Probing Cosmic Neutrino Background Charge via Unconventional Interferometer

TL;DR

This paper proposes using laser interferometry to detect potential electric charge of cosmic neutrinos by measuring phase shifts, offering a new method to probe neutrino properties with competitive sensitivity.

Contribution

Introduces a novel interferometry-based approach to detect cosmic neutrino background charge, achieving sensitivity comparable to existing bounds.

Findings

Can probe neutrino charge down to 10^{-18} e

Interferometry setup is feasible for detecting CNB neutrino charge

Provides a competitive alternative to laboratory and astrophysical bounds

Abstract

If neutrinos carry non-zero electric charge, they would interact directly with photons. This would induce a phase shift along the photon path in the optical experiment. We propose a novel idea to detect this phase shift induced by cosmic neutrino background (CNB) and the photon interaction using laser interferometry experiment. We show that our setup can probe the CNB neutrino charge in the order of $10^{-18} \,e- 10^{-17}\, e$. This is quite competitive with the existing upper bound on neutrino charge from both laboratory experiments and astrophysical observations.