Neutrino charge constraints from scattering to the weak gravity conjecture to neutron stars

Abstract

In various extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics, and intriguingly even in the three-generation Standard Model without neutrino masses, neutrinos are allowed to have very tiny electric charges. After a review of the theoretical scenarios that allow the emergence of such charges, we discuss the existing observational limits and we derive new stringent direct upper bounds for the charges of the muon and tau neutrinos. We also point out a flavor-universal lower bound on neutrino charges which is obtained from the weak gravity conjecture, that is based on the hypothesis that gravity is the weakest force. We finally present a new flavor-universal upper bound on neutrino charges based on astrophysical observations of Magnetars.