Superluminal neutrinos and domain walls

TL;DR

This paper proposes that superluminal neutrinos observed in OPERA could be explained by a domain wall caused by a scalar field, which affects neutrino and photon propagation differently, reconciling with supernova observations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel explanation involving domain walls and scalar fields to account for superluminal neutrinos and reconcile experimental discrepancies.

Findings

Domain walls can cause effective metric differences for neutrinos and photons.

The model explains superluminal neutrinos without conflicting with supernova data.

Reconciliation of OPERA results with SN1987a observations is possible under certain conditions.

Abstract

In this letter, we propose that the recent measurement of superluminal neutrinos in OPERA could be explained by the existence of a domain wall which is left behind after the phase transition of some scalar field in the universe. The scalar field couples to the neutrino and photon field with different effective couplings. It causes different effective metrics and the emergence of superluminal neutrinos. Moreover, if the supernova and the earth are in the same plane parallel to the wall, or the thickness of the wall is much smaller than the distance from the supernova to the earth, the contradiction between OPERA and SN1987a can be reconciled.