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Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 1833–1835 (1991)

Can the Sun shed light on neutrino gravitational interactions?

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A. Halprin and C. N. Leung
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716

Received 30 July 1991; published in the issue dated 30 September 1991

We have examined the effects of a large gravitational field on the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations as contemplated in the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein mechanism. We find that the Sun’s gravitational field would amplify any small breakdown in the universality of the gravitational coupling by many orders of magnitude. A breakdown of only 1 part in 1014 would still make the gravitational effect comparable to the conventional weak interaction. The differing energy dependences of the two level-crossing mechanisms can therefore be used as a very sensitive tool to test the conventional universality hypothesis.

© 1991 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.67.1833
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.67.1833
PACS:
96.60.Kx, 04.80.+z, 12.15.Ff, 14.60.Gh