Abstract
We ask whether the recent OPERA results on neutrino superluminality could be an environmental effect characteristic of the local neighborhood of our planet, without the need of violation of the Poincaré-invariance at a fundamental level. We show, that model-indepenently, such a possibility implies the existence of new gravitational degrees of freedom. Namely, this explanation requires the existence of a new spin-2 field of a planetary Compton wave-length that is coupled to neutrinos and the rest of the matter asymmetrically, both in the magnitude and in the sign. Sourced by the earth this field creates an effective metric on which neutrinos propagate superluminally, whereas other species are much less sensitive to the background. Such a setup, at an effective field theory level, passes all immediate phenomenological tests, but at the expense of sacrificing calculability for some of the phenomena that are under perturbative control in ordinary gravity. The natural prediction is an inevitable appearance of a testable long-range gravity-type fifth force. Despite phenomenological viability, the sign asymmetry of the coupling we identify as the main potential obstacle for a consistent UV-completion. We also discuss the possible identification of this field with a Kaluza-Klein state of an extra dimension in which neutrino can propagate.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
OPERA collaboration, T. Adam et al., Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam, arXiv:1109.4897 [INSPIRE].
G. Cacciapaglia, A. Deandrea and L. Panizzi, Superluminal neutrinos in long baseline experiments and SN1987a, JHEP 11 (2011) 137 [arXiv:1109.4980] [INSPIRE].
G. Amelino-Camelia et al., OPERA-reassessing data on the energy dependence of the speed of neutrinos, Int. J. Mod. Phys. D 20 (2011) 2623 [arXiv:1109.5172] [INSPIRE].
A. Vainshtein, To the problem of nonvanishing gravitation mass, Phys. Lett. B 39 (1972) 393 [INSPIRE].
C. Talmadge, J. Berthias, R. Hellings and E. Standish, Model independent constraints on possible modifications of newtonian gravity, Phys. Rev. Lett. 61 (1988) 1159 [INSPIRE].
G. Dvali, G. Gabadadze, M. Kolanovic and F. Nitti, The power of brane induced gravity, Phys. Rev. D 64 (2001) 084004 [hep-ph/0102216] [INSPIRE].
N. Arkani-Hamed, S. Dimopoulos and G. Dvali, Phenomenology, astrophysics and cosmology of theories with submillimeter dimensions and TeV scale quantum gravity, Phys. Rev. D 59 (1999) 086004 [hep-ph/9807344] [INSPIRE].
N. Arkani-Hamed, S. Dimopoulos and G. Dvali, The hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter, Phys. Lett. B 429 (1998) 263 [hep-ph/9803315] [INSPIRE].
C.S. Gauthier, R. Saotome and R. Akhoury, Interaction of neutrinos with a cosmological K-essence scalar, JHEP 07 (2010) 062 [arXiv:0911.3168] [INSPIRE].
A. Adams, N. Arkani-Hamed, S. Dubovsky, A. Nicolis and R. Rattazzi, Causality, analyticity and an IR obstruction to UV completion, JHEP 10 (2006) 014 [hep-th/0602178] [INSPIRE].
E. Babichev, V. Mukhanov and A. Vikman, k-Essence, superluminal propagation, causality and emergent geometry, JHEP 02 (2008) 101 [arXiv:0708.0561] [INSPIRE].
H. Pas, S. Pakvasa and T.J. Weiler, Sterile-active neutrino oscillations and shortcuts in the extra dimension, Phys. Rev. D 72 (2005) 095017 [hep-ph/0504096] [INSPIRE].
J. Dent, H. Pas, S. Pakvasa and T.J. Weiler, Neutrino time travel, arXiv:0710.2524 [INSPIRE].
S. Hollenberg, O. Micu, H. Pas and T.J. Weiler, Baseline-dependent neutrino oscillations with extra-dimensional shortcuts, Phys. Rev. D 80 (2009) 093005 [arXiv:0906.0150] [INSPIRE].
E. Kiritsis, Supergravity, D-brane probes and thermal super Yang-Mills: a comparison, JHEP 10 (1999) 010 [hep-th/9906206] [INSPIRE].
N. Arkani-Hamed, S. Dimopoulos, G. Dvali and J. March-Russell, Neutrino masses from large extra dimensions, Phys. Rev. D 65 (2002) 024032 [hep-ph/9811448] [INSPIRE].
K.R. Dienes, E. Dudas and T. Gherghetta, Neutrino oscillations without neutrino masses or heavy mass scales: a higher dimensional seesaw mechanism, Nucl. Phys. B 557 (1999) 25 [hep-ph/9811428] [INSPIRE].
G. Dvali and A.Y. Smirnov, Probing large extra dimensions with neutrinos, Nucl. Phys. B 563 (1999) 63 [hep-ph/9904211] [INSPIRE].
A.G. Cohen and S.L. Glashow, Pair creation constrains superluminal neutrino propagation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107 (2011) 181803 [arXiv:1109.6562] [INSPIRE].
R. Cowsik, S. Nussinov and U. Sarkar, Superluminal neutrinos at OPERA confront pion decay kinematics, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107 (2011) 251801 [arXiv:1110.0241] [INSPIRE].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
ArXiv ePrint: 1109.5685
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
About this article
Cite this article
Dvali, G., Vikman, A. Price for environmental neutrino-superluminality. J. High Energ. Phys. 2012, 134 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2012)134
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2012)134