The radiative decay of a high energy neutrino in the Coulomb field of a nucleus

This thesis concerns the testing of the SM and its extensions in e+e- collisions, the main emphasis being on neutrino physics (abridged abstract).

We predict the neutrino-nucleon cross section at ultrahigh energies relevant in connection with the search for high-energy cosmic neutrinos. Our investigation, employing the color-dipole picture, among other things allows us to quantitatively determine which fraction of the ultrahigh-energy neutrino-nucleon cross section stems from the saturation versus the color-transparency region. We disagree with various results in the literature that predict a strong suppression of the n...

We discuss various issues concerning the interactions of nuclei with neutrinos of low impinging energies (i.e. having several tens of MeV to a few hundred MeV) of interest for particle physics, nuclear physics and astrophysics. We focus, in particular, on open questions as well as possible strategies to obtain more experimental information. The option of a low-energy beta-beam facility is extensively discussed. We also mention its potential concerning the neutrino magnetic mo...

We report new calculations of the cross sections for deeply inelastic neutrino-nucleon scattering at neutrino energies between $10^{9}\ev$ and $10^{21}\ev$. We compare with results in the literature and assess the reliability of our predictions. For completeness, we briefly review the cross sections for neutrino interactions with atomic electrons, emphasizing the role of the $W$-boson resonance in $\bar{\nu}_{e}e$ interactions for neutrino energies in the neighborhood of $6.3...

We propose to extract the value of the effective neutrino charge radius from the coherent scattering of a neutrino against a heavy nucleus. In such an experiment the relevant quantity to measure is the kinetic energy distribution of the recoiling nucleus, which, in turn, may be directly related to the shift in the value of the effective weak mixing angle produced by the neutrino charge radius. This type of experiment has been proposed in order to observe the coherent elastic ...

High-energy neutrino-nucleus interactions are discussed by considering neutrino-oscillation experiments and ultra-high-energy cosmic neutrino interactions. The largest systematic error for the current neutrino oscillation measurements comes from the neutrino-nucleus interaction part, and its accurate understanding is essential for high-precision neutrino physics, namely for studying CP violation in the lepton sector. Depending on neutrino beam energies, quasi-elastic, resonan...

Review of neutrino properties; double beta decay; very high energy neutrinos; leptogenesis

This paper was submitted in Russian edition of Journal Physics of Atomic Nuclei in 2001. The present status of experiments that are being performed at nuclear reactors in order to seek the neutrino masses, mixing, and magnetic moments, whose discovery would be a signal of the existence of physics beyond the Standard Model, is considered, along with their future prospects.

PREAMBLE, BRIEF HISTORY AND PRELIMINARIES, QUICK REVIEW OF BASIC NEUTRINO PROPERTIES, CHARGED CURRENT NEUTRINO PROCESSES, NEUTRAL CURRENT NEUTRINO PROCESSES, VERY HEAVY NEUTRINOS, CONCLUDING SUMMARY

Several of the models for origin of the highest energy cosmic rays also predict significant neutrino fluxes. A common factor of the models is that they must provide sufficient power to supply the observed energy in the extragalactic component of the cosmic radiation. The assumption that a comparable amount of energy goes into high-energy neutrinos allows a model-independent estimate of the neutrino signal that may be expected.