Solar neutrinos and leptonic spin forces

Abstract

We quantify the efects of light spin-zero particles with pseudoscalar couplings to leptons and scalar couplings to nucleons on the evolution of solar neutrinos. In this scenario the matter potential sourced by the nucleons in the Sun’s matter gives rise to spin precession of the relativistic neutrino ensemble. As such the efects in the solar observables are diferent if neutrinos are Dirac or Majorana particles. For Dirac neutrinos the spin-favour precession results into left-handed neutrino to right-handed neutrino (i.e., active-sterile) oscillations, while for Majorana neutrinos it results into left-handed neutrino to right-handed antineutrino (i.e., active-active) oscillations. In both cases this leads to distortions in the solar neutrino spectrum which we use to derive constraints on the allowed values of the mediator mass and couplings via a global analysis of the solar neutrino data. In addition for Majorana neutrinos spin-favour precession results into a potentially observable fux of solar electron antineutrinos at the Earth which we quantify and constrain with the existing bounds from Borexino and KamLAND.