Lorentz violating effects in the neutrino sector have been considered by many
authors [86, 182, 181
, 180
, 83
, 55, 18
, 126
, 191, 82]. To illustrate how Lorentz violation affects neutrino
propagation, we consider the simplest case, where the limiting speeds for mass eigenstates of the neutrino
are different, i.e. neutrinos have dispersions
We can immediately see from Equation (108) that Lorentz violation can have a number of consequences
for standard neutrino oscillation experiments. The first is simply that neutrino oscillation still occurs even if
the mass is zero. In fact, some authors have proposed that Lorentz violation could be partly responsible for
the observed oscillations [181
]. Oscillations due to the type of Lorentz violation above vary as
[181].
Current data support neutrino oscillations that vary as a function of
[35, 125], so it
seems unlikely that Lorentz violation could be the sole source of neutrino oscillations. It is
possible, however, that Lorentz violation may explain some of the current problems in neutrino
physics by giving a contribution in addition to the mass term. For example it has been proposed
in [182] that Lorentz violation might explain the LSND (Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector)
anomaly [36]30,
which is an excess of
events that cannot be reconciled with other neutrino experiments [129]. We
note that the above model for Lorentz violating effects in neutrino oscillations is perhaps the simplest case.
In the neutrino sector of the mSME there can be more complicated energy dependence, directional
dependence, and new oscillations that do not occur in the standard model. For a discussion of these various
possibilities see [180].
The difference in speeds between electron and muon neutrinos was bounded in [88] to be
. Oscillation data from Super Kamiokande have improved this bound to
[114]. Current neutrino oscillation experiments are projected to improve on this by three orders
of magnitude, giving limits on maximal speed differences of order
[126]. For comparison, the time
of flight measurements from supernova 1987A constrain
[265]. Neutrino oscillations
are sensitive enough to directly probe non-renormalizable Lorentz violating terms. In [69] current neutrino
oscillation experiments are shown to yield bounds on dimension five operators stringent enough that the
energy scale suppressing the operator must be a few orders of magnitude above the Planck energy. Such
operators are therefore very unlikely in the neutrino sector. Ultra-high energy neutrinos, when observed, will
provide further information about neutrino Lorentz violation. For example, flavor oscillations of ultra-high
energy neutrinos at
propagating over cosmic distances would be able to probe Lorentz
violating dispersion suppressed by seven powers of
[83] (or more if the energies are even
higher).
Additionally, neutrino Lorentz violation can modify the energy thresholds for reactions involving neutrinos, which can have consequences for the expected flux of ultra-high energy neutrinos for detectors such as ICECUBE. The expected flux of ultra-high energy neutrinos is bounded above by the Bahcall-Waxman bound [273] if the neutrinos are produced in active galactic nuclei or gamma ray bursters. It has been shown [18] that Lorentz violation can in fact raise (or lower) this bound significantly. A higher than expected ultra-high energy neutrino flux therefore could be a signal of Lorentz violation.
Finally, neutrinos can also undergo a vacuum Čerenkov effect. Even though a neutrino is neutral there is a
non-zero matrix element for interaction with a photon as well as a graviton. Graviton emission is very
strongly suppressed and unlikely to give any useful constraints. The matrix element for photon emission,
while small, is still larger than that for graviton emission and hence the photon Čerenkov effect is more
promising. The photon-neutrino matrix element can be split into two channels, a charge radius term and a
magnetic moment term. The charge radius interaction is suppressed by the mass, leading to a reaction
rate too low for current neutrino observatories such as AMANDA to constrain
Lorentz
violation. However, the rate from the charge radius interaction scales strongly with energy, and it
has been estimated [154] that atmospheric PeV neutrinos may provide good constraints on
Lorentz violation. The magnetic moment interaction has not yet been conclusively
analyzed, so possible constraints from the magnetic moment interaction are unknown. In Lorentz
invariant physics, the magnetic moment term is suppressed by the small neutrino mass, so energy
loss rates are likely small. However, it should be noted that some Lorentz violating terms in
an effective field theory give rise to effective masses that scale with energy. These might be
much larger than the usual neutrino mass at high energies, yielding a large neutrino magnetic
moment.
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