Neutrino oscillations as a novel probe for a minimal length

Abstract

We suggest that the presence of a quantum gravity induced minimal length can be explored using neutrino oscillation probabilities. Neutrinos seem ideally suited for this investigation because they can propagate freely over large distances and can therefore pile up minimal length effects beyond detectable thresholds. We determine the modified survival probability in a scenario with a minimal length and find deviations from the classical behaviour for high energies. We find that for the currently available experimental statistics the deviations from the standard oscillations do only allow for a bound of ${\ell }^{-1}\gtrsim 10\mathrm{GeV}$ from MINOS data. On the other hand, oscillations of high-energy neutrinos emitted by galactic and extragalactic sources are strongly suppressed, leading to a possible observation of quantum gravity effects at neutrino telescopes such as IceCube and ANTARES.

Comments: 11 pages, 3 figures; v2 title changed, minor modifications, references added; v3 new conclusions, updated plots, enlarged reference list, version in press on Classical and Quantum Gravity