Testing Lorentz and CPT Invariance with Neutrinos

Searches for Violation of CPT Symmetry and Lorentz Invariance with Astrophysical Neutrinos

Neutrinos are a powerful tool for searching physics beyond the standard model of elementary particles. In this review, we present the status of the research on charge-parity-time (CPT) symmetry and Lorentz invariance violations using neutrinos emitted from the collapse of stars such as supernovae and other astrophysical environments, such as gamma-ray bursts. Particularly, supernova neutrino fluxes may provide precious information because all neutrino and antineutrino flavors are emitted during a burst of tens of seconds. Models of quantum gravity may allow the violation of Lorentz invariance and possibly of CPT symmetry. Violation of Lorentz invariance may cause a modification of the dispersion relation and, therefore, in the neutrino group velocity as well in the neutrino wave packet. These changes can affect the arrival time signal registered in astrophysical neutrino detectors. Direction or time-dependent oscillation probabilities and anisotropy of the neutrino velocity are manifestations of the same kind of new physics. CPT violation, on the other hand, may be responsible for different oscillation patterns for neutrino and antineutrino and unconventional energy dependency of the oscillation phase or of the mixing angles. Future perspectives for possible CPT and Lorentz violating systems are also presented.

Formal Developments for Lorentz-Violating Dirac Fermions and Neutrinos

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.