Subluminal OPERA Neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper proposes a kinematical resolution to the OPERA neutrino anomaly, suggesting neutrinos are subluminal relative to the true speed of light, and presents models based on various bosonic fields to support this idea.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interpretation that neutrinos are subluminal, not superluminal, and provides concrete models with bosonic fields to realize this concept.

Findings

Neutrinos travel faster than observed light but slower than true light in vacuum.

Models based on spin 0, 1, and 2 bosonic fields support the subluminal neutrino hypothesis.

The principle of invariant light speed can be replaced with a universal limiting speed.

Abstract

The OPERA collaboration has announced to have observed superluminal neutrinos with a mean energy 17.5 GeV, but afterward the superluminal interpretation of the OPERA results has been refuted theoretically by Cherenkov-like radiation and pion decay. In a recent work, we have proposed a kinematical resolution to this problem. A key idea in our resolution is that the OPERA neutrinos are not superluminal but subluminal since they travel faster than the observed speed of light in vacuum on the earth while they do slower than the true speed of light in vacuum determining the causal structure of events. In this article, we dwell upon our ideas and present some concrete models, which realize our ideas, based on spin 0, 1 and 2 bosonic fields. We also discuss that the principle of invariant speed of light in special relativity can be replaced with the principle of a universal limiting speed.