Search for quantum gravity using astrophysical neutrino flavour with IceCube
Planck
General Physics and Astronomy
115
GeV
7. Clean energy
UHE
01 natural sciences
Mathematical Sciences
space-time, defect
High Energy Physics - Experiment
IceCube
High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
propagation
info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/530
astro-ph.HE
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
new physics
Physics
ddc:530
quantum mechanics
Particle and High Energy Physics
suppression
Nuclear and Plasma Physics
Physical sciences
observatory
neutrino, flavor
kinematics
Physical Sciences
Particle astrophysics
Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Fluids & Plasmas
interferometer
Mathematical sciences
FOS: Physical sciences
scale, Planck
530
interference, quantum
phase shift
0103 physical sciences
structure
quantum gravity, effect
hep-ex
big bang
Physics and Astronomy
13. Climate action
gravitation
quantum gravity
Experimental particle physics
DOI:
10.1038/s41567-022-01762-1
Publication Date:
2022-10-24T16:03:59Z
AUTHORS (383)
ABSTRACT
The main text is 7 pages with 3 figures and 1 table. The Appendix includes 5 pages with 3 figures<br/>Along their long propagation from production to detection, neutrino states undergo quantum interference which converts their types, or flavours. High-energy astrophysical neutrinos, first observed by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, are known to propagate unperturbed over a billion light years in vacuum. These neutrinos act as the largest quantum interferometer and are sensitive to the smallest effects in vacuum due to new physics. Quantum gravity (QG) aims to describe gravity in a quantum mechanical framework, unifying matter, forces and space-time. QG effects are expected to appear at the ultra-high-energy scale known as the Planck energy, $E_{P}\equiv 1.22\times 10^{19}$~giga-electronvolts (GeV). Such a high-energy universe would have existed only right after the Big Bang and it is inaccessible by human technologies. On the other hand, it is speculated that the effects of QG may exist in our low-energy vacuum, but are suppressed by the Planck energy as $E_{P}^{-1}$ ($\sim 10^{-19}$~GeV$^{-1}$), $E_{P}^{-2}$ ($\sim 10^{-38}$~GeV$^{-2}$), or its higher powers. The coupling of particles to these effects is too small to measure in kinematic observables, but the phase shift of neutrino waves could cause observable flavour conversions. Here, we report the first result of neutrino interferometry~\cite{Aartsen:2017ibm} using astrophysical neutrino flavours to search for new space-time structure. We did not find any evidence of anomalous flavour conversion in IceCube astrophysical neutrino flavour data. We place the most stringent limits of any known technologies, down to $10^{-42}$~GeV$^{-2}$, on the dimension-six operators that parameterize the space-time defects for preferred astrophysical production scenarios. For the first time, we unambiguously reach the signal region of quantum-gravity-motivated physics.<br/>
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