The Hypothesis of Superluminal Neutrinos: comparing OPERA with other Data

Abstract

The OPERA Collaboration reported evidence for muonic neutrinos traveling slightly faster than light in vacuum. While waiting further checks from the experimental community, here we aim at exploring some theoretical consequences of the hypothesis that muonic neutrinos are superluminal, considering in particular the tachyonic and the Coleman-Glashow cases. We show that a tachyonic interpretation is not only hardly reconciled with OPERA data on energy dependence, but that it clashes with neutrino production from pion and with neutrino oscillations. A Coleman-Glashow superluminal neutrino beam would also have problems with pion decay kinematics for the OPERA setup; it could be easily reconciled with SN1987a data, but then it would be very problematic to account for neutrino oscillations.

v1: 10 pages, 2 figures; v2: 12 pages, 2 figures, improved discussion of CG case as for pion decay and neutrino oscillations, added references

References in corpus (2)

• Measurement of neutrino velocity with the MINOS detectors and NuMI neutrino beam
• Improved analysis of SN1987A antineutrino events

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Neutrinos with Lorentz-violating operators of arbitrary dimension
• Beyond the speed of light on Finsler spacetimes
• Constraints on Neutrino Velocities Revisited
• Testing Violations of Lorentz Invariance with Cosmic Rays
• Background Dependent Lorentz Violation: Natural Solutions to the Theoretical Challenges of the OPERA Experiment
• The Superluminal Neutrinos from Deformed Lorentz Invariance
• Relativity accommodates superluminal mean velocities
• Testing the Special Relativity Theory with Neutrino interactions