Neutrino Beam Constraints on Flavor-Diagonal Lorentz Violation

Abstract

Breaking of isotropy and Lorentz boost invariance in the dynamics of second-generation leptons would lead to direction-dependent changes in the lifetimes of charged pions. This would make the intensity of a neutrino beam produced via pion decay a function of the beam orientation. The experimental signature of this phenomenon--sidereal variations in the event rate at a downstream neutrino detector--has already been studied, in searches for Lorentz-violating neutrino oscillations. Existing analyses of MINOS near detector data can be used to constrain the flavor-diagonal Lorentz violation coefficients affecting muon neutrino speeds at roughly the 10^(-5) level.