Ponderomotive force due to neutrinos

We derive the ponderomotive force for an arbitrary distribution of neutrinos in a plasma using quantum statistical field theory. The ponderomotive force has two components. One component, due to gradients in the neutrino and plasma densities, reduces to a known expression. The second component is due to a coupling between anisotropies in the neutrino and plasma densities. Simple estimates suggest that the ponderomotive force is too small to play an important role in the acceleration mechanism for plasma in type II supernovae. copyright 1996 The American Physical Society