Challenges Confronting Superluminal Neutrino Models

TL;DR

This paper reviews the experimental constraints and theoretical challenges faced by superluminal neutrino models, especially focusing on a neutrino dark energy model and the constraints from various observations and physical principles.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the constraints on superluminal neutrino models and discusses potential ways to evade these constraints within specific theoretical frameworks.

Findings

Experimental constraints from OPERA, MINOS, ICARUS, KamLAND, IceCube, LEP, and SN1987A.

Theoretical constraints from Cohen-Glashow bremsstrahlung and phase space considerations.

Possible evasion of constraints in models with superluminal velocities only inside dense media.

Abstract

This talk opens the CosPA2011 session on OPERA's superluminal neutrino claim. I summarize relevant observations and constraints from OPERA, MINOS, ICARUS, KamLAND, IceCube and LEP as well as observations of SN1987A. I selectively review some models of neutrino superluminality which have been proposed since OPERA's announcement, focusing on a neutrino dark energy model. Powerful theoretical constraints on these models arise from Cohen-Glashow bremsstrahlung and from phase space requirements for the initial neutrino production. I discuss these constraints and how they might be evaded in models in which the maximum velocities of both neutrinos and charged leptons are equal but only superluminal inside of a dense medium.