MSW effect

The Mikheyev–Smirnov–Wolfenstein effect (often referred to as matter effect) is a particle physics process which can act to modify neutrino oscillations in matter. Works in 1978 and 1979 by American physicist Lincoln Wolfenstein led to understanding that the oscillation parameters of neutrino are changed in matter. In 1985, the Soviet physicists Stanislav Mikheyev and Alexei Smirnov predicted that slow decrease of the matter density can resonantly enhance the neutrino mixing. Later in 1986, Stephen Parke of Fermilab, Hans Bethe of Cornell University, and S. Peter Rosen and James Gelb of Los Alamos National Laboratory provided analytic treatments of this effect.

The presence of electrons in matter changes the energy levels of the propagation eigenstates (mass eigenstates) of neutrinos due to charged current coherent forward scattering of the electron neutrinos (i.e., weak interactions). The coherent forward scattering is analogous to the electromagnetic process leading to the refractive index of light in a medium. This means that neutrinos in matter have a different effective mass than neutrinos in vacuum, and since neutrino oscillations depend upon the squared mass difference of the neutrinos, neutrino oscillations may be different in matter than they are in vacuum. With antineutrinos, the conceptual point is the same but the effective charge that the weak interaction couples to (called weak isospin) has an opposite sign. If the electron density of matter changes along the path of neutrinos, the mixing of neutrinos grows to maximum at some value of the density, and then turns back; it leads to resonant conversion of one type of neutrinos to other one.

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