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Phys. Rev. D 72, 065019 (2005) [11 pages]

Probing Planck scale physics with IceCube

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Luis A. Anchordoqui* and Haim Goldberg
Department of Physics, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA

M. C. Gonzalez-Garcia
Y.I.T.P., SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11794-3840, USA
and IFIC, Universitat de València–C.S.I.C., Apt 22085, 46071 València, Spain

Francis Halzen§
Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison Wisconsin 53706, USA

Dan Hooper**
Astrophysics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RH, United Kingdom

Subir Sarkar††
Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3NP, United Kingdom

Thomas J. Weiler‡‡
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville Tennessee 37235, USA

Received 24 June 2005; published 28 September 2005

Neutrino oscillations can be affected by decoherence induced e.g. by Planck scale suppressed interactions with the space-time foam predicted in some approaches to quantum gravity. We study the prospects for observing such effects at IceCube, using the likely flux of TeV antineutrinos from the Cygnus spiral arm. We formulate the statistical analysis for evaluating the sensitivity to quantum decoherence in the presence of the background from atmospheric neutrinos, as well as from plausible cosmic neutrino sources. We demonstrate that IceCube will improve the sensitivity to decoherence effects of O(E2/MPl) by 17 orders of magnitude over present limits and, moreover, that it can probe decoherence effects of O(E3/MPl2) which are well beyond the reach of other experiments.

© 2005 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.065019
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.72.065019
PACS:
03.65.Yz, 95.55.Vj, 95.85.Ry

*Electronic address: l.anchordoqui@neu.edu

Electronic address: goldberg@neu.edu

Electronic address: concha@insti.physics.sunysb.edu

§Electronic address: halzen@pheno.physics.wisc.edu

**Electronic address: hooper@astro.ox.ac.uk

††Electronic address: sarkar@thphys.ox.ac.uk

‡‡Electronic address: tom.weiler@vanderbilt.edu