TeV neutrinos and GeV photons from shock breakout in supernovae

We show that as a Type II supernova shock breaks out of its progenitor star, it becomes collisionless and may accelerate protons to energies >10 TeV. Inelastic nuclear collisions of these protons produce an approximately 1 h long flash of TeV neutrinos and 10 GeV photons, about 10 h after the thermal (10 MeV) neutrino burst from the cooling neutron star. A Galactic supernova in a red supergiant star would produce a photon and neutrino flux of approximately 10(-4) erg cm(-2) s(-1). A km(2) neutrino detector will detect approximately 100 muons, thus allowing to constrain both supernova models and neutrino properties.     

Constraining Hořava–Lifshitz gravity from neutrino speed experiments

We constrain Ho?ava–Lifshitz gravity using the results of the OPERA and ICARUS neutrino speed experiments, which show that neutrinos are luminal particles, as found from examining the fermion propagation in the earth’s gravitational field. In particular, investigating the Dirac equation in the spherical solutions of the theory, we find that the neutrinos feel an effective metric with respect to which they might propagate superluminally. Therefore, in demanding not to have superluminal or subluminal motion we constrain the parameters of the theory. Although the excluded parameter regions are very narrow, we find that the detailed balance case lies in the excluded region.     

A high-energy neutrino signature from supersymmetric relics

We compute the energy spectrum of high-energy (0.1–10 GeV) neutrinos produced by the annihilation of supersymmetric (SUSY) cold dark matter trapped in the sun. We compare this spectrum to the spectrum of atmospheric neutrinos and find that in the direction of the sun the solar flux of neutrinos can exceed the atmospheric background for neutrino energies E_ν 1 GeV, and are as much as a factor 30 above background for energies E_ν few GeV. We discuss these signatures for standard SUSY relics as well as for superstring relics.     

Sneutrino dark matter in gauged inverse seesaw models for neutrinos

Extending the minimal supersymmetric standard model to explain small neutrino masses via the inverse seesaw mechanism can lead to a new light supersymmetric scalar partner which can play the role of inelastic dark matter (IDM). It is a linear combination of the superpartners of the neutral fermions in the theory (the light left-handed neutrino and two heavy standard model singlet neutrinos) which can be very light with mass in ~5-20 GeV range, as suggested by some current direct detection experiments. The IDM in this class of models has keV-scale mass splitting, which is intimately connected to the small Majorana masses of neutrinos. We predict the differential scattering rate and annual modulation of the IDM signal which can be testable at future germanium- and xenon-based detectors.     

Signatures for Majorana neutrinos at hadron colliders

The Majorana nature of neutrinos may only be experimentally verified via lepton-number violating processes involving charged leptons. We explore the Delta L = 2 like-sign dilepton production at hadron colliders to search for signals of Majorana neutrinos. We find significant sensitivity for resonant production of a Majorana neutrino in the mass range of 10-80 GeV at the current run of the Tevatron with 2 fb(-1) integrated luminosity and in the range of 10-400 GeV at the CERN LHC with 100 fb(-1).     

A model of superluminal neutrinos

Motivated by the tentative observation of superluminal neutrinos by the OPERA experiment, we present a model of active-sterile neutrino oscillations in which sterile neutrinos are superluminal and active neutrinos appear superluminal by virtue of neutrino mixing. The model demonstrates some interesting possibilities and challenges that apply to a large class of models aiming to explain the OPERA result.     

Superluminal neutrinos at OPERA confront pion decay kinematics

Violation of Lorentz invariance (VLI) has been suggested as an explanation of the superluminal velocities of muon neutrinos reported by OPERA. In this Letter, we show that the amount of VLI required to explain this result poses severe difficulties with the kinematics of the pion decay, extending its lifetime and reducing the momentum carried away by the neutrinos. We show that the OPERA experiment limits α=(ν(ν)-c)/c<4×10(-6). We then take recourse to cosmic-ray data on the spectrum of muons and neutrinos generated in Earth's atmosphere to provide a stronger bound on VLI: (ν-c)/c<10(-12).     

Superluminal neutrinos from Lorentz-violating dimension-5 operators

We consider Lorentz- and CPT-violating dimension-5 operators to address the issue of superluminal neutrinos recently pointed out in OPERA experiments. We assume these operators in the photon and neutrino sectors to be coupled to Lorentz-violating backgrounds in a preferred frame defined by a time-like direction. We show that such operators can produce a curve with OPERA’s slope that fits OPERA, MINOS and supernova SN1987a data.     

Constraining the spectrum of supernova neutrinos from nu-process induced light element synthesis

We constrain energy spectra of supernova neutrinos through the avoidance of an overproduction of the 11B abundance during Galactic chemical evolution. In supernova nucleosynthesis calculations with a parametrized neutrino spectrum as a function of temperature of nu(mu,tau) and nu(mu,tau) and total neutrino energy, we find a strong neutrino temperature dependence of the 11B yield. When the yield is combined with observed abundances, the acceptable range of the nu(mu,tau) and nu(mu,tau) temperature is found to be 4.8 to 6.6 MeV. Nonzero neutrino chemical potentials would reduce this temperature range by about 10% for a degeneracy parameter eta(nu) = mu(nu)/kT(nu) smaller than 3.     

Solar neutrinos: probing the quasi-isothermal solar core produced by supersymmetric dark matter particles

SNO measurements strongly constrain the central temperature of the Sun, to within a precision of much less than 1%. This result can be used to probe the parameter space of supersymmetric dark matter. In this first analysis we find a lower limit for the weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) mass of 60 GeV. Furthermore, in the event that WIMPs create a quasi-isothermal core, they will produce a peculiar distribution of the solar neutrino fluxes measured on Earth. Typically, a WIMP with a mass of 100 GeV and annihilation cross section of 10(-34) cm(3)/sec will decrease the neutrino predictions, by up to 4% for the Cl, by 3% for the heavy water, and by 1% for the Ga detectors.     

Non-standard interactions using the OPERA experiment

We investigate the implications of non-standard interactions on neutrino oscillations in the OPERA experiment. In particular, we study the non-standard interaction parameter ε _{μ τ} . We show that the OPERA experiment has a unique opportunity to reduce the allowed region for this parameter compared with other experiments such as the MINOS experiment, mostly due to the higher neutrino energies in the CNGS beam compared to the NuMI beam. We find that OPERA is mainly sensitive to a combination of standard and non-standard parameters and that a resulting anti-resonance effect could suppress the expected number of events. Furthermore, we show that running OPERA for five years each with neutrinos and anti-neutrinos would help in resolving the degeneracy between the standard parameters and ε _{μ τ} . This scenario is significantly better than the scenario with a simple doubling of the statistics by running with neutrinos for ten years.     

Neutrinos in a Vacuum Dominated Cosmology

We explore the dynamics of neutrinos in a vacuum dominated cosmology. First we show that such a geometry will induce a phase change in the eigenstates of a massive neutrino and we calculate the phase change. We also calculate the delay in the neutrino flight times in this geometry. Applying our results to the presently observed background vacuum energy density, we find that for neutrino sources further than 1.5 Gpc away both effects become non-trivial, being of the order of the standard relativistic corrections. Such sources are within the observable Hubble Deep Field. The results which are theoretically interesting are also potentially useful, in the future, as detection techniques improve. For example such effects on neutrinos from distant sources like supernovae could be used, in an independent method alternative to standard candles, to constrain the dark energy density and the deceleration parameter. The discussion is extended to investigate Caianiello's inertial or maximal acceleration (MA) effects of such a vacuum dominated spacetime on neutrino oscillations. Assuming that the MA phenomenon exists, we find that its form as generated by the presently observed vacuum energy density would still have little or no measurable effect on neutrino phase evolution, for neutrinos in the energy range of a few eV.     

Interpreting OPERA results on superluminal neutrino

OPERA has claimed the discovery of superluminal propagation of neutrinos. We analyze the consistency of this claim with previous tests of special relativity. We find that reconciling the OPERA measurement with information from SN1987a and from neutrino oscillations requires stringent conditions. The superluminal limit velocity of neutrinos must be nearly flavor independent, must decrease steeply in the low-energy domain, and its energy dependence must depart from a simple power law. We construct illustrative models that satisfy these conditions, by introducing Lorentz violation in a sector with light sterile neutrinos. We point out that, quite generically, electroweak quantum corrections transfer the information of superluminal neutrino properties into Lorentz violations in the electron and muon sector, in apparent conflict with experimental data.     

Bi-large Neutrino Mixing See-Saw Mass Matrix with Texture Zeros and Leptogenesis

We study constraints on neutrino properties for a class of bi-large mixing See-Saw mass matrices with texture zeros and with the related Dirac neutrino mass matrix to be proportional to a diagonal matrix of the form diag(ε,1,1). Texture zeros may occur in the light (class a) or in the heavy (class b) neutrino mass matrices. Each of these two classes has 5 different forms which can produce non-trivial three generation mixing with at least one texture zero. We find that two types of texture zero mass matrices in both class a and class b can be consistent with present data on neutrino masses and mixing. None of the neutrinos can have zero masses and the lightest of the light neutrinos has a mass larger than about 0.046 eV for class a and 0.0027 eV for class b. In these models although the CKM CP violating phase vanishes, the non-zero Majorana phases can exist and can play an important role in producing the observed baryon asymmetry in our universe through leptogenesis mechanism. The requirement of producing the observed baryon asymmetry can further distinguish different models and also restrict the See-Saw scale to be in the range of 10¹²～10¹⁵ GeV. We also discuss RG effects on V₁₃.     

Proposal for a supersymmetric standard model

The fact that neutrinos are massive suggests that the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) might be extended in order to include three gauge-singlet neutrino superfields with Yukawa couplings of the type H2Lnuc. We propose to use these superfields to solve the mu problem of the MSSM without having to introduce an extra singlet superfield as in the case of the next-to-MSSM (NMSSM). In particular, terms of the type nuc H1H2 in the superpotential may carry out this task spontaneously through neutrino vacuum expectation values. In addition, terms of the type (nuc)3 avoid the presence of axions and generate effective Majorana masses for neutrinos at the electroweak scale. On the other hand, these terms break lepton number and R parity explicitly. For Dirac masses of the neutrinos of order 10(-4) GeV, eigenvalues reproducing the correct scale of neutrino masses are obtained.     

Neutrino cross sections and future observations of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays

We show that future detectors of ultrahigh-energy cosmic-ray neutrinos will be able to measure neutrino-nucleon cross section, sigma(nu N), at energies as high as 10(11) GeV or higher. We find that the flux of upgoing charged leptons per unit surface area produced by neutrino interactions below the surface is inversely proportional to sigma(nu N). This contrasts with the rate of horizontal air showers (HAS) due to neutrino interactions in the atmosphere, which is proportional to sigma(nu N). Thus, by comparing the HAS and upgoing air shower rates, the neutrino-nucleon cross section can be inferred. Taken together, upgoing and horizontal rates ensure a healthy total event rate, regardless of the value of sigma(nu N).     

Constraining neutrino superluminality from searches for sterile neutrino decays

Superluminal neutrinos are expected to lose energy due to bremsstrahlung. It is dominated by e⁺e⁻$e^{+}{e}^{-}$-pair production if kinematically allowed. The same signature was used in searches for 3-body decays of hypothetical heavy sterile neutrinos. From the published analyses of these searches performed by CERN PS191 and CHARM experiments we set upper limits on the neutrino velocity in the energy range from 0.2 GeV to 280 GeV. Our limits are well below the neutrino velocity favored by the recent OPERA results. For energy-independent neutrino velocity the limits obtained in this Letter are stronger than those coming from ICARUS experiment and observations of Supernova SN1987a.     

Neutrino mass and mixing constrained from the LMC supernova burst

Observation of the prompt neutronization burst by Kamiokande II is shown to constrain the mixing parameter sin²ϑ of a 10–100 eV mass range neutrino less than 10⁻⁷, implying that the neutrino is unlikely to provide the critical mass of the universe except in a special case of a neutrino decoupled from other lighter neutrinos. Model dependent bounds on neutrino masses are also given for a class of neutrino mixing models.     

The seesaw mechanism at TeV scale in the 3-3-1 model with right-handed neutrinos

We implement the seesaw mechanism in the 3-3-1 model with right-handed neutrinos. This will be accomplished by the introduction of a scalar sextet into the model and the spontaneous violation of lepton number. The main result of this work is that the seesaw mechanism can work already at the TeV scale with the consequence that the right-handed neutrino masses lie in the electroweak scale, in the range from MeV to tens of GeV. This window provides a great opportunity to test their appearance at current detectors, though when we contrast our results with some previous analyses concerning the detection sensitivity at LHC, we conclude that further work is needed in order to validate this search.     

Particle physics on ice: constraints on neutrino interactions far above the weak scale

Ultrahigh energy cosmic rays and neutrinos probe energies far above the weak scale. Their usefulness might appear to be limited by astrophysical uncertainties; however, by simultaneously considering up- and down-going events, one may disentangle particle physics from astrophysics. We show that present data from the AMANDA experiment in the South Pole ice already imply an upper bound on neutrino cross sections at energy scales that will likely never be probed at man-made accelerators. The existing data also place an upper limit on the neutrino flux valid for any neutrino cross section. In the future, similar analyses of IceCube data will constrain neutrino properties and fluxes at the theta(10%) level.