Decays of spacelike neutrinos

Abstract

In this paper we consider the hypothesis that neutrinos are fermionic tachyons with helicity 1/2. We propose an effective model of interactions of these neutrinos and analyze dominant effects under the above hypothesis: the three-body neutrino decay, the radiative decay and briefly discuss beta-decay with tachyonic antineutrino. We calculate the corresponding amplitudes and the mean life time for decays, as well as the differential decay width. In addition we apply the neutrino three-body decay to the solar neutrino problem and we obtain a remarkable change of energy spectrum of the neutrino flux at the Earth ground (assuming no neutrino oscillation). We compare the results with the Standard Solar Model predictions and solar neutrino experiments to estimate an upper bound for the taonic neutrino.