Symmetric teleparallel gravitational effects on solar neutrino oscillations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how neutrino oscillations are affected by symmetric teleparallel gravity, a novel geometric framework, and suggests that neutrino behavior can serve as a new test for this gravity theory using astrophysical data.

Contribution

It provides the first analysis of neutrino oscillations in symmetric teleparallel gravity, deriving the Dirac Hamiltonian and phase differences in this framework, and constrains model parameters with observational data.

Findings

Derived the Dirac Hamiltonian in symmetric teleparallel gravity.

Calculated phase differences affecting neutrino oscillations.

Placed upper bounds on coupling constants based on observations.

Abstract

Neutrino oscillations probe the quantum gravity interface in unique ways. While gravitational effects on neutrinos are well studied in general relativity and torsion based geometries, the symmetric teleparallel regime where gravity stems solely from non-metricity, with zero curvature and torsion has remained uncharted. In this work, we perform the first analysis of neutrino oscillations in such a spacetime. Using the reduced Kerr metric in coincident gauge for the slowly rotating and weakly gravitating spherical Sun, we derive the Dirac Hamiltonian from the generalized Dirac equation and compute the accumulated phase of neutrino mass eigenstates. There are six free coupling constants in our model. Based on certain observational inputs, we inferred upper bounds on our arbitrary coupling constants. This allowed us to simplify the otherwise cumbersome calculations to some extent. Ultimately, we computed the phase differences that play a crucial role in solar neutrino oscillations and analyzed the contributions arising from our arbitrary coupling constants. Our results establish neutrino oscillations as a novel probe of non-metricity and open a new avenue for testing symmetric teleparallel gravity through astrophysical observations.