Frontiers in Science

p-ISSN: 2166-6083    e-ISSN: 2166-6113

2016;  6(2): 36-39

doi:10.5923/j.fs.20160602.02

 

Neutrino Oscillations Hint at a New Fundamental Interaction

Mário Everaldo de Souza

Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brazil

Correspondence to: Mário Everaldo de Souza, Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brazil.

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Copyright © 2016 Scientific & Academic Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).
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Abstract

Taking into account the weaknesses of the neutrino oscillation proposal with respect to the experimental data, either the lack of tau neutrino fluxes or the latest results of the Daya Bay Collaboration, it is proposed that the electron neutrino production at the Sun’s core in the pp and CNO cycles should be much larger than what is predicted by the Standard Solar Model, due to the action of a new interaction of matter which has recently been reported. This conclusion is achieved because it is shown that the interaction of electron neutrinos in the Sun’s core medium due to the new interaction cannot account for the observed electron neutrino deficits on Earth. It is implied, therefore, that, in their quest for proving neutrino oscillations, many experiments on neutrinos have found important features of this new interaction of matter.

Keywords: Neutrino, Neutrino Oscillations, New Fundamental Interaction

Cite this paper: Mário Everaldo de Souza, Neutrino Oscillations Hint at a New Fundamental Interaction, Frontiers in Science, Vol. 6 No. 2, 2016, pp. 36-39. doi: 10.5923/j.fs.20160602.02.

Article Outline

1. Introduction
2. A General Critique for the Neutrino Oscillation Proposal
    2.1. Lack of Detection of Tau Neutrino Fluxes
    2.2. Lack of Decays Violating Lepton Number
    2.3. Why the Strange Preference for the Tau Neutrino?
    2.4. Other Important Criticisms
3. Report of a New Fundamental Interaction
4. Tentative Solution to the Solar Neutrino Puzzle
5. A Possible Line of Solution to the Solar Neutrino Puzzle
6. Conclusions

1. Introduction

Electron neutrinos are copiously produced in the interiors of stars. In stars like the sun they are mainly produced in the pp cycle which dominates the fusion process in cool stars. This process generates a certain electron neutrino flux which would be expected to be detected at the Earth. The Super-Kamiokande data [1, 2] show that only about 45% of the predicted flux for 8B electron neutrinos is actually detected. Other experiments with atmospheric electron neutrinos have also reported electron neutrino fluxes with deficits with respect to those predicted by the standard solar model [3-8]. There have also been reports of electron neutrino deficits from reactors [9, 10]. The neutrino oscillation proposal explains the above problem by supposing that the electron neutrinos are changed into the other neutrino flavors, muon and tau neutrinos, especially to tau neutrinos, through the Mikheyev–Smirnov– Wolfenstein mechanism [11-13].

2. A General Critique for the Neutrino Oscillation Proposal

The neutrino oscillation proposal has a long list of flaws from which I present below only 3 very relevant ones.

2.1. Lack of Detection of Tau Neutrino Fluxes

The enhancement in tau neutrino fluxes due to neutrino oscillations has not been measured. Actually only the DONUT collaboration [14, 15] from Fermilab detected tau neutrinos from the annihilation of pairs, and the OPERA collaboration [16] found one tau neutrino in its quest for neutrino oscillations. The lack of fluxes invalidates the claim for the neutrino oscillations and

2.2. Lack of Decays Violating Lepton Number

According to the neutrino oscillation proposal the three neutrino flavors would be resonant states of the same particle. If this were true we would observe, for example, the weak decays but such decays have not been observed at all.

2.3. Why the Strange Preference for the Tau Neutrino?

If the disappearance of electron solar neutrinos were caused by oscillations we would detect a very high flux of muon neutrinos, but what has been reported is exactly the opposite, and there is also a supposed muon neutrino deficit [17]. Why would both neutrinos and prefer to change to which, according to the neutrino oscillation proposal, would be the most massive neutrino? Why not the opposite, that is, the oscillation of and to ? In such a case we would observe higher fluxes of

2.4. Other Important Criticisms

Other researchers have raised inconsistencies of the neutrino oscillations proposal. For example, LoSecco [18] discusses inconsistencies in the atmospheric neutrino data with respect to the ratio between muon neutrinos to electron neutrinos. Another important point, raised by Beshtoev [19], is the question on what kind of neutrinos are suffering oscillations: real neutrinos or virtual neutrinos? Beshtoev also shows that “neutrino oscillations in matter cannot be realized without violation of the law of energy-momentum conservation”.

3. Report of a New Fundamental Interaction

On the other hand there have been theoretical proposals for a fifth force of nature [20], and a recent report on the observation of a new fundamental interaction of matter [21, 22] mediated by a light boson. The data of reference 22 was carefully analyzed in detail by Feng et al. [22]. They reinforce the idea of a new fundamental force of nature mediated by means of a light vector boson X with a mass of about 17 MeV which, although produced through hadronic couplings, only decays to and . Therefore, it is expected that neutrinos should interact with matter by means of this interaction. It is also expected that there should be interplays between this new interaction and the weak interaction because both interactions involve leptons. It is important at this point to comment Daya Bay Collaboration results. This collaboration had reported in 2012 [10] a disappearance of about 6% in the electron antineutrino flux along a distance of 1648 m with respect to the produced flux according to the current models of nuclear theory, but in a paper that has just been published [23] the collaboration corrects the previous results because they report now that the actual production is 6% larger than that one expected from the theoretical nuclear models, and thus, this invalidates their previous disappearance claims.

4. Tentative Solution to the Solar Neutrino Puzzle

Although we do not know much yet on this new interaction above discussed, which will be the subject of many experiments throughout the world in the near future, we can propose that the electron neutrinos interact with matter in the Sun’s core and that this is the reason for the disappearance of part of their flux produced in the pp and CNO cycles, and their disappearance in experiments with neutrino fluxes on Earth. Because of the interplay above mentioned between the new interaction and the weak interaction, we should also expect disappearance of a certain neutrino flavor due to the interactions in the medium and appearance of another flavor due to interaction in the same medium, as has been observed by T2K [24] and OPERA collaborations [16]. It is important to emphasize this important conclusion by OPERA: “We therefore claim the observation of a first candidate CC interaction. Its significance, based on our best conservative knowledge of the background, exceeds two . This does not allow yet claiming the observation of oscillation. Given its sensitivity, the OPERA experiment will require the detection of a few more candidate events in order to firmly establish neutrino oscillations in direct appearance mode through the identification of the final charged lepton.”
We make use below of the concept of particle transparency in a medium and use it for the electron neutrinos in the Sun’s core. Extending the concept of transparency developed by Shapiro and Teukolsky [25] in their analysis of neutrino transparency in stars with core temperatures smaller than we can say that the effective mean free path of a neutrino in the Sun’s core is given by in which and are the neutrino mean free paths due to elastic scattering off neutrons and the weak inelastic scattering, respectively, and is the neutrino mean free path due to the new interaction.
Let us try to find an estimate for the new interaction cross section by making the following considerations. In order to significantly diminish the electron neutrino flux to about 45% along the Sun’s core we should have m where is the core radius of the Sun and is the Sun’s radius, assuming that the neutrino flux diminishes exponentially along the travelled distance. The product is given by the following relation [25]
where is the neutrino energy in electron-volt, is the nuclear density and is the Sun’s core density. For 8B neutrinos the energy spectrum [26] goes from zero up to 14 MeV, and the neutrino flux peaks around 7 MeV [27]. Thus, making we obtain and from the relation we have then The mean free path is related to the inelastic cross section due to the new interaction by the equation where is the number of nucleons per unit volume. For the Sun’s core the density of 100 g/cm3 means nucleons/cm3 and, hence, we obtain cm2.
As and depend on the electron and neutron densities, we should take the above calculation with caution because the electron and neutron densities depend strongly on the distance from the core center [28], and thus, is an average number. Another very important fact raised by Lopes and Turck-Chièze [28] is that different electron neutrinos are generated in different shells in the Sun’s core, and thus, we cannot compare the different values for and from the neutrino data of different collaborations when they refer to different neutrinos, but because of the conclusion below we do not need to make such comparisons.
The problem with the above calculation is that cm2 is too large to be true. And as we saw above, although the new interaction is produced through hadronic couplings, its boson only decays to and . This means that not only the neutrino, but also the electron would interact strongly by means of this new interaction, but this has not been observed for the electron. All this means that has to be much smaller than the above number. Reinforcing this reasoning it is worth recalling that the strong interaction between two protons has a cross section of about 40 mbarn, and thus, would be about 10000 times larger than the strong interaction cross section. Therefore, the solar neutrino problem may only have the other solution presented below.

5. A Possible Line of Solution to the Solar Neutrino Puzzle

In the light of the recent results of the Daya Bay Collaboration (23) and of the discovery of the new interaction above mentioned, and taking into account the above calculation, we can propose that the actual production of electron neutrinos in the Sun’s core is much larger than what has been predicted by the Standard Solar Model, exactly because of this new interaction. For example, if the production of 8B electron neutrinos in the pp cycle were 55% larger than what is predicted by the Standard Solar Model, the solar neutrino puzzle would be solved. Therefore, it is urgent to investigate further this new interaction and to find out the order of magnitude of its cross section for the different leptons. And this new interaction may also have an important role in the beginning of the Universe.

6. Conclusions

The above calculation shows that the neutrino absorption in matter due to the new interaction should be small and cannot account for the neutrino deficits.
Therefore, taking into account the discovery of a new fundamental interaction of matter which involves neutrino production and the latest results of the Daya Bay Collaboration [23], I propose a completely different solution to the solar neutrino deficits which is more logical than the neutrino oscillation solution. My proposal is that more electron neutrinos are generated in the pp and CNO cycles in the Sun’s core in such proportions that there are cancellations with the claimed neutrino deficits.
This also means that the results from the several experiments on neutrinos are finds features of this new interaction of matter. The above simple calculation is also very enlightening in this direction.
We should investigate further the existence of this new fundamental interaction and the role that it plays in the pp and CNO cycles in the Sun’s core for modifying the Solar Model accordingly. The above simple calculations provide a rationale for the definitive solution to the solar neutrino puzzle.
The many questions that remain in the area will begin to have answers depending on the experimental findings of this new interaction. It is important to point out that this new force may have an important role in the beginning of the Universe.

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