Probing Terrestrial Relic Neutrino Charge with Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

TL;DR

This paper proposes using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer to detect potential electric charge in relic neutrinos from the cosmic background, with sensitivity depending on quantum limits of measurement.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental approach to probe the electric charge of relic neutrinos using quantum-enhanced interferometry.

Findings

Sensitivity to neutrino charge can reach as low as 9.3×10⁻¹¹ at SQL

Sensitivity improves to 1.6×10⁻¹⁶ at Heisenberg limit

Super-Heisenberg limit allows probing down to 2.9×10⁻²²

Abstract

We propose a novel method to probe the cosmic neutrino background (CNB) which has been shown to be accumulated on the surface of the earth. If such relic neutrino carries non-zero electric charge, Mach-Zehnder interferometer offers a suitable venue to unveil its interaction with photons. For neutrino mass equals to 0.05 eV, the sensitivity reach of our proposal could probe the fractional electric charge of the neutrino $\epsilon_{\nu}$ as low as $9.3 \times 10^{-11},\, 1.6 \times 10^{-16}$, and $2.9 \times 10^{-22}$ provided that the interferometer operates at standard quantum limit (SQL), the Heisenberg limit as well as super-Heisenberg limit, respectively.