Yikun Wang,Johns Hopkins U., [HET Seminar] Neutrino-antineutrino pair production from potential gradient

Thursday 12 Feb 2026, 11:00 → 13:00 US/Eastern

Small Seminar Room

In this talk, I will discuss a particle-antiparticle pair production mechanism under the category of Schwinger effect. In the presence of a strong, supercritical, potential, particles and antiparticles can be pair produced from the vacuum. This has been studied for gauge fields in QED and QCD, and gravitation fields, that is relevant for black hole physics. We point out that the pair production could be sourced by alternative potentials, provided vector, chiral vector or tensor couplings to fermions. 

As an example, we show that neutrino-antineutrino can be pair produced under a strong matter potential. The supercritical condition requires that the matter potential to be greater than the neutrino mass, which can be realized in dense objects such as neutron stars. Additionally, a sizable pair production rate requires the potential to have a large gradient, such as a steep slope, or a narrow width for a step-like potential. The latter can be achieved in neutron stars provided discontinuity in its density profile, that can present as a result of phase transitions in neutron star matter. Provided with necessary conditions, the neutrino-antineutrinos are produced at a sizable rate comparable to other emission mechanisms. With the core temperature greater than the neutrino kinetic energy, this opens up a new channel for neutron star cooling. After escaping the neutron star, these neutrinos and antineutrinos, with energy much greater than cosmic neutrino backgrounds, can potentially be detected in direct detection experiments.

https://bnl.zoomgov.com/j/16010362754?pwd=Z1l1SS9JUDlyR1hSUHNyaDV1dTZHUT09