Neutrino Velocity and the Variability of Fundamental Constants

Abstract

Neutrino speed experiments could be viewed not only as tests of Lorentz invariance but also as measurements of limiting propagation speed for all standard model species below certain depth where no direct metrological information is available. The latter option, hypothetically caused by some chameleon-type background, could be tested in the next installment of the neutrino speed experiments. We also show that that complementary constraints on the same class of models can be obtained with experiments testing clock universality in deep underground/underwater experiments. By considering the explicit QED model with particle-universal modification of propagation speed by a depth-dependent tensor background, we show that in general one should expect larger-than-GR shifts of the clock frequencies and clock non-universality. This can be tested by comparison of the narrow transitions in atomic clocks, which for a generic model could deliver a superior accuracy compared to the neutrino speed experiments.

5 pages

References in corpus (6)

• Environmental Dependence of Masses and Coupling Constants
• Measurement of neutrino velocity with the MINOS detectors and NuMI neutrino beam
• Limit on the Temporal Variation of the Fine-Structure Constant Using Atomic Dysprosium
• Measurement of CNGS muon neutrino speed with Borexino
• Measurement of the velocity of neutrinos from the CNGS beam with the Large Volume Detector
• Lorentz Invariance Violation in Modified Gravity

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Relaxion Stars and their detection via Atomic Physics
• Calculation of the Decay Rate of Tachyonic Neutrinos against Charged-Lepton-Pair and Neutrino-Pair Cerenkov Radiation