Effects of gravitational lensing on neutrino oscillation in Hu-Sawicki f(R) gravity

Abstract

Gravitational lensing serves as a powerful probe of compact astrophysical objects and dark matter distributions. As relativistic counterparts to photons, neutrinos experiencing lensing offer a complementary means to investigate the properties of curved spacetimes. This paper studies neutrino oscillations within the spacetime geometry described by the Hu-Sawicki f(R) gravity model, focusing on the modifications induced by gravitational lensing. We calculate the oscillation phases for both radial and non-radial neutrino propagation and derive the corresponding flavor transition probabilities for 2-flavor and 3-flavor scenarios under the weak-field approximation. Our analysis demonstrates that the lensing-affected oscillation probabilities exhibit a clear dependence on the Hu-Sawicki model parameter $\lambda$ , the neutrino mass hierarchy, and the absolute value of the lightest neutrino mass. Furthermore, extending the analysis beyond the weak-field regime reveals that strong-field gravitational lensing amplifies these effects. These results, while theoretical, indicate that future high-precision measurements of lensed neutrinos from compact astrophysical objects could, in principle, help test modified gravity models and constrain neutrino parameters, provided that experimental and wave-packet decoherence challenges are overcome.

Comments: 25 pages, 9 figures