Probing Superluminal Neutrinos Via Refraction

TL;DR

This paper explores the hypothesis that superluminal neutrinos may refract inside matter, proposing experimental tests for detecting such refraction effects to understand neutrino propagation better.

Contribution

It introduces the idea of neutrino refraction as a test for superluminal propagation and discusses potential experimental signatures and implications.

Findings

Refraction effects could impart measurable momentum to matter.

Detecting refraction would suggest new manipulation methods for neutrinos.

The scenario of superluminal neutrinos exhibiting refraction is considered unlikely.

Abstract

One phenomenological explanation of superluminal propagation of neutrinos, which may have been observed by OPERA and MINOS, is that neutrinos travel faster inside of matter than in vacuum. If so neutrinos exhibit refraction inside matter and should exhibit other manifestations of refraction, such as deflection and reflection. Such refraction would be easily detectable through the momentum imparted to appropriately shaped refractive material inserted into the neutrino beam. For NuMI this could be as large as ~10g cm/s. If these effect were found, they would provide new ways of manipulating and detecting neutrinos. Reasons why this scenario seems implausible are given, however it is still worthwhile to conduct simple searches for differential refraction of neutrinos.