English

Possible cosmogenic neutrino constraints on Planck-scale Lorentz violation

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2010-03-04 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We study, within an effective field theory framework, O(E2/\Mpl2)O(E^{2}/\Mpl^{2}) Planck-scale suppressed Lorentz invariance violation (LV) effects in the neutrino sector, whose size we parameterize by a dimensionless parameter ην\eta_{\nu}. We find deviations from predictions of Lorentz invariant physics in the cosmogenic neutrino spectrum. For positive O(1) coefficients no neutrino will survive above 1019\eV10^{19} \eV. The existence of this cutoff generates a bump in the neutrino spectrum at energies of 1017\eV10^{17} \eV. Although at present no constraint can be cast, as current experiments do not have enough sensitivity to detect ultra-high-energy neutrinos, we show that experiments in construction or being planned have the potential to cast limits as strong as ην104\eta_{\nu} \lesssim 10^{-4} on the neutrino LV parameter, depending on how LV is distributed among neutrino mass states. Constraints on ην<0\eta_{\nu} < 0 can in principle be obtained with this strategy, but they require a more detailed modeling of how LV affects the neutrino sector.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0911.0521,
  title  = {Possible cosmogenic neutrino constraints on Planck-scale Lorentz violation},
  author = {David M. Mattingly and Luca Maccione and Matteo Galaverni and Stefano Liberati and Guenter Sigl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0911.0521},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

v1: 19 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to JCAP. v2: minor revisions and a few references added. Accepted by JCAP