Abstract

The emission of a charged light lepton pair by a superluminal neutrino has been identified as a major factor in the energy loss of highly energetic neutrinos. The observation of PeV neutrinos by IceCube implies their stability against lepton pair Cerenkov radiation. Under the assumption of a Lorentz-violating dispersion relation for highly energetic superluminal neutrinos, one may thus constrain the Lorentz-violating parameters. A kinematically different situation arises when one assumes a Lorentz-covariant, space-like dispersion relation for hypothetical tachyonic neutrinos, as an alternative to Lorentz-violating theories. We here discuss a hitherto neglected decay process, where a highly energetic tachyonic neutrino may emit other (space-like, tachyonic) neutrino pairs. We find that the space-like dispersion relation implies the absence of a q2 threshold for the production of a tachyonic neutrino-antineutrino pair, thus leading to the dominant additional energy loss mechanism for an oncoming tachyonic neutrino in the medium-energy domain. Surprisingly, the small absolute values of the decay rate and energy loss rate in the tachyonic model imply that these models, in contrast to the Lorentz-violating theories, are not pressured by the cosmic PeV neutrinos registered by the IceCube collaboration.

Department(s)

Physics

Comments

This research has been supported by the NSF (Grant PHY-1403937) and by a Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Keywords and Phrases

Parity; Solitons; Balanced gain

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1687-7357; 1687-7365

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2017 Ulrich D. Jentschura and Istvan Nandori, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publication Date

01 Nov 2017

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