Probing the braneworld hypothesis with a neutron-shining-through-a-wall experiment
Abstract
The possibility for our visible world to be a 3-brane embedded in a multidimensional bulk is at the heart of many theoretical edifices in high-energy physics. Probing the braneworld hypothesis is thus a major experimental challenge. Following recent theoretical works showing that matter swapping between braneworlds can occur, we propose a neutron-shining-through-a-wall experiment. We first show that an intense neutron source such as a nuclear reactor core can induce a hidden neutron flux in an adjacent hidden braneworld. We then describe how a low-background detector can detect neutrons arising from the hidden world and quantify the expected sensitivity to the swapping probability. As a proof of concept, a constraint is derived from previous experiments.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1501.06468,
title = {Probing the braneworld hypothesis with a neutron-shining-through-a-wall experiment},
author = {Michael Sarrazin and Guillaume Pignol and Jacob Lamblin and Fabrice Petit and Guy Terwagne and Valery V. Nesvizhevsky},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.06468},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
12 pages, 4 figures, final version published in Physical Review D