IceCube and GRB neutrinos propagating in quantum spacetime

TL;DR

This paper proposes a data analysis strategy to detect potential quantum-spacetime effects on neutrino propagation by examining correlations between neutrino energies and GRB observation times in IceCube data.

Contribution

It introduces a versatile analysis method applicable to various quantum-spacetime neutrino propagation models, identifying significant correlations in IceCube data.

Findings

Detected a strong correlation between neutrino energy and GRB trigger time differences.

Estimated a false alarm probability of about 1%, indicating potential quantum-spacetime effects.

Supports further investigation into quantum gravity signatures in neutrino data.

Abstract

Two recent publications have reported intriguing analyses, tentatively suggesting that some aspects of IceCube data might be manifestations of quantum-gravity-modified laws of propagation for neutrinos. We here propose a strategy of data analysis which has the advantage of being applicable to several alternative possibilities for the laws of propagation of neutrinos in a quantum spacetime. In all scenarios here of interest one should find a correlation between the energy of an observed neutrino and the difference between the time of observation of that neutrino and the trigger time of a GRB. We select accordingly some GRB-neutrino candidates among IceCube events, and our data analysis finds a rather strong such correlation. This sort of studies naturally lends itself to the introduction of a "false alarm probability", which for our analysis we estimate conservatively to be of 1%. We therefore argue that our findings should motivate a vigorous program of investigation following the strategy here advocated.