Optical simulation of neutrino oscillations in binary waveguide arrays

TL;DR

This paper proposes an optical analogue of neutrino oscillations using binary waveguide arrays, demonstrating how nonlinear effects can suppress oscillations and predicting neutrino solitons, thus enabling laboratory simulations of particle physics phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optical system that models neutrino oscillations with coupled Dirac equations, including nonlinear effects and soliton predictions.

Findings

Neutrino oscillations can be quenched by nonlinear effects.

Existence of neutrino solitons predicted in the system.

Binary waveguide arrays can simulate particle physics phenomena.

Abstract

We theoretically propose and investigate an optical analogue of neutrino oscillations in a pair of vertically displaced binary waveguide arrays with longitudinally modulated effective refractive index. Optical propagation is modelled through coupled-mode equations, which in the continuous limit lead to two coupled Dirac equations for fermionic particles with different mass states, i.e. neutrinos. We demonstrate that neutrino oscillations can be quenched by nonlinear effects, and we predict the existence of neutrino solitons. Incidentally, these phenomena are expected to play an important role in massive supernova stars. Our results pave the way for using binary waveguide arrays as a classical laboratory for predicting exotic effects in particle physics and astrophysics.