Neutrino Oscillations as a Gravitational Wave Detector?

TL;DR

This paper explores how gravitational waves can influence neutrino oscillations, potentially enabling detection of stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds with future high-resolution neutrino experiments.

Contribution

It develops criteria for when neutrino oscillations are sensitive to gravitational waves and assesses the potential for current and future experiments to detect these effects.

Findings

Current experiments lack sensitivity to coherent gravitational waves.

Future experiments could probe stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds.

Significant improvements in energy resolution are required for detection.

Abstract

Gravitational waves (GWs) can alter the neutrino propagation distance and thus affect neutrino oscillations. This can result in a complete disappearance of the oscillatory behavior that competes with other sources of neutrino decoherence. We develop a set of criteria that determines under which conditions neutrino oscillations are sensitive to this effect. We find that current or near future neutrino oscillation experiments are not sufficiently sensitive to coherent GW signals but may probe the stochastic gravitational wave background if the energy resolution improves drastically by several orders of magnitude.