LETTER: Neutrino Oscillations Induced by Gravitational Recoil Effects

Quantum gravitational fluctuations of the space-time background, described by virtual D branes, may induce the neutrino oscillations if a tiny violation of the Lorentz invariance (or a violation of the equivalence principle) is required. In this approach, the oscillation length of massless neutrinos turns out to be proportional to E ^–2 M, where E is the neutrino energy and M is the mass scale characterizing the topological fluctuations in the vacuum. Such a functional dependence on the energy is the same obtained in the framework of loop quantum gravity.