrons by
regular weak interactions and that by photon exchange are the same
for e of order 1010 B . Hence in the lower left corner of Fig. 12.17
the neutrinos would interact much more strongly by photon exchange
than by ordinary weak interactions, causing them to emerge from higher
layers of the SN core than normally assumed. Their uence and eective
temperature is then much smaller than standard. Put another way, for
10
e >
10 B the above constraints are not self-consistent (Hatsuda,
Lim, and Yoshimura 1988). However, because large dipole moments can
be constrained by other methods (Sect. 7.5.1) a detailed investigation
of their impact on SN physics is not warranted.
478
Chapter 12
Fig. 12.16. Dierent regimes of neutrino masses and total lifetimes referred
to in the text. t is the duration of the burst of decay photons. The
radiative lifetime limits in the areas 16 are summarized in Tab. 12.2.
Fig. 12.17. Upper limits on eective neutrino transition moments from

SN 1987A as given in Tab. 12.2. The contours are marked with log(e /B ).
In the shaded lower right region the neutrinos decay within the progenitor.
Toward the lower left side the bounds are not self-consistent because large
dipole moments induce large nonstandard scattering cross sections which
enhance neutrino trapping.
The discussion of the previous sections focussed on standard neutrinos which are emitted approximately with the same eciency and
similar energies as e s and e s. It is possible, however, that these neu-
479
Table 12.2. Neutrino radiative lifetime limitsa from SN 1987A.
Areab
Boundariesc
Radiative lifetime
limitc
Transition momentd
e /B
m < 40
3105 < tot m1
15
m1
> 0.810
1.5108 m2
40 < m < 200

3105 < tot m1
15
m1
> 0.210
0.8108 m2
200 < m < 107

9109 < tot m
m > 71018
1.61010 m1
m < 107
4108 < tot m < 9109
5
105 < tot m1
< 310
B < 1.2109
1.4105 m3/2
tot
m < 107
tot m < 4108
5
105 < tot m1
< 310
B < 31010
0.7105 m3/2
tot
5
tot m1
< 10
B < 0.01
1/2
1/2
the anisotropy parameter = 1.

as in Fig. 12.16.
c Neutrino masses in eV, lifetimes in s.
d Upper limit.
a For
b Numbered
trinos have Dirac masses and thus right-handed partners which could
be emitted from the inner core of the SN by helicity-ipping processes
(Sect. 13.8). Moreover, entirely new particles could be produced and
escape from there.
The present bounds can be scaled to such cases if one calculates the
total energy Ex,tot = fx 1053 erg emitted in the new x particles, where
11053 erg is the total energy that was used for a standard plus .
Self-consistency requires fx < 1, of course. In addition, one needs the
average energy Ex of the new objects which allows one to dene an
approximate equivalent temperature Tx = 13 Ex . Depending on the x
mass and total lifetime one can then read the radiative lifetime limits
directly from Figs. 12.8, 12.9, and 12.14, except that they must be
relaxed by a factor fx for the reduced uence.
480
12.4.7
Chapter 12
Limit on e e+ e
Neutrinos with a mass exceeding 2me can decay into e e+ e , a channel

which probably dominates over . Among the standard neutrinos, the
role of the parent can be played only by (or rather 3 ) with its upper
experimental mass limit of about 24 MeV. Within the standard model
where the decay is due to avor mixing the rate is given by Eq. (7.9).
In order to derive bounds on the e+ e channel from the GRS observations, photons need to be produced. At rst one may think that the
positrons would quickly annihilate so that a strong prompt ux can
be expected (Takahara and Sato 1987; Cowsik, Schramm, and Hoich
1989). Following Mohapatra, Nussinov, and Zhang (1994), however, the
gas density outside of the progenitor is too low, in spite of a substantial stellar wind during the progenitors supergiant evolution. Also, the
annihilation of the charged leptons from the decay among each other is
moderately ecient only if the decays occur close to the source. Typical galactic magnetic elds have a strength of about 3 G; they may
well be larger in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the circumstellar eld
of the SN 1987A progenitor may have been larger still. The gyromagnetic radii for 5 MeV positrons is then less than 1010 cm Renv so that
one may think that the charged leptons were locally trapped (Cowsik,
Schramm, and Hoich 1989). However, the momentum carried by the
ux of the charged decay products is so large that those elds would
have been swept away (Mohapatra, Nussinov, and Zhang 1994).
Altogether it appears that the decay positrons will linger in interstellar space for a long time before meeting annihilation partners unless
most decays occur immediately outside of the progenitor. Therefore,
prompt photons are mostly produced by bremsstrahlung e e+ e
which is suppressed relative to the decay rate only by a factor of about
/ 103 (Dar and Dado 1987).
Neutrinos with masses in the MeV range which are emitted at MeV
temperatures are nearly nonrelativistic. Their rest frame is then approximately equal to the laboratory frame, but they still move essentially with the speed of light. To escape from the progenitor before
decaying their rest-frame lifetime tot must exceed a few 100 s. This
also guarantees that the pulse of decay photons will outlast the GRS
integration time: one is automatically in the region of a long photon
burst which was case 3 in Fig. 12.16. In fact, if one assumes that
decays are induced by mixing, the decay rate Eq. (7.9) together with
the laboratory bounds on Ueh shown in Fig. 12.3 easily guarantees that
they fulll this requirement.
481
In order to estimate the expected photon ux from Eq. (12.22) one

needs to know the distribution of photon energies and emission angles
in the frame of the parent neutrino. In the absence of a detailed calculation I follow Oberauer et al. (1993) and assume approximate isotropy
for the photon emission. The soft part of the spectrum dN /d from
a bremsstrahlung process is given by the rate of the primary process
times (/) 1 (Jackson 1975). Extending this behavior up to photon
energies of 12 m I use
1
/ 1
f (, x) =
( 21 m ) ,
e+ e 2
(12.34)
an expression which does not depend on x because of the assumed

isotropy. ( = 1/137 is the ne-structure constant, not the previous
anisotropy parameter.)
After dropping the exponential in Eq. (12.22) because the neutrinos are long-lived, one integrates over a Boltzmann source spectrum
for nonrelativistic neutrinos, integrates over the GRS energy channels,
and compares the expected uence with the measured upper limits of
Tab. 12.1. The resulting bound on e+ e corresponds with Eq. (7.9)
directly to a limit on |Ue3 |2 . In Fig. 12.18 I show these bounds (transformed into bounds on the mixing angle) as a function of the assumed
neutrino mass for T = 4 and 6 MeV. There remains a strong limit
even for masses far exceeding the temperature because the exponential
Fig. 12.18. SN 1987A limits on sin2 2e3 = 4|Ue3 |2 with 3 for

T = 6 MeV (solid line) and 4 MeV (dashed line). Also shown are the corresponding laboratory and solar limits from Fig. 12.3.
482
Chapter 12
suppression of the ux is compensated by the steep phase-space factor

m5 in the expression for the decay rate.
These bounds are far more restrictive than those from laboratory
experiments (Fig. 12.3). The reason is that a SN explosion is a strong
source; such a source is dicult to make in the laboratory. This is
the reason why the has never been directly measured by its chargedcurrent conversion into .
The strong SN 1987A bounds on |Ue3 |2 imply that a heavy with
only standard-model interactions must be rather long-lived, in fact too
long to be compatible with cosmological limits derived from big-bang
nucleonsynthesis (Sect. 7.1.5). Those bounds together with the present
results imply that a heavy cannot exist unless it has fast, invisible decays induced by interactions beyond the standard model. If
this were the case it could well decay before leaving the SN progenitor. Therefore, the laboratory experiments with their short distance
between source and decay volume remain important for anomalously
short-lived neutrinos.
12.4.8
Heavy, Sterile Neutrinos
The bounds on Ue3 from reactors, beam stops, or the Sun were based on
a e ux which partially converts into 3 s which subsequently decay.
Because the SN emits about equal numbers of all ordinary neutrino
avors, this approach is obsolete with regard to 3 . However, one may
still consider hypothetical sterile neutrinos which interact only by virtue
of their mixing with e . By assumption these states would not interact
through ordinary weak interactions and so they would not be trapped
in the SN core. Hence the expected h ux would emerge from the deep
interior rather than the surface of the core.
In this case, however, the sterile neutrinos would carry away energy
much more eciently than the ordinary ones and so the requirement
that enough energy was left for the observed e s from SN 1987A al10
ready gives one the approximate limit |Ueh |2 <
(Sect. 9.6). If
10
this limit is approximately saturated one expects that about as much
energy is carried away by h as by the ordinary avors. Taking account
of the harder energies of neutrinos emitted from the SN core one still
obtains about the same limit on |Ueh |2 as on |Ue3 |2 before. Put another way, the GRS observations do not dramatically improve on the
cooling argument of Sect. 9.6, although they range in the same general
magnitude.

12.4.9
483
Axions
Another hypothetical particle that could have been emitted abundantly

from SN 1987A is the axion. The impact of the axionic energy loss is
discussed in Sect. 13.5. If axions are more strongly interacting than a
certain limit, implying that their mass is larger than a few eV, they
are emitted from the surface of the SN core with a luminosity similar
to that of neutrinos. Kolb and Turner (1989) found that the axion
12/11
uence from SN 1987A would have been Fa 61010 cm2 meV
4/11
with meV ma /eV at a temperature of Ta 15 MeV meV . From
the GRS uence limits, Kolb and Turner found that ma must be less
than a few 10 eV, a bound which is less restrictive than, for example,
the limit from globular cluster stars (Sect. 5.2.5).
12.4.10
Supernova Energetics
To derive the various GRS limits one had to assume that the radiative
decays occurred outside of the progenitors envelope and so neutrinos
falling into the shaded area in Fig. 12.16 were not accessible to these
arguments. However, in this case the stellar envelope itself serves as a
detector as discussed by Falk and Schramm (1978) many years ago;
see also Takahara and Sato (1986). Supernova observations in general,
and those of SN 1987A in particular, indicate that of the approximately
31053 erg of released gravitational binding energy only a small fraction
on the order of one percent becomes directly visible in the form of the
optical explosion as well as the kinetic energy of the ejecta. In contrast,
even if only one of the neutrino species decayed radiatively within the
progenitor, about 30% of the binding energy would light up!
If the lifetime were so short that the parent neutrinos would never
get far from the SN core one would not have to worry. Therefore, the
critical range of decay times is between the core dimensions of about
30 km = 104 s and the envelope radius of about 100 s. If the neutrinos
had nonradiative decay modes, and if their total laboratory lifetime fell
2
into this range, one could only conclude that B <
10 .
If they decayed only into radiation, and taking E to be 10 MeV,
the quantity /m cannot lie between about 1011 and 105 s/eV (for
heavy neutrinos includes the e+ e channel). For an eective transition moment e , an interval between about 102 and 105 B m2
eV is
excluded, moderately interesting only for large masses. Then, however,
the cosmological limits strongly suggest the presence of nonradiative
decay channels.
484
Chapter 12
12.5
Galactic Supernovae and e e+ e
12.5.1
Bounds on the Positron Flux
A core-collapse SN produces about 31057 s which may subsequently

decay into e e+ e . What is the long-term fate of all these positrons? If
the s decay mostly outside of the galaxy it is well possible that the
positrons will linger in intergalactic space forever. Those positrons
produced within the galaxy, however, will be trapped by the magnetic
elds (typical strength a few G) which render the galactic disk a magnetic bottle for charged particles. The interstellar electron density is
on the order 1 cm3 , leading to a positron lifetime against annihilation
of order 105 years. Moreover, elastic e+ e scattering (Bhabha scattering) is very ecient at slowing down relativistic positrons because of
the perfect mass match which allows for an ecient energy exchange
in collisions. Therefore, most annihilations occur at rest, producing a
sharp -ray feature at 511 keV.
The galactic SN rate is a few per century while the decay positrons
annihilate on a much longer time scale. Therefore, the galactic disk
should contain a stationary positron population with a density determined by the galactic SN rate and the lifetime. A comparison with
the measured photon ux at E = 511 keV of about 5103 cm2 s1
then leads to a very restrictive limit on the e+ e decay channel (Dar,
Goodman, and Nussinov 1987).
In detail these authors used a galactic rate of two core-collapse SN
per century, an e+ lifetime against annihilation of 105 yr, and a typical
distance of the decays from Earth of 10 kpc. If most neutrinos decay
within the galactic disk, these assumptions lead to an expected photon
ux of 400 cm2 s1 . Thus, it is enough that one in 105 neutrinos decays
within the galactic disk to outshine the measured ux.
This estimate is corroborated by the more recent work of Skibo, Ramaty, and Leventhal (1992) who devised detailed models of the positron
distribution in the galaxy in order to account for the 511 keV diuse
galactic line feature measured in the direction away from the galactic center. They found a total stationary positron annihilation rate in
the galaxy of 0.63 1043 s1 , where the precise coecient depends on
model assumptions. With two core-collapse SN per century the average
galactic production rate is 21048 s1 . Again, it is enough if one
in 105 injects an e+ into the galaxy to account for the observations.
If all positrons produced within about 1 kpc = 31021 cm from the
source (the scale height of the galactic disk) were magnetically trapped,
485
while those produced further away escaped into intergalactic space, a

lifetime below 105 1 kpc 1016 s in the laboratory frame is excluded.
Because SN neutrinos with MeV masses are nearly nonrelativistic the
rest-frame lifetime is identical with the laboratory lifetime to within a
15
factor of a few, excluding e+ e <
10 s.
If the decays occur too close to the source the annihilation with
electrons from the neutrino decay is of some importance (Mohapatra, Nussinov, and Zhang 1994). Therefore, decay times below about
104 s cannot be excluded by the present argument (Dar, Goodman, and
Nussinov 1987).
Actually, the galactic positron ux is thought to be associated with
supernovae, albeit not from decay but rather from the + decays
of certain nuclei which are synthesized in a SN explosion (Chan and
Lingenfelter 1993). These authors performed a detailed analysis of the
probability for positrons to escape without annihilation from the SN
environment into the galaxy.
12.5.2
Can the Tau Neutrino Be Heavy?
Armed with this result we can return to the question raised in Sect. 7.2.2
if a with a mass exceeding 2me is compatible with the cosmological requirement that such particles and their decay products do not
overclose the universe. It turns out that the SN constraints on
e e+ e presented in this chapter exclude this possibility so that
either respects the cosmological mass limit of a few 10 eV or else it
must have fast invisible decay channels which inevitably require interactions beyond the standard model.
In Fig. 12.19 the available constraints on e+ e are summarized. The
SN 1987A bound from the absence of a prompt burst, the cosmological
requirement, and the above limit from galactic positron annihilation
together exclude the entire range of possible masses and lifetimes. The
margins of overlap are so enormous that each of the arguments has
several orders of magnitude to spare for unaccounted uncertainties.
A heavy standard is also excluded on the basis of arguments involving big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). The usual limit on the number of eective neutrino degrees of freedom at nucleosynthesis alone
is enough to reach this conclusion (Sect. 7.1.5). Moreover, charged
leptons and secondary photons from the e+ e decay channel would destroy some of the synthesized nuclei (Lindley 1979, 1985; Krauss 1984;
Kawasaki, Terasawa, and Sato 1986). The main virtue of the SN limits
is, therefore, that no reference to BBN is required to exclude a heavy .
486
Chapter 12
Fig. 12.19. Excluded areas of the mass and lifetime if the standard-model
decay e e+ e is the only available channel. The laboratory results
refer to the bounds on sin2 2e3 of Fig. 12.3, translated into a limit on e+ e
by virtue of Eq. (7.9). The SN 1987A bound is that from Fig. 12.18 while
the cosmological one is from Fig. 7.2. The excluded range indicated by the
vertical arrow refers to the argument of Sect. 12.5.1.
12.6
Neutrinos from All Stars
All stars in the universe contribute to a diuse cosmic background ux

of MeV neutrinos. If they decayed radiatively they would produce a
cosmic x- and -ray background which must not exceed the measured
levels. Because the entire radius of the visible universe is available as a
decay path, one can derive rather restrictive limits on (Cowsik 1977).
In order to derive such limits I assume that neutrinos of energy E
are produced with a constant rate N (cm3 s1 ). Assuming a zerocurvature model of the universe, Kolb and Turner (1989) found for the
resulting isotropic ux of decay photons
m 1
N t2U
d 2 F
9
=
,
dE d
4 21/2 5 E3/2 E1/2
(12.35)
where tU is the age of the universe. Moreover, it was assumed that

in the daughter neutrino is massless, and that the decays
are isotropic in the parent frame (anisotropy parameter = 0). In
a at universe one has tU = 23 H01 = h1 2.051017 s where H0 =
487
h 100 km s1 Mpc1 is the present-day Hubble expansion parameter and

<
where observationally 0.4 <
h 1.
There exist numerous measurements of the diuse cosmic x- and
-radiation (for example Schonfelder, Graml, and Penningfeld 1980).
Between a few 100 keV and a few 10 MeV the isotropic ux is reasonably
well approximated by
d 2 F
= 2102 cm2 s1 sr1 MeV1
dE d
MeV
E
)2
(12.36)
Comparing this with Eq. (12.35), the most restrictive limit on is

obtained for the highest possible photon energy, E = E . The requirement that the decay ux does not exceed the measurements at
this energy leads to the upper limit
3 1
m <
s
40 eV cm
1.610
h2 ,
s
N
(12.37)
which does not depend on the assumed value for E because Eq. (12.35)
and (12.36) both scale with E 2 . This limit applies if the total neutrino
lifetime tot exceeds tU ; otherwise only a limit on the branching ratio
B can be found.
The most prolic stellar neutrino source in the universe are hydrogen-burning stars which produce two e s with MeV energies for
every synthesized 4 He nucleus. Because most of the binding energy
that can be liberated by nuclear fusion is set free when single nucleons
are combined to form 4 He, most of the energy emitted by stars can
be attributed to hydrogen burning. Therefore, it is easy to translate
the optical luminosity density of the universe into an average rate of
neutrino production.
The average luminosity density of the universe in the blue (B) spectral band is about h 2.4108 L,B Mpc3 where L,B is the solar B luminosity. The Sun produces about 11038 e /s and so one arrives at
N e h 2.41046 Mpc3 s1 = 0.81027 cm3 s1 . (Of course, this estimate is relatively crude in that the neutrino luminosity scales directly
with the average bolometric luminosity of a stellar population, but not
precisely with LB .) With Eq. (12.37) this leads to a constraint for e
2
12
7
<
of /me >
510 s/eV, or e 210 B meV .
The (core-collapse) supernovae in the universe are also very prominent neutrino sources, and, more importantly, they are thought to produce MeV neutrinos of all avors. Such SNe do not occur in elliptical galaxies, and their present-day rate in spirals depends sensitively
488
Chapter 12
on the Hubble type, varying from 0.2 h2 SNu for Sa spirals to about
5 h2 SNu for Sd (van den Bergh and Tammann 1991) where the supernova unit is dened by 1 SNu 1 SN per century per 1010 L,B .
Adopting 1 h2 SNu as a representative value and about 51057 neutrinos plus antineutrinos of a given avor per SN yields for each avor N h3 1.31027 cm3 s1 , a rate almost identical to that from
hydrogen-burning stars.79 The radiative lifetime limit is then also identical, except that it applies to neutrinos of all avors.
All of these bounds are weaker than those from SN 1987A. Therefore, decaying stellar neutrinos cannot actually contribute to the observed x- and -ray background.
12.7
Cosmological Bounds
12.7.1
Neutrinos
Within the big-bang scenario a cosmic background sea of neutrinos is

an inevitable consequence of the hot early universe. Its contribution to
the cosmic energy density was already used in Sect. 7.1.5 to derive extremely restrictive neutrino mass limits. If neutrinos decay radiatively,
further constraints can be obtained. For one, the decay photons can
show up directly as a diuse, isotropic cosmic background radiation.
If the decays occur before recombination, i.e. before the universe became transparent to radiation, but so late that the photons could not
be thermalized entirely, they contribute to a spectral distortion of the
cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). The resulting limits
were discussed, for example, by Kolb and Turner (1990) who found
that those areas of masses and lifetimes are excluded that are hatched
in Fig. 12.20. It was assumed that neutrinos decay only radiatively.
The contribution of the neutrinos and their decay products to the
mass density of the universe leads to the constraints shown in Fig. 7.2
which are based on the present-day value of h2 and on the expansion
79
Multiplying this rate with the age of the universe of about 31017 s and the
speed of light of 31010 cm/s, and using h = 0.5 one nds an estimated present-day
ux at Earth of about 1 cm2 s1 . In a recent detailed study, Totani and Sato
(1995) nd a ux which is larger than this crude estimate by as much as a factor
of 30. The Kamiokande II detector has set an upper limit on the cosmic background
ux of e of about 103 cm2 s1 for eective temperatures in the 34 MeV range
(Zhang et al. 1988). It is conceivable that this background will be measured by
the Superkamiokande detector. Note that at the Kamiokande site the e ux from
power reactors is roughly 1000 times larger than the background ux, except that
it falls o sharply beyond about 10 MeV.
489
Fig. 12.20. Cosmological limits on neutrino radiative lifetimes according to

Kolb and Turner (1990). The radiative mode is assumed to be the only decay
channel. The shaded area is excluded according to Sect. 7.1.5 (Fig. 7.2).
rate at nucleosynthesis. These limits (shaded area in Fig. 12.20) are

more general because they do not depend on the nature of the nal
states in the decay.
Kolb and Turners (1990) exclusion plot is somewhat schematic.
Ressell and Turner (1990) performed a much more detailed analysis on
the basis of the diuse photon backgrounds in all wavebands. Probably
the most interesting region is that of small neutrino masses and large
lifetimes (the upper left corner of Fig. 12.20). The excluded range of
eective electromagnetic transition moments for m < 30 eV is shown
in Fig. 12.21. It may be useful to approximate the excluded range
analytically by
11
2.3
e <
310 B (eV/m )
(12.38)
which is shown as a dashed line in Fig. 12.21.

Using favored cosmological parameters (h2 0.3) neutrinos with
m 30 eV would be the dark matter of the universe. With smaller
masses there would have to be another component, but neutrinos could
490
Chapter 12
Fig. 12.21. Limits on e according to Ressell and Turners (1990) bounds

on the radiative lifetime of long-lived neutrinos from the diuse cosmic background radiations. The dashed line corresponds to Eq. (12.38).
Fig. 12.22. Limits on decaying neutrinos in clusters of galaxies. (a) A1413,

A2218, and A2256 (Bershady, Ressell, and Turner 1991). (b) Coma
and Virgo (Henry and Feldman 1981). (c) A665 (Davidsen et al. 1991).
(d) Extragalactic background light (Overduin, Wesson, and Bowyer 1993).
(e) Background light from decay of unclustered neutrinos (Ressell and Turner
1990).
491
still play a signicant dynamical role. Recently, such mixed dark matter
scenarios have received much attention where m = 5 eV is a favored
value. Such low-mass particles cannot cluster on galactic scales, but
likely they would reside in clusters of galaxies. With radiative decays
and a total lifetime exceeding the age of the universe one then
expects clusters of galaxies to be strong sources of optical or ultraviolet
photons. Several limits are summarized in Fig. 12.22.
A case has been made that radiatively decaying neutrino dark matter is actually required to solve certain problems, notably the ionization of galactic hydrogen clouds (e.g. Melott and Sciama 1981; Melott,
McKay, and Ralston 1988; Sciama 1990a,b; Sciama 1993a,b, 1995).
The predictions are very specic: An energy of decay photons of E =
(14.4 0.5) eV and thus a neutrino mass of m = (28.9 1.1) eV
with a radiative lifetime of = (2 1) 1023 s which translates into
e = (6.3 2) 1015 B . Such a large transition moment would
require particle physics beyond the standard model.
Nominally, this possibility is already excluded by the absence of a
uv line from the cluster A665 (Davidsen et al. 1991). However, a bound
from a single source is always subject to the uncertainty of unrecognized
absorbing material in the line of sight or internal absorption. Moreover,
the dark matter in the core of this cluster may be mainly baryonic
(Sciama, Persic, and Salucci 1993; Melott et al. 1994). Bounds from the
diuse extragalactic background light are more reliable in this regard.
While they marginally exclude Sciamas neutrino (Overduin, Wesson,
and Bowyer 1993) it is perhaps too early to pronounce it entirely dead.
A decisive test will be performed with a future satellite experiment
where the uv line from neutrinos decaying in the solar neighborhood
denitely would have to show up if neutrinos were the bulk of the
galactic dark matter (e.g. Sciama 1993b).
12.7.2
Axions
The axion lifetime from a 2 is = 6.31024 s (ma /eV)5 / 2 where

is a model-dependent number of order unity (Sect. 14.3.2). Therefore,
axions with eV masses have radiative lifetimes in the neighborhood of
the above neutrino limits whence they can be constrained by similar
methods (Kephart and Weiler 1987). Moreover, such axions would contribute substantially to the mass density of the universe because they
would have been in thermal equilibrium until relatively late.80 Their
80
In the early universe, axions are also produced by the relaxation of the coherent
initial eld conguration at the onset of the QCD phase transition. This process
492
Chapter 12
contribution to the cosmic mass density would be a h2 = 0.082 ma /eV

(Turner 1987; Ressell 1991) and so one can expect that clusters of galaxies contain substantial amounts of axions even if they are not the main
dark matter component.
Observations of the diuse extragalactic background radiation limit
the axion mass to values below about 8 eV unless is very small (Ressell
1991). Overduin and Wesson (1993) found < 0.43, 0.07, and 0.02 for
ma /eV = 5.3, 8.6, and 13, respectively (Fig. 12.23). Moreover, some
axions would reside in the halo of our own galaxy so that their decays
would light up the night sky. Its brightness yields a conservative bound
of < (6 eV/ma )5 (Ressell 1991).
Fig. 12.23. Constraints on axion decays in galaxies and galaxy clusters;

parametrizes the coupling to photons with = 1 corresponding to common
axion models. (a) Line emission from clusters A2256 and A2218 (Bershady,
Ressell, and Turner 1991; Ressell 1991). (b) Diuse extragalactic background
radiation according to Ressell (1991) and (c) Overduin and Wesson (1993).
(d) Our galaxy (Ressell 1991).
The most interesting limits arise from a search for axion decay lines
from the intergalactic space in the clusters of galaxies A2256 and A2218.
Bershady, Ressell, and Turner (1991) and Ressell (1991) found < 0.16
0.078, 0.039, 0.032, 0.016, and 0.011 for ma /eV = 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0,
6.0, and 7.5 respectively (Fig. 12.23). These limits are placed into the
context of other constraints in Fig. 5.9.
yields a h2 (105 eV/ma )1.175 see Eq. (14.5). While the overall coecient of
this expression is very uncertain it is clear that a = 1 saturates for ma somewhere
between 1 eV and 1 meV. In this range axions never achieved thermal equilibrium.
Chapter 13
What Have We Learned from
SN 1987A?
The lessons for particle physics from the SN 1987A neutrino burst are
studied. First, neutrinos could have decayed or oscillated into other
states on their way out of the SN core and to us. Second, propagation
eects could have caused a time delay between photons and neutrinos
or between e s of dierent energy. Third, nonstandard cooling agents
could have shortened the neutrino burst below its observed duration.
These arguments are applied to a variety of specic cases.
13.1
Introduction
In Chapter 11 the neutrino observations from SN 1987A were discussed and it was shown that they agree well with standard theoretical expectations from the core collapse and subsequent explosion of
an evolved massive star. The signal displays several anomalies (time
gap at Kamiokande, anisotropy in both detectors) which render it a
less beautiful specimen of the expected signal characteristics than is
sometimes stated in the literature. Still, in the absence of plausible
alternatives one must accept that the Kamiokande II, IMB, and Baksan event clusters observed at 7:35 UT on 27 February 1987 represent
the e component of the neutrino burst from the core collapse of the
SN 1987A progenitor star rather than some other particle ux, or some
other reaction than the expected dominant e p ne+ process.
Accepting this, there is a host of consequences concerning a variety
of fundamental physics issues. The rst and simplest set of arguments
is based on the fact that the e pulse and perhaps the prompt e burst
493
494
Chapter 13
were observed, constraining various mechanisms that could have removed neutrinos from the beam such as decays. Equally important, the
nonobservation of a -ray burst in coincidence with the neutrino burst
constrains radiative decays of neutrinos and other particles (Sect. 12.4).
More intricate arguments involve signal dispersion, either between
photons and neutrinos, between e s and e s, or the intrinsic dispersion
of the e burst, constraining various eects that could cause signal
dispersion such as a nonzero neutrino mass or charge.
Most importantly, the inferred cooling time scale of a few seconds
of the newborn neutron star precludes an ecient operation of a nonstandard cooling agent and thus yields constraints on the emission of
new particles from the SN core, notably of right-handed (r.h.) neutrinos or axions. This line of reasoning is analogous to the energy-loss
argument which for normal stars has been advanced in Chapter 2.
13.2
Basic Characteristics of the Neutrino Burst
13.2.1
Fluence
The neutrinos from a SN are expected to consist of two major components: the prompt e burst, and quasi-thermal emission of about equal
total amounts of energy in (anti)neutrinos of all avors. The water
Cherenkov detectors would register the e burst by virtue of the reaction e + e e + e where the scattered electron is strongly forward
peaked, while the cooling signal is registered by e + p n + e+ with
an essentially isotropic e+ signal. Even though both detectors observed
a forward peaked overall signal, it cannot be associated with e -e collisions (Sect. 11.3.5). Most or all of the events are interpreted as e s.
The observation of a e uence (time-integrated ux) roughly in
agreement with what is expected from a stellar collapse precludes that
these particles have decayed on their way from the SN to us, yielding
a constraint on their lifetime of (Frieman, Haber, and Freese 1988)
5
e /me >
610 s/eV.
(13.1)
However, this simple result must be interpreted with care because massive neutrinos are expected to mix. The heavy e admixtures could
decay and may violate this bound.
The e s were not removed by excessive scattering on cosmic background neutrinos, majorons, dark-matter particles etc., leading to constraints on secret interactions (Kolb and Turner 1987). Take the
What Have We Learned from SN 1987A?
495
scattering on cosmic background neutrinos as an example. The presentday density of primordial neutrinos is about 100 cm3 in each neutrino and antineutrino avor. With a distance to the Large Magellanic
Cloud of about 50 kpc = 1.51023 cm one has a column density between SN 1987A and Earth of about 1025 cm2 so that the e - cross
section must be less than about 1025 cm2 . If the cosmic background
neutrinos are massless they have a temperature of about 1.8 K and
so E 3T 5104 eV. Because the measured SN neutrinos
have
a characteristic energy of 30 MeV the center of mass energy is
s 200 eV.
The cross-section bound is not particularly impressive compared
with a standard weak cross section of order G2F s 1051 cm2 . However, cross sections have never been directly measured and so the
SN 1987A limit provides nontrivial information. As an example, neutrinos could scatter by majoron exchange, or they could scatter directly on a background of primordial majorons. Kolb and Turner then
found a certain constraint on the neutrino-majoron Yukawa coupling
(Sect. 15.7.2). As another example, the proposition that the solar neutrino ux could be substantially depleted by scatterings on cosmic background particles (Slad 1983) is excluded.
Other particles besides neutrinos may have been emitted from the
SN and could have caused detectable events. Engel, Seckel, and Hayes
(1990) have discussed the case of axions; they can be absorbed in water
by oxygen nuclei, a16 O 16 O , which subsequently produce rays by
decays of the sort 16 O 16 O , 16 O 15 O n , and 16 O 15 N p .
The rays would cause electromagnetic cascades and so they are detectable about as eciently as e . The axion emission was estimated by
identifying their unit optical depth for a given interaction strength in a
simplied model of the SN temperature and density prole. More than
10 extra events would be expected at Kamiokande for an axion-nucleon
Yukawa coupling in the range
3
<
1106 <
gaN 110
(13.2)
which is thus excluded. In the middle of this interval, up to 300 additional events would have been expected. However, axions with couplings in this interval are also excluded by other methods (Sect. 14.4).
13.2.2
Energy Distribution
The energy distribution of the events at the IMB and Kamiokande

detectors broadly conrms the expected quasi-thermal emission with
496
Chapter 13
a temperature of around 4 MeV. This precludes that a major swap

by oscillations with the higher-energetic or ux has taken place.
The impact of neutrino oscillations on the observable signal has been
discussed in Sect. 11.4.
Also, , or , decays with nal-state e s would produce additional higher-energy events. While the SN 1987A data are probably too
sparse to extract signicant information on the presence or absence of
this eect, a future galactic SN would certainly allow one to exclude a
certain range of masses and decay times or to detect this eect (Soares
and Wolfenstein 1989).
The trapping of neutrinos in a SN core together with the condition
of equilibrium inevitably implies that there is a large e chemical
potential, leading to typical e energies of order 200 MeV. Moreover,
the inner temperature during deleptonization reaches values of up to
4070 MeV so that typical thermal (anti)neutrino energies of up to
100200 MeV are available. Therefore, if neutrinos could escape directly from the inner core they would cause high-energy events in the
detectors which have not been observed.
A mechanism to tap the inner-core heat bath directly is the production of r.h. neutrinos by a variety of possible eects such as spinip scattering by a Dirac mass term or a magnetic dipole moment
(Sect. 13.8). R.h. states could not be detected directly because they are
sterile with regard to standard l.h. weak interactions, a property which
allows them to avoid the SN trapping. However, they could produce
detectable l.h. states by decays (Dodelson, Scott, and Turner 1992) or
by magnetic oscillations (Notzold 1988; Barbieri and Mohapatra 1988).
13.2.3
Prompt e Burst
The prompt e burst can be seen in a water Cherenkov detector by the

reaction e e ee where the nal-state electron essentially preserves
the direction of the incident neutrino. At Kamiokande, the directionality of the rst event81 is consistent with the interpretation that it was
caused by this reaction. However, the expected uence corresponds
only to a fraction of an event and so the rst event may also be due
to the e p ne+ reaction and point coincidentally in the forward direction. A random direction has about a 5% chance of being forward
within 25 which is approximately the uncertainty of the Kamiokande
directional event reconstruction.
81
In the rst publication of the Kamiokande group (Hirata et al. 1987) the second
event was also reported forward; its most probable direction was later revised.
497
Still, the observation of the prompt e burst from a future galactic

SN would allow for a number of interesting conclusions. For example,
one could exclude or nd evidence for neutrino oscillations (Sect. 11.4).
Signal dispersion caused by a neutrino mass or other eects which are
discussed below for the cooling-phase signal would be even more signicant for the prompt burst because of its short duration. For example, the cooling signal with a duration of about 10 s is sensitive to e
masses in the 10 eV regime. As the prompt burst is at least 100 times
shorter one is sensitive to a factor of 10 smaller masses, i.e. to me in
the eV range.
The (anti)neutrino signal during the prompt burst phase allows one
to decide if the SN consisted of antimatter rather than matter. In
that case one would expect a prompt e burst with a scattering cross
section on electrons which is about a factor of 2.4 smaller (Eq. 10.17).
Moreover, e s are dominantly absorbed by the isotropic e p ne+
reaction and so the prompt burst would cause a substantial isotropic
signal within the rst 50 ms. In a matter SN the cooling e s have
larger energies than the e s; the reverse for antimatter. Therefore, the
observable e signal from the cooling phase would be reduced. In a
detector like Kamiokande one would then expect 620% of the total
e signal from the prompt burst, in contrast with at most 1% for a
regular matter SN (Barnes, Weiler, and Pakvasa 1987). Of course, in
the foreseeable future one can hope to acquire the relevant data only
from a galactic SN which, no doubt, consists of matter.
13.2.4
Nonobservation of a -Ray Burst
No rays in conjunction with the SN 1987A neutrino burst were observed by the solar maximum mission (SMM) satellite which was operational at the relevant time. Therefore, one can derive some of the most
restrictive limits on neutrino radiative decays as detailed in Sect. 12.4.
13.3
Dispersion Eects
13.3.1
Photons vs. Antineutrinos
The optical sighting of SN 1987A followed the detection of the e burst

by only a few hours (Fig. 11.7), a delay which is expected on the basis
of the simple reasoning that some time must pass before the mantle of
a SN notices the collapse of the inner core. Hence the two signals
must have propagated through space with an almost identical velocity
498
Chapter 13
so that the speed of light and that of neutrinos are equal to within
(Longo 1987; Stodolsky 1988)

c c
<

2109 ,
c
(13.3)
assuming an uncertainty of 3 h in the relative duration of the transit

times from the LMC to us. This was interpreted as the most stringent
test of special relativity to date in the sense that it proves with high
precision the universality of a relativistic limiting velocity.82
This result can also be interpreted as testing the weak equivalence
principle of general relativity (Krauss and Tremaine 1988). In the postNewtonian approximation one predicts that a gravitational potential
V (r) delays a light signal (Shapiro time delay) by an amount
t = 2
V [r(t)] dt,
(13.4)
where the integral is taken along the trajectory r(t) of the beam between
the points of emission (E) and absorption (A). This delay is the same
for neutrinos and photons to within

t t

< 0.74103 ,

t
(13.5)
where the uncertainty reects the uncertain modelling of the gravitational potential between Earth and SN 1987A.83 This result has been
used to constrain the parameters of a specic model of C- and Pviolating gravitational forces (Almeida, Matsas, and Natale 1989), and
to constrain the parameters of a class of nonmetric theories of gravity
(Coley and Tremaine 1988).
13.3.2
Neutrinos vs. Antineutrinos
Assuming that the rst event at Kamiokande represents the prompt e

burst one may also constrain the dierence in transit time between e
and e and thus conrm the equivalence principle between matter and
antimatter (LoSecco 1988; Pakvasa, Simmons, and Weiler 1989). Of
course, in order to make such results reliable one would need to observe
the prompt burst from a future SN with greater statistical signicance.
82
For a recent laboratory experiment which addresses the Lorentz limiting velocity, see Greene et al. (1991), and references there to earlier works. See also the book
by Will (1993).
83
See Will (1993) for a review of many other empirical tests of general relativity.

13.3.3
499
Intrinsic Dispersion of the e -Pulse
a) Neutrino Mass
So far the transit time of dierent particle species was compared under the assumption of a xed velocity each. However, the most likely
eect of signal propagation over large distances is dispersion due to an
energy-dependent speed of propagation. The most widely discussed84
case is that of a nonzero neutrino mass (Zatsepin 1968). The main
problem at extracting information about the signal dispersion is the
unknown behavior of the source which must be modelled according
to some theoretical assumptions. A particularly detailed discussion is
that of Loredo and Lamb (1989) who found a mass limit of me < 23 eV
(Sect. 11.3.4). In a similar analysis which included the 13% dead-time
eect at IMB, Kernan and Krauss (1995) found me < 20 eV.
b) Neutrino Charge
The absence of an energy-dependent dispersion of the neutrino pulse
can be used to constrain other neutrino properties. A small electric
charge e would bend the neutrino path in the galactic magnetic eld,
leading to a time delay of
t
e2 (BT dB )2
=
,
t
6E2
(13.6)
where BT is the transverse magnetic eld and dB the path length within
the eld. This leads to a constraint of
(
e <
1 G
31017
e
BT
)(
1 kpc
dB
(13.7)
(Barbiellini and Cocconi 1987; Bahcall 1989). Note that a typical eld
strength for the ordered magnetic eld in the galactic spiral arms is
23 G and that the path length of the neutrinos within the galactic
disk is only of order 1 kpc because the LMC lies high above the disk
(galactic latitude about 33 ).
84
Limits on me from the SN 1987A data were derived, among others, by Abbott,
de R
ujula, and Walker (1988), Adams (1988), Arnett and Rosner (1987), Bahcall and Glashow (1987), Burrows and Lattimer (1987), Burrows (1988a), Chiu,
Chan, and Kondo (1988), Cowsik (1988), Kolb, Stebbins, and Turner (1987a,b),
Midorikawa, Terazawa, and Akama (1987), Sato and Suzuki (1987a,b), Spergel and
Bahcall (1988), Loredo and Lamb (1989), and Kernan and Krauss (1995).
500
Chapter 13
c) Long-Range Forces
Speculating further one may imagine some sort of neutrino fth-force
charge. If electrons, protons, or dark-matter particles also carry such
a charge the bending of the neutrino trajectory in the fth-force eld of
the galaxy would lead to an energy-dependent time delay. This and related arguments were advanced by a number of authors (Pakvasa, Simmons, and Weiler 1989; Grifols, Masso, and Peris 1988, 1994; Fiorentini
and Mezzorani 1989; Malaney, Starkman, and Tremaine 1995).
The most plausible form for such a long-range interaction is one mediated by a massless vector boson, i.e. a new gauge interaction, perhaps
related to a novel leptonic charge (Sect. 3.6.4). In this case neutrinos
and antineutrinos would carry opposite charges so that the cosmic neutrino background would be essentially a neutral plasma with regard to
the new interaction. The resulting screening eects then invalidate the
SN 1987A argument (Dolgov and Raelt 1995).
Screening eects would not operate if the force were due to a spin-0
or spin-2 boson which always cause attractive forces. However, any
force mediated by a massless spin-2 boson must couple to the energymomentum tensor and thus is identical with gravity. The force mediated by a scalar boson between a static source and a relativistic neutrino
is suppressed by a Lorentz factor. Therefore, even if scalar-mediated
forces existed between macroscopic bodies, their eect would be weakened for relativistic neutrinos.
In summary, the SN 1987A signal does not seem to carry any simple
information concerning putative nongravitational long-range forces.
d) Fundamental Length Scale
Fujiwara has proposed a quantum eld theory where the velocity of particles increases with energy, leading to an energy-dependent advance of
the arrival times by t/t = 12 (0 E )2 . Here, 0 is a fundamental length
18
scale. Whatever the merits of this theory, a value 0 <
10 cm would
not be in conict with the SN 1987A neutrino signal (Fujiwara 1989).
e) Lorentz Addition of Velocities
If relativistic particles (photons, massless neutrinos) are emitted by a
moving source (velocity vS ) their velocity c in the laboratory frame
should be equal to c (velocity in the frame of the source). The Galilean
addition of velocities, on the other hand, would give c = c + vS . In
general one may assume that velocities add according to c = c + KvS
501
with K = 0 representing the Lorentzian, K = 1 the Galilean law of

adding velocities. For photons, the most stringent laboratory bound is
4
K <
10 derived from the time of ight of decay photons 2
from a pulsed source (Alvager et al. 1964). A much more stringent

9
constraint (K <
210 ) obtains from an analysis of the photon signal
from a pulsed x-ray source (Brecher 1977).
The absence of dispersion of the e pulse can be used to derive constraints on K (Atzmon and Nussinov 1994). The observed SN 1987A
neutrinos were produced by microscopic processes involving nearly relativistic nucleons, and subsequently scattered several times on such
nucleons before leaving the star. If the last nucleon on which they
scatter is considered the source with vS 0.2 c their laboratory speed
c will be represented by a distribution of approximate width 0.2 K
around c because of the random orientation and distribution in magni11
tude of vS . Thus one derives a bound K <
from the absence of
10
a spread in arrival times exceeding about 10 s.
Atzmon and Nussinov (1994) warn, however, that this simple argument may be too naive as the motion through the progenitors envelope may cause the particles of the envelope to be the true source of
the neutrino waves as there is a substantial amount of refraction between the neutrino sphere and the stellar surface. If one follows Atzmon
and Nussinovs reasoning, there remains only a much weaker bound of
5
K <
10 from the absence of an anomalous time delay between the
neutrino signal and the optical sighting of the SN.
13.4
Duration of Neutrino Emission
13.4.1
General Argument
The most intricate way to use SN 1987A as a laboratory arises from the
observed duration of neutrino cooling. While the neutrino luminosity
during the rst few 100 ms until the shock has been revived is largely
powered by accretion and by the contraction and settling of the bloated
outer core, the long tail is associated with cooling, i.e. emission from
the neutrino sphere which is powered by energy originally stored deep
in the inner core. If a direct cooling channel existed for that region,
such as the emission of r.h. neutrinos or axions, the late cooling phase
would be deprived of energy. Put another way, a novel cooling channel
from the inner core would leave the schematic neutrino light curves
of Fig. 11.3 more or less unchanged before about 1 s while the long
Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling phase would be curtailed.
502
Chapter 13
Of course, this reasoning is identical with the energy-loss argument

previously studied for normal stars in Chapters 1 and 2. The main
dierence is that neutrinos are trapped so that particles which interact
more weakly can dominate the thermal evolution by volume emission.
In normal stars, photons are trapped and neutrinos can dominate the
energy loss by volume emission as, for example, in the early cooling of
a white dwarf.
This general argument is best illustrated with axion emission. These
particles are pseudoscalars which for the purpose of this argument are
taken to interact with neutrons and protons with a common Yukawa
coupling strength ga which is the only free parameter in the problem.
For very small values of ga axions will play no role, but with an increasing coupling strength their emission from the inner core by bremsstrahlung processes, N N N N a, will begin to compete with neutrino cooling. Of course, if ga exceeds some critical value axions will be trapped
and emitted from an axion sphere at about unit optical depth. Beyond some large coupling they will be trapped so eectively that their
contribution to the cooling of the SN core is, again, negligible and the
neutrino signal assumes its standard duration. This general behavior is
shown in Fig. 13.1 on the basis of the numerical cooling calculations85
of Burrows, Turner, and Brinkmann (1989) and Burrows, Ressell, and
Turner (1990). These authors used the quantity t90% as a measure of
the cooling time; it represents the time at which 90% of the expected
number of events have arrived at a detector. t90% was calculated separately for Kamiokande II and IMB; in Fig. 13.1 an average relative
signal duration is shown, normalized to the value when axions are not
important. It is apparent that a large range of ga values can be excluded
on the basis of the observed duration of the neutrino signal.
One is here considering the time scale of neutrino emission at the
source while the detectors register a pulse which conceivably could have
been lengthened by dispersion eects. However, in view of the recent
laboratory limits of me <
5 eV this is not a serious concern.
If one contemplates nonstandard neutrinos, a relatively short emission time scale at the source is compatible with the observations if s
85
In the free-streaming regime these calculations were based on axion emission

rates which do not take the high-density multiple-scattering eects into account
that were discussed in Sect. 4.6.7. Therefore, the free-streaming part of Fig. 13.1
probably overestimates the import of axion emission. For the present purpose of
discussing the general aspects of a novel cooling channel, however, this problem is
of no concern. The axion case is the only one where numerical cooling calculations
are available for both the volume-emission (free-streaming) and the trapping limit.
503
Fig. 13.1. Relative duration of neutrino cooling of a SN core as a function

of the axion-nucleon Yukawa coupling ga . In the free-streaming limit axions
are emitted from the entire volume of the protoneutron star, in the trapping
limit from the axion sphere at about unit optical depth. The solid line is
according to the numerical cooling calculations (case B) of Burrows, Turner,
and Brinkmann (1989) and Burrows, Ressell, and Turner (1990); the dotted
line is an arbitrary completion of the curve to guide the eye. The signal
duration is measured by the quantity t90% discussed in the text; an average
for the IMB and Kamiokande detectors was taken.
or s decay. The nal states could include e s which are detectable

at IMB and Kamiokande so that one can obtain late-time events by
a suitable combination of mass and lifetime. For a 17 keV Majorana
neutrino a lifetime around 104 s would allow one to explain the signal
duration even with a short emission time scale at the source (Simpson
1991; see also Cline 1992). In the following it will be assumed that this
is not the explanation of the observed signal duration.
Another loophole is that some or all of the late-time events at Kamiokande, which are separated from the main bunch by a 7 s gap, were
caused by eects other than core cooling. Recall that a similar problem
exists with the x-ray observations of old neutrons stars (Sect. 2.3) where
it is not always clear that one is observing blackbody surface emission
from thermal cooling rather than magnetospherically produced x-rays.
In the present case, one possibility is the fall-back of material onto
the core, i.e. late-time accretion which could cause signicant neutrino
emission. However, on the basis of an analytic estimate Janka (1995b)
has argued that even with extreme assumptions this is not a likely
explanation of the late events.
504
Chapter 13
While it is clear that a large range of ga values can be excluded,

the quantity t90% is a relatively crude measure of the length of the
cooling phase. In principle, one should perform a maximum likelihood
analysis for a given range of particle properties. Moreover, one would
need to consider a variety of models for the protoneutron star where the
equation of state (EOS), mass, accretion rate, neutrino opacities, and
perhaps other parameters should be varied to optimize the agreement
with the observed signal when a novel cooling mechanism operates.
Another caveat applies to the trapping regime of the new particles. One may expect that they play a signicant role during the
infall phase and shock formation of a SN collapse, an issue that was
addressed only by a small number of authors in the context of majoron
bounds (Fuller, Mayle, and Wilson 1988) and bounds on neutrino dipole
moments (Notzold 1988). Hence, in general it is not obvious that parameters allowed by the cooling argument on the trapping side would
remain allowed if one took account of these eects. Moreover, on the
trapping side the novel particles interact about as strongly as neutrinos
and so they could also cause a signal in the detectors. For axions, this
argument rules out the values of ga given in Eq. (13.2).
13.4.2
Analytic Criterion in the Free-Streaming Limit
In order to estimate the impact of a novel cooling channel on the neutrino signal it is obviously useful to evolve a protoneutron star numerically with the new physics included, and to calculate the expected
neutrino signal for a varying strength of the new eect. Considering
the many uncertainties involved in this procedure one may well ask if
it is not just as reliable to perform a simple analytic estimate.
At about 1 s after core bounce the neutrino luminosity in all six
(anti)neutrino degrees of freedom together is about 31052 erg s1 . The
mass of the object is around 1.5 M = 31033 g so that its average
energy-loss rate is L /M 11019 erg g1 s1 . A novel cooling agent
would have to compete with this energy-loss rate in order to aect the
total cooling time scale signicantly. Therefore, the observed signal
duration indicates that a novel energy-loss rate is bounded by
19
1 1
x <
10 erg g s .
(13.8)
It is to be evaluated at typical core conditions, i.e. at a temperature

of around 30 MeV and a density of around 31014 g cm3 . The nuclear
medium is then at the borderline between degeneracy and nondegeneracy while the electrons are highly degenerate.
505
Fig. 13.2. Prole of various parameters for the protoneutron
star model S2BH 0 of Keil,
Janka, and Raelt (1995), 1 s
after core bounce. The degeneracy parameters were approximated by N = (EF mN )/T
with EF2 = p2F + m2N and with
the eective nucleon mass.
506
Chapter 13
The prole of various parameters as a function of the mass coordinate is shown in Fig. 13.2 for model S2BH 0 of the cooling calculations of Keil, Janka, and Raelt (1995); it illustrates typical physical
conditions encountered in the core of a protoneutron star during the
Kelvin-Helmholtz phase. For this model, the average value of (/0 )n
with the nuclear density 0 = 31014 g cm3 and of (T /30 MeV)n is
shown in Fig. 13.3 as a function of n.
Fig. 13.3. Average values for (/0 )n with the nuclear density 0 =
31014 g cm3 and of (T /30 MeV)n for the protoneutron star model of
Fig. 13.2.
As an example one may apply this criterion to the bremsstrahlung

energy-loss rate N N N N a for the emission of some pseudoscalar
boson a (axion) with a Yukawa coupling ga . The nondegenerate energy3.5
loss rate Eq. (4.8) is a = ga2 21039 erg g1 s1 15 T30
where T30 =
15
3
T /30 MeV and 15 = /10 g cm . From Fig. 13.3 one nds that
3.5
15 0.4 and T30
1.4. The criterion Eq. (13.8) then yields
10
ga <
10
,
similar
to
what
one would conclude from Fig. 13.1. Using
the degenerate emission rate Eq. (4.10) yields an almost identical result.
Therefore, a simple criterion like Eq. (13.1) is not a bad rst estimate
for the import of a novel energy-loss rate.
13.4.3
Trapping Limit
When the new particles (for example, axions) interact strongly enough,
they will be emitted from a spherical shell where their optical depth is
about unity rather than by volume emission. Again, one is concerned
507
mostly with a time later than 0.51 s where the outer core has settled and the shock has begun to escape. The density of the protoneutron star falls within a thin shell from supranuclear levels to nearly
zero, causing the photosphere radius rx of the new particles to be
essentially the radius R 10 km of the settled compact star. With a
photosphere temperature Tx of the new objects their luminosity is
4r2 Tx4 with the Stefan-Boltzmann constant which is g 2 /120 in
natural units with g the eective number of degrees of freedom (2 for
photons). Therefore, one must demand that
1/4
Tx <
,
8 MeV g
(13.9)
in order to stay below the total neutrino luminosity of 31052 erg s1 .

It is nontrivial, however, to determine the temperature Tx which
corresponds to about unit optical depth. Following the approach of
Turner (1988) who carried this analysis through for axions one may
assume a simple model for the run of temperature and density above
the settled inner core. A simple power-law ansatz is (r) = R (R/r)n
with the density R = 1014 g cm3 at a radius R 10 km. A plausible
ansatz for the temperature prole is T (r) = TR [(r)/R ]1/3 with TR
(temperature at radius R) of around 10 MeV. From the opacity as a
function of density and temperature one may then calculate the optical
depth as (rx ) = r
dr. From the condition (rx ) 32 one can
x
determine the photosphere radius rx and thus its temperature Tx .
The opacity of axions for a medium of nondegenerate nucleons was
given in Eq. (4.28). One may dene R R R R so that R =
R (/R )2 (TR /T )1/2 where Eq. (4.28) yields R = ga2 3.41016 . Then
one nds for Turners model an optical depth a at the axion-sphere
temperature Ta
a = R ( 11
n 1) (Ta /TR )11/23/n .
6
(13.10)
2
Because n is a relatively large number such as 37 the criterion a <
3
6
<
yields R >
n (TR /Ta ) . With the requirement Ta 8 MeV and with
>
TR 20 MeV as taken by Turner one nds ga 2107 , not in bad
agreement with what one would conclude from the numerical results
shown in Fig. 13.1.
Still, this argument is rather sensitive to the detailed model assumptions concerning the protoneutron star structure. Also, as axions
contribute to the transfer of energy within the star, a self-consistent
model must take this eect into account. Moreover, for novel fermions
such as r.h. neutrinos one must distinguish carefully between their neutrino sphere (from where they can escape almost freely) and the deeper
508
Chapter 13
region where their energy ux is set. Put another way, for fermions the
concept of blackbody emission from a neutrino sphere is not adequate,
making it impossible to apply the Stefan-Boltzmann in a simplistic way.
The transport of r.h. neutrinos in the trapping limit is an equally complicated problem as that of l.h. ones! Therefore, a proper treatment of
the trapping limit is generally a tricky subject; axions are the only case
where it has been studied in some detail.
Occasionally one may wish to construct a particle-physics model
that avoids the SN limit. It would be incorrect to believe that this
is achieved when the interaction strength has been tuned such that
the mean free path is of order the neutron star radius. On the contrary, when this condition obtains the impact on the cooling rate is
maximized. This is analogous to the impact of novel particles on the
structure and evolution of the Sun as depicted in Fig. 1.2; the cooling
rate is maximized when the mfp corresponds to a typical geometric dimension of the object. In the trapping regime a new particle is harmless
only if it interacts about as strongly as the particles which provide the
standard mode of energy transfer.
13.5
Axions
13.5.1
Numerical Studies
The most-studied application of the SN cooling-time argument is that

of invisible axions as these particles are well motivated (Chapter 14).
Moreover, they have attracted much interest because they are one of
the few particle-physics motivated candidates for the cosmic dark matter. Early analytic studies in the free-streaming limit are Ellis and Olive
(1987), Raelt and Seckel (1988), and Turner (1988) who also discussed
the trapping regime; his line of reasoning was presented in Sect. 13.4.3
above. Numerical studies in the free-streaming limit were performed
by Mayle et al. (1988, 1989) and by Burrows, Turner, and Brinkmann
(1989) while the trapping regime was numerically studied by Burrows,
Ressell, and Turner (1990). The numerical studies by dierent workers in the free-streaming limit used dierent assumptions concerning
the axion couplings, emission rates, and other aspects. In my previous review (Raelt 1990d) I have attempted to reduce the results of
these works to a common and consistent set of assumptions; apart from
relatively minor dierences which could be blamed on dierent input
physics (e.g. softer equation of state and thus higher temperatures in
the Mayle et al. papers) the results seemed reasonably consistent. A
509
recent numerical study by Keil (1994) who used the same axion emission rates as Burrows, Turner, and Brinkmann (1988) conrmed their
results.
Here, I present the numerical studies of Burrows and his collaborators where axions were assumed to couple with equal strength to protons and neutrons. The axial-vector coupling to nucleons is written in
the form (C/2fa ) 5 a with a model-dependent numerical factor
C, the Peccei-Quinn energy scale fa , the nucleon Dirac eld , and the
axion eld a. Under certain assumptions detailed in Sect. 14.2.3 it can
be written in the pseudoscalar form i ga 5 where ga = CmN /fa
is a dimensionless Yukawa coupling (nucleon mass mN ); Burrows et al.
used C = 21 . All results will be discussed in terms of ga and as such they
apply to any pseudoscalar particle which couples to nucleons accordingly. In Sect. 14.4 the available constraints on axions will be expressed
in terms of the axion mass ma .
In the free-streaming limit the energy loss by axions was implemented according to the numerical rates of Brinkmann and Turner
(1988); limiting cases of these rates were discussed in Sect. 4.2. In the
trapping regime, the transfer of energy by axions as well as axion cooling from an axion sphere was implemented by means of an eective
radiative opacity as discussed in Sect. 4.4. The protoneutron star models are those of Burrows and Lattimer (1986) and of Burrows (1988b).
In the latter study, cooling sequences were presented for dierent equations of state (EOS), and dierent assumptions concerning the mass
and early accretion rate of the stars. A ducial case in these studies is
model 55 with a sti EOS, an initial baryon mass of 1.3 M , and an
initial accretion of 0.2 M .
The compatibility of a given model with the SN 1987A observations
should be tested by a maximum-likelihood analysis of the time and
energy distributions of the events in both the IMB and Kamiokande II
detectors. In practice, it is easier to consider a few simple observables.
Burrows and his collaborators chose the total number of events NKII
and NIMB in the two detectors as well as the signal duration dened by
the expected times tKII and tIMB it takes to accrue 90% of the expected
total number of events. As both detectors measured approximately
10 events each, the time of the last event probably is a reasonable
estimate of tKII and tIMB . Finally, Burrows et al. calculated the total
energy carried away by neutrinos and axions.
The run of these quantities with ga is shown in Fig. 13.4. Recall from Sect. 11.3.2 that the observed SN 1987A numbers of events
are NIMB = 8 and NKII = 1012, depending on whether event No. 6
510
Chapter 13
Fig. 13.4. Results from protoneutron star cooling sequences with axions.
The free-streaming regime (small ga ) is according to Burrows, Turner, and
Brinkmann (1989), the trapping regime (large ga ) according to Burrows,
Ressell, and Turner (1990). For models A, B, and C (corresponding to
models 57, 55, and 62 of Burrows 1988b) the amount of early accretion and
the type of EOS (sti or soft) is indicated. The models were calculated
until 20 s after collapse.
511
was actually due to background (quite possible) and whether event

No. 1 was due to the prompt e burst (possible but not necessary).
The last events were registered at 5.6 s after the rst (IMB) and 12.4 s
(Kamiokande II). Recall also that the absolute timing between the two
detectors is uncertain to within a minute although it seems plausible
that in both cases the rst event essentially marks the arrival of the
rst neutrinos. Finally, recall that the signal at Kamiokande II exhibits
a peculiar 7.3 s time gap before the last three events; event No. 9 was
registered at 1.9 s after the rst. Naturally, it is worrisome that the
large Kamiokande time scale rests on the last three events, i.e. in order
to take the Kamiokande pulse duration seriously one needs to appeal
to a rare statistical uctuation.
The total number of events observed is not very sensitive to the
amount of axion cooling which has an impact mostly on the late-time
neutrino signal. Interestingly, in the trapping regime (large ga ) the
number of events at IMB actually increases because the axionic energy
transfer heats the neutrino sphere to higher temperatures. NIMB responds sensitively to the neutrino spectrum because of the high threshold at IMB. However, for this reason it is a bad indicator for the actual
neutrino ux because the high-energy tail of the spectrum is relatively
uncertain. For example, if it is described by a Fermi-Dirac function
with a degeneracy parameter = 23 rather than = 0 reduces NIMB
by about a factor of two (Fig. 11.11).
No numerical results are available in the intermediate regime between free streaming and trapping where the axion mean free path is
of order the neutron star radius. In this range of coupling constants
the impact of axions on the star is maximized. Moreover, a substantial
modication of the initial collapse phase obtains.
As emphasized before, the most sensitive observable is the duration
of the neutrino signal at the detectors. Therefore, nominally a range
7
<
of coupling constants 11010 <
ga 310 is excluded. Within this
range the observed neutrino signal likely would be shortened too much
to be compatible with the observations.
13.5.2
Impact of Multiple-Scattering Eects
The results presented in the previous section were based on a naive

perturbative calculation of the axion emission rate without taking the
modication of the spin-density structure function into account that
must occur at high density as outlined in Sect. 4.6.7. The density dependence of the axion emission rate is encapsuled in the spin-uctuation
512
Chapter 13
rate which, in the nondegenerate limit, was given in Eq. (4.7) on the
basis of a perturbative one-pion exchange (OPE) calculation. For the
protoneutron star model displayed in Fig. 13.2 the prole of this /T
is shown in Fig. 13.5. In Fig. 4.8 the axion emission rate was shown as a
function of , revealing that for the conditions of interest one is in the
neighborhood of the maximum of the solid curve. In a realistic nuclear
medium, the true spin uctuation rate may be smaller than the OPE
calculated value, taking one perhaps somewhat to the left of the maximum. Therefore, the true axion emission rate corresponds to the naive
one (dashed line in Fig. 4.8) at /T 35 which at temperatures
around 30 MeV corresponds to around 20% nuclear density.
Fig. 13.5. Prole for the nondegenerate spin-uctuation rate of Eq. (4.7)
in the protoneutron star model S2BH 0 of Keil, Janka, and Raelt (1995)
shown in Fig. 13.2.
Given the overall uncertainties involved in this discussion it is best

to derive a plausible limit on ga by the analytic criterion Eq. (13.8). The
relevant average temperature is about 30 MeV for which the maximum
emission rate corresponds to the naive one at about 51013 g cm3 .
From Eq. (4.8) one nds an approximate axion energy-loss rate of
ga2 11038 erg g1 s1 . Then Eq. (13.8) indicates that one needs to re10
quire ga <
310 , about a factor of 3 less restrictive than the nominal bound from the numerical calculations above. Altogether one may
adopt
7
<
31010 <
ga 310
as a range excluded by the SN 1987A cooling-time argument.
(13.11)
13.6
513
How Many Neutrino Flavors?
One may ask how the neutrino signal from a SN would be modied
if there existed additional light sequential neutrino avors beyond e ,
, and . Of course, the Z decay width measured at CERN already
reveals that there are exactly three sequential neutrino avors (Particle
Data Group 1994); the same conclusion is reached from studies of big
bang nucleosynthesis (e.g. Kolb and Turner 1990).
Burrows, Ressell, and Turner (1990) calculated several protoneutron star cooling sequences, varying the number of avors from 3, the
standard value, to 11. This increases the eciency of energy transfer
within the SN core and also allows for a more ecient radiation from
the neutrino sphere as there are more degrees of freedom. Thus one
expects a shortened signal in the Kamiokande II and IMB detectors,
as well as a reduced number of events because the available energy is
shared between more neutrino degrees of freedom of which mostly the
Fig. 13.6. Number of events NKII and NIMB in the Kamiokande and IMB
detectors as well as the signal duration tKII and tIMB (in sec) as a function
of the assumed number of neutrino avors (Burrows, Ressell, and Turner
1990). The signal duration is dened as the time it takes to accrue 90% of
the total expected number of events.
514
Chapter 13
e s are detected. These expectations are borne out by the numerical results shown in Fig. 13.6. A doubling of the number of avors is
probably excluded by the observed signal duration.
13.7
Neutrino Opacity
The cooling time scale of a young SN core is determined by the neutrino

opacities which in turn are dominated by the neutral-current scattering
+ N N + of neutrinos on nucleons. Apart from nal-state Pauli
blocking eects these opacities are given in terms of the scattering cross
section = (G2F /) (CV2 + 3CA2 ) E2 where the neutral-current nucleon
weak-coupling constants CV,A were given in Appendix B. Therefore, the
neutrino opacities are dominated by the axial-vector, i.e. the nucleon
spin-dependent interaction. In Sect. 4.6.7 it was discussed that a naive
application of perturbation theory in a nuclear medium likely is not
appropriate because of the large spin uctuation rate implied by this
method. It would indicate that the spin of a given nucleon uctuates
so fast in a SN core that a neutrino would see on average a nearly
vanishing contribution. This would lead to a decrease of a typical axialvector scattering rate as estimated in Fig. 4.9.
To test if such a suppression eect is compatible with the SN 1987A
neutrino signal, Keil, Janka, and Raelt (1995) calculated a series of
protoneutron star cooling sequences with modied neutrino opacities.
To this end they substituted CA2 F CA2 in the numerical subroutine
which evaluates the opacities where
a
F = (1 a) +
(13.12)
1+b
with
1
b=
12
)2
13
310 g cm3
)2
10 MeV
.
T
(13.13)
Here, a = 1 represents full suppression while smaller values of a allow

one to dial a lesser reduction of the opacities.
The predicted neutrino signal at IMB and Kamiokande II was,
again, characterized by the total number of expected events NIMB and
NKII as well as the signal durations tIMB and tKII which represent the
time at which 90% of the total number of expected events have been accrued. In Fig. 13.7 these quantities are shown as a function of a where
the suppression eect was implemented for both, neutral- and chargedcurrent axial-vector interactions. The results marked with open circles
515
Fig. 13.7. Number of events in the Kamiokande and IMB detectors as well
as the signal durations as a function of the assumed opacity suppression
parameter dened by Eq. (13.12). Filled circles refer to a suppression of
both neutral- and charged-current axial-vector interactions while open circles
refer to a suppression of neutral-current interactions only. (Adapted from
Keil, Janka, and Raelt 1995.)
refer to a suppression of the neutral-current reactions alone. The modication of the results between those cases is relatively minor, indicating
that the neutral-current interactions represent the dominant opacity
source for the overall cooling time scale.
The increase of the counting rates at the two detectors with decreasing opacities is explained by the neutrino sphere moving to deeper and
hotter layers, yielding larger neutrino energies. The detectors register
mostly e s so that the number of events is relatively sensitive to the
charged-current opacity which aects only the electron avor. NIMB is
particularly sensitive to the e spectrum because of its high threshold.
516
Chapter 13
By the same token, NIMB is quite sensitive to spectral pinching, an effect not included in these calculations where an equilibrium neutrino
transport scheme was used. Therefore, the total number of events,
notably at IMB, is a poor measure to characterize the neutrino signal.
In the calculations of Keil, Janka, and Raelt (1995) the mass of
the initial neutron-star model as well as its temperature prole and the
equation of state were varied. While such modications cause changes
in the predicted signal durations and event counts, none of these parameters appears likely to be able to compensate for an extreme suppression of the neutrino opacities. The SN 1987A neutrino signal excludes
a suppression eect stronger than, say, a >
0.5.
These ndings are in agreement with those of the previous section
where the number of neutrino avors had been increased. Essentially
that procedure amounted to increasing the eciency of neutral-current
energy transfer and so it is not very dierent from the decreased opacities used here.
Therefore, it appears that the standard opacities which ignore
fast spin uctuations provide a reasonable representation of what is
observed. This result appears to imply that the spin-uctuation rate
does not exceed O(T ) in a SN coresee Sect. 4.6.7 for a discussion
of these matters. However, it is surprising that the best t is achieved
by the naive opacities because the spin-uctuation eect is only one
reason to expect reduced axial-vector opacities. Other reasons include
reduced eective values for CA in a nuclear medium, and spin-spin
correlations which tend to pair the spins and thus tend to reduce the
opacities. The question of the appropriate neutrino opacities in a SN
medium remains worrisome.
However, with regard to particle bounds the eect of reduced opacities goes in the direction of making those constraints more conservative
as a reduction of the opacities, like an anomalous energy loss, shortens
the neutrino signal.
13.8
Right-Handed Neutrinos
13.8.1
Dirac Mass
Right-handed neutrinos (helicity-minus neutrinos, helicity-plus antineutrinos) do not interact by the standard weak interactions and so
they would not be trapped in the interior of a SN core. Therefore, the
SN 1987A neutrino signal allows one to constrain any mechanism that
517
could produce these wrong-helicity states.86 The main possibilities

are the existence of novel r.h. interactions which couple directly to r.h.
neutrinos, the existence of neutrino magnetic or electric dipole moments
which allow for left-right scatterings or magnetic oscillations, and the
existence of neutrino Dirac masses. Of course, these possibilities are
not necessarily distinct as the existence of r.h. currents or a Dirac mass
would usually also induce magnetic dipole moments.
Beginning with the assumption that neutrinos have a Dirac mass,
the mismatch between chirality and helicity for massive fermions implies that in purely l.h. interactions a nal-state neutrino or antineutrino sometimes has the wrong helicity and thus nearly r.h. chirality.
Then it is essentially noninteracting and thus may escape almost freely.
In principle, there are two production channels, the spin-ip scattering
of trapped l.h. states, and the production of pairs L R or R L by
the medium. In Sect. 4.10 it was shown that the neutrino phase space
favors the spin-ip process by a large margin. Moreover, in a nonrelativistic medium the spin-ip scattering rate was found to be simply
the nonip scattering rate times the factor (m /2E )2 . The energyloss rate was then given by Qscat in Eq. (4.94) in terms of a dynamic
structure function of the medium.87
In a dilute medium consisting of only one species of nucleons one
has S() = (CV2 + 3CA2 ) 2(), leading to an energy-loss rate of
R =
3(CV2 + 3CA2 ) G2F m2 T 4

2 3 mN
0.71019 erg g1 s1
m
30 keV
)2 (
T
30 MeV
)4
(13.14)
where CV2 +3CA2 1 was used (see Appendix B). Even though the axialvector structure function is not a function, Eq. (13.14) is probably a
reasonable estimate because the results of the previous section indicate
that the neutrino scattering rate in a dense medium is probably not
86
Such bounds naturally can be avoided if one assumes that the r.h. neutrinos
have other novel interactions which are strong enough to trap them eciently in a
SN core. Explicit models were constructed, for example, by Babu, Mohapatra, and
Rothstein (1992) or Rajpoot (1993). These authors aimed at avoiding the SN 1987A
bound on Dirac neutrino masses.
87
Besides the neutrino spin-ip rate due to the neutrino weak interactions with
nucleons or other particles, there is also a spin-ip scattering term in the gravitational eld of the entire neutron star (Choudhury, Hari Dass, and Murthy 1989).
However, the resulting energy loss was found to be small except for low-energy
neutrinos.
518
Chapter 13
too dierent from that found in the dilute-medium limit. If one applies
the analytic criterion Eq. (13.8) one nds
m <
30 keV
(13.15)
as a limit on a possible Dirac neutrino mass. This agrees with the

bounds originally estimated by Raelt and Seckel (1988) and Gaemers,
Gandhi, and Lattimer (1989) while Grifols and Masso (1990a) estimated a slightly more restrictive limit (14 keV). This sort of bound
only applies if the mass is not so large that the wrong-helicity states
interact strongly enough to be trapped themselves. This would occur
for a mass beyond a few MeV. Therefore, a Dirac-mass with, say,
m = O(10 MeV) is not excluded by this argument.
In a numerical study Gandhi and Burrows (1990) implemented the
spin-ip energy-loss rate and calculated the expected event counts and
signal durations at the IMB and Kamiokande II detectors. They found
a bound almost identical with Eq. (13.15). A similar numerical study
by Burrows, Gandhi, and Turner (1992) corroborated this result. Another numerical study was performed by Mayle et al. (1993) who found
a somewhat more restrictive limit of about 10 keV, essentially because
their equation of state allows the core to heat up to much higher temperatures than are found in Burrows implementation with a sti EOS.
In the Mayle et al. (1993) study, a more restrictive bound of around
3 keV was claimed if the pion-induced pair emission process + N
N +R + L was included. This result is incorrect if one accepts the predominance of the spin-ip scattering over the pair-emission processes
that was discussed in Sect. 4.10. It does not seem believable that the
presence of pions would enhance the scattering cross section on nucleons. In the form implemented by Mayle et al. (1993), the pair emission
rate and their neutrino opacities were not based on a common and
consistent axial-vector dynamical structure function.
A massive or likely would mix with e . In this case the degenerate e sea initially present in a SN core would partially convert into a
degenerate or sea (Maalampi and Peltoniemi 1991; Turner 1992;
Pantaleone 1992a). In Sect. 9.5 it was shown that the avor conversion
would be very fast even for rather small mixing angles. In this case the
spin-ip scattering energy-loss rate involves initial-state neutrinos with
much larger average energies than those of a nondegenerate distribution that was used above. However, even though the initial energy-loss
rate in r.h. neutrino is much larger than before, the degeneracy eect
disappears after the core has been deleptonized and so the late-time
519
neutrino signal is not aected as signicantly as one might have expected. The Dirac mass limit becomes only slightly more restrictive if
mixing is assumed (Burrows, Gandhi, and Turner 1992).
Neutrinos with masses in the keV range must decay suciently fast
in order to avoid overclosing the universe. If r.h. Dirac-mass neutrinos escape directly from the inner core of a SN they have energies
far in excess of l.h. neutrinos emitted from the neutrino sphere. If
their decay products involve sequential l.h. neutrinos or antineutrinos,
these daughter states would have caused high-energy events at IMB or
Kamiokande II, contrary to the observations. Dodelson, Frieman, and
Turner (1992) found that this argument excludes the lifetime range
7
<
109 s/keV <
/m 510 s/keV,
(13.16)
<
for Dirac masses in the range 1 keV <
m 300 keV, assuming that
the visible channel dominates.
13.8.2
Right-Handed Currents
On some level r.h. weak gauge interactions may exist as, e.g. in leftright symmetric models where the gauge bosons which couple to r.h.
currents would dier from the standard ones only in their mass. In the
low-energy limit relevant for processes in stars one may account for the
novel couplings by a r.h. Fermi constant which is given as GF with
some small dimensionless number which may be dierent for chargedand neutral-current processes. In left-right symmetric models one nds
explicitly for charged-current reactions (Barbieri and Mohapatra 1989)
2CC = 2 + (mWL /mWR )4 ,
(13.17)
where mWR,L are the r.h. and l.h. charged gauge boson masses while
is the left-right mixing parameter.
In order to constrain CC one assumes the existence of r.h. e s so
that the dominant energy-loss mechanism of a SN core is e + p
n + e,R where the nal-state r.h. neutrino escapes freely. Initially, a
substantial fraction of the thermal energy of a SN core is stored in
the degenerate electron sea. Therefore, the time scale of cooling is
estimated by the inverse scattering rate for e + p n + e,R . The usual
charged-current weak scattering cross section involving nonrelativistic
nucleons is G2F (CV2 +3CA2 )Ee2 / with CV2 +3CA2 4 in a nuclear medium
(Appendix B). Using a proton density corresponding to nuclear matter
at 1015 g cm3 and using 100 MeV for a typical electron energy one nds
520
Chapter 13
a charged-current scattering rate of 0.61010 s1 or an approximate

10
cooling time-scale by r.h. neutrinos of 2
s. The requirement
CC 210
that this timescale exceeds a few seconds leads to the constraint
5
CC <
10 ,
(13.18)
in agreement with a result of Barbieri and Mohapatra (1989) while Raffelt and Seckel (1988) found a somewhat less restrictive limit of CC <
2
310
3105 . Laboratory experiments yield a limit of order CC <
(e.g. Jodidio et al. 1986) which is much weaker but does not depend
on the assumed existence of r.h. neutrinos. Mohapatra and Nussinov
(1989) extended the SN 1987A bound to the case of r.h. Majorana
neutrinos which mix with e .
In order to constrain r.h. neutral currents, equivalent to constraining
the mass of putative r.h. Z gauge bosons, one considers the emission
of r.h. neutrino pairs R R . The dominant emission process is by the
nucleons of the medium; in a dilute medium it can be represented as the
bremsstrahlung process N N N N R R . Apart from a global scaling
factor 2NC , the bremsstrahlung energy-loss rate for a nondegenerate
medium was given in Eq. (4.23). However, in a dense medium this
rate probably saturates at around 10% nuclear density as in the case
of axion emission (Sect. 4.6.7). Evaluating Eq. (4.23) at 10% nuclear
density (15 = 0.03) and at T = 30 MeV, and applying the analytic
criterion Eq. (13.8) one nds
3
NC <
310 .
(13.19)
This is less restrictive from what was found by Raelt and Seckel (1988)
or Barbieri and Mohapatra (1989).
The translation of a limit on NC into one on a r.h. gauge boson mass
depends on details of the couplings to quarks and leptons, and notably
on the mixing angle between the new and the standard Z bosons. Detailed analyses were presented by Grifols and Masso (1990b), Grifols,
Masso, and Rizzo (1990), and Rizzo (1991). Because these authors did
not consider multiple-scattering eects and the resulting saturation of
the bremsstrahlung process, their bounds on the Z mass are somewhat
too restrictive, perhaps by a factor of 2 or 3. Still, mZ has to exceed
at least 1 TeV, except for special choices of the mixing angle.
The SN 1987A limits on r.h. neutral currents are weaker than those
3
from big bang nucleosynthesis (NC <
10 ) which are based on the
requirement that r.h. neutrinos must not have come to thermal equilibrium after the QCD phase transition (at T <
200 MeV) in the early
universe (e.g. Olive, Schramm, and Steigman 1981; Ellis et al. 1986).

13.8.3
521
Magnetic Dipole Moments
Turning to neutrino magnetic dipole moments, the main production

process of r.h. states would be spin-ip scattering on charged particles, notably on protons. The scattering cross section was discussed in
Sect. 7.4. It involves the usual Coulomb divergence which in a medium
is cut o by screening eects. In a SN core, the electrons are initially
very degenerate while the protons are essentially nondegenerate and
so the main contribution to screening is from the protons. According to Eq. (D.17) they are electrically weakly coupled at the prevailing
temperatures and densities so that Debye screening should be an approximately adequate prescription; the Debye scale for the protons is
found to be around 30 MeV. As typical neutrino energies are somewhat
larger but of the same order, the Coulomb logarithm is approximately
unity. Thus the cross section is approximately 2 with the magnetic dipole or transition moment.
This is to be compared with the spin-ip cross section from a Dirac
mass which is approximately G2F m2 /4. In Sect. 13.8.1 a Dirac mass
bound of about 30 keV was derived which translates into
12
<
410 B
(13.20)
with B = e/2me the Bohr magneton. This bound is similar to that

derived by Barbieri and Mohapatra (1988), but less restrictive by about
an order of magnitude than that claimed by Lattimer and Cooperstein
(1988). See also Nussinov and Rephaeli (1987), Goldman et al. (1988),
and Goyal, Dutta, and Choudhury (1995).
Eq. (13.20) applies to all magnetic, electric, and transition moments
of Dirac neutrinos. Numerically, it is similar to the bound Eq. (6.97)
derived from the absence of excessive plasmon decay in globular cluster
stars. However, because this latter result applies also to Majorana
transition moments it is more general than the SN limit. The SN limit,
on the other hand, applies to masses up to a few MeV while the globular
cluster bound only for m <
5 keV.
The simple cooling argument that led to Eq. (13.20) is not necessarily the end of the story of neutrino magnetic dipole moments in SNe. If
r.h. neutrinos were indeed produced in the inner core and escaped freely,
they could rotate back into l.h. ones in the magnetic eld around the
SN and in the galaxy. For a galactic magnetic eld of order 106 Gauss,
extended over, say, 1 kpc (the eld is conned to the disk, the LMC lies
12
far above the disk) this eect would be important for >
10 B .
522
Chapter 13
As the r.h. neutrinos escape from the inner core with much larger energies than those from the neutrino sphere one would expect high-energy
events in the Kamiokande and IMB detectors, contrary to the observa12
tions. Therefore, one probably needs to require <
10 B for the
diagonal dipole moments; spin-avor oscillations could be suppressed
by the neutrino mass dierences. As the spin precession is the same for
all neutrino energies, this limit would not apply if the Earth happened
to be in a node of the oscillation pattern between SN 1987A and us.
Neutrino magnetic moments of order 1012 B could also aect the
infall phase of SNe. The spin-ip scattering on nuclei would be coherently enhanced relative to protons. Therefore, neutrinos could escape
in the r.h. channel for much longer so that eectively trapping would
set in much later than in the standard picture (Notzold 1988).
In and near the SN core there probably exist strong magnetic elds
of order 1012 Gauss or more which would induce spin-precessions between r.h. and l.h. neutrinos. Therefore, the sterile states produced in
the deep interior by spin-ip scattering could back-convert into active
ones near the neutrino sphere. Depending on details of the matterinduced neutrino energy shifts, the vacuum mass dierences, and the
magnetic eld strengths and congurations this conversion could take
place inside or outside of the neutrino sphere. The observable neutrino
signal could be aected, but also the energy transfer within the SN core
and outside of the neutrino sphere. Perhaps, a more ecient transfer of
energy to the stalled shock wave could help to explode SNe in the delayed explosion scenario. Various aspects of these scenarios have been
studied by Dar (1987), Nussinov and Rephaeli (1987), Goldman et al.
(1988), Voloshin (1988), Okun (1988), Blinnikov and Okun (1988), and
Athar, Peltoniemi, and Smirnov (1995).
Clearly, Dirac magnetic or transition moments in the 1012 B range
and below would aect SN dynamics and the observable neutrino signal
in interesting ways. However, because there are so many parameters
and possible eld congurations, it is hard to develop a clear view of
the excluded or desired neutrino properties. If compelling evidence for
nonstandard neutrino electromagnetic properties in this range were to
emerge, SN dynamics likely would have to be rethought from scratch.
13.8.4
Millicharges
Within the particle physics standard model it is not entirely impossible that neutrinos have small electric charges (Sect. 15.8). In this
case neutrinos would have to be Dirac fermions and so the r.h. states
523
can be produced in pairs by their coupling to the electromagnetic eld.

Obvious production processes are the plasmon decay pl R R and
pair annihilation e+ e R R with an intermediate photon. An intermediate photon can also be coupled to hadronic components of the
medium. Mohapatra and Rothstein (1990) considered nucleon-nucleon
bremsstrahlung, and notably an amplitude where the electromagnetic
eld is coupled to an intermediate charged pion. One may well wonder,
however, if this sort of naive perturbative bremsstrahlung calculation
is adequate in a nuclear medium.
A simple estimate of the plasmon decay process begins with the
energy-loss rate Eq. (6.94). Because the electrons in a SN core are
highly relativistic the plasma frequency is given by Eq. (6.43) as P2 =
(4/3) (2e + 13 2 T 2 ) where e is the electron chemical potential. For
a SN core P 10 MeV is a reasonable estimate while the relevant
temperature is about T = 30 MeV. Taking approximately Q1 = 1 in
Eq. (6.94) and applying the approximate criterion Eq. (13.8) one nds
9
e <
10 e.
(13.21)
This is similar to Mohapatra and Rothsteins (1990) result. Including

the e+ e annihilation process would slightly improve this limit and
extend it to somewhat larger masses.
The bound Eq. (13.21) would apply to any millicharged particle
which is not trapped in the SN core. Mohapatra and Rothstein (1990)
estimated that for a charge in excess of about 107 e the particles would
be suciently trapped by scatterings o electrons to leave the SN cooling time scale essentially unaected. If they are Dirac neutrinos with a
mass in excess of a few MeV trapping by spin-ip scattering would become important. Again, it is not obvious how strong the impact of such
trapped particles would be during the infall phase of SN collapse, i.e.
one should not infer that millicharged particles in the trapping regime
would not have a strong impact on SN physics just because their impact
on the Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling phase is small.
13.8.5
Charge Radius
If r.h. neutrinos existed and had an eective electromagnetic interaction

by virtue of a charge radius, they would be produced in a SN core by
the same processes as above where they were assumed to have a charge.
On the basis of the e+ e annihilation process Grifols and Masso (1989)
found a limit of about 31017 cm on a r.h. charge radius.
Chapter 14
Axions
The idea of axions is introduced and their phenomenological properties
are reviewed. The constraints on pseudoscalars that have been derived
throughout this book are systematically applied to axions.
14.1
The Strong CP-Problem
All fermions, with the possible exception of neutrinos, have magnetic

dipole momentssee Tab. 14.1 for several important examples. The
minimal electromagnetic coupling of charged spin- 12 fermions (charge q,
mass m) automatically yields a Dirac moment q/2m. Higher-order
amplitudes lead to an additional anomalous contribution, which is
the only one for neutral particles. For example, the magnetic moments
of massive neutrinos calculated in the standard model were given in
Eq. (7.16). The QED prediction of the electron anomalous magnetic
moment is perhaps the most stunning quantitative success of theoretical
physics.
On the other hand, no particle electric dipole moment has ever
been detectedsee Tab. 14.1 for some upper limits. At rst this is
quite satisfying because an electric dipole moment would allow one to
distinguish between matter and antimatter in an absolute sense.88 The
electroweak and strong gauge interactions are CP-conserving, so the
observed broad symmetry between particles and antiparticles appears
natural.
88
In the nonrelativistic limit the electric dipole operator d must be proportional

to the spin operator s which is an axial vector. Because the electric eld is a polar
vector the energy dE reverses sign under P and thus under CP whence its absolute
sign yields an absolute distinction between fermions and antifermions.
524
Axions
525
Table 14.1. Particle magnetic and electric dipole moments.
Fermion
Protona
Neutrona
Electrona
Neutrinob
Magnetic Momentc
Electric Momentd
[1026 e cm]
2.792, 847, 3(86) N

1.913, 042, (75) N
1.001, 159, 652, 1(93) B
< 31012 B
4000 6000
< 11e
0.3 0.8
< 6000
a Particle
Data Group (1994).

avors with m <
5 keV (Sect. 6.5.6).
c Bohr magneton = e/2m ; nuclear magneton = e/2m .
e
p
B
N
d 1 e cm = 5.181010 = 0.9511014 (Appendix A).
B
N
e 95% CL.
b All
This symmetry is not respected, however, by the generally complex

Yukawa couplings to the Higgs eld which are thought to induce the
fermion masses (Sects. 7.1 and 7.2). The resulting complex quark mass
matrix Mq can be made real and diagonal by suitable transformations
of the quark elds. This involves a global chiral phase transformation
(angle = arg det Mq ), leading to a term in the QCD Lagrangian
L =
s e
GG .
8
(14.1)
e
Here, s is the ne-structure constant of strong interactions and GG
e
1
e
Gb Gb where Gb is the color eld strength tensor, G
b = 2 Gb
its dual, and the implied summation over b refers to the color degrees
of freedom. Of course, det Mq and thus would vanish if one of the
quarks were exactly massless, but this does not seem to be the case.
Under the combined action of charge conjugation (C) and a parity
transformation (P) the Lagrangian Eq. (14.1) changes sign,89 violating
the CP invariance of QCD. It leads to a neutron electric dipole moment
|dn | || (0.04 2.0)1015 e cm (Baluni 1979; Crewther et al. 1979;
see also Cheng 1988). This is |dn | || (0.004 0.2) N in units of
nuclear magnetons. Hence, for || of order unity one expects a neutron electric dipole moment almost as large as its magnetic one. The
e is Ecolor Bcolor , i.e. the scalar product of a polar with an
The structure of GG
axial vector and so it is CP-odd.
89
526
Chapter 14
9
experimental limit (Tab. 14.1), however, indicates || <
10 , surpris3
ingly small in view of the phase = 3.310 which appears in the
Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix Eq. (7.6) and which explains the
observed CP-violating eects in the K -K system.
Even worse, QCD alone produces a term like Eq. (14.1) because of
the nontrivial topological structure of its ground state (Callan, Dashen,
and Gross 1976; Jackiw and Rebbi 1976; tHooft 1976a,b). The coecient QCD is a parameter characterizing the -vacuum. It is mapped
onto itself by a transformation QCD QCD + 2 so that dierent
ground states are characterized by values in the range 0 QCD < 2.
The phase of the quark mass matrix and the QCD-vacuum together
yield QCD + arg det Mq as a compound coecient for Eq. (14.1).
The experimental bounds then translate into

9
QCD + arg det Mq <
10 .
(14.2)
The CP-Problem of strong interactions consists of the smallness of

which implies that the numbers QCD and arg det Mq are either separately very small, or cancel each other with very high accuracy. However, both are expected to be of order unity, or perhaps of order in
the case of arg det Mq , and completely unrelated to each other.
14.2
The Peccei-Quinn Mechanism
14.2.1
Generic Features
An attempt to explain the smallness of may be overambitious as

long as we do not have an understanding of the origin of the Yukawa
couplings that went into Mq and of the other seemingly arbitrary parameters of the standard model. Still, whatever determines these constants of nature, the strong CP-problem can be elegantly explained
by the existence of a new physical eld, the axion eld, which allows
to vanish dynamically (Peccei and Quinn 1977a,b; Weinberg 1978;
Wilczek 1978). In this scheme, the CP-violating Lagrangian Eq. (14.1)
is literally switched o by its own force.
To this end the new eld a(x) must be a pseudoscalar which couples
to gluons according to Eq. (14.1) with replaced by a/fa . The
constant90 fa with the dimension of an energy is the Peccei-Quinn scale
90
In the literature one often nds fa /N , Fa /N , vPQ /N etc. for what I call fa . It
was stressed, e.g. by Georgi, Kaplan, and Randall (1986) that a discussion of the
generic properties of all axion models does not require a specication of the modeldependent integer N which can be conveniently absorbed in the denition of fa .
Axions
527
or axion decay constant. Axions must be fundamentally massless so that

all observable eects remain unchanged under a global shift a(x)
a(x) + a0 where a0 is a constant. (A mass term 12 m2a a2 would spoil this
possibility.) This invariance allows one to absorb in the denition of
the axion eld. Including a kinetic term, Eq. (14.1) is replaced by
L La = 12 ( a)2
s
e.
a GG
8 fa
(14.3)
It conserves CP because axions were assumed to be pseudoscalar (odd

under CP), similar to neutral pions.
Even though axions were constructed to be massless they acquire an
eective mass by their interaction with gluons. It induces transitions to
qq states and thus to neutral pions (Fig. 14.1) which means physically
that a and mix with each other. Axions thereby pick up a small mass
which is approximately given by (Bardeen and Tye 1978; Kandaswamy,
Salomonson, and Schechter 1978)
ma fa m f ,
(14.4)
where m = 135 MeV is the pion mass and f 93 MeV its decay
constant. This mass term implies that at low energies the axion Lagrangian contains a potential V (a) which expands to lowest order as
1 2 2
m a . Because of the invariance of L with respect to + 2
2 a
the gluon-induced potential V (a) is a function periodic with 2fa .
Fig. 14.1. Axion mixing with qq states and thus . The curly lines represent
gluons, the solid lines quarks.
The ground state of the axion eld is at the minimum of its potential at a = 0, explaining the absence of a neutron electric dipole
moment. If one could produce a static nonvanishing axion eld a0 in
some region of space, neutrons there would exhibit an electric dipole
moment corresponding to = a0 /fa .
The Lagrangian Eq. (14.3) is the minimal ingredient for any axe coupling is their dening feature as opposed to
ion model: the aGG
other pseudoscalar particles. Then axions inevitably acquire an eective mass at low energies. Thus the concept of a massless axion for
some arbitrary pseudoscalar is a contradiction in terms.
528
Chapter 14
Because of the mixing with , axions share not only their mass, but
also their couplings to photons and nucleons with a strength reduced
by about f /fa . Therefore, they generically couple to photons so that
the general discussion of Chapter 5 applies directly except for those
aspects which required massless pseudoscalars.
The eective axion mass is a low-energy phenomenon below QCD
200 MeV. Above this energy pions and other hadrons dissociate in
favor of a quark-gluon plasma. Then a = 0 is no longer singled out so
that any value in the interval 0 a < 2fa is physically equivalent.
Because the universe is believed to begin with a hot and dense big
bang, any initial value for a is equally plausible, or dierent initial
conditions in dierent regions of space. As the universe expands and
cools below QCD , however, the axion eld must relax to its newly
singled-out ground state at a = 0. This relaxation process produces a
population of cosmic background axions which is, in units of the cosmic
critical density (e.g. Kolb and Turner 1990),
a h2 (fa /1012 GeV)1.175 .
(14.5)
The exact value depends on details of the cosmic scenario and of the
relaxation process. Modulo this uncertainty, values exceeding fa
1012 GeV are excluded as axions would overdominate the dynamics of
5
the universe. With Eq. (14.4) this corresponds to ma <
10 eV; axions
near this bound would be the cosmic dark matter. A search strategy
for galactic axions in this mass range was discussed in Sect. 5.3.
14.2.2
Axions as Nambu-Goldstone Bosons
The invariance of L in Eq. (14.1) against transformations of the form

+ 2, and the corresponding invariance of the axion Lagrangian
against transformations a a + 2fa , calls for a very simple interpretation of the axion eld as the phase of a new scalar eld.
A transparent illustration is provided by the KSVZ axion model
(Kim 1979; Shifman, Vainshtein, and Zakharov 1980) where one introduces a new complex scalar eld which does not participate in
the weak interactions, i.e. an SU(2)U(1) singlet. There is also a new
massless fermion eld and one considers a Lagrangian with the usual
kinetic terms, a potential V for the scalar eld, and an interaction term,
L=
i
2
+ h.c. + V (||)
(
h L R + h.c. .
(14.6)
Axions
529
The Yukawa coupling h is chosen to be positive, and L 12 (1 5 )

and R 12 (1 + 5 ) are the usual left- and right-handed projections.
This Lagrangian is invariant under a chiral phase transformation of
the form
ei ,
L ei/2 L ,
R ei/2 R ,
(14.7)
where the left- and right-handed elds pick up opposite phases. This
chiral symmetry is usually referred to as the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry UPQ (1).
The potential V (||) is chosen
to be a Mexican hat with an absolute minimum at || = fPQ / 2 where fPQ is some large energy scale.
The ground state is characterized
by a nonvanishing vacuum expecta i
tion value = (fPQ / 2) e where is an arbitrary phase. It spontaneously breaks the PQ symmetry because it is not invariant under a
transformation of the type Eq. (14.7). One may then write
=
fPQ + ia/fPQ
e
2
(14.8)
in terms of two real elds and a which represent the radial and
angular excitations.
The potential V provides a large mass for , a eld which will be of
no further interest for these low-energy considerations. Neglecting all
terms involving the Lagrangian Eq. (14.6) is
L=
+ h.c. + 12 ( a)2 m ei5 a/fPQ ,

(14.9)
where m hfPQ / 2. The variation of the fermion elds under a

PQ transformation is given by Eq. (14.7) while a a + fPQ . The
invariance of Eq. (14.9) against such shifts is a manifestation of the
UPQ (1) symmetry. It implies that a represents a massless particle, the
Nambu-Goldstone boson of the PQ symmetry.
Expanding the last term in Eq. (14.9) in powers of a/fPQ , the zerothorder term m plays the role of an eective fermion mass. Higher
orders describe the interaction of a with ,
m
m
Lint = i
a 5 + 2 a2 + . . . .
(14.10)
fPQ
2fPQ
i
2
The dimensionless Yukawa coupling ga m/fPQ is proportional to the

fermion mass.
The fermion is taken to be some exotic heavy quark with the usual
strong interactions, i.e. an SUC (3) triplet. The lowest-order interaction
530
Chapter 14
of a with gluons is then given by the triangle graph of Fig. 14.2. With
the rst term of Eq. (14.10) it yields an eective a-gluon interaction of
LaG =
ga s
e,
a GG
m 8
(14.11)
where s gs2 /4. All external momenta were taken to be small relative
to the mass m of the loop fermion.
Fig. 14.2. Triangle loop diagram for the interaction of axions with gluons
(strong coupling constant gs , axion-fermion Yukawa coupling ga ). An analogous graph pertains to the coupling of axions with photons if the fermion
carries an electric charge which replaces gs .
In more general models, several conventional or exotic quark elds

j may participate in this scheme. The transformation of each eld
under a UPQ (1) transformation is characterized by its PQ charge Xj ,
jL eiXj /2 jL .
(14.12)
e interaction is obtained as a sum over Eq. (14.11) for all

The total aGG
j . Because gaj = Xj mj /fPQ the fermion masses drop out. With
Xj
and fa fPQ /N
(14.13)
one has then found the required coupling Eq. (14.3) which allows one
to interpret a as the axion eld.
The potential V (a) is periodic with 2fa = 2fPQ /N . The interpretation of a as the phase of , on the other hand, implies a periodicity
with 2fPQ so that N must be a nonzero integer. This requirement
restricts the possible assignment of PQ charges to the quark elds. It
also implies that there remain N dierent equivalent ground states for
the axion eld, each of which satises = 0 and thus solves the CP
problem.
Axions
14.2.3
531
Pseudoscalar vs. Derivative Interaction
There has been considerable confusion in the literature concerning the

proper structure for the coupling of axions to fermions. The lowestorder term in the expansion Eq. (14.10) is a pseudoscalar interaction
which is frequently used because of its simplicity. However, there is an
innite series of terms which sometimes must be taken into account.
For example, the axion scattering on fermions is second order in the
rst term of Eq. (14.10), but rst order in the second whence both must
be included.
Such complications can be avoided if one redenes the fermion eld
in Eq. (14.9) by a local transformation,
L eia/2fPQ L ,
R eia/2fPQ R .
(14.14)
The last term in Eq. (14.10) is then a simple mass term m. The
interaction between and a now arises from the kinetic term in
Eq. (14.9),
Lint =
1
5 a .
2fPQ
(14.15)
This interaction is of derivative nature, and it is linear in a with no

higher-order terms. The fermion part has the form of an axial-vector
current, bringing out a useful similarity between neutrino and axion
interactions.
Pions play the role of Nambu-Goldstone bosons of a spontaneously
broken U(2)LR symmetry of QCD and so their interactions with nucleons should involve similar higher-order terms. The dierence between
derivative and naive pseudoscalar couplings should become apparent
in bremsstrahlung processes of the type shown in Fig. 14.3 where two
Nambu-Goldstone bosons are attached to one fermion line. A useful
template is provided by p + p p + p + where existing data, indeed, favor the derivative case (Choi, K. Kang, and Kim 1989; Turner,
H.-S. Kang, and Steigman 1989).
It should be noted in this context that the pion-nucleon interaction
is described by the Lagrangian (Carena and Peccei 1989),
2
Lint = gN N 5 N + fN
N N ,
(14.16)
where gN f /m 1/m and fN 1/2f are the relevant coupling

constants, is a vector of Pauli isospin matrices, is the isovector of
the neutral and charged pion elds, and N is the isodoublet of neutron
and proton. Thus there appears an extra dimension-6 term compared
532
Chapter 14
Fig. 14.3. Nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung emission of axions or pions.
with the axion example Eq. (14.15) where only one Nambu-Goldstone
boson was present as opposed to the pion isotriplet. However, this additional term does not contribute to the bremsstrahlung process in the
limit of nonrelativistic nucleons so that the above conclusion regarding
the derivative coupling remains valid.
In the process N N N N a (Fig. 14.3) axions and pions appear so
that again two Nambu-Goldstone bosons are attached to one fermion
line. It is then necessary to use a derivative coupling for at least one
of them (Raelt and Seckel 1988). For other bremsstrahlung processes
such as e p pe a, where the particles interact through a virtual
photon (a gauge boson) the pseudoscalar coupling causes no trouble.
Also for the Compton process e e a one may use either the pseudoscalar or the derivative axion coupling: both yield the same result.
Because it is not always a priori obvious whether the pseudoscalar and
derivative couplings yield the same result it is a safe strategy to use the
derivative coupling in all calculations.
14.2.4
The Onslaught of Quantum Gravity
A heavy critique was levied against the PQ mechanism by quantumgravity inspired phenomenological considerations. The main idea is
that generally the PQ symmetry, like any other global symmetry, will
not be respected by gravity (Georgi, Hall, and Wise 1981). For example, a black hole can swallow any amount of PQ charge without a
trace, while a swallowed electric charge remains visible by its Coulomb
force. At energy scales exceeding the Planck mass mPl = 1.21019 GeV
quantum gravitational eects are expected and so mPl is a phenomenological cuto for any quantum theory which does not fundamentally
include gravitation. In the low-energy world it should manifest itself
by all sorts of eective interactions which are not forbidden by a symmetry and which likely involve inverse powers of the cuto scale mPl .
Axions
533
Notably, the Higgs eld which gives rise to the axion probably
exhibits eective interactions of dimension 2m + n
m n
i ( )
Vgrav () = g e
,
(14.17)
m2m+n4
Pl
where g and are real numbers. Because such interactions violate the
PQ symmetry for n = 0 they induce an eective potential for the axion
after spontaneous symmetry breaking. The full potential is then of the
form (Kamionkowski and March-Russell 1992)
[
]
[
]
V (a)
2
2
1
cos(
+
na/f
)
,(14.18)
1
cos(a/f
)
+
m
=
m
a
a
QCD
grav
fa2
where mQCD is the usual QCD axion mass while gravity induces
m2grav = g m2Pl (fa / 2 mPl )2m+n2 .

(14.19)
For g of order unity and for low values of m and n one needs a very
small fa for the QCD eect to dominate. Therefore, unless gravity for
some reason favors a minimum at the CP-conserving position for a the
PQ scheme will be ruined entirely.91
Whatever the ultimate quantum theory of gravitation, no doubt it
will be very special. Therefore, it is by no means obvious that the
above arguments, which do not go far beyond a dimensional analysis,
correctly represent the low-energy eects of Planck-scale physics. Even
then the PQ mechanism still works if the PQ global symmetry is an
automatic symmetry of a gauge theory; in this case it is protected
from the assault of quantum gravity. Such models can be constructed
(Holman et al. 1992) and in fact may be quite generic (Barr 1994).
Either way, in order for axions to solve the strong CP problem one
must assume that the PQ scheme is not ruined by quantum gravity.
This discussion illustrates an important feature of axion models,
or any model involving a broken global symmetry and its NambuGoldstone boson. These particles are interlopers in the low-energy
worldaxions really belong to the high-energy world at the PQ scale.
These roots make them susceptible to physics at large energy scales,
at the Planck mass, for example. By the same token, if axions were
ever detected, for example by the galactic axion search (Sect. 5.3), they
would be one of the few messengers that we can ever hope to receive
from a high-energy world which is otherwise inaccessible to experimental enquiry.
91
These issues were studied by Barr and Seckel (1992) and by Kamionkowski and
March-Russell (1992). See also the earlier papers by Georgi, Hall, and Wise (1981),
Lazarides, Panagiotakopoulos, and Sha (1986), and Dine and Seiberg (1986).
534
Chapter 14
14.3
Fine Points of Axion Properties
14.3.1
The Most Common Axion Models
Axions generically mix with pions so that their mass and their couplings
to photons and nucleons are crudely f /fa times those of . In detail,
however, these properties depend on the specic implementation of
the PQ mechanism. Therefore, it is useful to review briey the most
common axion models which may serve as generic examples for an
interpretation of the astrophysical evidence.
In the standard model, the would-be Nambu-Goldstone boson from
the spontaneous breakdown of SU(2)U(1) is interpreted as the third
component of the neutral gauge boson Z , making it impossible for the
scalar eld of which axions are the phase to be the standard Higgs
eld. Therefore, one needs to introduce two independent
Higgs elds 1
2
and
f
/
2 which must
and 2 with vacuum expectation
values
f
/
2
1
2
1/2
2 1/2
obey (f1 + f2 ) = fweak ( 2 GF )
250 GeV. In this standard
axion model (Peccei and Quinn 1977a,b; Weinberg 1978; Wilczek 1978)
1 gives masses to the up- and 2 to the down-quarks and charged
leptons. With x f1 /f2 and 3 families the axion decay constant is
fa = fweak [3 (x + 1/x)]1 <
42 GeV. This and related variant models
(Peccei, Wu, and Yanagida 1986; Krauss and Wilczek 1986), however,
are ruled out by overwhelming experimental and astrophysical evidence;
for reviews see Kim (1987), Cheng (1988), and Peccei (1989).
Therefore, one is led to introduce anelectroweak singlet Higgs eld
with a vacuum expectation value fPQ / 2 which is not related to the
weak scale. Taking fPQ fweak , the mass of the axion becomes
very small, its interactions very weak. Such models are generically referred to as invisible axion models. The rst of its kind was the KSVZ
model (Kim 1979; Shifman, Vainshtein, and Zakharov 1980) discussed
in Sect. 14.2.2. It is very simple because the PQ mechanism entirely
decouples from the ordinary particles: at low energies, axions interact
with matter and radiation only by virtue of their two-gluon coupling
which is generic for the PQ scheme. The KSVZ model in its simplest
form is determined by only one free parameter, fa = fPQ , although one
may introduce N > 1 exotic quarks whence fa = fPQ /N .
Also widely discussed is the DFSZ model introduced by Zhitnitski
(1980) and by Dine, Fischler, and Srednicki (1981). It is a hybrid between the standard and KSVZ models in that it uses an
electroweak
singlet scalar eld with a vacuum expectation value fPQ / 2 and two
electroweak doublet elds 1 and 2 . There is no need, however, for ex-
Axions
535
otic heavy quarks: only the known fermions carry Peccei-Quinn charges.
Therefore, N is the number of standard families. Probably N = 3 so
that the remaining free parameters of this model are fa = fPQ /N and
x = f1 /f2 which is often parametrized by x = cot or equivalently by
cos2 = x2 /(x2 + 1).
From a practical perspective, the main dierence between the KSVZ
and DFSZ models is that in the latter axions couple to charged leptons
in addition to nucleons and photons. The former is an example for the
category of hadronic axion models.
Because fPQ fweak in these models, one may attempt to identify
fPQ with the grand unication scale fGUT 1016 GeV (Wise, Georgi,
and Glashow 1981; Nilles and Raby 1982). However, the cosmologi12
cal bound fa <
10 GeV disfavors the GUT assignment. There exist
numerous other axion models, and many attempts to connect the PQ
scale with other scalesfor a review see Kim (1987). In the absence
of a compelling model fa should be viewed as a free phenomenological
parameter.
14.3.2
Axion Mass and Coupling to Photons
The axion mass which arises from its mixing with can be obtained
with the methods of current algebra to be (Bardeen and Tye 1978;
Kandaswamy, Salomonson, and Schechter 1978; Srednicki 1985; Georgi,
Kaplan, and Randall 1986; Peccei, Bardeen, and Yanagida 1987)
f m
ma =
fa
z
(1 + z + w)(1 + z)
107 GeV
= 0.60 eV
,
fa
)1/2
(14.20)
where the quark mass ratios are (Gasser and Leutwyler 1982)
z mu /md = 0.568 0.042,
w mu /ms = 0.0290 0.0043.
(14.21)
Aside from these uncertainties there are higher-order corrections to

the current-algebra axion mass which have not been estimated in the
literature.
536
Chapter 14
By their generic coupling to gluons, axions necessarily mix with

pions and hence couple to photons according to
Lint = 14 ga F Fe a = ga E B a,
(14.22)
where F is the electromagnetic eld strength tensor and Fe its dual. In

models where the quarks and leptons which carry PQ charges also carry
electric charges, there is a contribution from a triangle loop diagram as
in Fig. 14.2, replacing gs with the electric charge Qj e of the lepton. It
yields an axion-photon coupling proportional to
E2
Xj Q2j Dj ,
(14.23)
where Dj = 3 for color triplets (quarks) and 1 for color singlets (charged
leptons). The total axion-photon coupling strength is then (Kaplan
1985; Srednicki 1985)
3
meV
ga =
=
,
(14.24)
2fa 4
0.691010 GeV
where
(
)
(
)
4 E
2 4+z+w
4 E
=
1.92 0.08
(14.25)
3 N
3 1+z+w
3 N
and meV ma /eV.
In the DFSZ or grand unied models one has for a given family of quarks and leptons E/N = 8/3. Neglecting w this yields
(8/3) z/(1 + z) 1. However, one may equally consider models where
E/N = 2 so that = 0.10.1, i.e. the axion-photon coupling is strongly
suppressed and may actually vanish (Kaplan 1985).
14.3.3
Model-Dependent Axion-Fermion Coupling
The discussion in Sect. 14.2.3 implies that axions interact with a given
fermion j (mass mj ) according to a pseudoscalar or a derivative axialvector interaction,
Cj mj
Cj
Lint = i
j 5 j a or
j 5 j a ,
(14.26)
fa
2fa
where Cj is an eective PQ charge of order unity to be dened below.
Evidently gaj Cj mj /fa plays the role of a Yukawa coupling and
2
/4 that of an axionic ne structure constant. Numerically,
aj = gaj
gae = Ce me /fa = Ce 0.851010 meV ,
gaN = CN mN /fa = CN 1.56107 meV
for electrons and nucleons.
(14.27)
Axions
537
Various axion models dier in their assignment of PQ charges. How

ever, in all models N = quarks Xj is a nonzero integer. The assignment
at high energies is not maintained in the low-energy sector because
the spontaneous breakdown of the weak SUL (2)UY (1) symmetry at
fweak 250 GeV mixes the axion with the would-be Nambu-Goldstone
boson which becomes the longitudinal component of the Z gauge boson. Hence the PQ charges must be shifted such that the physical axion
does not mix with the Z ; these shifted values are denoted as Xj . Also,
below the QCD scale QCD 200 MeV free quarks do not exist, so one
needs to consider the eective coupling to nucleons which arises from
the direct axion coupling to quarks and from the mixing with and ,
leading to PQ charges Xp and Xn for protons and neutrons. The above
eective PQ charges are obtained by Cj Xj /N in order to absorb N
in their denition just as it was absorbed in fa = fPQ /N .
In the KSVZ model Ce = 0 at tree level (hadronic axions) although there are small radiatively induced couplings (Srednicki 1985).
In the DFSZ model
Ce = cos2 /Nf ,
(14.28)
where Nf is the number of families, probably 3.

The nucleon interactions in general axion models were investigated
by Kaplan (1985) and Srednicki (1985). They were revisited by Mayle
et al. (1988, 1989),
Cp = (Cu )u + (Cd z)d + (Cs w)s ,
Cn = (Cu )d + (Cd z)u + (Cs w)s ,
(14.29)
where (1 + z + w)1 with z and w were given in Eq. (14.21).

For a given quark avor, q = u, d, or s, the interaction strength
with protons depends on the proton spin content carried by this particular quark avor, S q p|q 5 q|p where S is the proton spin.
Similar expressions pertain to the coupling with neutrons; the two sets
of expressions are related by isospin invariance. Neutron and hyperon
-decays as well as polarized lepton scattering experiments on nucleons
yield a consistent set of qs (Ellis and Karliner 1995)
u = +0.85,
d = 0.41,
s = 0.08
(14.30)
with an approximate uncertainty of 0.03 each.

In the DFSZ model, Cs = Cd = Ce , Cu + Cd = 1/Nf , and Cu Cd =
cos2 /Nf , leading to Cu = sin2 /Nf and Cd = Cs = Ce = cos2 /Nf .
538
Chapter 14
With Nf = 3 one nds

Cp = 0.10 0.45 cos2 ,
Cn = 0.18 + 0.39 cos2 .
(14.31)
In the KSVZ model and in other hadronic axion models Cu = Cd =

Cs = 0 which yields
Cp = 0.39,
Cn = 0.04.
(14.32)
In Fig. 14.4 these couplings are shown, for DFSZ axions as a function
of cos2 . They are all uncertain to within about 0.05, but even then
Cp and Cn never seem to vanish simultaneously.
Fig. 14.4. Axion couplings to fermions according to Eqs. (14.28), (14.31),

and (14.32).
14.4
Astrophysical Axion Bounds
Because axions couple to nucleons, photons, and electrons it is easy

to translate the bounds on such couplings derived in previous chapters
of this book into bounds on the Peccei-Quinn scale or equivalently, on
the axion mass. A possible modication of the usual axion models by
the quantum gravity eects discussed in Sect. 14.2.4 is ignored for the
present discussion.92
92
Barr and Seckel (1992) studied astrophysical axion bounds when quantum gravity eects are taken seriously.
Axions
539
Bounds on the Yukawa coupling to electrons of various novel particles were derived in Chapter 3; for pseudoscalars a summary was given
in Tab. 3.1. The most restrictive limit was obtained from the delay of
helium ignition in low-mass red giants that would be caused by excessive axion emission; in terms of the axion-electron Yukawa coupling it
13
is gae <
2.510 . With Eq. (14.27) this translates into
9
>
ma Ce <
0.003 eV and fa /Ce 210 GeV.
(14.33)
Axions which interact too strongly to escape freely from the interior
of stars would still contribute to the transfer of energy. For the Sun,
this issue was studied in Sect. 1.3.5. One easily nds that for Ce = 1
Fig. 1.2 excludes axion masses below about 50 keV.
In hadronic axion models Ce = 0 at tree level and so no interesting
bounds on ma and fa obtain. In the DFSZ model, Ce was given in
Eq. (14.28). Taking the number of families to be Nf = 3 one nds
2
9
>
ma cos2 <
0.01 eV and fa / cos 0.710 GeV.
(14.34)
These limits depend on the parameter cos2 which, in principle, can

be equal to 0.
The axion-photon coupling is best constrained by the lifetime of
horizontal-branch (HB) stars as outlined in Sect. 5.2.5. The limit
Eq. (5.23) translates into
7
>
ma <
0.4 eV and fa / 1.510 GeV,
(14.35)
where was dened in Eq. (14.25). In addition, approximately the

mass range 414 eV is excluded by the telescope search for a line
from the radiative decay of cosmic axions (Fig. 12.23).
The most restrictive limit on the axion-nucleon coupling arises from
the duration of the neutrino signal of SN 1987A. The formally excluded range for the axion-nucleon Yukawa coupling was specied in
Eq. (13.11); as discussed in Sect. 13.5 it is fraught with uncertainties
because no reliable calculation of the axion emission rate from a nuclear
medium is available at the present time. In terms of the axion mass
and axion decay constant the nominally excluded range is
<
0.002 eV <
CN ma 2 eV,
9
<
3106 GeV <
fa /CN 310 GeV.
(14.36)
The case of large ma (small fa ) is the trapping regime where axions

contribute to the energy transfer in a SN core, and where they are
540
Chapter 14
emitted from an axion sphere rather than the entire volume of the
protoneutron star.
These bounds were derived assuming equal couplings to protons and
neutrons. However, a glance at Fig. 14.4 reveals that KSVZ axions essentially do not couple to neutrons while Cp 0.36. For DFSZ axions
the couplings vary with cos2 , although for cos2 0.5 about the same
values as for KSVZ axions apply which are thus taken as generic. Assuming a proton fraction of about 0.3 for the relevant regions of the SN
core I estimate an eective nucleon coupling of CN 0.31/2 0.36 0.2.
Therefore,
<
0.01 eV <
ma 10 eV,
9
<
0.6106 GeV <
fa 0.610 GeV
(14.37)
are formally adopted as the SN 1987A excluded axion parameters.

Axions on the trapping side of the SN argument can still be excluded because they would have caused additional events in the IMB
and Kamiokande water Cherenkov detectors. The excluded range of
Eq. (13.2) translates into the approximate mass exclusion range of
20 eV20 keV.
These limits on the axion mass and decay constant are summarized
in Fig. 14.5. The slanted end of the SN 1987A exclusion bar is a
reminder of the potentially large uncertainty of this limit. Except for
very special choices of model-dependent parameters axions with a mass
above 0.01 eV are excluded.
The high-mass end of the stellar exclusion bars in Fig. 14.5 has
not been worked out in detail because of their overlap with laboratory
limits. The globular cluster limits apply without modication up to a
mass of, say, 30 keV because the temperature in the cores of HB stars
and red giants are about 10 keV. However, axions with masses in this
range interact much more strongly than those at the low-mass end of the
exclusion bar so that the Boltzmann suppression of the emission rate
for a large mass is partly balanced by the increased coupling strength.
14.5
Cosmological Limits
The stellar-evolution bounds on axions have received much attention

because they push the Peccei-Quinn scale to such large values that
axions appear to play a signicant cosmological role if they exist at
all. Therefore, to place the stellar constraints into context it may be
useful to close this chapter with a brief summary of the cosmological
Axions
541
Fig. 14.5. Astrophysical and cosmological bounds on invisible axions. One

globular-cluster limit (white exclusion bar) is based on the axion-electron
coupling and thus applies only if axions are of the DFSZ type (cos2 = 1
was used). For the coupling to photons = 1 was assumed. Slanted ends of
exclusion bars indicate an estimated uncertainty of the bounds. The anticipated range of sensitivity of the Livermore and Kyoto search experiments
are also indicated (Sect. 5.3).
limits which I quote from my contribution to the axion session of the

XVth Moriond Workshop Dark Matter in Cosmology, Clocks, and Tests
of Fundamental Laws, (Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland, January 2128,
1995). The proceedings of this meeting will provide many up-to-date
accounts of dierent aspects of the axion saga.
8
If axions were suciently strongly interacting (fa <
10 GeV) they
would have come into thermal equilibrium before the QCD phase transition and so we would have a background sea of invisible axions in
analogy to the one expected for neutrinos (Turner 1987). This parameter range is excluded by the astrophysical arguments summarized
in Fig. 14.5. Hence axions must be so weakly interacting that they
have never come into thermal equilibrium. Still, the well-known mis-
542
Chapter 14
alignment mechanism will excite coherent oscillations of the axion eld

(Abbott and Sikivie 1983; Dine and Fischler 1983; Preskill, Wise, and
Wilczek 1983; Turner 1986). When the temperature of the universe
falls below fa the axion eld settles somewhere in the brim of its Mexican hat potential. When the hat tilts at the QCD phase transition,
corresponding to the appearance of a mass term for the axion, the eld
begins to move and nally oscillates when the expansion rate of the universe has become smaller than the axion mass. In units of the cosmic
critical density one nds for the axionic mass density
a h2 0.23100.6 (fa /1012 GeV)1.175 2i F (i ),
(14.38)
where h is the present-day Hubble expansion parameter in units of

100 km s1 Mpc1 . The stated range reects recognized uncertainties of
the cosmic conditions at the QCD phase transition and uncertainties in
the calculations of the temperature-dependent axion mass. The cosmic
axion density thus depends on the initial misalignment angle i which
could have any value between 0 and . The function F (i ) encapsules
anharmonic corrections to the axion potential for 0. (For a recent
analytic determination of F see Strobl and Weiler 1994.)
The age of the universe indicates that h2 0.3, causing a problem
with = 1 models if h is around 0.8 as indicated by recent measurements. For the present purpose I take a h2 = 0.3 21 for axions
which constitute the dark matter where the adopted uncertainty of a
factor of 2 likely covers the whole range of plausible cosmological models. Then, axions with ma = O(1 eV) are the cosmic dark matter if
i is of order 1.
Because the corresponding Peccei-Quinn scale of fa = O(1012 GeV)
is far below the GUT scale one may speculate that cosmic ination, if
it occurred at all, did not occur after the PQ phase transition. If it
did not occur at all, or if it did occur before the PQ transition with
Treheat > fa , the axion eld will start with a dierent i in each region
which is causally connected at T fa and so one has to average over all
possibilities to obtain the present-day axion density. More importantly,
because axions are the Nambu-Goldstone mode of a complex Higgs eld
after the spontaneous breaking of a global U(1) symmetry, cosmic axion
strings will form by the Kibble mechanism (Davis 1986). The motion of
these global strings is damped primarily by the emission of axions rather
than by gravitational waves. At the QCD phase transition, the U(1)
symmetry is explicitly broken (axions acquire a mass) and so domain
walls bounded by strings will form, get sliced up by the interaction
with strings, and the entire string and domain wall system will quickly
Axions
543
decay into axions. This complicated sequence of events leads to the

production of the dominant contribution of cosmic axions. Most of
them are produced near the QCD transition at T QCD 200 MeV.
After they acquire a mass they are nonrelativistic or mildly relativistic
so that they are quickly redshifted to nonrelativistic velocities. Thus,
even the string and domain-wall produced axions form a cold dark
matter component.
In their recent treatment of axion radiation from global strings,
Battye and Shellard (1994a,b) found that the dominant source of axion
radiation are string loops rather than long strings, contrary to what
was assumed in the previous works by Davis (1986) and Davis and
Shellard (1989). At a given cosmic time t the average loop creation
size is parametrized as = t while the radiation power from loops
is P = with the renormalized string tension. The exact values
of the parameters and are not known; the cosmic axion density is
a function of the combination /. For / < 1 the dependence of
a h2 on / is found to be rather weak. Battye and Shellard favor
/ 0.1 for which a h2 = 18100.6 (fa /1012 GeV)1.175 , about an
order of magnitude smaller than originally found by Davis (1986) and
Davis and Shellard (1989). The overall uncertainty has the same source
as in Eq. (14.38) above. With a h2 = 0.321 the mass of dark-matter
axions is found to be ma = 301000 eV; the cosmologically excluded
range of axion masses is indicated in Fig. 14.5.
These results are plagued with systematic uncertainties. Battye and
Shellard (1994a,b) argue that the largest uncertainty was the impact
of the backreaction of axion emission on the string network. (They
believe that a current numerical study will allow them to pin down
the parameter / to within, say, a factor of 2.) Further, Sikivie and
his collaborators (Harari and Sikivie 1987; Hagmann and Sikivie 1991)
have consistently argued that the motion of global strings was overdamped, leading to an axion spectrum emitted from strings or loops
with a at frequency spectrum. In Battye and Shellards treatment,
wavelengths corresponding to the loop size are strongly peaked, the
motion is not overdamped. In Sikivie et al.s picture, much more of
the string-radiated energy goes into kinetic axion energy which is redshifted so that ultimately there are fewer axions; it was argued that
the cosmic axion density was then of order the misalignment contribution. Therefore, following Sikivie et al. one would estimate the mass of
dark-matter axions at about ma = 4150 eV where the range reects
the same overall uncertainties that bedevil the Battye and Shellard
estimate, or the misalignment contribution.
544
Chapter 14
While the cosmic axion bounds claimed by both groups of authors

still dier signicantly, the overall uncertainty within either scenario
is larger than the mutual disagreement, i.e. the range of masses where
axions could be the dark matter overlaps signicantly between the predictions of the two groups (Fig. 14.5). Moreover, there remain dicult
to control uncertainties, for example, with the dilute instanton gas
calculation of the temperature-dependent axion mass near the QCD
phase transition. There may be other unaccounted systematic problems which may increase the adopted uncertainty of the cosmic mass
prediction which is represented in Fig. 14.5 by the slanted end of the
cosmic exclusion bar.
The astrophysical and cosmological limits on axions leave a narrow
window of parameters where axions could still exist (Fig. 14.5); they
would then be some or all of the dark matter of the universe. While the
SN 1987A as well as the cosmological bound are each very uncertain,
there is a recent trend toward an allowed range near ma = O(1 meV)
where no current or proposed experimental eort appears to be sensitive. Of course, the overall quantitative uncertainty of the predicted
cosmic axion density is large, especially if one includes the possibility
of late-time ination after the Peccei-Quinn phase transition or latetime entropy production after the QCD phase transition. Therefore,
the microwave cavity experiments (Sect. 5.3) in Livermore and Kyoto
no doubt have a fair chance of detecting galactic axions if they are the
dark matter. In September 1995, the Livermore search experiment has
taken up operation (K. van Bibber, private communication).
Chapter 15
Miscellaneous Exotica
Stellar-evolution constraints on a variety of hypotheses are discussed
and compared with limits from other sources. Specically, a possible
time variation of Fermis and Newtons constant, the validity of the
equivalence principle, a photon mass and charge, the existence of free
quarks and supersymmetric particles, and the role of majorons and
millicharged particles are considered.
15.1
Constancy of Fermis Constant
One of the basic physical assumptions commonly made in astrophysical research is that the laws of nature are the same at dierent places
in the universe, and at earlier times here and elsewhere. Apparently
this assumption has never been challenged seriously by any experiment
or observation that would have indicated a spatial or temporal variation of parameters such as particle masses or coupling constants. At
the present time it is not known what xes the values of such fundamental numbers. Therefore, the possibility that they vary in time or
space cannot be a priori rejected. Notably, Dirac (1937, 1938) is often
quoted for his speculation that the large value of some dimensionless
numbers occurring in physics are related to variations of some physical
constants on cosmological time scales. Whatever the merit of Diracs
large numbers hypothesis, it remains an interesting task to isolate simple observables that are sensitive to variations of certain constants.
One instructive stellar-evolution example was discussed by Scherrer
and Spergel (1993) who considered the constancy of Fermis constant
GF which governs weak-interaction
2 physics. The particle-physics stan1
dard model gives GF = 2 0 in terms of the Higgs-eld vacuum
expectation value 0 . Scherrer and Spergel noted that a nonconstant
545
546
Chapter 15
vacuum expectation value of a physical eld was more plausibly subject

to variations than dimensionless constants such as gauge and Yukawa
couplings.
Type Ia supernovae are thought to represent the nuclear deagration
of a white dwarf pushed beyond its Chandrasekhar limit by accretion
(e.g. Woosley and Weaver 1986b). Therefore, their light curves are
very reproducible and indeed serve as standard candles in an attempt
to improve measurements of the cosmic expansion rate. The shape of
the lightcurve is determined by radioactive heating of the SN remnant
by the decay of 56 Co; its lifetime is proportional to G2
F . A change of
order 10% in the slope of type Ia SN lightcurves in neighboring galaxies
(Leibundgut et al. 1991) would be readily observable so that GF must
be constant within at least 5% over 30 Mpc distances.
In addition, Scherrer and Spergel showed that the agreement between the observed primordial light element abundances and big-bang
nucleosynthesis calculations imply that GF lay within 1% and +9%
of its standard value at this early epoch.
A stringent constraint on the local93 time variation of GF obtains
from the analysis of ores from the Oklo uranium mine where a natural ssion reactor is thought to have operated about 2 Gyr ago (e.g.
Maurette 1976). A shift of the ground state dierence between 150 Sm
and 149 Sm by more than 0.02 eV is inconsistent with the isotope ratios at Oklo (Shlyakhter 1976, 1983). According to this author the
contribution of the weak interaction to the nuclear binding energy is
about 200 eV, excluding a change of GF by more than 0.1% over the
past 2 Gyr.
15.2
Constancy of Newtons Constant
15.2.1
Present-Day Constraints from Celestial Mechanics
Another constant of nature that might vary in time is Newtons constant GN . Indeed, there exist self-consistent alternative theories to
general relativity which actually predict a temporal variation of GN on
cosmological time scalessee Will (1993) for a summary of such theories and detailed references. A typical scale for the rate of change
is the cosmic expansion parameter H so that it is natural to write
G N /GN = H with a dimensionless model-dependent number. Some
93
The Earth moves with the galaxy and the local group relative to the cosmic
microwave background (CMB). Taking 600 km s1 for this peculiar velocity the
Earth moves by about 1.2 Mpc in 2 Gyr relative to a frame dened by the CMB.
547
Table 15.1. Bounds on the present-day G N /GN . (Adapted from Will 1993.)
Method
G N /GN
[1012 yr1 ]
Laser ranging (Moon)

0 10
Radar ranging (Mars)
2 10
Binary pulsar 1913+16
11 11
Spin-down PSR 0655+64 < 55
References
M
uller et al. (1991)
Shapiro (1990)
Damour and Taylor (1991)
Goldman (1990)
recent discussions have also addressed the possibility of an oscillating

GN (Hill, Steinhardt, and Turner 1990; Accetta and Steinhardt 1991)
with a rate of change much faster than H. The following discussion
does not generically address such extreme model assumptions.
The GN rate of change can be tested by a detailed study of the
orbits of celestial bodies. Particularly precise data exist in the solar system from laser ranging of the moon and radar ranging of planets, notably by the Viking landers on Mars. Very precise orbital data
also exist beginning 1974 for the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16; among
other things its orbital decay reveals the emission of gravitational radiation. A weaker but also less model-dependent bound can be derived from the spin-down rate of the pulsar PSR 0655+64. These
present-day limits on G N /GN are summarized in Tab. 15.1; altogether
12
1
|G N /GN | <
2010 yr is probably a safe limit. The Hubble expansion parameter today is H0 = h 100 km s1 Mpc1 = h 1.021010 yr1
1
<
<
(observationally 0.4 <
h 1). Thus today || 0.2 h .
15.2.2
Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
An interesting constraint on the value of GN in the early universe arises

from the observed primordial light element abundances as rst discussed by Barrow (1978).94 In a Friedman-Robertson-Walker model of
2
GN
the universe the expansion rate is given by H 2 = (R/R)
= 8
3
in terms of the energy density which, during the epoch of nucleosynthesis, is dominated by radiation (photons, neutrinos). It is a standard
94
Apparently there is an earlier discussion of this limit by G. Steigman in an

unpublished essay for the 1976 Gravity Research Foundation Awards. Subsequent renements include Rothman and Matzner (1982), Accetta, Krauss, and
Romanelli (1990), Damour and Gundlach (1991), and Casas, Garca-Bellido, and
Quiros (1992).
548
Chapter 15
argument to constrain from the yield of 4 He and other light elements,

and thus to constrain the eective number of neutrino degrees of freedom at nucleosynthesis (Yang et al. 1979, 1984; Olive et al. 1990; Walker
et al. 1991). Because the number of low-mass sequential neutrino families is now known to be 3, such constraints can be translated into
constraints on the value of GN pertaining to the nucleosynthesis epoch.
An extra neutrino species would add around 15% to . It appears
reasonably conservative to assume that big-bang nucleosynthesis does
not allow for a deviation of the standard number of eective neutrino
degrees of freedom by more than 1 so that GN at that time must
have been within about 15% of its present-day value. It is possible,
however, that GN was considerably smaller if this reduction was compensated by additional exotic degrees of freedom such as right-handed
neutrinos which increase . Moreover, it was assumed that Fermis
constant had its present-day value at nucleosynthesis, contrary to the
speculations discussed in Sect. 15.1. Still, barring fortuitous compensating eects, nucleosynthesis excludes an O(1) deviation of GN from
its standard value at nucleosynthesis.
This sort of result can be compared with the present-day bounds
of Sect. 15.2.1 only by assuming a specic functional form for GN (t)
which is often taken to be
GN (t) = GN (t0 ) (t0 /t) ,
(15.1)
where t0 refers to the present epoch. Assuming that GN at nucleosynthesis was within 50% of its standard value one nds || <
0.01 which
12
1
would imply |G N /GN |today <
10
yr
,
at
least
a
factor
of ten below
the present-day limits. One should keep in mind, however, that a powerlaw variation of GN is a relatively arbitrary assumption. For example,
in scalar-tensor extensions of general relativity such as the Brans-Dicke
theory GN varies as a power law during the matter-dominated epoch
while it remains constant when radiation dominates. Either way, while
the nucleosynthesis bounds are probably somewhat more restrictive
than the celestial-mechanics ones it is interesting that the resulting
12
1
bounds |G N /GN |today <
11010 yr are of the same general order
of magnitude. They leave room for a considerable variation of GN over
cosmic time scales.
15.2.3
549
Properties of the Sun
If GN did vary in time one would expect a modication of the standard

course of stellar evolution as rst stressed by Teller (1948). By means
of a beautifully simple homology argument, Teller showed that the luminosity of the Sun is approximately proportional to G7N M5 with M
the solar mass which was also allowed to vary in the spirit of Diracs
(1937, 1938) large numbers hypothesis. Teller then proceeded to estimate the temperature on Earth in the past, taking a modication of its
orbit from the GN variation into account. Depending on whether GN
was larger or smaller in the past the average terrestrial surface temperature would have been larger or smaller. Teller estimated that if
GN fell outside 10% of its standard value it would be unlikely that
life on Earth could be sustained. Therefore, GN should have remained
constant to within this accuracy at least during the past 500 million
years or more where life has been known to exist on Earth.95
Later, a similar homology argument based on the solar age was presented by Gamow (1967). Detailed models of the Sun with a varying
GN were constructed by Pochoda and Schwarzschild (1964), Ezer and
Cameron (1966), Roeder and Demarque (1966), Shaviv and Bahcall
(1969), Chin and Stothers (1975, 1976), Demarque et al. (1994), and
Guenther et al. (1995). The crux with constraining G N from the Sun
is that the presolar helium abundance Yinitial and the mixing-length parameter can and must be tuned to reproduce the Suns present-day
luminosity and radius. In Sect. 1.3.2 it became clear that even extreme
anomalous energy-loss rates could be compensated by an adjustment
of Yinitial ; a similar eect pertains to variable-GN solar models. Even
though the present-day central temperature, density, and helium abundance could dier vastly from standard predictions, their main impact
would be on the neutrino ux which, however, is not a reliable probe
of the solar central conditions as it may get modied by neutrino oscillations.
At the present time the most sensitive probe of a variant internal
solar structure is aorded by the measured p-mode frequencies which
agree well with standard predictions, especially when the gravitational
settling of helium is taken into account. Demarque et al. (1994) have
constructed solar models with a varying GN and then analyzed their
p-mode spectra in comparison with the observations. They assumed a
GN time variation of the form Eq. (15.1) with t0 = 15 Gyr for the age of
95
Apparently there is more recent evidence for primitive lifeforms on Earth as

early as 3.5 Gyr ago (e.g. Gould 1994).
550
Chapter 15
Table 15.2. Characteristics of the Demarque et al. (1994) solar models with
a varying GN according to Eq. (15.1).
Xinitial
[%]
Xc
[%]
0.4 1.832 69.42 45.6

0.2 1.895 70.10 42.1
0.1 1.936 70.51 40.0
0.0 1.983 70.98 37.6
0.1 2.036 71.51 34.8
0.2 2.104 72.11 31.7
0.4 2.291 73.56 23.9
Tc
[106 K]
c
[g/cm3 ]
Renv
[R ]
15.14
15.28
15.37
15.47
15.58
15.72
16.07
125.5
134.0
139.5
146.2
154.6
165.1
197.3
0.739
0.731
0.724
0.721
0.716
0.710
0.695
37
Cl 71 Ga
[SNU] [SNU]
5.5
117
6.8
124
8.7
134
the universe. Some characterisitics of their solar models as a function of

are summarized in Tab. 15.2 where is the mixing-length parameter,
Xinitial the presolar hydrogen abundance, the quantitites with index c
refer to central conditions of the present-day Sun, and Renv to the radius
of its convective envelope. The last two columns are the predicted
counting rates in the chlorine and gallium solar neutrino experiments
under the assumption that there are no neutrino oscillations.
The most important eect of the GN variation is a shift of the base
of the convective envelope which is caused by the required change of
and the initial helium abundance Yinitial . It is this modication of the
convection zone which has the largest impact on the observable p-mode
frequencies. However, an identical shift can be produced by other eects
such as modied opacities, equation of state, surface boundary conditions, degree of gravitational helium settling, and perhaps by magnetic
elds. Therefore, only relatively crude limits can be extracted at the
present time. Demarque et al. (1994) believe that || <
0.4 is a reasonably conservative limit which probably can be improved by a factor
of four within the next decade by more precise p-mode observations.
With Eq. (15.1) the current limit corresponds to
12
1
|G N /GN | <
3010 yr ,
(15.2)
similar to the celestial-mechanics bounds of Tab. 15.1. The precise functional form Eq. (15.1) is not crucial for the solar bound as it probes GN
only for the last 4.5 Gyr of the assumed 15 Gyr cosmic age. Therefore,
one could have equally assumed a linear form for GN (t).
551
Most recently, a similar study was completed by Guenther et al.

(1995) who focussed on the predicted g-mode spectrum. At the present
time there is no generally accepted observation of solar g-modes (recall that they are evanescent in the convection zone). If one were to
take the claimed observations by Hill and Gu (1990) seriously, a bound
|| <
0.05 would obtain. Therefore, if an unambiguous identication
of g-modes would emerge from a number of forthcoming observational
projects, the Sun may yet provide one of the most restrictive limits on
the constancy of Newtons constant.
15.2.4
White Dwarfs
A large impact of a time-varying gravitational constant can be expected

on the oldest stars which integrate GN (t) into the more distant past
than does the evolution of the Sun. One well understood case are
white dwarfs, the faintest of which likely formed shortly after the birth
of the galactic disk. Therefore, the age of the galactic disk implied by
the fast drop of the white-dwarf luminosity function at the faint end
(Sect. 2.2.1) depends on the GN evolution in the past.
In an early study Vila (1976) concluded on the basis of the observations then available that G N /GN as large as 751012 yr1 was not excluded. Garca-Berro et al. (1995) constructed detailed luminosity functions under the assumption of a decreasing GN . For an assumed age of
the galactic disk of 7 Gyr, which probably is a lower plausible limit, the
best t for the faintest data point requires G N /GN = 101012 yr1
while the curves for 0 and 301012 yr1 lie somewhat outside of the
1 error bar of this all-important data point. Still, the white-dwarf
luminosity function does not seem to yield signicant limits relative to
the celestial-mechanics ones.
15.2.5
Globular Clusters
The oldest stellar objects in the galaxy are globular-cluster stars which
are thus expected to yield the most restrictive stellar-evolution limits
on G N /GN . A color-magnitude diagram for an intermediate-aged galactic cluster was constructed by Roeder (1967) while detailed studies of
globular clusters were performed by Prather (1976) and DeglInnocenti
et al. (1995). Roeder (1967) and Prather (1976) used a time variation
for a specic Brans-Dicke cosmology where GN decreases approximately
as in Eq. (15.1) with 0.03 while DeglInnocenti et al. (1995) considered more generic cases of GN (t).
552
Chapter 15
The main impact of the assumed GN variation is a change in the

time it takes for a star to burn out hydrogen at its center and thus to
leave the main sequence (MS). The subsequent fast evolution (ascending the RGB, HB evolution, etc.) is determined by the present-day
value of GN . The stellar evolutionary tracks in the color-magnitude diagram can look signicantly dierent from the standard ones if the
GN variation was suciently severe. However, within the range of
possibilities left open by the above G N /GN bounds, the present-day
isochrone cannot be observationally distinguished from the standard
case (DeglInnocenti et al. 1995). Apparently, then, the only signicant consequence of a time-varying gravitational constant is that the
true age of a globular cluster is dierent from its apparent age
which is inferred from its color-magnitude diagram in the framework of
a constant-gravity scenario.
The change of the MS lifetime can be estimated by Tellers (1948)
homology relation L GN . Based on a specic assumption for the
opacity variation with temperature and density Teller found = 7
while a more appropriate value for low-metallicity globular-cluster stars
is = 5.6 (DeglInnocenti et al. 1995). Either way, one can easily
show that the true ( ) and apparent age ( ) at the MS turno are
approximately related by
t0
t0
dt GN (t)/GN (t0 )
(15.3)
(Prather 1976; DeglInnocenti et al. 1995). For all practical purposes

this analytic result can be considered to be exact because it agrees with
numerical calculations surprisingly well.
Unless one wishes to probe the very early universe it is fairly generic
to assume a linear GN variation of the form
[
GN (t) = 1 + 0 (t t0 ) GN (t0 ),
(15.4)
where 0 = G N (t0 )/GN (t0 ) is the present-day rate of change of Newtons

constant. Then one nds explicitly
1 0
1 (1 1 0 )1/1
=
=
,
1 (1 0 )1
0
(15.5)
where 1 + 1. Given a present-day rate of change 0 one can

thus determine the modication of the globular-cluster age if a certain
apparent age or a certain true age is assumed.
The observed color-magnitude diagrams of globular clusters yield
apparent ages in the range 14 to 18 Gyr. With these values one
553
Fig. 15.1. Required present-day G N /GN in order to achieve a true globularcluster age , given that the apparent age is . A linear GN (t) variation as
in Eq. (15.4) was assumed.
can relate a desired true age to a required value for 0 (Fig. 15.1).
Conversely, it is probably safe to assume that the true ages of globular
clusters do not exceed 20 Gyr. Then Fig. 15.1 implies that today
12
1
G N /GN <
710 yr .
(15.6)
A lower age limit is less certain. Taking 8 Gyr one nds G N /GN >
351012 yr1 which is less certain, and also less interesting relative
to the limits discussed in the previous sections.
Fig. 15.2. Summary of limits on the present-day G N /GN . The big-bang

nucleosynthesis limit is not shown as it depends sensitively on the assumed
GN (t) variation at early cosmic times.
554
Chapter 15
Actually, a certain reduction of the true globular-cluster ages relative to their apparent ones would be a welcome cosmological eect as
they are, at best, marginally compatible with other cosmic age indicators. In view of the current limits on G N /GN summarized in Fig. 15.2
this possibility cannot be excluded at present.
15.3
Test of the Equivalence Principle
The equivalence principle of Einsteins general theory of relativity implies that the space-time trajectories of relativistic particles should be
independent of internal degrees of freedom such as spin or avor, and
independent of the type of particle under consideration (photons, neutrinos). A number of astronomical observations allow one to test this
prediction. Laboratory tests of various consequences of the equivalence
principle are discussed in Wills (1993) book.
Nonsymmetric extensions of general relativity (e.g. Moat 1991)
predict that dierent polarization components of electromagnetic waves
propagate with dierent phase velocities in gravitational elds. This
birefringence eect would lead to the depolarization of the Zeeman
components of spectral lines emitted in magnetically active regions of
the Sun. The absence of this depolarization eect leads to signicant
constraints on Moats theory and others (Gabriel et al. 1991).
In a similar approach one uses the dierence of the Shapiro time
delay between dierent particles or between dierent polarization states
of a given particle which propagate through the same gravitational
eld. In Sect. 13.3 the absence of an anomalous shift between the
SN 1987A photon and neutrino arrival times gave limits on violations
of the equivalence principle because both pulses moved through the
same galactic gravitational potential.
Also, one may search for dierences in the arrival times of leftand right-handed polarized electromagnetic signals from distant pulsars
(LoSecco et al. 1989). The best bound was obtained from an analysis of
the pulse arrival times from PSR 1937+21 which is about 2.5 kpc away
from Earth. One may write the eective gravitational potential in the
form V (r) = V0 (r) [1 + A1 r + A2 v + A3r (v )] where r, v, and
represent the location, velocity, and spin of the particles (photons,
neutrinos). The PSR 1937+21 data then yield a constraint |A1 | <
41012 and |A2 | < 11012 (Klein and Thorsett 1990), apparently
the most restrictive limits of their kind.
555
A violation of the equivalence principle could also manifest itself by

a relative shift of the energies of dierent neutrino avors in a gravitational eld. For a given momentum p the matrix of energies in avor
space (relativistic limit) is E = p + M 2 /2p + 2p(r)(1 + F ) where M 2
is the squared matrix of neutrino masses, (r) is the Newtonian gravitational potential, and F is a matrix of dimensionless constants which
parametrize the violation of the equivalence principle; in general relativity F = 0. A nontrivial matrix F can lead to neutrino oscillations in
analogy to the standard vacuum oscillations which are caused by the
matrix M 2 (Gasperini 1988, 1989; Halprin and Leung 1991; Pantaleone,
Halprin, and Leung 1993; Iida, Minakata, and Yasuda 1993; Minakata
and Nunokawa 1995; Bahcall, Krastev, and Leung 1995). Values for
Fij in the general 1014 1017 range could account for the solar neutrino problem and perhaps could be probed with future long-baseline
oscillation experiments.
15.4
Photon Mass and Charge
Even though in classical electrodynamics gauge invariance implies that

photons must be massless, quantum electrodynamics (QED) can be
formulated consistently with the inclusion of a photon mass, and the
limit m 0 takes the modied theory smoothly over to massless QED
(St
uckelberg 1941). Therefore, the possibility of a small photon mass
cannot be excluded theoretically; limits must be set by laboratory and
astrophysical methods. A still up-to-date review of the laboratory lim14
its was given by Goldhaber and Nieto (1971); the best is m <
10 eV
from a test of Coulombs law (a photon mass would modify the inversesquare behavior). More recent experiments worked at low temperature
(Ryan, Accetta, and Austin 1985; Chernikov et al. 1992); the resulting
limits on m are relatively weak, however.
An astrophysical limit may be set by the absence of an anomalous
dispersion of photon signals from distant sources, notably the pulsed
signal from radiopulsars. This method is limited by the presence of the
ionized interstellar medium. It causes a dispersion relation for photons
which mimics the eect of a photon mass m = P where the plasma
frequency is given by P2 = 4ne /me . With a typical electron density
ne of order 0.1 cm3 the photon plasma mass is of order 1011 eV so
that a vacuum mass much smaller than this value cannot be probed.
In Sect. 13.3.3 a limit on a hypothetical e charge was derived from
the absence of a dispersion of the SN 1987A neutrino pulse. The path of
556
Chapter 15
charged particles in the galactic magnetic eld would be curved, leading to an energy-dependent time-delay (Barbiellini and Cocconi 1987).
Because the same argument can be applied to photons, the signals from
radio pulsars also allow one to set a limit on a putative photon electric
charge (Cocconi 1988). However, the resulting dispersion eect scales
with photon frequency in the same way as the eect caused by a photon
mass or by the plasma eect so that this method, again, is limited by
the standard dispersion eect (Raelt 1994). One nds a bound on the
29
photon charge of Q <
10 e.
Returning to a hypothetical photon mass, its value can be extracted,
in principle, from the spatial distribution of static magnetic elds of
celestial bodies. The measured elds can be tted by an appropriate
multipole expansion in which m is kept as a free parameter. The
most restricitve limit of this sort was derived from Jupiters magnetic
eld on the basis of the Pioneer-10 observations; Davis, Goldhaber,
15
and Nieto (1975) found a limit m <
0.610 eV. The same method
applied to the Earths magnetic eld yields an almost equivalent bound
15
of m <
0.810 eV (Fischbach et al. 1994).
As detailed in a review by Barrows and Burman (1984) more restrictive limits obtain from detailed considerations of astrophysical objects
in which magnetic elds, and hence the Maxwellian form of electrodynamics, play a key role in maintaining equilibrium or creating long-lived
27
stable structures. The most restrictive such limit of m <
10 eV is
based on an argument by Chibisov (1976) concerning the magnetogravitational equilibrium of the gas in the Small Magellanic Cloud
which requires that the range of the interaction exceeds the characteristic eld scale of about 3 kpc. This limit, if correct, is surprisingly
close to 1033 eV where the photon Compton wavelength would exceed
the radius of the observable universe and thus would cease to have any
observable consequences.
15.5
Free Quarks
It is thought that quarks cannot exist as free particles; they always

occur bound in hadrons which are neutral (white) with regard to the
color charge of the strong interaction. In order to test this hypothesis of connement it remains an important task to search for single
quarks. The observation of fractional charges in the experiment of
LaRue, Phillips, and Fairbanks (1981) has never been conrmed. However, if their observations were caused by unconned quarks bound to
557
nuclei it would correspond to an abundance of one quarked nucleus

(Q-nucleus) in 61017 normal ones.
A small abundance of Q-nuclei could signicantly alter the stellar thermonuclear reaction chains and among other eects change the
solar neutrino predictions (Boyd et al. 1983). Detailed nuclear reaction chains involving Q-nuclei were studied by Boyd et al. (1985). For
strangelets (lumps of strange quark matter) trapped in stars the nuclear
networks were investigated by Takahashi and Boyd (1988); the eect of
strangelets is similar to that of Q-nuclei. The Q-nuclear reactions were
implemented in a stellar evolution code by Joseph (1984). Predictions
for the solar neutrino ux were worked out by Sur and Boyd (1985).
With a Q-nuclear abundance of order 1015 the modied reaction
chains would compete with the standard ones. In the Sun one could
achieve a reduction of the high-energy solar neutrino ux and thus solve
the old solar neutrino problem (missing boron neutrinos). However,
Sur and Boyd (1985) predict an increase of the low-energy ux, corresponding to a substantially increased counting rate at the gallium solar
neutrino experiments. As this contradicts the ndings of SAGE and
GALLEX (Sect. 10.3) one concludes that Q-nuclear burning is not the
answer to the solar neutrino problem. Turning the SAGE/GALLEX
observations around one concludes that in the Sun the abundance of
Q-nuclei is below about 1015 .
15.6
Supersymmetric Particles
Supersymmetric extensions of the particle-physics standard model are

very popular, among other reasons because the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) could play the role of the cosmic dark matter. In
these models, there is a fermionic partner to all standard bosons, and
a bosonic partner to all standard fermions. The supersymmetric partners of the photon, the Z gauge boson, and the neutral Higgs boson (photino, Zino and Higgsino) would be Majorana fermions. They
would be very much like Majorana neutrinos except that their interaction strength is not xed by the Fermi constant but rather depends on
details of the supersymmetric models.
If these neutralinos had low enough masses they would be produced in the interior of stars by the same processes that create neutrinos, except that the coupling strength has to be adjusted according
to the particular model that one has in mind. Limits to an anomalous
energy loss of stars yielded early constraints on supersymmetric models
558
Chapter 15
(Bouquet and Vayonakis 1982; Fukugita and Sakai 1982; Anand et al.
1984). The neutrino burst of SN 1987A yielded more interesting limits
for the case of low-mass photinos (Ellis et al. 1988; Grifols, Masso, and
Peris 1989; Grifols and Masso 1990b). To avoid that too much energy
is carried away by photinos they inferred that squark masses in the
approximate range 60 GeV to 2.5 TeV were excluded.
Low-mass neutralinos are disfavored by laboratory limits. Moreover, if the LSP plays the role of cold dark matter its mass likely is
above several 10 GeV. In this case the stellar energy-loss arguments
would not yield any constraints as all supersymmetric particles would
be too heavy to be emitted. Stars would still play an interesting role as
they could trap the dark-matter particles. Their annihilation in the Sun
or Earth would lead to a high-energy neutrino signal which has been
constrained by the Kamiokande detector (Mori et al. 1992). It may
well be found at the Cherenkov detectors Superkamiokande, NESTOR,
DUMAND, or AMANDA and thus lead to the indirect discovery of particle dark matter in the galaxy. These important issues are discussed
at length in the forthcoming review Supersymmetric Dark Matter by
Jungman, Kamionkowski, and Griest (1995).
15.7
Majorons
15.7.1
Particle-Physics and Cosmological Motivations
Axions (Chapter 14) are one representative of a variety of NambuGoldstone bosons of spontaneously broken global symmetries that have
appeared in the literature over the years. Another widely discussed example are the majorons rst introduced by Chicashige, Mohapatra,
and Peccei (1981) as a scheme to generate small neutrino Majorana
masses. An important variation by Gelmini and Roncadelli (1981) and
Georgi, Glashow, and Nussinov (1981) led to a model where neutrinos had small Majorana masses and coupled to the massless majoron
(a pseudoscalar boson like the axion) with a relatively large Yukawa
strength. The main phenomenological interest in this sort of conjecture lies in the intriguing possibility that neutrinos could have relatively
strong interactions with the majorons and with each other by virtue of
majoron exchange. As majorons would not necessarily show up in interactions with ordinary matter one could well speculate that neutrinos
might have secret interactions which would be of relevance only in
a neutrino-dominated environment such as the early universe, perhaps
the present-day universe if neutrinos have a cosmologically signicant
559
mass, and in supernovae. Another motivation to consider majoron

models is the possibility to account for fast neutrino decays in order to
avoid cosmological neutrino mass bounds. In the laboratory, majorons
could show up in experiments searching for neutrinoless 2 decays.
The main motivation for the introduction of majorons is the puzzling smallness of neutrino masses (if they have nonvanishing masses at
all) relative to other fermions. As outlined in Sect. 7.1, in the particlephysics standard model it is thought that all Dirac fermions acquire a
mass by their interaction with a background Higgs eld which takes on
a classical value (vacuum expectation value) 0 everywhere; neutrino
masses could well arise in the same fashion, except that the Yukawa
couplings to the Higgs eld would have to be extremely small. Alternatively, one may speculate that neutrino masses are so small because
they arise in a dierent fashion. Notably, the known sequential neutrinos e , , and could well be Majorana fermions, i.e. their own
antiparticles so that the e is really equivalent to a helicity-plus e . As
long as neutrinos are massless this picture is equivalent to an interpretation where the standard left-handed neutrinos are the two active
components of a four-component Dirac spinor while the two remaining sterile components would never have been observed because they
do not interact. With a nonvanishing mass these interpretations are
vastly dierent because helicity ips in collisions would allow one to
produce the (almost) sterile wrong-helicity Dirac components. This
possibility was exploited in Sect. 13.8.1 to set bounds on a neutrino
Dirac mass from the SN 187A neutrino signal. For Majorana neutrinos, a helicity-ipping collision takes an active e into an active e ,
thus violating lepton number by two units. Therefore, Majorana masses
could not arise from the coupling to the standard Higgs eld which is
lepton-number conserving.
Majorana masses could arise, however, by interacting with a different Higgs eld which would develop a vacuum expectation value by
virtue of the usual spontaneous breakdown of a global symmetry. The
resulting Nambu-Goldstone boson is the majoron. (Recall that the
Nambu-Goldstone boson of the standard Higgs eld shows up as the
third polarization degree of the massive Z gauge boson so that there
is no massless Nambu-Goldstone degree of freedom in the standard
model.) In the original model of Chicashige, Mohapatra, and Peccei
(1981), the singlet majoron model, the new vacuum expectation value
was considered to be much larger than the standard 0 250 GeV.
Large masses would be given primarily to sterile neutrinos postulated
to exist; the standard sequential neutrinos would obtain their small
560
Chapter 15
masses by a see-saw type mixing eect with the heavy states. The majoron coupling to standard neutrinos would be extremely small in this
model, leading to no interesting consequences besides small Majorana
masses for e , , and .
Gelmini and Roncadelli (1981) and Georgi, Glashow, and Nussinov
(1981) suggested instead to do away with the unobserved heavy sterile
neutrinos and give a small Majorana mass directly to the sequential
neutrinos by the interaction with the new Higgs eld. The intriguing
feature of this model is that it requires a very small vacuum expectation
value v, perhaps in the keV regime. As all couplings of the new Higgs
eld to fermions scale with the inverse of v, the majoron would have
a rather strong coupling to neutrinos. Among many fascinating phenomenological and astrophysical consequences (e.g. Georgi, Glashow,
and Nussinov 1981; Gelmini, Nussinov, and Roncadelli 1982) this model
predicted, however, that the new Higgs eld should contribute precisely
the equivalent of two massless neutrino species to the Z decay width.
The measurements of this width at CERN and SLAC in 19891990,
however, correspond exactly to the known three neutrino avors (Particle Data Group 1994), leaving no room for this triplet majoron model.
Other doublet majoron models which would contribute one-half of an
eective neutrino species to the Z decay width are also excluded (for
references see, e.g. Berezhiani, Smirnov, and Valle 1992). It is possible,
however, to construct majoron models for Majorana neutrino masses
which retain the original idea of Chicashige, Mohapatra, and Peccei
(1981) and yet provide large majoron-neutrino couplings (e.g. Berezhiani, Smirnov, and Valle 1992 and references therein; see also Burgess
and Cline 1994a; Kikuchi and Ma 1994, 1995).
The main motivation for going out of ones way to construct such
models does not arise from particle theory but rather from experiments and astrophysics. In Sect. 7.1.4 it was outlined that those nuclei
which decay predominantly by a double beta channel (emission of 2e
and 2 e ) can also decay in a neutrinoless mode if e has a Majorana
mass, allowing an emitted e to be eectively reabsorbed as a e . In
majoron models of Majorana neutrino masses there is a third decay
channel where the intermediate e in the 0 mode radiates a majoron
so that eectively 2e plus one majoron are emitted. The expected
sum spectrum of the electron energies would be continuous as in the
2 mode, but with a dierent spectral shape. Once in a while, experiments which search for the 0 mode (a sharp endpoint peak of
the 2e sum spectrum) have reported a continuous spectral signature
which allegedly could not be ascribed to the dominant 2 mode or other
561
backgrounds, although such claims have tended to disappear with the

collection of more signicant data. If interpreted in terms of an upper limit to the majoron-e Yukawa coupling, current experiments give
4
about g <
210 (Beck et al. 1993 and references therein). At the
present time there does not appear to exist a compelling signature for
majorons in any of the experiments, although several of them seem
to nd certain spectral anomaliessee, e.g. Burgess and Cline (1993,
1994b) for an overview and references.
If the spectral anomalies were to represent the rst evidence of majoron emission in 2 decays, the Yukawa coupling would have to be near
the 104 level. The neutrino-majoron coupling is given as g = m /v in
terms of the neutrino mass and the symmetry breaking scale v. With
me <
1 eV for a Majorana mass from measured limits on the 0 decay mode one nds the requirement v <
10 keV which is an extremely
small scale of symmetry breaking. The majoron is the angular degree
of freedom of a complex scalar eld; the radial degree of freedom,
often referred to as the eld, has a mass typically of order v. Therefore, a low-mass scalar particle beyond the majoron would appear in
the low-energy sector of the theory.
One severe limitation on such models is provided by big-bang nucleosynthesis which has been widely used to set limits on additional
low-mass degrees of freedom which are thermally excited during the
epoch of nucleosynthesis; an upper limit of about 0.3 is often quoted as
the maximum allowed extra contribution in units of eective neutrino
degrees of freedom (e.g. Walker et al. 1991). On the face of it, this
limit excludes majoron models where the majoron (and possibly the )
interact suciently strongly with neutrinos to reach thermal equilibrium. In one recent study Chang and Choi (1994) found that one must
5
require g <
10 for the largest majoron Yukawa coupling to any neutrino species in order to avoid thermalization of the majorons before
nucleosynthesis.
Such constraints rely on the assumption of 3 standard light neutrino species being in thermal equilibrium at the epoch of nucleosynthesis. However, in majoron models the usual cosmological neutrino
mass bound does not apply because of the possibility of fast decays of
the type (majoron ) which are induced by avor o-diagonal
Yukawa couplings. Therefore, s may have a mass of, say, a few
MeV and may have disappeared by decays and annihilations before nucleosynthesis, thus making room for majorons; for detailed numerical
studies see Kawasaki et al. (1994) and papers quoted there. Such heavy,
short-lived s may provide interesting eects on scenarios of galaxy
562
Chapter 15
formation and thus could be a novel ingredient for cold dark matter
cosmological models (Dodelson, Gyuk, and Turner 1994).
Even if in the long run the 2 experiments do not yield any compelling evidence for majoron emission, one may consider a decayingneutrino cosmology as a motivation in its own right for majoron models. Such cosmologies may explain the discrepancy between the cosmic
density uctuation spectrum inferred from the cosmic microwave background and from galaxy correlations which persists in a purely cold
dark matter cosmology (Bond and Efstathiou 1991; Dodelson, Gyuk,
and Turner 1994; White, Gelmini, and Silk 1995). Another neutrinorelated explanation of this discrepancy is a hot plus cold dark matter
cosmology which involves neutrinos with a mass of a few eV.
In summary, the simplest majoron model which implied large couplings to neutrinos (the Gelmini-Roncadelli model) is experimentally
excluded although one can construct more complicated ones which retain sizeable neutrino-majoron couplings and yet are compatible with
the Z decay width. The possibility of such models is entertained because 2 decay experiments may yet turn up compelling evidence for
majoron decays, and because certain cosmological models of structure
formation may be taken to suggest massive, decaying neutrinos.
15.7.2
Majorons and Stars
Majorons could also have an impact on stellar evolution. Besides interacting with neutrinos, they typically also couple to other fermions,
allowing one to apply the astrophysical bounds on pseudoscalars derived throughout this book to majoron models.
Because of the possibility of fast decays the neutrino signal
from distant sources, notably from the Sun or from SN 1987A, would
be aected. Such decays are not likely to be able to explain the solar neutrino problem as discussed in Sect. 10.8. It remains interesting,
however, that the matter-induced e - e energy splitting allows for decays e e (Sect. 6.8). Should a solar e ux show up in future
measurements, it could be an indication for such decays.
As for SN neutrinos, the decay of massive s or s with nalstate e s could modify the e signal observed in a detector, notably
the energy distribution and duration of the observed pulse (Soares and
Wolfenstein 1989; Simpson 1991). The SN 1987A data have not been
analyzed in detail with regard to this possibility, although the observed
signal can be accounted for without invoking such eects. It is not
clear if one could derive signicant constraints on majoron models from
563
SN 1987A on the basis of this decay argument. Aharonov, Avignone,

and Nussinov (1988a) predicted for certain parameters a dramatic increase of the number of observable events from the prompt e burst.
One interesting SN 1987A limit is based on the interaction of the
pulse of observed e s with the cosmic majoron background that would
be expected to exist for majorons which thermalized in the early universe. In order not to deplete the pulse too much by collisions, Kolb
and Turner (1987) found a certain upper limit on the majoron-neutrino
Yukawa coupling. Unfortunately, their bound was based on an incorrect cross section for the process . They used a pseudoscalar coupling of the form ig 5 rather than a derivative coupling (1/2v) 5 where g = m /v and v is the majoron symmetry breaking scale. As discussed in Sect. 14.2.3, in processes which
involve two Nambu-Goldstone bosons attached to one fermion it is
mandatory to use the derivative coupling in order to obtain the correct
interaction rate. The pseudoscalar coupling yields a scattering cross
section (g 4 /64) s1 times an expression of order unity which depends
on the neutrino mass and s, the squared CM energy. Put another way,
the cross section is (m /v)4 s1 times numerical factors. The derivative
coupling, on the other hand, leads to a cross section m2 /v 4 times numerical factors (Choi and Santamaria 1990). Therefore, Kolb and Turners
4
(1987) bound translates approximately into g (eV/m )1/2 <
310 . It
is not a bound on g alone.
Typical energies of neutrinos and other particles which prevail in the
interior of a SN core are in the range of tens to hundreds of MeV. In
majoron models with a symmetry breaking scale below this range, the
symmetry may be restored in the interior of the star, and both components of the complex Higgs eld will be thermally excited. Quick
deleptonization may be achieved by reactions involving the majoron
eld, leading to a high-entropy collapse. Substantial majoron emission
may shorten the SN 1987A e signal too much, although decays of heavier neutrinos in ight could, perhaps, provide the late events observed
in the detectors. SN scenarios involving majorons were discussed by a
number of authors.96 There is little doubt that majoron models will
have an important impact on SN physics for Yukawa couplings somewhere in the range 106 103 . From the available literature, however,
96
Kolb, Tubbs, and Dicus (1982); Dicus, Kolb, and Tubbs (1983); Manohar
(1987); Fuller, Mayle, and Wilson (1988); Aharonov, Avignone, and Nussinov
(1988b, 1989); Choi et al. (1988); Grifols, Masso, and Peris (1988); Konoplich
and Khlopov (1988); Dicus et al. (1989); Berezhiani and Smirnov (1989); Choi and
Santamaria (1990).
564
Chapter 15
the present author has not been able to develop a clear view of the
precise range of parameters that can be ruled out or ruled in by the
SN 1987A neutrino signal.97
15.8
Millicharged Particles
It is commonly assumed that all particles have charges in multiples of

1
e (electron charge); notably neutrinos are thought to be electrically
3
neutral. While gauge invariance and anomaly cancellation constraints
pose limits on the possible charge assignments in the standard model,
electric charge quantization is not entirely assured. Two of the three
neutrino species may carry small charges if one gives up the assumption
that the three fermion families dier only in the mass of their members (Takasugi and Tanaka 1992; Babu and Volkas 1992; Foot, Lew,
and Volkas 1993). Moreover, if one allows for charge nonconservation,
all neutrinos could have small charges (Babu and Mohapatra 1990;
Maruno, Takasugi, and Tanaka 1991). Finally, the existence of novel
particles with small electric charges is possible and actually motivated
by certain models involving a mirror sector where the mirror symmetry is slightly broken (Holdom 1986; see also Davidson, Campbell, and
Bailey 1991). Therefore, it is interesting to study the experimental, astrophysical, and cosmological bounds on the existence of particles with
small electric charge.98
The most severe constraints obtain for nonstandard charge assignments in the rst family of quarks and leptons. The most modelindependent charge limit on e was derived from the absence of an
anomalous dispersion of the SN 1987A neutrino signal (Sect. 13.3.3)
97
An incomplete list of issues that ought to be considered in a study of majorons

in SNe are the following. If the symmetry is broken within the SN core, a derivative
majoron coupling to neutrinos should be used instead of a pseudoscalar one (Choi
and Santamaria 1990). For light neutrinos, the medium-induced dispersion relation may dominate the cross section result. Besides the medium-induced processes
, the process should be included (Sect. 6.8). The decay of heavy
neutrinos outside of the SN could contribute to the measurable signal. The trapping
of neutrinos and majorons due to reactions with each other should be properly understood along the lines discussed by Dicus et al. (1989); it is dubious, for example,
that a process like really contributes to the majoron opacity. The eect
of majorons during the infall phase must be understood, especially the possibility
of early deleptonization.
98
Such studies were performed by Dobroliubov and Ignatiev (1990), Davidson,
Campbell, and Bailey (1991), Babu and Volkas (1992), Mohapatra and Nussinov
(1992), and Davidson and Peskin (1994).
565
which led to (Barbiellini and Cocconi 1987; Bahcall 1989)

17
ee <
310 e.
(15.7)
If electric charge conservation is assumed to hold in processes such

as neutron decay, one nds a more restrictive limit of
21
ee <
310 e.
(15.8)
It is based on a limit for the neutron charge of en = (0.41.1)1021 e

(Baumann et al. 1988) and on the neutrality of matter which was found
to be ep +ee = (0.80.8)1021 e assuming a vanishing neutron charge
(Marinelli and Morpurgo 1984).
The deection of charged neutrinos in the toroidal magnetic eld
in the solar convection zone would modify the observable ux at Earth
(Ignatiev and Joshi 1994, 1995). However, in view of the above limits
an unrealistically large eld gradient is required to obtain signicant
ux modications.
Babu and Volkas (1992) derived a limit on the electric charge
from the measured e cross section which would receive a contribution
from photon exchange,
9
e <
10 e.
(15.9)
Similar limits could be derived for e .

The following arguments apply to millicharged neutrinos or novel
particles alike. They would appear as virtual states in higher-order amplitudes. For example, they would contribute to the anomalous magnetic moment of electrons and muons, and to the Lamb shift between
the 2P1/2 and 2S1/2 states of the hydrogen atom. Of these quantitities,
the Lamb shift gives the most restrictive limit (Davidson, Campbell,
and Bailey 1991),
ex < 0.11e mx /MeV,
(15.10)
where ex and mx are the charge and mass of the millicharged particle,
respectively. This result applies to mx >
1 keV.
Davidson, Campbell, and Bailey (1991) have reviewed more restrictive bounds from a host of accelerator experiments (Fig. 15.3).
A simple astrophysical constraint is based on avoiding excessive energy losses of stars which can produce millicharged particles by various
reactions, most notably the plasma decay process. To avoid an unacceptable delay of helium ignition in low-mass red giants, and to avoid an
566
Chapter 15
Fig. 15.3. Summary on limits on the electric charge ex and mass mx of

generic millicharged particles which may be sequential neutrinos or novel
particles. (Adapted from Davidson, Bailey, and Campbell 1991.) In order
to avoid overclosing the universe, additional model-dependent parameter
regions are excluded. The big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) excluded region
is larger in some models.
undue shortening of the lifetime of horizontal-branch stars, one needs

to require (Sect. 6.5.6)
14
ex <
(15.11)
210 e.
It applies for mx <
P /2 with P the plasma frequency. It is larger for
red giants before helium ignition than for HB stars because of the larger
average density of 2105 g cm3 which corresponds to P 8.6 keV.
The white-dwarf luminosity function yields about the same limit.
If ex exceeds around 108 e the mean free path of the millicharged
particles will be less than the physical size of a white dwarf or redgiant core. For larger ex the particles will be trapped and contribute
to the transfer of energy. Their impact on stellar evolution will become
negligible when ex is so large that other forms of energy transfer (photon
radiation, convection) are more important. Because the new particles
act essentially as radiation their mean free path must be less than that
of photons, or very crudely, their charge must be of order an electron
charge. (The main opacity source is probably Coulomb scattering on
charged particles.) Therefore, if their mass is below a few keV, even the
properties of the Sun would imply that there is not an allowed range of
large ex on the trapping side of the red-giant argument, except perhaps
for ex so large that it is excluded by experimental arguments.
567
For a narrow range of charges, these limits can be extended to larger

masses by the SN 1987A cooling argument (Sect. 13.8.4). Accordingly,
< 7
(15.12)
109 e <
ex 10 e
is excluded for mx up to several MeV, perhaps up to 10 MeV. On
the trapping side of this range (large ex ) these particles surely would
have an important impact on SN physics even though they cannot be
excluded on the basis of the simple cooling argument.
If millicharged particles reach thermal equilibrium in the early universe before nucleosynthesis they contribute to the energy density and
thus to the expansion rate. If they are one of the sequential neutrinos,
this means that the right-handed degrees of freedom of that species
are excited (they must be Dirac particles!), adding an eective neutrino degree of freedom. If they are nonneutrinos, even more energy
is contributed, depending on their spin degrees of freedom. Even one
additional eective neutrino degree of freedom is excluded and so for
any millicharged particle Davidson, Campbell, and Bailey (1991) found
9
ex <
(15.13)
310 e
if mx <
1 MeV. In certain models where the millicharged particles are
associated with a shadow sector, more stringent limits apply (Davidson
and Peskin 1994).
Additional regions in the mass-charge plane can be excluded by
the requirement that the novel objects do not overclose the universe.
However, these arguments depend on the annihilation cross section in
the early universe so that one needs to know all of their interactions
apart from the millicharge. It is hard to imagine novel particles which
interact only by their small electric charge! For certain specic cases
the excluded regime was derived by Davidson, Campbell, and Bailey
(1991) and Davidson and Peskin (1994).
All of these constraints leave the possibility open that s have a
mass in the 124 MeV range and a charge in the 105 103 e range.
Then they would annihilate suciently fast before nucleosynthesis to
actually reduce their eective contribution to the expansion rate (Foot
and Lew 1993). In the standard model with small neutrino charges,
however, two sequential neutrino species must carry a millicharge of
equal but opposite magnitude (Babu and Volkas 1992; Takasugi and
Tanaka 1992). Because the large charges required for Foot and Lews
scenario are excluded for e and one would need to require that only
carries a relatively large charge, forcing one to espouse even more
exotic particle-physics models.
Chapter 16
Neutrinos: The Bottom Line
Most of the particle-physics arguments discussed in this book are closely
related to neutrino physics because these particles play an important
role in stellar evolution whether or not they have nonstandard properties. Besides a summary of some recent developments of standardneutrino astrophysics, a synthesis is attempted of what stars as neutrino
laboratories have taught us about these elusive objects, and what one
might reasonable hope to learn in the foreseeable future.
16.1
Standard Neutrinos
The main theme of this book has been an attempt to extract information about the properties of neutrinos and other weakly interacting particles from the established properties of stars. However, even
standard-model neutrinos (massless, no mixing, no exotic properties)
play a signicant role in astrophysics. There have been some recent developments in standard-neutrino astrophysics which deserve mention
in a summary.
It is now thought that neutrinos play an active role in supernovae
besides carrying away the binding energy of the newborn neutron star
(Chapter 11). In the delayed-explosion scenario they are crucial to
revive the stalled shock wave which is supposed to expel the stellar
mantle and envelope. Moreover, they have a strong impact on r-process
nucleosynthesis which is thought to occur in the high-entropy region
above the neutron star a few seconds after collapse. For both purposes it
is crucial to calculate the SN neutrino lightcurve for the rst seconds
after collapse. Convection below the neutrino sphere and large-scale
convective turnovers in the region between the neutron star and the
shock wave are both important and need to be understood better on
568
569
the basis of 2- and 3-dimensional hydrodynamic calculations which are

only beginning to appear in the literature.
In addition, however, the neutrino opacities must be calculated with
greater reliability. In Chapter 4 the weaknesses of a naive calculation
of the axial-vector opacities have been amply demonstrated. In my
opinion, a far better understanding of the interaction rates of neutrinos
with a hot nuclear medium is required before one can calculate a SN
neutrino lightcurve (notably the duration of Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling)
with a reasonable precision.
Neutrinos presumably play a key role for the self-acceleration of neutron stars which are observed to have huge kick velocities (Sect. 11.5).
The required anisotropic neutrino emission of 12% may be caused
by temperature uctuations on the neutrino sphere (convection!), or
by magnetic-eld induced anisotropies of the neutrino opacities. Of
course, other phenomena may be responsible for anisotropic neutrino
emission and for the kick velocities.
For the rst time ever neutrinos have been observed from a collapsing star (SN 1987A), conrming the expected signal behavior within
the large uncertainties caused by the small number of observed events
(Chapter 11).
Neutrinos are routinely observed from the Suncurrently in four
dierent detectors with three dierent spectral response characteristics
(Chapter 10). At least three further detectors will soon take up operations. The measured solar neutrino spectrum diers signicantly from
theoretical predictions. This solar neutrino problem has no obvious
astrophysical solution that would involve plausible variations of input parameters such as nuclear cross sections or photon opacities. Still,
the gallium detectors SAGE and GALLEX have for the rst time measured the dominant low-energy ux of pp neutrinos, conrming that the
Sun cannot be completely dierent at its center from what had been
thought.
There is also some more benign news. The interest of some authors
to apply the methods of nite temperature eld theory to astrophysical
problems has led to a new formulation of the photon dispersion relation
in a plasma (Sect. 6.3). It helped to correct some fossilized errors in
the literature on plasma neutrino emission (see also Appendix C.1). It
may well be worthwhile to scrutinize other standard aspects of stellarevolution input physics that involve subtle dispersion or screening effects.
570
Chapter 16
16.2
Minimally Extended Standard Model
16.2.1
Cosmological Mass Limit for All Flavors
Neutrinos with nonstandard properties would have more radical implications in astrophysics. A minimal and most plausible extension of the
standard model is the possibility that they have masses and mixings
like the other fermions. Taking this hypothesis in a literal sense means
that neutrinos would need to have Dirac masses like the charged fermions. Therefore, one needs to postulate the existence of right-handed
neutrinos and Yukawa couplings to the standard Higgs eld to generate
masses and mixings. What do we know about neutrinos in the context
of this Minimally Extended Standard Model?
Perhaps the most dramatic lesson is that the mass of all sequential neutrinos (e , , ) must be less than the cosmological limit of
approximately 30 eV (Sect. 7.1.5). This conclusion is not to be taken
for granted as massive neutrinos with mixings can decay by virtue of
, and by e e+ e if m exceeds about 2me . While the
standard-model radiative decays are too slow to avoid the cosmological
limit, the e+ e channel can be fast on cosmological time scales if the
mixing angle is not too small. This decay channel is an option only
for which may have a mass of up to 24 MeV while the experimental
mass limits on the other avors are below 0.16 MeV.
Such a heavy , however, can be excluded by several arguments.
The stellar evolution one based on SN arguments was presented in
Sect. 12.5.2. The bremsstrahlung emission of photons in e e+ e
would produce a -ray ux in excess of the SMM limits for SN 1987A
9
unless sin2 2e3 <
10 . (For a detailed dependence of this limit on the
assumed mass see Fig. 12.18.) In addition, the integrated positron ux
from all galactic supernovae over the past, say, 100,000 years would
exceed the observed value unless the decays are very fast (near the SN)
or very slow (outside of the galactic disk). Together, these limits leave
no room for a heavy (Fig. 12.19). In addition, the mass range
<
0.5 MeV <
m 35 MeV can be excluded on the basis of big bang
nucleosynthesis arguments (Fig. 7.2) unless the neutrinos are shorter
lived than permitted by the Minimally Extended Standard Model.
Neutrino masses near the cosmological limit would be important for
cosmology as they could contribute some or all of the dark matter of
the universe. The latter option is disfavored by theories of structure
formation. However, a subdominant hot dark matter contribution in
the form of, say, 5 eV neutrinos might be cosmologically quite welcome.
571
Neutrino masses in this general range are also accessible to timeof-ight measurements. The neutrino burst of SN 1987A has already
provided a limit of me <
20 eV (Sect. 11.3.4), a result which remains
interesting in view of the confusing situation with the tritium decay endpoint experiments which seem to be plagued by systematic effects which cause the appearance of a negative neutrino mass-square
(Sect. 7.1.3). The observation of the prompt e burst from a future
galactic SN would allow one to reduce this limit to a few eV. Moreover, one may well be able to detect or constrain a or mass in
the 1020 eV range, assuming the simultaneous operation of a water
Cherenkov detector such as Superkamiokande and a neutral-current detector such as the proposed Supernova Burst Observatory (Sect. 11.6).
16.2.2
Oscillations of Solar Neutrinos
Small neutrino masses or rather, small neutrino mass dierences can

have dramatic consequences if neutrinos also mix; this is expected in the
present scenario. Neutrino oscillations then lead to the possibility that
a dierent neutrino avor is measured in a detector than was produced
in the source. The observed characteristics of the solar neutrino ux
strongly suggest that neutrino oscillations may in fact be occurring. In
terms of the mass dierence and mixing angle between e and or
there remain three solutions which account for the presently available
data from the chlorine (Homestake), gallium (GALLEX and SAGE),
and Cherenkov (Kamiokande) experiments (Tab. 16.1). In view of possible systematic uncertainties concerning such quantities as the solar
opacities and the p 7 Be cross section the values of the favored mixing
angles can be somewhat dierent from those shown in Tab. 16.1. However, the required mass dierences remain rather stable against large
nonstandard modications of the solar model.
Table 16.1. Approximate neutrino parameters which explain all current solar
neutrino observations in the framework of standard solar model assumptions.
Solution
m2 [eV2 ]
sin2 2
Large-angle MSW
Nonadiabatic MSW
Vacuum oscillations
2105
0.6105
0.81010
0.6
0.006
0.81
572
Chapter 16
The main aspect of the current situation is that there does not seem
to be a simple astrophysical solution to reconcile the solar source
spectrum with the measured uxes in experiments with three dierent
spectral response characteristics. Even allowing for large modications
of the p 7 Be cross section or the solar central temperature does not yield
consistency unless one stretches the experimental uncertainties of the
ux measurements beyond reasonable limits. Still, a nal verdict on
the question of solar neutrino oscillations can be expected only from
the near-future experiments Superkamiokande, SNO, and BOREXINO
as discussed in Chapter 10.
16.2.3
Oscillation of Supernova Neutrinos
Naturally, neutrino oscillations would also aect the characteristics of

SN neutrinos which have been observed only from SN 1987A, although
it is not unrealistic to hope for the observation of a galactic supernova
at Superkamiokande or SNO within, say, a decade of operation. In water Cherenkov detectors, the main signal of SN neutrinos is thought to
be from the e p ne+ reaction, although the angular characteristics of
the SN 1987A observations do not square well with this assumption except that there is no convincing alternate interpretation (Sect. 11.3.5).
The MSW solution in the Sun requires a normal mass hierarchy with
e being dominated by the smaller mass eigenstate. In this case resonant oscillations do not occur among the s.
Still, for large-angle vacuum oscillations such as those corresponding
to the solar vacuum solution, the signal in the IMB and Kamiokande
detectors would have been hardened by the partial swap of, say, the
e with the spectrum. It is not entirely obvious from the current
literature if this eect is ruled in or ruled out by the SN 1987A observations (Sect. 11.4.3).
If the mixing angle of e with both and is small (sin2 2 <
0.1)
there is no impact on the e SN signal. Still, the prompt e burst could
be aected even for small mixing angles because of the possibility of
resonant oscillations (Sect. 11.4.2) and so the observation of a future
galactic supernova could serve to measure this eect.
If one were to contemplate more general neutrino mass matrices
with an inversion so that e is not dominated by the lowest-mass
eigenstate, there could be resonant oscillations in the sector which
would then lead to dramatic modications of the SN signal in a large
range of masses and mixing angles. This possibility has not been explored much in the literature.
573
Apart from the detector signal, the oscillation of SN neutrinos can

have important implications for SN physics itself because of the swap
of, say, the e with the spectrum which is much harder. For a mass
dierence corresponding to the cosmologically interesting range of a few
to a few tens of eV, resonant oscillations could occur so close to the neutrino sphere that the crossover point is within the stalling shock wave
in the delayed-explosion scenario. The eective hardening of the e
spectrum would then enhance the neutrino energy transfer to the shock
wave, thus helping to explode supernovae (Sect. 11.4.4). Conversely, a
few seconds after collapse the same eect would drive the hot wind
proton rich which is driven from the surface of the compact remnant.
This eect would prevent the occurrence of r-process nucleosynthesis
which requires a neutron-rich environment (Sect. 11.4.5). Interestingly,
because the remnant is more compact at late times (few seconds after
collapse), the adiabaticity condition can be met only for relatively large
mixing angles. Thus, there is a plausible range of neutrino parameters
where oscillations may help to explode supernovae, and still r-process
nucleosynthesis may proceed undisturbed (Fig. 11.20). At any rate, it
is impossible to ignore neutrino oscillations for SN physics if neutrino
masses happen to lie in the cosmologically interesting range.
16.2.4
Electromagnetic Properties
In the Minimally Extended Standard Model neutrinos have magnetic

and electric diagonal and transition moments which are proportional to
their assumed masses (Sect. 7.2.2). Because of the cosmological mass
limit these quantities are so small that they do not seem to be important
anywhere. However, one may toy with the idea that neutrinos actually
carry small electric charges, a possibility that is not entirely excluded
by the structure of the Standard Model if one gives up the notion that
the second and third particle families are exact replicas of the rst
except for the masses (Sect. 15.8).
17
The possible magnitude of a e charge is limited by ee <
310 e
from the absence of an anomalous dispersion of the SN 1987A neutrino burst (Sect. 13.3.3). All neutrino charges are limited by e <
21014 e from the absence of anomalous cooling of globular-cluster

stars (Sect. 6.5.6). For and the cosmological mass limit is crucial
for this bound because their emission would be suppressed by threshold
eects if their mass exceeded the relevant plasma frequency of a few
keV. The assumption of charge conservation in decay yields a more
21
restrictive limit ee <
(Sect. 15.8).
310
574
Chapter 16
Either way, possible charges of all neutrinos must be so small that

the quantization of charge is very accurately realized among the fermions of the Standard Model. Therefore, charge quantization is probably
exact so that the neutrino electric charges vanish exactly, those of the
quarks are exactly 13 e and 32 e, respectively.
16.3
New Interactions
16.3.1
Majorana Masses
Because of the cosmological limit all neutrino masses are found to be so

small relative to those of the corresponding charged fermions (Fig. 7.1)
that it is hard to maintain the pretense that neutrinos are essentially
like the other fermions. In this sense the assumption of a Minimally
Extended Standard Model is self-defeating. One reaction may be to
return to the assumption of massless two-component neutrinos. It remains to be seen for how much longer this option remains viable in view
of the expected progress in solar neutrino astronomy and, perhaps, in
laboratory experiments (including atmospheric neutrino observations).
They may soon yield unrefutable evidence for neutrino oscillations.
Another reaction is to embrace the notion of neutrinos being very
dierent from the charged leptons with a possible wealth of novel and
unexpected properties. The most benign assumption is to maintain the
notion of only two neutrino components per family which are characterized by a Majorana mass term which may arise by new physics at
some large energy scale. In this case all that was said about neutrino
masses and oscillations in the previous section remains applicable.
16.3.2
Heavy Neutrinos and Fast Decays
If one postulates novel neutrino interactions one may speculate about

the possibility of neutrino decays which proceed faster than in the Minimally Extended Standard Model. Besides accelerated radiative decays
one may speculate about fast invisible decays of the form
or where is some new boson such as the majoron (Sect. 15.7).
In this case one can escape the cosmological mass limit. In fact, such
fast-decaying neutrinos can be a welcome feature of theories for the
formation of structure in the universe (Sect. 7.1.5).
Heavy s or s are not in obvious conict with normal stellar
evolution even though their emission could now be suppressed by the
mass threshold. Thermal production of neutrinos from a stellar plasma
575
is dominated by the plasmon decay process for a large range

of stellar conditions (Appendix C). This process occurs mostly by the
vector-current coupling to electrons of the medium. Because the weak
mixing angle has the special value sin2 W = 0.23 14 the vectorcurrent coupling of and to electrons nearly vanishes (Appendix B)
and so and plays near to no role anywayin this sense
stars are blind to the issue of heavy or masses.
However, assuming that the heavy neutrinos are Dirac particles one
can limit their mass by a SN argument: The energy loss by right-handed
states produced in spin-ip collisions must not be too large, yielding a
limit of m <
30 keV (Sect. 13.8.1). In addition, these neutrinos have
very high energies, typical of SN core temperatures, and so their decays
might produce high-energy daughter e s (100200 MeV) which were
not observed from SN 1987A (Sect. 13.8.1).
Even Majorana neutrinos would not be harmless for SN physics if
they would mix suciently strongly with e . In this case they would
eectively participate in equilibrium (Sect. 9.5) so that the spinip scattering of, say, would eectively lead to s and thus to
deleptonization without the need of transporting lepton number to the
stellar surface.
In addition, even though heavy Majorana neutrinos would be emitted from the neutrino sphere so that their decays would not produce
high-energy daughter products, the decays could still add to the detectable signal. It is not obvious from the existing literature which
(if any) range of masses and decay times is ruled out or ruled in by the
SN 1987A observations (Sect. 13.2.2).
If the fast decays were due to some sort of majoron model, large
secret neutrino-neutrino interactions are conceivable, possibly in conjunction with a small vacuum expectation value of a new Higgs eld so
that the symmetry may be restored in a SN core. While a substantial
body of literature exists on this sort of scenario (Sect. 15.7.2) I believe
that in this context the story of SN physics would have to be rewritten
more systematically than has been done so far. However, there appears
to be little doubt that for neutrino-majoron Yukawa couplings in excess
of about 105 one would expect dramatic modications of the transport
of energy and lepton number.
In summary, heavy neutrinos with fast invisible decays are a way
to circumvent the cosmological mass limit, and may indeed be desirable
in certain scenarios of cosmic structure formation. Depending on their
detailed properties they could have a substantial impact on SN physics
and the signal observable in a detector. It is dicult, however, to
576
Chapter 16
state general constraints as one may easily postulate, for example, that
the decays do not involve nal-state e s, that even wrong-helicity
Dirac neutrinos are trapped in a SN core by novel interactions, or that
heavy Majorana s have only negligible mixings with e . Surely other
loopholes could be found.
16.3.3
Electromagnetic Properties
a) Spin and Spin-Flavor Oscillations

If one contemplates neutrino interactions beyond the Minimally Extended Standard Model, neutrino dipole and transition moments no
longer need to be small. In particular, they do not need to be proportional to the neutrino masses; one example are left-right symmetric
models where even massless neutrinos would have large dipole moments
(Sect. 7.3.1). Dipole and transition moments can lead to spin or spinavor oscillations in external magnetic elds, they allow for spin-ip
scattering on charged particles, for the plasmon decay in stars,
and for radiative decays .
One motivation for studying neutrino dipole moments is the apparent ux variability of the solar neutrino signal in the Homestake
detector. It anticorrelates with solar magnetic activity too closely to
blame it comfortably on a statistical uke (Sect. 10.4.3). The only
physical explanation put forth to date is that of Voloshin, Vysotski,
and Okun of a partial depletion of left-handed (measurable) neutrinos
by spin or spin-avor oscillations. Unfortunately, the required value for
B (neutrino dipole moment , magnetic eld B in the solar convection zone) exceeds by about two orders of magnitude what is allowed by
typical models of the solar magnetic eld and by limits on . Therefore, this scenario appears to be in big trouble. Still, if one ignores the
limits or speculates about large convection-zone magnetic elds one
may t all currently available solar neutrino data (Sect. 10.7).
Spin or spin-avor oscillations can be very important in and near
the cores of supernovae where elds of order 1012 G exist, and perhaps
pockets with much larger elds. If neutrinos are Dirac particles so that
their spin-ipped (right-handed) states are sterile, the combination of
spin-ip scattering on charged particles and the magnetic spin oscillation in large-scale magnetic elds can lead to nonlocal modes of energy
transfer where energy can be deposited in one region that was depleted
from a distant other region. Thus, energy transfer could no longer be
treated with simple dierential equations which involve local gradients
577
of temperature and lepton number. (Of course, a nonlocal energy transfer mechanism is already thought to be important for reviving the shock
wave in the delayed-explosion scenario.) As far as I know, nothing more
quantitative than back-of-the-envelope estimates of this scenario exist
in the literature. Therefore, alleged bounds of order 1012 B (Bohr
magneton B = e/2me ) on Dirac-neutrino dipole moments probably
have to be used with some reservation (Sect. 13.8.3). Conversely, such
dipole moments may actually help to explode supernovae.
With regard to the observable neutrino signal, spin and spin-avor
oscillations both in the SN and in the galactic magnetic eld may cause
vast modications of the e uxes and spectra observable in water Cherenkov detectors if neutrinos have dipole moments in the ballpark of
1012 1014 B .
Spin and spin-avor oscillations can be very important in the early
universe where strong magnetic elds may exist, and where a population of the r.h. degrees of freedom would accelerate the expansion
rate of the universe. These issues are being investigated in the current
literature; nal conclusions do not seem to be available at the present
time. Still, it appears that this eect may well be the most signicant
impact of small Dirac neutrino dipole or transition moments anywhere
in nature.
b) Laboratory Limits
Less problematic bounds on neutrino dipole moments arise from laboratory experiments where one studies the recoil spectrum of electrons
in the reaction + e e + where can be the same or a dierent
avor (Sect. 7.5.1). A sensitivity down to, perhaps, as low as 1011 B
can be expected from a current eort involving reactor neutrinos as
a source (MUNU experiment). Current limits on dipole or transition
moments are about 21010 B if e is involved, and about 71010 B
if is involved. For transition moments, these limits are subject to
the assumption that there is no cancellation between a magnetic and
an electric dipole scattering amplitude.
c) Huge Dipole Moments or Millicharges
In principle, the possibility of a large diagonal moment for remains
open as it has not been possible to produce a strong source in the laboratory so that only extremely crude limits exist on the -e-scattering
cross section. The globular-cluster bounds discussed below do not
578
Chapter 16
apply to a heavy so that one is confronted with a nontrivial allowed region in -m space where even MeV masses become cosmologically allowed because of the dipole-induced annihilation process
e+ e ( in the ballpark of 107 B ). Of course, such large
dipole moments must be caused by a fairly nontrivial arrangement of
intermediate charged states and so one may wonder if a large magnetic moment could be realistically the only manifestation of these new
particles and/or interactions.
Still, a large dipole moment and the correspondingly large annihilation cross section in the early universe is one possibility to tolerate a large mass without the need for fast decayssuch a particle
could be entirely stable. Another similar possibility is that has a
huge millicharge in the neighborhood of 105 103 e. Such a scheme
would require the violation of charge conservation as the possibility of
neutrino charges within a simple extension of the Standard Model discussed above always gives charges to two neutrino avors; for e or
the required value is not tolerable (Sect. 15.8).
For the issues of stellar evolution, the only conceivable consequence
of such large electromagnetic interaction cross sections would be
a reduced contribution to the energy transfer in SNe because of the
reduced mean free path. In the study discussed in Sect. 13.6 one should
have included the possibility of only two eective avors! Still, there
is little doubt that large cross sections could be accommodated in
what one knows about SNe today.
d) Astrophysical Bounds on Dipole and Transition Moments
For all neutrinos with a mass below a few keV a very restrictive limit
on dipole or transition magnetic or electric moments arises from the absence of anomalous neutrino emission from the cores of evolved globularcluster stars, notably of red-giant cores just before helium ignition
12
(Sect. 6.5.6). One nds a limit <
310 B which applies to Dirac
and Majorana neutrinos, and which does not allow for a destructive
interference between electric and magnetic amplitudes.
Neutrino transition moments would reveal themselves by radiative
decays. Because the decay rate involves a phase-space factor m3 this
method is suitable only for large masses. In the cosmologically allowed
range with m <
30 eV, the only radiative limit which can compete
with the globular-cluster bound is from the cosmic diuse background
radiations (Fig. 12.21). In fact, Sciama has proposed a scheme where a
28.9 eV neutrino with a radiative decay time corresponding to a tran-
579
sition moment of 0.61014 B plays a signicant cosmological role

(Sect. 12.7.1). While this scenario is probably excluded it highlights
the possibility of interesting cosmological eects for radiatively decaying neutrinos in the range allowed by the globular-cluster bound.
Radiative decay limits which are based on astronomical decay paths
suer from the uncertainty of other invisible decay channels which may
compete with the radiative mode. Limits based on the cosmic background radiations (Fig. 12.20) imply that in a large range of cosmologically allowed neutrino masses and lifetimes the dominant decay channel must be nonradiative. Therefore, one should use the cosmic background radiations to derive limits on the branching ratio. One could
then construct a contour plot of the excluded transition moments in
the m - plane.
From the SN 1987A radiative lifetime limits I have constructed
such a plot in Fig. 12.17. For large dipole moments in excess of,
say, 1010 B these bounds are not self-consistent because neutrinos
would be trapped too strongly by electromagnetic scatterings. However, the laboratory limits exclude large transition moments. Moreover, the globular-cluster bound yields more restrictive limits if m is
less than a few keV. However, for relatively large neutrino masses, and
for lifetimes not so short that the decays would have occurred within
the progenitor star, SN 1987A yields the most restrictive limits on transition moments. Naturally, one must assume that or were actually
emitted with about the standard uxes. Trapping eects by additional
new interactions could circumvent this assumption.
16.3.4
Summary
Neutrinos with nonstandard interactions may well saturate the experimental mass limits, and may have a variety of novel properties. However, it is nearly impossible to derive generic constraints on quantities like magnetic transition moments without specifying an underlying
particle physics model. Many constraints, notably those related to
SN 1987A or to cosmology, can be circumvented by postulating sufciently bizarre neutrino properties. Therefore, it is probably more
important to know the arguments that can serve to learn something
about neutrinos in astrophysics than it is to know a list of alleged limits. If a concrete conjecture turns up, or a specic theoretical model
needs to be constrained, one can easily go through the list of arguments
and check if they apply or not. Perhaps this book can be of help at
this task.
Appendix A
Units and Dimensions
In the astrophysical context, frequently occurring units of length are
centimeters, (light) seconds, light years, and parsecs. Conversion factors are given in Tab. A.1. For example, 1 pc = 3.26 ly.
Using both centimeters and (light) seconds as units of length implies
a system of units where the speed of light c is dimensionless and equal to
unity. In this book I always use natural units where Plancks constant h
and Boltzmanns constant kB are also dimensionless and equal to unity.

This implies that (length)1 , (time)1 , mass, energy, and temperature
can all be measured in the same unit by virtue of x = ct, E = mc2 ,
E=h
, = 2/t, and E = kB T . In Tab. A.2 conversion factors are
given. For example, 1 K = 0.862104 eV or 1 erg = 0.9481027 s1 .
The most confusing aspect of natural units is that of an electromagnetic eld strength. The square of a eld strength is an energy density
(erg/cm3 ) which, in natural units, is (energy)4 or (length)4 . Thus,
an electric or magnetic eld may be measured, for example, in eV2 or
cm2 . In natural units, electric charges are dimensionless numbers.
However, there is a general ambiguity in the denition of charges
and eld strengths because only their product (a force on a charged
particle) is operationally dened. All physical quantities stay the same
if the charges are multiplied with an arbitrary number and the eld
strengths are divided by it. However, the ne-structure constant
1/137 is dimensionless in all systems of units, and its value does not
depend on this arbitrary choice. If e is the charge of the electron one has
= e2 /4 in the rationalized system of (natural) units which is always
used in modern works on eld theory, and is used throughout this book.
The energy density of an electromagnetic eld is then 12 (E 2 + B 2 ). In
the older literature and some texts on electromagnetism, unrationalized
units are used where = e2 and the energy density is (E 2 + B 2 )/8.
580
Units and Dimensions
581
In the astrophysical literature the cgs system of units is very popular

where magnetic elds are measured in Gauss (G). Confusingly, this
system happens to be an unrationalized one. Field strengths given in
Gauss can be translated into our rationalized natural units by virtue of
1G
1 erg/cm3
= 1.953102 eV2 = 0.502108 cm2 , (A.1)
4
where I have converted erg and cm1 into eV according to Tab. A.2.
The energy density of a magnetic eld of strength 1 G is, therefore,
1
(1.953102 eV2 )2 = 1.908104 eV4 = 3.979102 erg cm3 =
2
(1/8) erg cm3 . For a further discussion of electromagnetic units see
Jackson (1975).
It is sometimes useful to measure very strong magnetic elds in
terms of a critical eld strength Bcrit which is dened by the condition
that the quantum energy corresponding to the classical cyclotron frequency h
(eB/me c) of an electron equals its rest energy me c2 so that in
natural units
Bcrit = m2e /e.
(A.2)
Note that the Lorentz force on an electron in this eld is proportional

to eBcrit so that the electron charge cancels. Hence, Eq. (A.2) is the
same in a rationalized
or unrationalized system of units. In 2our rationalized units e = 4 = 0.303 so that Bcrit = (0.511 MeV) /0.303 =
0.8621012 eV2 which, with Eq. (A.1), corresponds to 4.4131013 G, in
accordance to what is found in the literature (Meszaros 1992).
Magnetic dipole moments of electrons and neutrinos are usually
discussed in terms of Bohr magnetons B e/2me . For particle electric dipole moments, on the other hand, one commonly uses 1 e cm as
a unit. The conversion is achieved by 1 e cm = (2me cm) (e/2me ) =
5.181010 B .
1
2.9981010
1.3101011
1.5191015
1.4151024
0.9481027
0.8521048
cm1
0.3341010
1
4.369
0.507105
0.4721014
0.3161017
2.8431037
Atomic mass unit.
s1
cm1
K
eV
amu
erg
g
s1
1
2.9981010
0.9461018
3.081018
ly
1.061018
0.317107
1
3.26
s
0.3341010
1
3.156107
1.028108
0.3251018
0.973108
0.307
1
pc
0.7641011
0.2289
1
1.160104
1.0811013
0.7241016
0.6511037
K
0.6581015
1.973105
0.862104
1
0.931109
0.6241012
0.5611033
eV
0.7071024
2.1181014
0.9261013
1.074109
1
0.670103
0.6021024
amua
1.0551027
3.1611017
1.3811016
1.6021012
1.492103
1
0.8991021
erg
Tab. A.2. Conversion factors in the system of natural units.
cm
s
ly
pc
cm
Tab. A.1. Conversion factors between dierent units of length.
1.1731048
0.3521037
1.5371037
1.7831033
1.6611024
1.1131021
1
582
Appendix A
Appendix B
Neutrino Coupling Constants
Neutrinos can interact with other fermions and with each other by
the exchange of W or Z bosons. Because the astrophysical phenomena
relevant for this book take place at very low energies compared with the
W or Z mass, one may always use an eective four-fermion coupling
which is parametrized in terms of the Fermi constant and the weak
mixing angle
GF = 1.166105 GeV2 ,
sin2 W = 0.2325 0.0008.
(B.1)
The tree-level relationship of these quantities with the gauge-boson

masses is
2 GF = 2
= 2
,
(B.2)
2
2
mW sin W
mZ sin W cos2 W
where mZ = 91.2 GeV and mW = 80.2 GeV.
The eective charged-current interaction between nucleons and leptons is written in the form
GF
Hint = p (CV CA 5 )n (1 5 ) ,
2
(B.3)
where the j are the proton, neutron, charged-lepton, and the corresponding neutrino eld. The vector-current coupling constant is CV = 1
while the axial-vector coupling for free nucleons is CA = 1.26. However,
in large nuclei this value is suppressed somewhat, and the commonly
used value for nuclear matter is CA = 1.0 (e.g. Castle and Towner 1990).
This quantity would be relevant, for example, for reactions in supernova cores and neutron stars.
583
584
Appendix B
The eective charged-current interaction between charged leptons

and their own neutrinos, e.g. between e and e , is written in the same
form with CV = CA = 1. By virtue of a Fierz transformation it is
brought into the form of a neutral current (see below).
Neutral-current interactions between a neutrino and a fermion f
are written in the form
GF
Hint = f (CV CA 5 )f (1 5 ) .
2
(B.4)
If f is the charged lepton corresponding to , there is a contribution

with CV = CA = 1 from a Fierz-transformed charged current. The
compound eective CV s and CA s for various combinations of f and
are given in Tab. B.1. (Note that the |CV,A | for neutral currents are
typically 12 , a factor which is sometimes pulled out front so that the
global coecient is GF /2 2 while the couplings are then twice those of

Tab. B.1.) For neutrinos interacting with neutrinos of the same avor a
factor 2 for an exchange amplitude for identical fermions was included.
The CA s for nucleons were thought to be given by isospin invariance
to be 1.26/2. However, because of the strange-quark contribution to
the nucleon spin there is an isoscalar piece as well giving rise to the
values shown in Tab. B.1for a discussion and references to the original
literature see Raelt and Seckel (1995). Moreover, in a nuclear medium
a certain suppression is expected to occur. In analogy to the chargedcurrent couplings Raelt and Seckel (1995) suggested the values CAp
1.09/2 and CAn 0.91/2.
Table B.1. Neutral-current couplings for the eective Hamiltonian Eq. (B.4)
in vacuum.
Fermion f
Electron
Proton
Neutron
Neutrino (a )
Neutrino
CV
1
e
+ 2 + 2 sin2 W
,
21 + 2 sin2 W
e,,
+ 12 2 sin2 W
e,,
12
a
+1
b=a
+ 21
CA2
CA
CV2
+ 12
0.9312 0.25
12
0.0012 0.25
+1.37/2 0.0012 0.47
1.15/2 0.25 0.33
+1
1
1
1
+2
0.25 0.25
Appendix C
Numerical Neutrino
Energy-Loss Rates
In normal stars with densities below nuclear there are four main reactions that contribute to the energy loss by neutrino emission:
pl
e
e+ e
e (Z, A)
(Z, A) e
Plasma process,
Photoneutrino process,
Pair annihilation,
Bremsstrahlung.
(C.1)
Individual processes dominate in the regions of density and temperature

indicated in Fig. C.1. In the following, various analytic t formulae for
these neutrino emission rates are reviewed.
C.1
Plasma Process
Widely used formulae for the plasma process are those of Beaudet, Petrosian, and Salpeter (1967), Munakata, Kohyama, and Itoh (1985), and
Schinder et al. (1987), which all agree with each other to better than 1%
if the same eective coupling constants are used. All of these rates are
8
poor approximations for T <
10 K which is relevant for low-mass stars
because they were optimized for higher temperatures. Itoh et al. (1989)
have attempted to improve the accuracy at low temperatures, and Blinnikov and Dunina-Barkovskaya (1994) gave rates which were optimized
for low-mass stars but fail for temperatures above about 108 K. At high
temperatures and densities, a poor approximation to the photon dispersion relation was used in all of these works (Braaten 1991) whence
none of these rates are satisfactory. A new t by Itoh et al. (1992) still
contains islands in the -T -plane with errors of several 10%.
585
586
Appendix C
Fig. C.1. Regions of density and temperature where the indicated neutrino
emission processes contribute more than 90% of the total. e is the electron
mean molecular weight, i.e. roughly the number of baryons per electron.
The bremsstrahlung contribution depends on the chemical composition. The
solid lines are for helium, the dotted ones for iron which yields a larger
bremsstrahlung rate.
A detailed comparison of these formulae with the exact rates was

performed by Haft, Raelt, and Weiss (1994). They provided a new
tting formula which approximates the analytic emission rate to within
5% in the entire regime where the plasma process dominates.
C.2
Photoneutrino and Pair-Annihilation

Process
Beaudet, Petrosian, and Salpeter (1967) provided analytic approximations for the photoneutrino and pair-annihilation processes. Dicus
(1972) gave global correction factors to these rates to include neutralcurrent eects. Schinder et al. (1987) numerically recalculated the emission rates in the standard model and found good agreement with the
BPS formulae together with the Dicus correction factors. They supplemented the BPS rates for the temperature range 1010 1011 K.
An alternate set of approximation formulae was provided by Itoh
et al. (1989) who improved on their previous work (Munakata, Kohyama, and Itoh 1985). In Fig. C.2 I show the relative deviation between
the Itoh et al. (1989) with the Schinder et al. (1987) rates. The total
Numerical Neutrino Energy-Loss Rates
587
Fig. C.2. Deviation between the Schinder et al. (1987) and the Itoh et al.
(1989) rates for the photoneutrino and pair-annihilation processes. Compared are the total emission rates where the plasma rate of Haft, Raelt and
Weiss (1994) and the bremsstrahlung rate (helium) of Itoh and Kohyama
(1983) were used. The contours indicate were the individual processes dominate (Fig. C.1).
energy-loss rates for the photo and pair process was calculated according to these authors, while in each case the plasma rate of Haft, Raelt,
and Weiss (1994) and the bremsstrahlung rate for helium of Itoh and
Kohyama (1983) were taken. Therefore, deviations occur only in the
range of temperatures and densities where the photo or pair process
dominates. The largest deviations in the lower left corner of Fig. C.2
are around 25%. However, there the absolute magnitude of neutrino
emission is very small (see below) so that the dierence between the
rates in this regime does not appear to be of much practical signicance.
Another analytic approximation formula for the pair process was
derived by Blinnikov and Rudzski (1989).
588
C.3
Appendix C
Bremsstrahlung
Bremsstrahlung dominates for low temperatures and high densities

where electrons are degenerate and the nuclei are strongly correlated.
In a series of papers the emission rate was calculated by Itoh and Kohyama (1983), Itoh et al. (1984a,b), and Munakata, Kohyama, and Itoh
(1987).
For simple estimates one may use the approximate rate given in
Eq. (11.40). In Fig. C.3 I display the error of this approximation for
iron relative to the results of Itoh and Kohyama (1983). For orientation
the contours of Fig. C.1 for iron are also shown, but only the bremsstrahlung rates are compared. The simple approximation is not a bad
t in the regions where bremsstrahlung could be of interest. For carbon
the t is almost as good, but it is substantially worse for helium.
Fig. C.3. Relative deviation between the bremsstrahlung rates of Itoh and
Kohyama (1983) for iron and the simple approximation formula Eq. (11.40).
The contours where dierent processes dominate are for iron.
Numerical Neutrino Energy-Loss Rates
C.4
589
Total Emission Rate
The total neutrino energy-loss rate for helium is shown in Figs. C.4C.6
where the photoneutrino and pair-annihilation rates are from Schinder
et al. (1987), the plasma process from Haft, Raelt, and Weiss (1994),
and bremsstrahlung (helium) from Itoh and Kohyama (1983)
Fig. C.4. Contour plot for the total neutrino energy-loss rate per unit
mass for helium. The thin contours are at intervals of a factor of 10 for .
The regions where the individual processes dominate are also indicated.
590
Appendix C
Fig. C.5. Neutrino energy-loss rate as a function of density. The thin lines are
for temperatures 2, 3, 4, etc. times the value indicated on the corresponding
thick line.
Fig. C.6. Neutrino energy-loss rate as a function of temperature for the

indicated values of 2/e .
Appendix D
Characteristics of Stellar
Plasmas
D.1
Normal Matter
D.1.1
Temperatures and Densities
The material encountered in stars is usually in a state of thermal equilibrium. In the absence of strong magnetic elds, the plasma is entirely
characterized by its temperature T , mass density , and a set of chemical composition parameters X, Y , X12 , etc. which determine the mass
fractions of the elements 1 H, 4 He, 12 C, and so forth. The mass fraction
of all elements heavier than helium (metals) is denoted by Z.
The number density of a species with mass fraction Xj , atomic
weight Aj , and charge Zj e is given by
nj = (/mu ) Xj /Aj ,
(D.1)
where mu = 1.661024 g = 0.932 GeV is the atomic mass unit.99 The

number density of electrons is
ne =
Zj n j =
X j Zj
=
,
mu j Aj
e mu
(D.2)
where e is the mean molecular weight per electron, not to be confused with the electron chemical potential. (Strictly speaking ne =
ne ne+ , the number density of electrons minus that of positrons.)
99
The proton and neutron mass are 0.9383 and 0.9396 GeV, respectively. An exact
translation between mass and number density thus requires taking nuclear binding
energies into account whence the Aj are not exact integers. For the purposes of this
book these dierences are negligible.
591
592
Appendix D
For all elements except hydrogen Zj /Aj 12 . Notably, this applies

to helium and compounds of -particles such as 12 C and 16 O. Therefore,
1
Ye 1
e X + 2 (Y + Z),
(D.3)
where Ye is the mean number of electrons per baryon. Here, the mass
fraction Z of metals must not be confused with a nuclear charge.
Some examples for typical conditions encountered in stars are shown
in Fig. D.1, ignoring neutron stars (density around nuclear). Aside
from the example of an evolved massive star, all conditions refer to the
centers of stars. Except for the hydrogen main squence, the abscissa is
essentially the physical density because for most chemical compositions
Ye 12 . Horizontal-branch (HB) stars correspond essentially to the
helium main sequence at 0.5 M .
Fig. D.1. Typical temperatures and densities encountered in stars, ignoring

neutron stars. The hydrogen, helium, and carbon main sequence (H-MS,
He-MS and C-MS) represent the conditions at the center of zero-age models;
for selected cases their M/M is indicated (adapted from Kippenhahn and
Weigert 1990). The highly evolved 25 M star is according to Woosely and
Weaver (1986b) where the open circles are marked with the energy source of
the dierent burning shells (He-burning etc.). There is no nuclear burning
at the center (Fe). Also shown is the evolution of the central conditions of
a 0.8 M star from the hydrogen main sequence to the helium ash (Haft,
Raelt, and Weiss 1994). The rear ends of the arrows mark the indicated
values of the absolute surface brightness in magnitudes.
Characteristics of Stellar Plasmas

D.1.2
593
Relativistic Conditions for Electrons
The nuclei in normal stellar matter are always nonrelativistic; relativistic corrections begin to be important only in neutron stars. The electrons, on the other hand, tend to be at least partially relativistic. Even
at the center of the Sun at a temperature of 1.3 keV, a typical thermal
electron velocity is about 9% of the speed of light. In Fig. D.2 contours
for the thermal average v 2 1/2 are shown in the -T -plane. The loci of
the stellar models of Fig. D.1 are also indicated. For low-mass stars, the
electrons are mildly relativistic, although a nonrelativistic treatment is
often enough as a rst approximation.
Fig. D.2. Contours for v 2 1/2 , the average thermal velocity of electrons.
The loci of the stellar models of Fig. D.1 are also indicated.
D.1.3
Electron Degeneracy
The phase-space occupation numbers of fermions in thermal equilibrium are characterized by a Fermi-Dirac distribution
fp =
1
e(Ep )/T
+1
(D.4)
where Ep is the energy of the momentum mode p. If dispersion eects

can be ignored, Ep2 = m2 + p2 with the fermion vacuum mass m. The
(relativistic) chemical potential is denoted by ; for electrons it should
not be confused with the mean molecular weight e . The distribution
594
Appendix D
of antifermions is given by the same expression with . Then

is implicitly given by the phase-space integral
nf =
2 d3 p
(2)3
1
e(Ep )/T + 1
1
e(Ep +)/T + 1
(D.5)
where the second term represents antifermions and the factor 2 is for the
two spin degrees of freedom. Again, the fermion density is understood
to mean the density of fermions minus that of antifermions.
At vanishing temperature, fp becomes a step function ( Ep ).
If > 0 so that nf > 0, i.e. an excess of fermions over antifermions,
there are no antifermions at all at T = 0. The fermion integral yields
nf = p3F /3 2 ,
(D.6)
where the Fermi momentum is dened by 20 = p2F + m2 with 0 the

zero-temperature chemical potential. The Fermi energy is dened by
EF2 = p2F + m2e , i.e. EF = 0 .
Equation D.6 is taken as the denition of the Fermi momentum even
at T > 0; it is a useful parameter to characterize the fermion density,
whether or not they are degenerate. Numerically it is
pF = 5.15 keV (Ye )1/3
(D.7)
for electrons with the mass density in units of g cm3 .

In general, Eq. (D.5) cannot be made explicit for ; it has to be
solved numerically or by an approximation method. In the -T -plane,
contours for the electron chemical potential are shown in Fig. D.3.
Above the main plot, the electron density is characterized by pF . On
the right side, the temperature is shown in units of keV. Recall that
107 K = 0.8621 keV (Appendix A).
For nonrelativistic electrons the contours in Fig. D.3 are very sensitive to the exact value of . Therefore, in this regime the nonrelativistic
chemical potential
(D.8)
is a more appropriate parameter. Often

is referred to as the chemical potential. This can be very confusing when relativistic eects are
important. In terms of
, the relativistic Fermi-Dirac distribution is
fp =
1
e(Ekin )/T
+1
(D.9)
with the kinetic energy Ekin = Ep m p2 /2m (nonrelativistic limit).
595
Fig. D.3. Contours for the electron chemical potential . The solid lines are
marked with the relevant value for , the dotted lines with me .
Fig. D.4. Contours for the electron degeneracy parameter = ( me )/T .

Also shown are the loci of the stellar models of Fig. D.1.
596
Appendix D
A Fermi gas becomes degenerate when a typical thermal (kinetic)

energy is on the order of
. Therefore, the degeneracy parameter
/T = ( m)/T
(D.10)
is frequently used to characterize the fermions. They are degenerate

for larger than a few, and nondegenerate for < 0. For electrons,
contours of in the -T -plane are shown in Fig. D.4. A comparison
with the loci of the stellar models of Fig. D.1 reveals that electrons in
stellar plasmas are often at least partially degenerate.
D.1.4
Plasma Frequency
Other characteristic properties of a plasma refer to the behavior of

electromagnetic waves. The photon dispersion relation (Sect. 7.4) is
characterized by the plasma frequency which at T = 0 is
02 = 4 ne /EF = (4/3) p3F /EF .
(D.11)
Nonrelativistically, it takes on the familiar form 02 = 4 ne /me . Numerically it is

0 = 28.7 eV
(Ye )1/2
,
[1 + (1.019106 Ye )2/3 ]1/4
(D.12)
where the mass density is in units of g cm3 .

D.1.5
Screening Scale
An electric test charge will be screened by the polarization of the

plasma. If the plasma is weakly coupled (see below) the screened
Coulomb potential takes the form of a Yukawa potential r1 ekS r where
kS is the screening scale; its inverse is the screening radius. The plasma
is polarized by the test charge because the positive constituents of the
plasma are repelled while the negative ones are attracted, or the reverse. Therefore, both electrons and ions contribute to screening. If
2
+ ki2 where
both are nondegenerate the total contribution is kS2 = kD
the electron contribution is known as the Debye scale,
2
= 4ne /T = (4/3) p3F /T.
kD
(D.13)
The ions (charge Zj e, atomic weight Aj ) contribute

ki2
4 2
4 Xj Zj2
.
=
Z nj =
T j j
T mu j
Aj
(D.14)
597
2
For only one species of ions with charge Ze one has ki2 = Z kD
. Numerically,
kD = 222 eV (Ye /T8 )1/2 ,
(D.15)
where is in units of g cm3 and T8 = T /108 K. Contours in the -T plane are shown in Fig. D.5.
Fig. D.5. Contours for the Debye scale kD in keV.
When the electrons are degenerate they cannot form a Debye-H

uckel
cloud around a test charge. Rather, their distribution is characterized
2
by a Thomas-Fermi model which results in the screening scale kTF
=
4pF EF /. Because kTF kD the electron screening can be neglected
relative to the ions whence kS ki .
Degenerate electrons form an essentially inert background of negative charge in which the ions move, subject to their mutual Coulomb
interaction. They can be treated as a weakly coupled Boltzmann gas as
long as a typical thermal energy exceeds a typical Coulomb interaction
energy. As a quantitative measure one uses the plasma parameter
= Z 2 /ai T,
(D.16)
where Ze is the nuclear charge and ai the ion-sphere radius dened by

= 4a3i /3 with the ion density ni . Numerically this is
n1
i
= 1.806103 T81 (Z 5 2Ye )1/3 ,
(D.17)
598
Appendix D
with the mass density in units of g cm3 and T8 = T /108 K. Recall that
for a single nuclear species Ye = Z/A (atomic weight A).
The plasma is weakly coupled for <
1, it is in the liquid metal
<
phase for 1 < 178, and forms a body-centered cubic lattice for
> 178 (Slattery, Doolen, and DeWitt 1980, 1982). Debye screening
by the ions is appropriate for a weakly coupled plasma; otherwise the
Debye approximation for the ion-ion correlations is misleading. Contours for in the -T -plane are shown in Fig. D.6. For the purposes
of this book, a strongly coupled plasma occurs only in the interior of
white dwarfs.
Fig. D.6. Contours for the plasma coupling parameter . Also shown are
the loci of the stellar models of Fig. D.1 which had to be shifted relative
to each other according to the nuclear charge Z relevant for each chemical
composition.
D.1.6
Summary
The characteristic plasma properties for a number of typical astrophysical sites that are important in the main body of the book are summarized in Tab. D.1.
Nonrelativstic Fermi energy EF me .
Center of WD with M = 0.66 M .
degenerate
weakly coupled
108 K
= 8.6 keV
106 g cm3
4
He
3.01029 cm3
409 keV
144 keV
18 keV
0.57
ions
kS = ki
= 222 keV
nondegenerate
nonrelativistic
108 K
= 8.6 keV
104 g cm3
4
He, 12 C, 16 O
3.01027 cm3
88 keV
7.6 keV
2.0 keV
0.12
electrons + ions
2
+ ki2 )1/2
kS = (kD
= 27 keV
Core of
HB stars
Red-giant core
just before
helium ignition
nondegenerate
nonrelativistic
Temperature
1.55107 K
= 1.3 keV
Density
156 g cm3
Composition
X = 0.35
Electron density
6.31025 cm3
Fermi momentum 24.3 keV
Fermi energyb
0.58 keV
Plasma frequency 0.3 keV
Plasma coupling
= 0.07
Debye screening
electrons + ions
2
+ ki2 )1/2
kS = (kD
= 9.1 keV
Characteristic
Center of
standard
solar model
degenerate
strongly coupled
3106 2107 K
= 0.31.7 keV
1.8106 g cm3 (a )
12
C, 16 O
5.31029 cm3
495 keV
200 keV
23 keV
14422
(strong
screening)
White dwarf
Table D.1. Plasma characteristics for some typical astrophysical sites.

599
600
Appendix D
D.2
Nuclear Matter
D.2.1
The Ideal p n e e Gas
For the topics discussed in this book, the properties of hot nuclear
matter in a young supernova core are of great interest. The relevant
range of densities and temperatures is about 31012 31015 g cm3
and 3100 MeV, respectively. The properties of matter at such conditions is determined by its equation of state which takes the nuclear
interaction fully into account. However, in order to gain a rough understanding of the behavior of the main constituents of the medium
(protons, neutrons, electrons, and electron neutrinos) it is worthwhile
to study a simple toy model where these particles are treated as ideal
Fermi gases.
To this end, neutrinos and electrons are treated as massless. Their
dispersion relation is dominated by the interaction with the medium.
Because they interact only by electroweak forces their eective mass
is always much smaller than their energies.
D.2.2
Kinetic and Chemical Equilibrium
The reaction e p n e which establishes equilibrium is fast compared to other relevant time scales. Therefore, the relative abundances
of n, p, e, and e are determined by the conditions of kinetic and chemical equilibrium. The physical condition of the medium is then determined by the baryon density nB , the temperature T , and the condition
of electric charge neutrality
nB = nn + np
np = ne
e + p = n + e
Baryon density,
Charge neutrality,
equilibrium.
(D.18)
Here, the j are the relativistic chemical potentials of the fermions

which determine their number densities nj according to the Fermi-Dirac
distribution Eq. (D.5). Recall that nj is the dierence between fermions
and antifermions of a given species.
In addition, one of two extreme assumptions is made. In a young
SN core the neutrinos are trapped so that the local lepton number is
conserved. In this case the lepton fraction YL is the fourth required
input parameter,
YL nB = ne + ne
Lepton conservation.
(D.19)
601
As a neutron star cools it becomes transparent to neutrinos. In this

case their chemical potential vanishes which yields
e = 0
Free neutrino escape
(D.20)
as the other extreme additional condition.

D.2.3
Cold Nuclear Matter
The limit T 0 relevant for old neutron stars is particularly simple

because it allows one to express the Fermi-Dirac distributions as stepfunctions. One may express all Fermi momenta in units of the eective
nucleon mass, i.e., xj pjF /mN . Then baryon conservation is
x3B = x3p + x3n ,
(D.21)
where nj = (pjF )3 /3 3 was used, and

xB (3 2 nB )1/3 /mN = 0.255 14 (mN /mN ),
1/3
(D.22)
with 14 the baryonic mass density in units of 1014 g cm3 .

Because the star is transparent to neutrinos one may use e = 0.
Then the equation of -equilibrium becomes e + p n = 0 or
xp + (1 + x2p )1/2 (1 + x2n )1/2 = 0,
(D.23)
where xe = xp was used from the condition of charge neutrality. This

is easily solved to yield (Shapiro and Teukolsky 1983)
x2p =
x4n
.
4 (1 + x2n )
(D.24)
This result may be expressed in terms of the usual composition parameters Yp and Yn which give the number of protons and neutrons per
baryon; Yp + Yn = 1. Then Yn,p = (xn,p /xB )3 so that
(
Yp =
xB
2
)3
(1 Yp )2
.
[1 + x2B (1 Yp )2/3 ]3/2
(D.25)
When xB 1 this is Yp = (xB /2)3 = 2.1103 14 (mN /mN )3 so that

the proton fraction is smallhence the term neutron staralthough
the exact Yp for a given density depends sensitively on the nucleon
dispersion relation. For innite density (xB ) a maximum of
Yp = 19 is reached.
602
D.2.4
Appendix D
Hot Nuclear Matter
In a supernova core right after collapse the temperature is so high (several tens of MeV) that the nucleons are nearly nondegenerate. Moreover, the neutrinos are trapped so that locally a xed value for YL
determined by initial conditions is assumed. Most of the lepton number will reside in electrons, causing the proton concentration Yp to be
approximately equal to YL . A more accurate determination requires a
numerical solution of Eqs. (D.18) and (D.19).
In Figs. D.7 (a)(c) the results of such an exercise are presented
for YL = 0.3, which is a typical value for the material in a SN core just
after collapse. The proton concentration Yp , the dierence between the
neutron and proton chemical potentials, and the degeneracy parameters
for neutrons and protons are shown. In each case, a solid line refers
to the assumption of an eective nucleon mass as in Fig. 4.10 while
a dotted line refers to the vacuum mass. As expected, the reduced
eective mass increases somewhat the mediums degeneracy.
Because n p = e e , the contours of Fig. D.7 (b) also give
the dierence between the surfaces of the electron and neutrino Fermi
seas. Note that the leptons are much more degenerate than the nucleons
because they are essentially massless. This remark does not apply to the
upper-left corner of the plots where actually an excess of antineutrinos
is enforcedthere are more protons than leptons (Yp > YL )!
Fig. D.7. (a) Contours for Yp in hot neutron-star matter with YL = 0.3.
Solid lines for the eective nucleon mass as in Fig. D.7, dotted lines for the
vacuum mass.
Fig. D.7. (b) n p = e e (in MeV).
Fig. D.7. (c) Degeneracy parameter for protons and neutrons.
603
604
Appendix D
Fig. D.8. Degeneracy suppression of neutrino scattering on heavy nucleons

for YL = 0.3 and an eective nucleon mass as in Fig. D.7.
Fig. D.9. Ratio of the suppression factor of Fig. D.8 between the case with
an eective nucleon mass and with the vacuum one.
When neutrinos scatter on a heavy nucleon recoil eects can be

neglected. The nucleon does not change its momentum so that the
degeneracy suppression is given by a factor
2 d3 p
=
fp (1 fp ),
nN (2)3
(D.26)
where fp is a Fermi-Dirac occupation number. In Fig. D.8 contours

for Yn n + Yp p are shown for the same parameters as in Fig. D.7, i.e.
605
YL = 0.3 and the eective nucleon mass of Fig. 4.10. In Fig. D.9 the
ratio of this factor between the case of an eective nucleon mass and
the vacuum one are shown, i.e. the additional Pauli suppression of the
neutrino scattering rate from using an eective nucleon mass.
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Acronyms
The acronyms listed below do not include names of experiments such
as GALLEX or IMB, and also do not include names of laboratories
such as CERN or SLAC. These acronyms really play the role of proper
names; usually nobody quite remembers what they stand for.
AGB
AU
BBN
BC
BP
BS
CC
CKM
CL
CM
CMB
CMBR
CNO
CO
D
DAV
DFSZ
EOS
FTD
GIM
GUT
HB
IAU
IMF
KII
pc
KSVZ
asymptotic giant branch

astronomical unit (distance to the Sun)
big-bang nucleosynthesis
bolometric correction
Bahcall and Pinsonneault
blue straggler
charged current
Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa
condence level
center of mass
cosmic microwave background
cosmic microwave background radiation
carbon-nitrogen-oxygen
carbon-oxygen
degenerate
DA Variable
Dine-Fishler-Srednicki-Zhitniski
equation of state
nite temperature and density
Glashow-Iliopoulos-Maiani
grand unied theory
horizontal branch
International Astronomical Union
initial mass function
Kamiokande II (detector)
parsec (3.081018 cm)
Kim-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov
642
Acronyms
L
l.h.
l.h.s.
ly
LMC
LSP
mfp
MS
MSW
NC
ND
T
TL
TO
OPE
PQ
QED
QCD
RG
RGB
r.h.
r.h.s.
SGB
SN
SNe
SNU
SNu
SNBO
UT
VVO
WD
643
longitudinal
left-handed
left-hand side (of an equation)
light year
Large Magellanic Cloud
lightest supersymmetric particle
mean free path
main sequence
Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein
neutral current
nondegenerate
transverse
Turck-Chièze and Lopes
main-sequence turno
one pion exchange
Peccei-Quinn
quantum electrodynamics
quantum chromodynamics
red giant
red-giant branch
right-handed
right-hand side (of an equation)
sub-giant branch
supernova
supernovae
solar neutrino unit
supernova unit
Supernova Burst Observatory
universal time
Voloshyn-Vysotski-Okun
white dwarf
Symbols
Symbols which have only a local meaning in, say, one paragraph are
not listed here. Four-momenta are usually denoted by uppercase italics
such as K, three-momenta are boldface lowercase letters such as k, the
modulus of a three-momentum is in lowercase italics such as k = |k|.
Lorentz indices are usually given in Greek letters (, , , , etc.),
three-indices and avor indices in Latin letters (i, j, k, etc.).
Functions, Operators
Besides the usual functions and operators, the following convention may
be noteworthy.
x
ln
log
partial derivative /x
natural logarithm
logarithm base 10
Latin Symbols
a
ai
A
B
B
c
cj
cp
CV,A
Cj
d
d, D
axion, axion eld, annihilation operator, acceleration, radiation

constant (a = 2 /15 in natural units)
ion-sphere radius
electromagnetic vector potential, atomic mass number
magnetic eld, operator for background medium
specic energy density of a radiation eld
speed of light (c = 1 in natural units)
speed of propagation of particle j
heat capacity at constant pressure
vector and axial-vector weak-coupling constants
eective Peccei-Quinn charge of fermion j
electric dipole moment
distance
644
Symbols
dp
e
ej
E
EF
f
fPQ
fa
f
fp
F
F
F
g
ga
g10
G
GN
GF
H
H0
H
k
kB
kD
ki
kS
kTF
l
L
L
L
m
ma
me
m
645
dierential in phase space, dp = d3 p/(2)3

electron, electric charge of electron, photon polarization fourvector
charge of particle j
electric eld, energy of a particle
Fermi energy
occupation numbers, dimensionless function, energy scale
Peccei-Quinn scale
axion decay constant
pion decay constant (93 MeV)
occupation number of mode p
electromagnetic eld-strength tensor, number ux of particles,
dimensionless function of order unity
specic energy ux in a radiation eld
uence (time-integrated ux)
dimensionless Yukawa coupling, gluon, graviton, number of spin
degrees of freedom
axion-photon coupling strength (units GeV1 )
ga /1010 GeV1
color eld-strength tensor, matrix of coupling constants, dimensionless function
Newtons constant (GN = m2
Pl )
Fermis constant (GF = 1.166105 GeV2 )
Hubble expansion parameter
Hubble expansion parameter today (h 100 km s1 Mpc1 )
Hamiltonian density
momentum of a particle, momentum transfer in a reaction
Boltzmanns constant (kB = 1 in natural units)
Debye screening scale of the electrons
Debye screening scale of the ions
screening scale
Thomas-Fermi screening scale
momentum transfer in a reaction
mean free path, avor index
luminosity of a star
solar luminosity (3.851033 erg)
Lagrangian density
mass
axion mass
electron mass (0.511 MeV)
pion mass (135 MeV)
646
Symbols
mN
nucleon mass (938 MeV)
mu
atomic mass unit (931 MeV)
mPl Planck mass (1.2211019 GeV)
mW W -boson mass (80.2 GeV)
mZ
Z-boson mass (91.2 GeV)
M
absolute magnitude of a star, mass matrix of quarks or neutrinos
Mbol absolute bolometric magnitude of a star
M
mass of a star, matrix element
M solar mass (1.991033 g)
n
particle density
nB
baryon density
ne,p,n, electron, proton, neutron, neutrino density
nrefr index of refraction
N
nucleon, number of degenerate vacua in QCD
N matrix element of neutrino current
p
proton, momentum of a particle, pressure, dimensionless power
index
pF
Fermi momentum
P
four-momentum of a particle, stellar pulsation period
q
momentum transfer, charge of a particle
Q
energy loss or generation rate per unit volume
r
radial coordinate
R
radius of a star
R
solar radius (6.961010 cm)
s
entropy density, dimensionless power index, square of CM energy, dimensionless spin-structure function
S
static or dynamical structure function
t
time
T
temperature
T7
T /107 K
T8
T /108 K
T30
T /30 MeV
U
total internal energy of a star, four-velocity
v
velocity, vacuum expectation value of a Higgs-like eld
V
potential energy, volume
w
up/strange quark mass ratio
W
W -boson
WK,K Transition probability from K to K .
x
dimensionless energy (/T ), spatial coordinate, dimensionless
Fermi momentum (pF /m)
X
mass fraction of hydrogen
Symbols
Xj
Y
Yj
Ye
YL
z
Z
Z, Z
647
Peccei-Quinn charge of a fermion j

mass fraction of helium
number of fermions j per baryon
mass fraction of helium in stellar envelope
lepton number per baryon
up/down quark mass ratio, z-coordinate
mass fraction of metals, nuclear charge
Z-boson
Greek Symbols
a,
s
ij
ij
ne-structure constant (e2 /4 = 1/137), asymmetry parameter

in angular distribution of decay photons
ne-structure constant for general bosons, = g 2 /4 with the
Yukawa coupling g
ne-structure constant for axions, majorons
strong ne-structure constant
pionic ne-structure constant, = (f 2mN /m )2 /4 15 with
f 1.0
velocity of a particle, parameter of axion models, parameter in
nucleon-nucleon-axion bremsstrahlung rate
photon, Dirac matrix, adiabatic index, dimensionless uctuation
rate = /T
rate for decay or uctuations, plasma coupling parameter
spin-uctuation rate in a nuclear medium
function, Kronecker , dierential quantity
energy loss or generation rate per unit mass, electric dipole moment, polarization vector
neutrino transition electric moment
degeneracy parameter, = ( m)/T
mixing angle, scattering angle
parameter of QCD
weak mixing angle (sin2 W = 0.2325)
opacity, dimensionless screening or momentum scale
reduced opacity
wave length, mean free path
magnetic moment, chemical potential, muon, Lorentz index,
mean molecular weight
nonrelativistic chemical potential,
=m
neutrino transition magnetic moment
648
B
N
e
0
14
15
P
0
Symbols
Bohr magneton (e/2me )
nuclear magneton (e/2mp )
electron mean molecular weight (e Ye1 ), electron chemical
potential
neutrino, Lorentz index, dimensionless power index
dimensionless correction factor, dimensionless axion-photon coupling constant
= 3.1415 . . ., pion
mass density, density matrix
density matrix for antineutrinos
nuclear density (31014 g cm3 )
/1014 g cm3
/1015 g cm3
scattering cross section, Pauli matrix, spin operator
lifetime of a particle, duration of a stellar evolution phase, Pauli
matrix, optical depth
Higgs eld
vacuum expectation value of Higgs eld
majoron, majoron eld
fermion eld
column vector of fermion elds (several avors)
energy of a particle, energy transfer in reactions
plasma frequency
zero-temperature plasma frequency
cosmic density parameter, matrix of energies for mixed neutrinos
Subject Index
A
-Ori 189
A665, A1413, A2218, A2256 (galaxy
clusters) 49092
adiabatic index 396
adiabatic oscillations
neutrino oscillations
adiabatic temperature gradient 1012
adiabaticity parameter 299
AGB (asymptotic giant branch) 27, 35,
61
aligned rotator 185
AMANDA xvi, 558
anapole moment 26870
Andromeda 446
angular anomaly of SN 1987A neutrino
signal 422, 42830
antimatter supernova 497
arions 18790
automatic symmetry 533
asymptotic giant branch 27, 35, 61
atmospheric neutrinos 2903
atomic mass unit 582, 591
axio-electric eect 100
axion
pseudoscalar boson
bounds 191f, 53941
cavity experiment 177f, 191f, 544
cosmic density 491f, 528, 54144
cosmic thermal production 541
couplings
electron 536f
fermions general 5302
gluon 159, 527, 530
nucleon 53638
photon 167f, 176, 191f, 536
decay 167f, 191f
decay constant 526f, 529, 535
direct search
decay photons of cosmic axions
491f
galactic (cavity search) 177f, 191f,
544
laboratory 182, 184f, 191f
solar 100, 181, 191f, 462
SN 1987A 483
mass 527, 535
mixing with pion 527f, 534
models
DFSZ 53540
KSVZ 52830, 54244
other 53436
Nambu-Goldstone boson 190f, 52830
quantum gravity 532f
solution to strong CP problem 527f
sphere 507
axio-recombination 100
B
decay 255
decay 257f, 560f
Baade-Wesselink method 73
Baksan scintillator telescope (BST)
414f, 417, 420
band-structure eects 58, 106f
baryonic force 114
beam-stop neutrinos 456f
Betelgeuse 189
big-bang nucleosynthesis: bounds
majorons 259f, 561f
millicharged particles 522f, 566f
neutrino
Dirac dipole moment 277f
mass 259f
time variation
Fermis constant 546
Newtons constant 547f
649
650
binary pulsar PSR 1913+16
birefringence
neutrino avor 195, 281
photon in media 180f, 194f, 208
vacuum 1835, 187f, 190f, 554
Bloch state 155
blue loop 32, 3941
bolometric correction 62
bolometric magnitude: denition 28
Boltzmanns constant 580
Boltzmann collision equation (for mixed
neutrinos) 32331
BOREXINO 343, 371, 393f
bounce and shock 399, 4015
bound-free transition 100f
branching ratio 449
Brans-Dicke theory 548
bremsstrahlung
classical limit 14347
electronic 101-9
nucleonic
axial-vector vs. vector 127, 142
bubble phase 159
meson condensate 15557
neutrino pairs 12730
pseudoscalars 11926, 14345, 148f
suppression at high density 148f
quark matter 157f
brown dwarfs 9, 24
bubble phase 159
bump on RGB 61, 64f
C
Cabbibo mixing 261, 285
Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix
262
carbon-burning stars 2
cavity axion experiment 177f, 191f, 544
Cepheids 40f
Chandrasekhar limit 9, 25, 37, 42, 396
charged current
collision term (in neutrino
oscillations) 331
coupling constants 583
Hamiltonian 329, 583
reactions 1, 58f, 15254
charge quantization 56467
chemical potential 59396, 600f
Subject Index
Cherenkov
eect 194, 216, 238f
detectors IMB, Kamiokande,
Superkamiokande
chirality 160, 253
chiral symmetry 166, 529
chlorine detector (solar neutrinos) 342f,
35762, 371
CHORUS experiment 289f
CKM matrix 262
clump giants 76, 80
CM energy 92
CNO cycle 346f
COBE satellite 191
coherent neutrino scattering 396, 446
collision equation for mixed neutrinos
32331
color-magnitude diagram
evolutionary track 31
globular cluster M3 27
globular-cluster observables 61
populations of stars 41
zero-age main sequence 26
Compton process 20f, 9198, 108
conduction 11, 22, 78
convection
description 12f
helium dredge-up 66, 77
mixing length 12, 16, 351, 549f
RGB bump 13, 61, 64f
superadiabatic 12
supernova 4025, 444
core
red giant red giant core mass
supernova supernova core
correlations: Coulomb plasma 22225
cosmic background uxes
-rays 487
microwaves 191, 488, 546, 562
neutrinos
core-collapse SNe 447, 487f
hydrogen-burning stars 487
primordial neutrinos: cosmic
background
photons 489f
cosmic strings 191, 54244
cosmic structure formation 258f
cosmion xvi
Cotton-Mouton eect 180, 183
Subject Index
Coulomb gauge 204
Coulomb propagator in plasma 221f,
226
CP symmetry 241, 246, 262, 271, 453,
52426
Crab Nebula 38, 56f
critical eld strength 581
crossing relation 323
current algebra 167, 535
D
Cepheids 40f
Scuti stars 41
damping neutrino oscillations:
damping by collisions
DA Variables 53
dark matter xvxvi, xviii, 22, 24, 177f,
258f, 528, 54244, 558
decoherence 311, 313f
degeneracy parameter 124, 595f, 603
delayed explosion mechanism 399,
4025, 426, 436f, 522
Delbr
uck scattering 183
deleptonization burst
prompt neutrino burst
deleptonization: supernova core 339,
398, 401, 408
density matrix (neutrino avor)
collision equation 319, 32331
denition 284, 31516
derivative coupling 119, 531f, 536, 563
detailed balance 129, 137, 146
DFSZ axions 53540
dielectric permittivity 173, 208f
diusion
elements gravitational settling
neutrinos neutrino opacity
dipole moment
neutrino dipole moments
neutron electric 52426
other particles 525
units 525, 581
Dirac matrices 270
Dirac neutrinos neutrino mass,
neutrinos: right-handed
direct explosion mechanism 399, 401f
651
dispersion
neutrino dispersion, photon
dispersion
general theory 193202
double beta decay decay
DUMAND xvi, 558
dynamical structure function
structure function
E
Einstein x-ray satellite 5658, 189
electron charge 581
electro-Primako eect 172f
energy conservation in stars 10f
energy-loss argument
analytic treatment 1416
applied to
HB stars 7982, 98f, 1079, 112,
176, 236
neutron stars 59f
red giants 8387, 1079, 236
red supergiants 2
Sun 16f, 20f, 109f, 175f
supernova core 50123
white dwarfs 4752
ZZ Ceti stars 5254
introduction 35, 21f
numerical treatment 16f, 4752, 81,
8387, 108f, 50811, 51316
energy-loss rate
bremsstrahlung
electronic 1025
nucleonic 1216, 12830, 14749,
156f
Compton process 9698
plasma process 23236
Primako process 169, 174
quark matter 157f
URCA processes 153f
energy-momentum conservation 121,
200
energy transfer
convection, opacity
equation 1113
particle bounds
general argument 4f, 17f
Sun 20f
SN 1987A 503, 50611
652
energy transfer (contd)
radiative 4, 1719, 131
WIMPs 22
equation of state
impact on SN neutrino signal 412f
normal stars 6
nuclear 600
equivalence principle: tests 113, 498,
554f
escape velocity
galaxy 26
globular clusters 25
Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian 183
EXOSAT 56f
explosion mechanism
supernova: type II
F
Faraday eect 180
Fermi
constant 545f, 583
energy 594
momentum 594
Fermi-Dirac distribution 59396
forward scattering 19698
fth force 11216, 500
ne-structure constant
axion-nucleon 119
electromagnetic 580
new bosons 92
pion-nucleon 119
avor-changing neutral current 263f,
303, 326
avor conversion
uence: denition 463
foe 402
form factor neutrino form factor
free-bound transition 100f
Frejus experiment 291f
FTD eld theory xviiixix, 105, 174,
241
fundamental length scale 500
G
G117B15A 53f
Subject Index
GALLEX 343f, 35759, 36264, 371,
373
gallium detectors 343f, 35759, 36264,
371
gauge
bosons: new 11416
invariance 2046
General Relativity gravitation
giant star
red giant
denition 10
GIM suppression 266f
globular cluster
red giants, HB stars, RR Lyrae
stars
ages 62f, 66, 55254
general properties 25f
M3 25, 27
observables
interpretation 7479
in the color-magnitude diagram
6065
observational results 7074
theoretical relations 6570
gluons 159, 525, 527, 530
g-mode helioseismology
gravitation
Brans-Dicke theory 548
equivalence principle: tests 113, 498f,
554f
graviton 116, 166, 191, 254
induced neutrino mixing 555
nonmetric theory 498
nonsymmetric extension 554
quantum 532f
Shapiro time delay 498, 554
time-varying GN 54654
gravitational settling
description 13f
globular-cluster ages 13, 66
red-giant envelope helium abundance
66, 74, 77
solar neutrino ux 14, 352, 354
graviton 116, 166, 191, 254
group velocity 199
GRS instrument 465f
Subject Index
653
I, J
Hayashi line 32, 35, 40

HB (horizontal branch)
location in color-magnitude diagram
27, 41, 61
morphology 34
HB stars
RR Lyrae stars
energy-loss argument 7982, 98f,
1079, 112, 176, 236
inner structure 29f, 80f, 592, 599
lifetime 70, 76, 7982
overview 34f
particle bounds: tabulation 82
helioscope 179, 181f
helioseismology xvi, 17, 113, 344f,
54951
helium abundance
presolar 16f, 351, 549f
primordial 24, 67
red-giant envelope 66f, 7478
helium-burning stars HB stars
helium ash helium ignition
helium ignition
red giant core mass
brightness 63f, 6872
description 33f
delay by particle emission 63, 8387,
236
o-center 34, 78, 83f
Hertzsprung gap 32, 40
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
color-magnitude diagram
Higgs eld 3, 165f, 194, 252f, 528, 534,
545, 559
Homestake (solar neutrino detector)
chlorine 342f, 35762, 371, 37376
iodine 343, 394
homologous models 1416, 549, 552
horizontal branch HB
hot bubble 38, 397, 406
hot plus cold dark matter 258
Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar
PSR 1913+16
Hyades 48
hydrodynamic event 6
hydrogen-burning chains 341, 346f
hydrostatic equilibrium 57
IMB detector
atmospheric neutrinos 291f
SN 1987A neutrinos 41523
ination 542
ions
contribution to screening 220f, 596,
599
correlations 106, 22225
ion-sphere radius 223f, 597
isochrone 61f
Jupiter magnetic eld 556
K
mechanism 40
Kamiokande (Cherenkov detector)
atmospheric neutrinos 291f
dark-matter search xvi
neutrino detection
eciency 417
electron scattering 36567, 416f
proton absorption 416f
proton decay xvii
SN 1987A neutrinos 41823
solar neutrinos 343f, 36873, 383
Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling
Sun 8
supernova core 397, 400, 40713,
50123
Kibble mechanism 542
kick velocity (neutron stars) 44345
Klein-Gordon equation for mixed
neutrinos 28284, 294
Kramers-Kronig relation 198
KSVZ axions 52830, 54244
L
Lamb shift 565f
Landau damping 199, 214, 216f
Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal eect
145, 148f
Landau-Zener approximation 300
Langmuir wave
plasmon: longitudinal
Large Magellanic Cloud 39, 74, 414, 446
large-numbers hypothesis 545, 549
654
left-right symmetric model 268
leptonic force 11416, 500
lepton
fraction in nuclear matter 600, 6025
masses 252, 265
prole in SN core 398
level crossing 295f, 298
linear-response theory 2046, 208f
long-range force fifth force,
scalar particles, photon
long-wavelength limit 121, 128f, 14143
Lorentz
addition of velocities 500f
gauge 204
Lorentzian model for structure function
135, 14447
LPM eect 145, 148f
M
M1 transition 94, 102
M3 (globular cluster) 25, 27
magnetic dipole moment
units 581
magnetic eld
Earth 556
galactic 18890, 484, 499
large-scale cosmic 191
Jupiter 556
neutron stars 18588, 444f
primordial 278
Small Magellanic Cloud 556
solar 186, 37376, 387f, 554, 565
supernova 522
twisting 308f
white dwarfs 185f
magnetic oscillations
neutrino spin precession
magnetic permeability 208f
magnetogram 375
main sequence
helium 35, 592
internal stellar conditions 592, 599
lifetime 27, 552
27, 41, 61
turno 27, 6163
zero-age 26
Subject Index
Majorana neutrinos neutrino mass
majorons
pseudoscalar bosons
decay 560f
decay in media 195, 24850, 259f
interaction with supernova neutrinos
495
motivation 55862
neutrino decay: limits 56264
nucleosynthesis constraints 259f
solar neutrino decay 389
supernova physics 56264
mass fraction (of elements) 591f
mass loss 25, 34, 36
mass-radius relationship 9, 42
Maxwells equations 2024
mean molecular weight 591
meson condensate 59, 15557, 243
metallicity
-enhanced 78f
globular cluster 26, 34, 60, 66f, 78f
impact on opacity 12
Sun 24
Mexican hat 529, 542
Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein eect
neutrino oscillations: resonant
millicharged particles 227f, 23236,
56467
misalignment mechanism 541f
mixing angle in medium 2947
mixing between particles
neutrino mixing, neutrino
oscillations
axion-photon 17981
axion-pion 527f, 534
graviton-photon 191
gravitationally induced 555
mixing length 12, 16, 351, 549f
molecular chaos 319
monopoles xv
MSW
bathtub 3013
eect neutrino oscillations
solution of solar neutrino problem
38486
triangle 3013, 386, 434
Subject Index
multiple scattering
Cherenkov detector 366
nuclear medium 135, 14351, 511f
MUNU experiment 276
muon decay 263
N
Nambu-Goldstone bosons 165f, 250,
52931, 559f
NESTOR xvi, 558
neutral current
collision term in neutrino oscillations
323f
coupling constants 584
avor-changing 263f, 303, 326
Hamiltonian 95, 119, 136, 320, 531,
584
neutrality of matter 565
neutrino absorption neutrino opacity
neutrino charge: electric 227f, 23236,
240, 499, 522f, 56467
neutrino cooling
supernova core
red-giant core 8385
white dwarfs 4750
neutrino coupling constants: standard
583f
neutrino cross section
electrons 365f, 416
protons and nuclei 416
neutrino dark matter 25860
neutrino decay
neutrino radiative decay
fast invisible 24850, 389, 485, 559
standard-model 26367
astrophysical impact and bounds
early universe 277f
HB stars 82, 236
neutron stars 59f
red-giant core mass 86f, 236
supernova 277, 47779, 483, 521f
white dwarfs 4850
electric vs. magnetic 265f, 26871,
27375, 525
experimental bounds
scattering experiments 267, 275f
655
neutrino dipole moments (contd)
interaction structure 228, 265, 26871
medium induced 240
processes
plasmon decay 229, 23236, 274
scattering 272f
summary 27275
radiative decay
summary of limits 27579
theoretical prediction
Dirac vs. Majorana 265, 271, 451
left-right symmetric model 268
standard-model 265f
structure of interaction 265, 26871
neutrino dispersion
Cherenkov eect 238f
deection 247f
density-matrix treatment 321f
inhomogeneous medium 442f
neutrino background 321f, 432f,
44042
nonisotropic medium 321, 432f,
44042
o-diagonal refractive index 322
relation for massive neutrinos in
media 295f
spin-ip scattering 162
neutrino emission: standard
solar neutrino flux, supernova core
astrophysical impact
red-giant core mass 83f
red supergiant 2
white-dwarf cooling 4750
historical perspective 1f
numerical rates 58590
specic processes
bremsstrahlung (electronic) 105-7,
588
bremsstrahlung (nucleonic) 12730,
157, 159
Compton (photoneutrino) 95f, 98,
586f
free-bound transition 100f
pair annihilation 99f, 586f
plasma 585f
656
neutrino form factor: electromagnetic
neutrino dipole moment
anapole moment 26870
charge 227f, 23236, 240, 268, 56467
charge radius 269f, 523
in plasma 230f, 23741
neutrino lasing 389
neutrino lightcurve supernova core
neutrino mass
bounds
decay 257f
cosmological 25860
experimental 252, 25458
future supernovae 447f, 497
SN 1987A signal dispersion 426f
SN 1987A signal duration 51619
Dirac 253f, 51619
eective neutrino dispersion
inverted hierarchy 434
Majorana 253f, 25759
neutrino mixing
bounds
atmospheric neutrinos 291
decay experiments 456f, 461
oscillation experiments 289f
r-process nucleosynthesis 43742
SN 1987A -rays 481
SN 1987A prompt burst 43234
SN 1987A signal duration 43436
supernova core: avor conversion
338
decay rates and dipole moments
26467
induced by
avor-changing neutral currents
303
gravity 555
mass matrix 262, 282
neutrino opacity 13235, 14951, 329f,
334f, 408, 51416
damping by collisions
kinetic equation 32729, 33234
simple picture 31012
spin relaxation 313
time scale in SN core 33538
equations of motion 28284
Subject Index
neutrino oscillations (contd)
experimental searches 289f
historical introduction and overview
28082
in media
adiabatic limit 29799
analytic results 299300
homogeneous 296f
mixing angle 2947
neutrino background in supernovae
432f, 44042
oscillation length 285f, 289, 29497
primordial 322
resonant
analytic results 299f
description 281, 298
Landau-Zener approximation 300
level crossing 295f, 298
schematic model for the Sun 3013
solution of solar neutrino problem
38486
supernova core 333f
supernova mantle 43242
spin-precession picture 286f, 314f
supernova
cooling phase 43436
explosion mechanism 436f
overview 430f
prompt burst 43234, 496f, 498
Sun
MSW solutions 38486, 434f
schematic model of MSW eect
3013
vacuum solution 38184
survival probability
general expression 28486
with energy distribution 288
with source distribution 287f
temporal vs. spatial 283f
three-avor 284f
two-avor 28488
neutrino-photon scattering 245f
neutrino dipole moment, neutrino
two-photon coupling
Subject Index
neutrino radiative decay (contd)
bounds from
beam stop 456f
cosmic background neutrinos
48991
diuse ux from all stars 487f
reactors 45355
solar positrons 457, 461
solar x-rays 45961
SN 1987A -rays 467f, 474f, 47779
photon spectrum
stationary source 45153
pulsed source 46365, 46973
standard-model predictions 26467
summary of bounds 278f
neutrino rocket engine 44345
neutrino sphere 397, 407, 409
neutrino spin precession
supernova magnetic eld 521f
theoretical description
equations of motion 304f
in electric elds 305
in medium 306
oscillation length 305
spin-avor 3069
time variation of solar neutrino ux
374, 387f
neutrino trapping 396
neutrino two-photon coupling 245, 265f,
271f
neutrinos: cosmic background
screening of leptonic force 114f, 500
mass density 25860, 48991
radiative decay 48991
neutrinos: number of families 251, 260,
513
component of Dirac 253f
e+ e decay limits 479, 482
SN 1987A limit
charge radius 523
dipole moment 521f
Dirac mass 51619
mixing with sequential avors
33840
right-handed currents 51920
spin-ip production 16064
neutrinos: solar solar neutrino flux
neutrinos: strongly interacting 558f, 563
657
neutrinos: supernova SN 1987A,
supernova core
neutron stars
cooling 5460
crust 5860, 106f
formation 38
kick velocities 44345
internal conditions 601
magnetosphere 18588
pseudoscalar eld around 187
x-ray observations 5658
Newtons constant
value 6
time variation 54654
NOMAD experiment 289f
nonabelian Boltzmann collision
equation 323f
nuclear matter
novel phases 15559
properties 151f, 6005
nucleon mass: eective 151f, 6025
nucleosynthesis big-bang nucleosynthesis, supernova (type II)
number fraction: denition 243
O
o-diagonal refractive index 322
Oklo natural reactor 546
one-pion exchange potential 119, 122,
124f, 141
opacity
-enhanced 78f
conductive 11, 22, 78
denition 11
neutrino 13235, 14951, 329f, 334f,
408, 51416
particle 11, 18f, 12735
radiative 18f
reduced 19
Rosseland average 11, 18f
solar 21, 345, 35355
tables 12
OPAL 12
open clusters 60, 76
OPE potential 119, 122, 124f, 141
optical activity birefringence
optical theorem 198
oscillation length 285f, 289, 29497, 305
658
oscillations (particles)
axion-photon 17982, 185f, 18890
graviton-photon 191
inhomogeneous media 181, 442f
pion-photon 183
oscillations (stars) helioseismology,
stars: variable
P
pair annihilation 99f
paraphoton 82, 92f, 99
Pauli matrices 286
Peccei-Quinn
mechanism 52628, 532f
scale 166, 526f, 529, 535
peculiar velocity (neutron stars) 44345
permittivity dielectric permittivity
phase velocity 199, 244
photon
baryonic 114
charge limits 555f
decay plasma process
leptonic 11416
mass
plasma frequency
eective 208
vacuum 206, 555f
transverse 209, 214
refraction photon dispersion
splitting 184
weakly interacting 18
photon dispersion
approximate expressions 213f
external elds (vacuum birefringence)
1835, 187f, 190f, 554
mixing with axions 180f
transverse mass 209, 214
photoproduction
Compton process
X-particles in HB stars 82, 429
pinching of neutrino spectra 410f
pion
one-pion exchange potential
Compton scattering 157
condensate 59, 15557, 243
coupling to nucleons 119, 151f, 531
Subject Index
pion (contd)
decay 162, 167f, 256
decay constant 166f, 527
mass 119, 124f, 527
mixing with axion 527f, 534
Nambu-Goldstone boson 165f
Planck mass: denition 6
Plancks constant 580
planetary nebulae 36, 43, 51
plasma
conditions in stars 59199
coupling parameter 224, 59799
crystallization 46, 598
uctuations 17274
frequency 198, 211f, 596, 599
one-component 22325
strongly coupled 223f
two-component 223
plasma process
astrophysical impact
HB star lifetime 8082
neutron-star crust 59f
red-giant core mass 8387
supernova core 523
gluonic 159
plasmino 195
plasmon
coalescence 17072
e+ e decay 195, 211
longitudinal 17072, 195, 202f, 213
decay plasma process
p-mode helioseismology
Poincare sphere representation 286
polarimetry of radio sources 190f
polarization tensor 20512, 230f, 238
polarization vector
neutrino avor
denition 286f
degree of coherence 313
individual modes 317
shrinking by collisions 314f
transverse 314, 325
plasma excitations 206f
positron ux: interplanetary 461, 487f
pp-chain 15, 341, 346f
pressure sources in stars 710
Subject Index
Primako process 116, 159, 16875,
177, 357
prompt
explosion mechanism 399, 401f
neutrino burst 397, 399f, 43234,
496f, 498
proton
decay xvii
fraction in nuclear matter 601f
spin 537, 584
protoneutron star supernova core
pseudomomentum 200
pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons 166
pseudoscalar bosons
arions, axions, majorons
astrophysical impact and bounds
HB star lifetime 8082, 98f, 176,
191f
neutron-star cooling 59
red-giant core mass 85f, 107-9
SN 1987A 5014, 50812
Sun 16f, 20f, 176, 191f
white-dwarf cooling 5052
ZZ Ceti period decrease 54
bounds on couplings to
photons 17, 81f, 176, 191f
electrons 20f, 51f, 82, 85, 99f,
10711
nucleons 512
conversion to photons 17982, 185f,
18890
derivative coupling 119, 531f, 563
emission processes
bremsstrahlung (electronic) 1025,
107f
bremsstrahlung (nucleonic) 11926,
14345, 148f, 155f
bremsstrahlung (quarks) 157f
Compton 20, 94, 98, 108f
energy spectrum 123, 175
pair annihilation 99f
Primako (gluonic) 159
Primako (photonic) 16875, 177
interaction Hamiltonian 119
long-range force 112
opacity contribution 18f, 21, 131f,
5068
refractive index 250
solar direct search 100, 181, 191f
659
PSR 0655+64 547
PSR 1913+16 (Hulse-Taylor binary
pulsar) xiv, 113, 116, 547
PSR 1937+21 188, 190, 554
pulsar
neutron star
pulse dispersion 554f
pulsation
constant 40
periods 40f
period decrease 53f
PVLAS experiment 185, 192
Q
QCD: CP problem 52426
Q-nuclei (quarked nuclei) 557
quark
free 556f
matter xv, 15759, 557
masses 252, 525
mass ratios 535
mixing 261f
quantum gravity 532f
R
radiative energy transfer energy
transfer, opacity
random media: particle oscillations 181,
442f
rank-ordering statistics 374f
reactor: nuclear
natural 546
neutrino radiative decay limits 454f
neutrino spectrum 450, 453f, 455
red-giant
branch RGB
core mass at helium ignition
increase by particle emission 8387
observational 7579
theoretical 67f
uncertainties 78f
core rotation 78
properties and evolution 2832, 592,
599
reduced opacity 19, 131
660
refractive index
photon dispersion, neutrino
dispersion
denition 194
forward scattering 19698
neutrino 242, 244
relativistic limiting velocity 497f
renormalization: wave function 200,
21719, 228, 233
repulsion of energy levels 296
resonant oscillations
axion-photon 181, 186
RGB (red-giant branch)
brightest star 63f, 6872
bump 61, 64f
27, 41
phase transition 37
right-handed
currents 268, 51920
neutrinos neutrinos: right-handed
Ring Nebula in Lyra 36
R-method 65, 70, 72, 7478
ROSAT 5658
Rosseland average 11, 18f
r-process nucleosynthesis 4056, 43742
RR Lyrae stars
absolute brightness 62, 65, 69f, 73f
ages of globular clusters 62
color 62
40f
mass-to-light ratio 77
Rubakov-Callan eect xv
Rydberg atom 178
S
S17 factor 35557, 377f, 386
SAGE 343f, 35759, 362f, 371
Sanduleak 69 202 39, 414
scalar eld
scalar particles, Higgs field
around a neutron star 113
scalar particles
bounds on coupling
electrons 82, 99, 107
nucleons 82, 113
Subject Index
scalar particles (contd)
emission from binary pulsar 113
emission processes
bremsstrahlung 103, 124f
Compton 93, 98
long-range force 112f, 500
photon coupling 166
Sciamas neutrino 491f
screening eects
background neutrinos 114f
Debye-H
uckel scale 220f, 596f, 599
in processes
bremsstrahlung 1026
Primako 169
spin-ip scattering 277f
ion contribution 220f, 596f, 599
modication of Coulomb propagator
221f, 226
Thomas-Fermi scale 221
secret neutrino interactions 558f, 563
see-saw mechanism 254
self-energy 201, 209
Shapiro time delay 498, 554
shining light through walls 182
shock wave 397, 399405
Small Magellanic Cloud 446, 556
SMM satellite 465f
SN supernova
SN 1987A
neutrino pulse
analysis 42326
anomalies 42730
measurements 41923
optical lightcurve 414f
progenitor 39, 414
SN 1987A bounds
antimatter supernova 497
arion-photon conversion 189
axions
direct detection 495
neutrino signal duration 5014,
50812
fundamental length scale 500
Lorentz addition of velocities 500f
neutrino
charge 499, 522f
decay 494, 496, 519
mass 426f, 499
Subject Index
SN 1987A bounds (contd)
neutrino (contd)
neutrino-neutrino cross section 494f
number of families 513
secret interactions 494f
cooling phase 43436
prompt burst 43234
pseudoscalar boson couplings 5014,
50812
radiative particle decays 467f, 474f,
47779, 483
relativistic limiting velocity 497f
right-handed currents 51920
right-handed neutrinos
charge radius 523
dipole moment 521f
Dirac mass 51619
mixing with sequential neutrinos
33840
secret neutrino interactions 563
supersymmetric particles 558
weak equivalence principle 498
SNBO 448
SNO 343, 371, 392f
SNu (supernova unit) 488
SNU (solar neutrino unit) 358
solar axions 100, 181f, 191f
solar maximum mission satellite 465f
solar neutrino ux
antineutrino component
from majoron decay 389
from spin-avor oscillations 388
limits from Kamiokande 369
counting rate prediction for detection
Cherenkov 370
chlorine 359, 361
gallium 359, 364
future experiments 3904
measurements
Cherenkov 36870
chlorine 36062
gallium 36264
modied by
electrically charged neutrinos 565
gravitational settling 14, 352, 354
opacities 35355
neutrino decay 389
neutrino-neutrino scattering 495
661
solar neutrino ux (contd)
modied by (contd)
resonant oscillations 3013, 38486,
434f
temperature 354
WIMP energy transfer xvi
strange quark matter 557
Q-nuclear burning 557
vacuum oscillations 38184
radiative decay limits 45862
source reactions
beryllium 343, 34750, 355, 378f
boron 343, 34749, 35557, 36870,
377f, 383
CNO 343, 34749
electron capture vs. decay 350
hep 34749
pep 347, 350
pp 343, 34749
time variation
day-night 372, 385f, 390f
semiannual 372f, 382f
solar cycle 37376, 387f
solar neutrino problem
introduction and historical overview
34145, 380f
ux decits
beryllium 378f
beryllium/boron branching ratio
379f
boron 377f
ux variation at Homestake 37377
MSW solution 38486
vacuum solution 38184
VVO solution (magnetic oscillations)
387f
Sommerfeld parameter 355
space-like excitations 194, 198f, 207,
216, 215f, 238f
spectral density 173f
speed of light 497f
spin-avor oscillations neutrino spin
precession
spin ip 16064, 277f, 3049, 317,
51623
spin-uctuation rate 118, 121-23, 127,
133, 144f
spin relaxation 313
662
spin-spin interaction potential 141, 151
starburst galaxies 446
stars
ages 27, 35, 43, 62f, 55254
formation 2427
initial mass function 24
intermediate-mass 37
mass loss 25, 34, 36
mass range 24
massive 3739
populations in color-magnitude
diagram 41
variable 12, 3941, 5254
statistical parallaxes 73
Stefan-Boltzmann law 409
stellar collapse supernova: type II
stellar evolution
bibliography 24
descriptive overview 2341
evolutionary track 31
main phases 30
stellar oscillations helioseismology,
variable stars, ZZ Ceti stars
stellar structure
convective 12f
equations 514
examples for models 29f
generic cases 710
homologous models 1416, 549, 552
long-range force: new 113
sterile neutrinos
Stodolskys formula 31315, 324f
Stokes parameters 286
strange quark matter xv, 15759, 557
structure function
Coulomb plasma 106, 22225
dynamical
classical 146f
detailed balance 129, 137, 146
formal denition 13643, 323
long-wavelength limit 121, 128f,
14143
Lorentzian model 135, 14447
nuclear medium 128f, 135, 14651,
16163
spin-density 138
static 137, 22225
subgiant 27, 28
Subject Index
sum rules 13941
Sun
solar neutrino flux
activity cycle 37376, 387f
axion spectrum 175
bounds on
axion ux 100, 181, 191f
deection of neutrinos 247f
energy-loss argument 16f, 20f, 109f,
175f
global properties
central temperature 7, 353
convective layer 550
distance 341, 372
Kelvin-Helmholtz time scale 8
helium abundance 16f, 351, 549f
luminosity 8, 341
magnetic eld 186, 37376, 387f,
554, 565
mass 7
plasma properties 599
radius 7, 351
opacity 21, 345, 35355
positron ux limits 457, 461
spots 186, 37376
standard model 29, 35153
x- and -ray ux 45862
superuidity in neutron stars 58f
Superkamiokande (Cherenkov detector)
343, 371, 3902
supernova
SN 1987A
burst observatory 448
core collapse supernova: type II
energetics: particle bounds 483
future 44548
Keplers 39
galactic
positron ux 484f
rate 39, 446, 487f
remnants 38f, 5658
SN 1054 38
Tychos 39
type I 36, 546
unit (SNu) 488
Subject Index
supernova core
binding energy 407
characteristics of the medium 398,
505f, 512, 6025
matter accretion 397, 400, 425f, 503
neutrino cooling
SN 1987A
analytic emission models
expected detector signal 418
schematic picture 397, 400, 407f
spectral characteristics 40811
time evolution 41114
neutrino avor conversion 33238
particle cooling
axion emission 5014, 50812
general argument 5018
numerical studies 50811, 51316
structure (numerical model) 505f, 512
supernova: type II
supernova core
description 3739
explosion mechanism 4015, 436f, 522
cooling phase 43436
explosion mechanism 436f
overview 430f
prompt burst 43234
nucleosynthesis 4056, 43742
stellar collapse 39599
supersymmetric particles
dark matter xvxvi, 22, 558
emission from stars 81, 557f
supersymmetry: avor-changing neutral
current 303
SXT satellite 186
T
tau neutrino
charge 567
dipole moment 278, 455, 457, 476f
e+ e decay: bounds
galactic supernovae 48486
reactors 455, 457
SN 1987A -rays 48082
solar positrons 457, 461
mass 256, 25860, 485f
theoretical decay rate 264
663
thermal broadening of beryllium line
350f
thermal equilibrium in stars 8
Thomas-Fermi scale 221
transition moment neutrino dipole
moments
transverse current 204, 219f
transverse gauge 204
transverse part of the avor
polarization vector 314, 325
transverse photon mass 209, 214
triangle condition 153f
triangle loop 167f, 530, 536
triangle: MSW 3013, 386, 434
triple- reaction 33, 80
tritium decay 255
twisting magnetic eld 308f
two-photon coupling
neutrinos 245, 265f, 271f
various bosons 16568
U, V
units
conversion factors 58082
natural 6
rationalized 184, 580
URCA process 1, 58f, 15254
vacuum birefringence 1835, 187f, 190f,
554
vector bosons
Compton process 9193, 98
energy-loss bounds 82, 99, 11012
long-range force 11216, 500
virial theorem
introduction 6f
negative specic heat 7f
VVO eect 387
W
weak damping limit (of neutrino
oscillations) 326f, 330f
weak decay spectrum 348
weak mixing angle 583
Weinberg angle 583
664
white dwarfs
bounds on
neutrino dipole moments 4850
pseudoscalar bosons 5052
time-varying GN 551
characteristics 9, 4245, 599
cooling theory 4547
formation 35f
inferred galactic age 43, 51
40f
luminosity function 4345
magnetic 185f
mass-radius relationship 9, 42
neutrino cooling 4750
variable 41, 5254
vs. red giant core 88
Subject Index
Whole-Earth Telescope 53
WIMP xv, 22
X, Y, Z
x-rays
neutron stars 5658
particle bounds
SN 1987A arion-photon conversion
189
SN 1987A axion decays 483
SN 1987A radiative neutrino
decays 467f, 474f, 47779
solar x-rays 45862
satellites 5658, 186, 465f
Yohkoh satellite 186
ZZ Ceti stars 41, 5254

Stars As Laboratories For Fundamental Physics

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What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What are some of the main topics covered in the book?

What are some of the main topics covered in the book?

Georg G.

Final Manuscript, October 1995

Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1996

Georg G. Raelt is a sta researcher at the Max-Planck-Institut f

To be published by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

1.3 Impact of Novel Particles (14)

1.4 General Lesson (21)

2. Anomalous Stellar Energy Losses Bounded

2.2 White-Dwarf Cooling (42)

2.3 Neutron Stars (54)

2.4 Globular-Cluster Stars (60)

2.5 Particle Bounds from Globular-Cluster Stars (79)

2.6 Summary (87)

3. Particles Interacting with Electrons

3.3 Pair Annihilation (99)

3.6 Astrophysical Bounds on Yukawa and Gauge Couplings (109)

3.7 Graviton Emission from Stars (116)

4. Processes in a Nuclear Medium

4.3 Neutrino Pair Emission (126)

4.4 Axion Opacity (131)

2. Bremsstrahlung Emission of Neutrino

4.5 Neutrino Opacity (132)

4.6 Structure Functions (136)

4.7 Eective Nucleon Mass and Coupling (151)

4.10 Emission of Right-Handed Dirac Neutrinos (160).

5. Two-Photon Coupling of Low-Mass Bosons

5.3 Search for Cosmic Axions (176)

5.5 Astrophysical Magnetic Fields (185)

5.6 Summary of Constraints on ga (191)

6. Particle Dispersion and Decays in Media

6.3 Photon Dispersion (202)

6.4 Screening Eects (219)

6.5 Plasmon Decay in Neutrinos (227)

6.6 Neutrino Form Factors in Media (237)

6.8 Majoron Decay (248)

7.2 Neutrino Mixing and Decay (260)

7.3 Neutrino Electromagnetic Form Factors (267)

7.4 Electromagnetic Processes (272)

8.3 Oscillations in Media (293)

8.4 Spin and Spin-Flavor Oscillations (304)

9. Oscillations of Trapped Neutrinos

9.3 Neutral-Current Interactions (320)

9.4 Charged-Current Interactions (329)

2. Kinetic Terms (329)

9.5 Flavor Conversion in a SN Core (332)

9.6 Sterile Neutrinos and SN 1987A (338)

10. Solar Neutrinos

10.3 Observations (357)

10.4 Time Variations (372)

10.5 Neutrino Flux Decits (377)

10.6 Neutrino Oscillations (380)

10.7 Spin and Spin-Flavor Oscillations (387)

11. Supernova Neutrinos

11.2 Predicted Neutrino Signal (407)