Neutrino oscillations and Lorentz invariance violation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Lorentz invariance violation affects neutrino oscillations, especially at high energies, suggesting that such effects could indicate fundamental space-time discreteness.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis of neutrino oscillations considering Lorentz invariance violation in various media, highlighting potential observable signals at high energies.

Findings

High energy neutrino oscillations due to mass differences are suppressed.

Lorentz invariance violation contributes significantly to neutrino oscillations at high energies.

Observation of high energy neutrino oscillations could signal space-time discreteness.

Abstract

Lorentz invariance is a well known fundamental concept of special relativity but its violation is predicted by some variations of quantum gravity, string theory, and some alternatives to general relativity. We study neutrino oscillation at the presence of the Lorentz invariance violation in vacuum, normal and nuclear media. It is shown that for very high energy neutrinos the neutrino oscillations due to mass difference is suppressed and its contribution to the conversion probability is negligibly small, but the contribution of the Lorentz invariance violation term is not zero. This means that the observation of very high energy neutrino oscillations may be a signal of the discreteness of space and Lorentz invariance violation.