The Price of Neutrino Superluminality continues to rise

TL;DR

This paper examines the theoretical challenges of explaining neutrino superluminality, proposing a phase transition in a hidden sector as a potential solution to reconcile experimental claims with observational constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a novel binary matter effect mechanism involving a phase transition in a hidden sector to explain neutrino superluminality.

Findings

Short-range matter effects are incompatible with fifth-force bounds.

A phase transition in a hidden sector could induce superluminality without conflicting with existing constraints.

High-energy particle velocities in dense matter have not been precisely measured before.

Abstract

We revisit the model building challenges that one faces when trying to reconcile the OPERA claim of neutrino superluminality with other observational constraints. The severity of the supernova bound and of the kinematical constraints of Cohen-Glashow type lead us to focus on scenarios where all types of particles are superluminal inside matter. In contrast to the Dvali-Vikman proposal, this matter effect needs to be very short-ranged to avoid constraints from experiments on the Earth's surface in low-density environments. Due to this short range, the interaction underlying such a matter effect would have to be far stronger than permitted by fifth-force bounds. As a conceivable way out we suggest to make the matter effect "binary", i.e., dense matter does not directly trigger superluminality, but merely induces the transition to a different phase of some weakly coupled hidden sector. This phase exhibits spontaneous Lorentz violation or at least a stronger than usual mediation of some residual Lorentz violation to all matter. The effect has not been observed before since we have never before been able to measure the velocity of high-energy particles in dense matter with sufficient precision.