Elastic neutrino-atom scattering as a probe of neutrino millicharge and magnetic moment

Abstract

Neutrino scattering on a target at low-energy transfer is one of the basic tools for searching for neutrino electromagnetic properties. We consider the effects of the neutrino millicharge and magnetic moment on the atomic recoil spectrum in elastic neutrino–atom scattering. The results of our calculations of differential cross sections for elastic collisions of tritium neutrinos with the H, 2H, 3He, and 4He atomic targets show that the corresponding experiments can achieve sensitivity to the indicated neutrino electromagnetic characteristics by orders of magnitude better than the available measurements of elastic neutrino–electron and neutrino–nucleus collisions.