Probing neutrino-night-quark effective scalar interactions from neutrino masses

Abstract

In this work, we use neutrino masses as a probe of the neutrino-light-quark effective scalar interactions. It is found that neutrinos can acquire masses not only from the usual light quark loop corrections but also from the light quark condensates. The latter contribution has been overlooked in the literature. We show that both contributions are comparable for operators involving $u$ and $d$ quarks, while quark loop corrections dominate for operators involving the $s$ quark. Using the low-energy effective field theory extended with light right-handed neutrinos and matching to chiral perturbation theory, we systematically analyze these contributions, deriving constraints on the corresponding Wilson coefficients from neutrino mass bounds, coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, and light pseudoscalar meson invisible decays. Our analysis shows that electron neutrino mass measurements provide the most stringent constraints on these scalar couplings, significantly improving upon limits from other observables. The results highlight the importance of including both perturbative and nonperturbative contributions in complete phenomenological analyses of neutrino mass generation mechanisms.