Violation of Equivalence Principle in Neutrino Sector: Probing the Extended Parameter Space

TL;DR

This paper explores how potential violations of the Equivalence Principle could affect neutrino oscillations, using data from IceCube and projections for IceCube-Gen2 to constrain these effects.

Contribution

It introduces an extended parameter space for VEP and analyzes its impact on neutrino oscillations, providing new constraints and sensitivity projections.

Findings

VEP parameters are severely constrained by atmospheric and cosmic neutrino data

IceCube-Gen2 can improve sensitivity to VEP effects

Neutrino oscillation data can test fundamental principles of gravity

Abstract

The oscillation of neutrino flavors, due to its interferometry nature, is extremely sensitive to the phase differences developing during the propagation of neutrinos. In this paper we investigate the effect of the Violation of Equivalence Principle (VEP) on the flavor oscillation probabilities of atmospheric and cosmic neutrinos observed at neutrino telescopes such as IceCube. Assuming a general parameterization of VEP, dubbed extended parameter space, we show that the synergy between the collected data of high energy atmospheric and cosmic neutrinos severely constrains the VEP parameters. Also, the projected sensitivity of IceCube-Gen2 to VEP parameters is discussed.