Instability of magnetic fields in electroweak plasma driven by neutrino asymmetries

Abstract

The magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is modified to incorporate the parity violation in the Standard Model leading to a new instability of magnetic fields in the electroweak plasma in the presence of nonzero neutrino asymmetries. The main ingredient for such a modified MHD is the antisymmetric part of the photon polarization tensor in plasma, where the parity violating neutrino interaction with charged leptons is present. We calculate this contribution to the polarization tensor connected with the Chern-Simons term in effective Lagrangian of the electromagnetic field. The general expression for such a contribution which depends on the temperature and the chemical potential of plasma as well as on the photon's momentum is derived. The instability of a magnetic field driven by the electron neutrino asymmetry for the ν-burst during the first second of a supernova explosion can amplify a seed magnetic field of a protostar, and, perhaps, can explain the generation of strongest magnetic fields in magnetars. The growth of a cosmological magnetic field driven by the neutrino asymmetry density Δnν = nν-n0 is provided by a lower bound on |ξ ν e| = |μ ν e|/T which is consistent with the well-known Big Bang nucleosynthesis (upper) bound on neutrino asymmetries in a hot universe plasma. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab srl.