Magnetic-field creation by solar-mass neutrino jets

Abstract

Parity violation and its effects for neutrinos in astrophysical contexts have been considered earlier in pioneering papers of Hawking and Vilenkin. But because even the largest magnetic moments predicted by physics beyond the Standard Model are some twelve orders of magnitude smaller than the Bohr magneton, their implications for magnetic-field generation and neutrino oscillations are generally considered insignificant. Here we show that since in astrophysical scenarios a huge number of neutrinos may be emitted, the smallness of the magnetic moment, when coupled with parity violation, is compensated by the sheer number of neutrinos. The merger of neutron stars would leave behind a short pulse of electromagnetic synchrotron radiation even if the neutrino jet in the merger points away from the neutrino detectors. We show that the magnetic field can be as large as 106 Gauss and comment on the possibility of direct detection. Observation of such a pulse would lend strong support for neutrino magnetic moments and resolve the missing neutrino problem in neutron star mergers.