NEUTRINO HELICITY FLIP IN A CURVED SPACE-TIME

In Minkowskian spaces, the helicity of a massless fermion is a conserved quantity. In principle, this property may not hold when gravitational effects are not neglected. In this context, this work proves that the helicity of a massless neutrino is not conserved in curved spaces. In order to show this fact, the time variation of the helicity in the Heisenberg picture is calculated. Also, we verify that the differential cross-section due to helicity flip of a massless neutrino in a curved space does not vanish as a result of the coupling between the spin and the curvature of space-time.