No Arabic abstract
Lorentz-violating neutrino parameters have been severely constrained on the basis of astrophysical considerations. In the high-energy limit, one generally assumes a superluminal dispersion relation of an incoming neutrino of the form E ~ |p|v, where E is the energy, p is the momentum and $v = sqrt(1 + delta) > 1. Lepton-pair creation due to a Cerenkov-radiation-like process (nu -> nu + e^- + e^+) becomes possible above a certain energy threshold, and bounds on the Lorentz-violating parameter delta can be derived. Here, we investigate a related process, nu_i -> nu_i + nu_f + bar_nu_f, where nu_i is an incoming neutrino mass eigenstate, while nu_f is the final neutrino mass eigenstate, with a superluminal velocity that is slightly slower than that of the initial state. This process is kinematically allowed if the Lorentz-violating parameters at high energy differ for the different neutrino mass eigenstates. Neutrino splitting is not subject to any significant energy threshold condition and could yield quite a substantial contribution to decay and energy loss processes at high energy, even if the differential Lorentz violation among neutrino flavors is severely constrained by other experiments. We also discuss the SU(2)-gauge invariance of the superluminal models and briefly discuss the use of a generalized vierbein formalism in the formulation of the Lorentz-violating Dirac equation.
The current paper is a technical work that is focused on Lorentz violation for Dirac fermions as well as neutrinos, described within the nonminimal Standard-Model Extension. We intend to derive two theoretical results. The first is the full propagator of the single-fermion Dirac theory modified by Lorentz violation. The second is the dispersion equation for a theory of $N$ neutrino flavors that enables the description of both Dirac and Majorana neutrinos. As the matrix structure of the neutrino field operator is very involved for generic $N$, we will use sophisticated methods of linear algebra to achieve our objectives. Our main finding is that the neutrino dispersion equation has the same structure in terms of Lorentz-violating operators as that of a modified single-fermion Dirac theory. The results will be valuable for phenomenological studies of Lorentz-violating Dirac fermions and neutrinos.
The current article reviews results on vacuum Cherenkov radiation obtained for modified fermions. Two classes of processes can occur that have completely distinct characteristics. The first one does not include a spin flip of the radiating fermion, whereas the second one does. A r{e}sum{e} will be given of the decay rates for these processes and their properties.
We compute the full vacuum polarization tensor in the minimal QED extension. We find that its low-energy limit is dominated by the radiatively induced Chern-Simons-like term and the high-energy limit is dominated by the c-type coefficients. We investigate the implications of the high-energy limit for the QED and QCD running couplings. In particular, the QCD running offers the possibility to study Lorentz-violating effects on the parton distribution functions and observables such as the hadronic R ratio.
We study an extension of QED involving a light pseudoscalar (an axion-like particle), together with a very massive fermion which has Lorentz-violating interactions with the photon and the pseudoscalar, including a nonminimal Lorentz-violating coupling. We investigate the low energy effective action for this model, after integration over the fermion field, and show that interesting results are obtained, such as the generation of a correction to the standard coupling between the axion-like particle and the photon, as well as Lorentz-violating effects in the interaction energy involving electromagnetic sources such as pointlike charges, steady line currents and Dirac strings.
The effect of Lorentz symmetry violation in the phenomenon of photon gravitational bending, is investigated. Using a semiclassical approach, where the photon is described by the Carrol-Field-Jackiw (CFJ) electrodynamics which is responsible for implementing the Lorentz symmetry violation, the gravitational deflection angle related to the CFJ photon is computed. As expected, this bending angle experiences a deviation from the usual Einstein result and the latter is recovered in the appropriate limit. A comparison between the theoretical prediction and the experimental results allows to conclude that no trace of Lorentz symmetry breaking is found provided the components of the background vector field are $lesssim 10^{-8}$ eV.