No Arabic abstract
Momentum-space curvature, which is expected in some approaches to the quantum-gravity problem, can produce dual redshift, a feature which introduces energy dependence of the travel times of ultrarelativistic particles, and dual lensing, a feature which mainly affects the direction of observation of particles. In our recent arXiv:1605.00496 we explored the possibility that dual redshift might be relevant in the analysis of IceCube neutrinos, obtaining results which are preliminarily encouraging. Here we explore the possibility that also dual lensing might play a role in the analysis of IceCube neutrinos. In doing so we also investigate issues which are of broader interest, such as the possibility of estimating the contribution by background neutrinos and some noteworthy differences between candidate early neutrinos and candidate late neutrinos.
Two recent publications have reported intriguing analyses, tentatively suggesting that some aspects of IceCube data might be manifestations of quantum-gravity-modified laws of propagation for neutrinos. We here propose a strategy of data analysis which has the advantage of being applicable to several alternative possibilities for the laws of propagation of neutrinos in a quantum spacetime. In all scenarios here of interest one should find a correlation between the energy of an observed neutrino and the difference between the time of observation of that neutrino and the trigger time of a GRB. We select accordingly some GRB-neutrino candidates among IceCube events, and our data analysis finds a rather strong such correlation. This sort of studies naturally lends itself to the introduction of a false alarm probability, which for our analysis we estimate conservatively to be of 1%. We therefore argue that our findings should motivate a vigorous program of investigation following the strategy here advocated.
In a recent paper, we introduced a new discretization scheme for gravity in 2+1 dimensions. Starting from the continuum theory, this new scheme allowed us to rigorously obtain the discrete phase space of loop gravity, coupled to particle-like edge mode degrees of freedom. In this work, we expand on that result by considering the most general choice of integration during the discretization process. We obtain a family of polarizations of the discrete phase space. In particular, one member of this family corresponds to the usual loop gravity phase space, while another corresponds to a new polarization, dual to the usual one in several ways. We study its properties, including the relevant constraints and the symmetries they generate. Furthermore, we motivate a relation between the dual polarization and teleparallel gravity.
It was recently realized that Planck-scale momentum-space curvature, which is expected in some approaches to the quantum-gravity problem, can produce dual-curvature lensing, a feature which mainly affects the direction of observation of particles emitted by very distant sources. Several gray areas remain in our understanding of dual-curvature lensing, including the possibility that it might be just a coordinate artifact and the possibility that it might be in some sense a by product of the better studied dual-curvature redshift. We stress that data reported by the IceCube neutrino telescope should motivate a more vigorous effort of investigation of dual-curvature lensing, and we observe that studies of the recently proposed $rho$-Minkowski noncommutative spacetime could be valuable from this perspective. Through a dedicated $rho$-Minkowski analysis, we show that dual-curvature lensing is not merely a coordinate artifact and that it can be present even in theories without dual-curvature redshift.
The flavor composition of astrophysical neutrinos observed in neutrino telescopes is a powerful discriminator between different astrophysical neutrino production mechanisms and can also teach us about the particle physics properties of neutrinos. In this paper, we investigate how the possible existence of light sterile neutrinos can affect these flavor ratios. We consider two scenarios: (i) neutrino production in conventional astrophysical sources, followed by partial oscillation into sterile states; (ii) neutrinos from dark matter decay with a primary flavor composition enhanced in tau neutrinos or sterile neutrinos. Throughout the paper, we constrain the sterile neutrino mixing parameters from a full global fit to short and long baseline data. We present our results in the form of flavor triangles and, for scenario (ii), as exclusion limits on the dark matter mass and lifetime, derived from a fit to IceCube high energy starting events and through-going muons. We argue that identifying a possible flux of neutrinos from dark matter decay may require analyzing the flavor composition as a function of neutrino energy.
Treating general relativity as an effective field theory, we compute the leading-order quantum corrections to the orbits and gravitational-wave emission of astrophysical compact binaries. These corrections are independent of the (unknown) nature of quantum gravity at high energies, and generate a phase shift and amplitude increase in the observed gravitational-wave signal. Unfortunately (but unsurprisingly), these corrections are undetectably small, even in the most optimistic observational scenarios.