The helicity flip of a spin-1/2 Dirac fermion interacting with a torsion-fi
eld endowed with a pseudo-tensorial extension is analysed. Taking the torsi
on to be represented by a Kalb-Ramond field, we show that there is a finite
amplitude for helicity flip for massive fermions. The lowest order contrib
ution which turns out to be proportional to the pseudo-tensor term. implies
a new physical understanding of the phenomenon of helicity flip. (C) 2001
Published by Elsevier Science B.V.