Nonlinear neutrino-photon interactions inside strong laser pulses

Abstract

Even though neutrinos are neutral particles and interact only via the exchange of weak gauge bosons, charged leptons and quarks can mediate a coupling to the photon field beyond tree level. Inside a relativistically strong laser field nonlinear effects in the laser amplitude can play an important role, as electrons and positrons interact nonperturbatively with the coherent part of the photon field. Here, we calculate for the first time the leading-order contribution to the axial-vector--vector current-coupling tensor inside an arbitrary plane-wave laser field (which is taken into account exactly by employing the Furry picture). The current-coupling tensor appears in the calculation of various electroweak processes inside strong laser fields like photon emission or trident electron-positron pair production by a neutrino. Moreover, as we will see below, the axial-vector--vector current-coupling tensor contains the Adler-Bell-Jackiw (ABJ) anomaly. This occurrence renders the current-coupling tensor also interesting from a fundamental point of view, as it is the simplest Feynman diagram in an external field featuring this kind of anomaly.