Long-range interaction effects on neutrino oscillation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a very light gauge boson with weak coupling could cause significant long-range interaction effects on neutrino oscillations, impacting current and future experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a model of long-range neutrino interactions via an extremely light gauge boson and analyzes its potential effects on neutrino oscillation experiments.

Findings

Long-range interactions can significantly alter atmospheric neutrino disappearance.

Effects are detectable with IceCube DeepCore and future experiments.

The model remains consistent with current experimental bounds.

Abstract

Motivated by the recent anomaly in the muon neutrino and anti-muon neutrino disappearance experiments, we consider a long-range interaction with an extremely light gauge boson and extraordinarily weak coupling. A long-range interaction, consistent with current bounds, could have very pronounced effects on atmospheric neutrino disappearance that will be studied with the IceCube DeepCore array, currently in operation, and can have a significant effect on future high-precision long-baseline oscillation experiments.