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Search for decoherence from quantum gravity with atmospheric neutrinos

Nature Physics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Neutrino oscillations at the highest energies and longest baselines can be used to study the structure of spacetime and test the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. If the metric of spacetime has a quantum mechanical description, its fluctuations at the Planck scale are expected to introduce non-unitary effects that are inconsistent with the standard unitary time evolution of quantum mechanics. Neutrinos interacting with such fluctuations would lose their quantum coherence, deviating from the expected oscillatory flavour composition at long distances and high energies. Here we use atmospheric neutrinos detected by the IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory in the energy range of 0.5–10.0 TeV to search for coherence loss in neutrino propagation. We find no evidence of anomalous neutrino decoherence and determine limits on neutrino–quantum gravity interactions. The constraint on the effective decoherence strength parameter within an energy-independent decoherence model improves on previous limits by a factor of 30. For decoherence effects scaling as E2, our limits are advanced by more than six orders of magnitude beyond past measurements compared with the state of the art.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of the quantum gravitational decoherence effect.
Fig. 2: Decoherence of an oscillating neutrino ensemble.
Fig. 3: Example neutrino oscillogram and energy spectrum.
Fig. 4: Test statistic distributions.
Fig. 5: Comparison with previous results.

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Data availability

A list of selected event energies and zenith angles, a Monte Carlo simulation set and information on systematic uncertainty effects, along with other public IceCube data releases, are available at https://icecube.wisc.edu/science/data-releases/.

Code availability

IceCube maintains an open-source repository of software tools for handling the IceCube data at https://github.com/IceCubeOpenSource. We also include scripts for handling the public data within the data release at https://icecube.wisc.edu/science/data-releases/.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from the following sources, grouped by country. United States: US National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs; US National Science Foundation, Physics Division; US National Science Foundation, EPSCoR; US National Science Foundation, Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; Open Science Grid (OSG), Partnership to Advance Throughput Computing (PATh), Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS), Frontera computing project at the Texas Advanced Computing Center; US Department of Energy, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Particle Astrophysics Research Computing Center at the University of Maryland; Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research at Michigan State University; Astroparticle Physics Computational Facility at Marquette University; NVIDIA Corporation; and Google Cloud Platform. Belgium: Funds for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS and FWO), FWO Odysseus and Big Science programmes and Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo). Germany: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP), Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY), and High Performance Computing cluster of the RWTH Aachen. Sweden: Swedish Research Council, Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. European Union: EGI Advanced Computing for Research. Australia: Australian Research Council. Canada: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Calcul Québec, Compute Ontario, Canada Foundation for Innovation, WestGrid and Digital Research Alliance of Canada. Denmark: Villum Fonden, Carlsberg Foundation and European Commission. New Zealand: Marsden Fund. Japan: Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Institute for Global Prominent Research (IGPR) of Chiba University. Korea: National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). Switzerland: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Author information

Author notes

  1. S. K. Agarwalla, S. Chattopadhyay, J. Krishnamoorthi & A. K. Upadhyay

    Present address: Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Sainik School Post, Bhubaneswar, India

  2. J. Becker Tjus

    Present address: Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

  3. K. Hoshina

    Present address: Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Japan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    R. Abbasi

  2. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Zeuthen, Germany

    M. Ackermann, S. Athanasiadou, S. Blot, J. Brostean-Kaiser, L. Fischer, T. Karg, M. Kowalski, A. Kumar, N. Lad, C. Lagunas Gualda, S. Mechbal, R. Naab, J. Necker, T. Pernice, S. Reusch, C. Spiering, A. Trettin & J. van Santen

  3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    J. Adams

  4. Department of Physics and Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    S. K. Agarwalla, A. Balagopal V, M. Baricevic, V. Basu, J. Braun, D. Butterfield, S. Chattopadhyay, D. Chirkin, A. Desai, P. Desiati, J. C. Díaz-Vélez, H. Dujmovic, M. A. DuVernois, H. Erpenbeck, K. Fang, S. Griffin, F. Halzen, K. Hanson, S. Hori, K. Hoshina, R. Hussain, M. Jacquart, A. Karle, M. Kauer, J. L. Kelley, A. Khatee Zathul, J. Krishnamoorthi, J. P. Lazar, L. Lu, J. Madsen, Y. Makino, S. Mancina, W. Marie Sainte, K. Meagher, R. Morse, M. Moulai, M. Nakos, V. O’Dell, J. Osborn, J. Peterson, A. Pizzuto, M. Prado Rodriguez, Z. Rechav, B. Riedel, I. Safa, P. Savina, M. Silva, R. Snihur, J. Thwaites, D. Tosi, A. K. Upadhyay, J. Vandenbroucke, J. Veitch-Michaelis, C. Wendt, E. Yildizci, T. Yuan, P. Zilberman & M. Zimmerman

  5. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Science Faculty, Brussels, Belgium

    J. A. Aguilar, N. Chau, I. C. Mariş, F. Schlüter & S. Toscano

  6. Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    M. Ahlers, K. M. Groth, D. J. Koskinen, T. Kozynets, J. V. Mead, A. Søgaard & T. Stuttard

  7. Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany

    J. M. Alameddine, D. Elsässer, P. Gutjahr, M. Hünnefeld, K. Hymon, L. Kardum, W. Rhode, T. Ruhe, J. Soedingrekso, J. Werthebach & L. Witthaus

  8. Bartol Research Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    N. M. Amin, S. N. Axani, P. A. Evenson, J. G. Gonzalez, R. Koirala, A. Leszczyńska, A. Novikov, H. Pandya, E. N. Paudel, A. Rehman, F. G. Schröder, D. Seckel, T. Stanev, S. Tilav & S. Verpoest

  9. Department of Physics, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    K. Andeen & A. Vaidyanathan

  10. Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

    G. Anton, A. Domi, A. Eimer, S. Fiedlschuster, T. Glüsenkamp, C. Haack, U. Katz, C. Kopper, M. Rongen, S. Schindler, J. Schneider, L. Schumacher & G. Wrede

  11. Department of Physics and Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    C. Argüelles, J. Y. Book, K. Carloni, D. Delgado, A. Garcia, M. Jin, N. Kamp, J. P. Lazar, I. Martinez-Soler, I. Safa, B. Skrzypek, W. G. Thompson, A. Y. Wen & P. Zhelnin

  12. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Y. Ashida, M. Jeong & C. Rott

  13. III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    L. Ausborm, C. Benning, J. Böttcher, L. Brusa, S. Deng, S. El Mentawi, P. Fürst, E. Ganster, O. Gries, C. Günther, L. Halve, M. Handt, J. Häußler, J. Hermannsgabner, L. Heuermann, O. Janik, S. Latseva, A. Noell, S. Philippen, A. Rifaie, J. Savelberg, M. Schaufel, L. Schlickmann, P. Soldin, M. Thiesmeyer, C. H. Wiebusch & A. Wolf

  14. Physics Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD, USA

    X. Bai, L. Paul & M. Plum

  15. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    S. W. Barwick

  16. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    R. Bay, S. R. Klein, Y. Lyu & S. Robertson

  17. Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    J. J. Beatty, A. Connolly & W. Luszczak

  18. Department of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    J. J. Beatty, A. Connolly, W. Luszczak, A. Medina & M. Stamatikos

  19. Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    J. Becker Tjus, A. Franckowiak, J. Hellrung, E. Kun, M. Lincetto, L. Merten, P. Reichherzer & G. Sommani

  20. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    J. Beise, O. Botner, A. Coleman, C. Glaser, T. Glüsenkamp, A. Hallgren, N. Heyer, E. O’Sullivan, C. Pérez de los Heros, A. Pontén & N. Valtonen-Mattila

  21. Physik-department, Technische Universität München, Garching, Germany

    C. Bellenghi, P. Eller, M. Ha Minh, M. Karl, T. Kontrimas, E. Manao, R. Orsoe, E. Resconi, L. Ruohan, C. Spannfellner, A. Terliuk & M. Wolf

  22. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

    S. BenZvi & S. Griswold

  23. Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    D. Berley, E. Blaufuss, B. A. Clark, J. Evans, K. L. Fan, S. J. Gray, K. D. Hoffman, M. J. Larson, A. Olivas, R. Procter-Murphy, T. Schmidt, S. Sclafani, G. W. Sullivan & A. Vijai

  24. Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia Galileo Galilei, Università Degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy

    E. Bernardini, C. Boscolo Meneguolo & S. Mancina

  25. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

    D. Z. Besson, M. Seikh & R. Young

  26. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Astroparticle Physics, Karlsruhe, Germany

    F. Bontempo, R. Engel, A. Haungs, W. Hou, T. Huber, D. Kang, P. Koundal, T. Mukherjee, P. Sampathkumar, H. Schieler, F. G. Schröder, R. Turcotte, M. Venugopal, A. Weindl & M. Weyrauch

  27. Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany

    S. Böser, T. Ehrhardt, D. Kappesser, L. Köpke, E. Lohfink, Y. Popovych & J. Rack-Helleis

  28. School of Physics and Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    B. Brinson, C. Chen, P. Dave, I. Taboada & C. F. Tung

  29. Department of Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    R. T. Burley, E. G. Carnie-Bronca, G. C. Hill & E. J. Roberts

  30. Institut für Kernphysik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany

    R. S. Busse, M. Dittmer, A. Kappes, C. J. Lozano Mariscal, M. Neumann, B. Schlüter, M. A. Unland Elorrieta & J. Vara

  31. Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    M. A. Campana, X. Kang, M. Kovacevich, N. Kurahashi, C. Love & R. Shah

  32. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Z. Chen, H. Hamdaoui, J. Kiryluk & Z. Zhang

  33. Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea

    S. Choi, S. In, W. Kang, J. W. Lee, S. Rodan, G. Roellinghoff, C. Rott & C. Tönnis

  34. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    G. H. Collin, J. M. Conrad, A. Diaz, J. Hardin, D. Vannerom & P. Weigel

  35. Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Dienst ELEM, Brussels, Belgium

    P. Coppin, P. Correa, C. De Clercq, K. D. de Vries, E. Magnus, Y. Merckx & N. van Eijndhoven

  36. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    D. F. Cowen, D. Fox, Y. Liu & Y. Wang

  37. Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    D. F. Cowen, K. Leonard DeHolton, Y. Liu, Y. Wang & J. Weldert

  38. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

    J. J. DeLaunay, A. Ghadimi, M. Marsee, M. Santander & D. R. Williams

  39. Oskar Klein Centre and Department of Physics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    K. Deoskar, C. Finley, A. Hidvegi, K. Hultqvist, M. Jansson & C. Walck

  40. Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics and Phenomenology—CP3, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    G. de Wasseige, K. Kruiswijk, M. Lamoureux, C. Raab & M. Vereecken

  41. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    T. DeYoung, D. Grant, R. Halliday, A. A. Harnisch, A. Kochocki, E. Krupczak, K. B. M. Mahn, F. Mayhew, J. Micallef, H. Niederhausen, M. U. Nisa, S. C. Nowicki, B. Pries, D. Salazar-Gallegos, S. E. Sanchez Herrera, K. Tollefson, J. P. Twagirayezu, C. Weaver, N. Whitehorn & S. Yu

  42. Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany

    E. Ellinger, K. Helbing, S. Hickford, F. Lauber, U. Naumann, A. Sandrock, N. Schmeisser & T. Stürwald

  43. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Experimental Particle Physics, Karlsruhe, Germany

    R. Engel, J. Saffer, S. Shefali & D. Soldin

  44. Department of Physics and The International Center for Hadron Astrophysics, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

    K. Farrag, C. Hill, A. Ishihara, M. Meier, Y. Morii, R. Nagai, A. Obertacke Pollmann, A. Rosted, N. Shimizu & S. Yoshida

  45. Department of Physics, Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    A. R. Fazely, J. Mitchell, S. Ter-Antonyan, K. Upshaw & X. W. Xu

  46. Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    A. Fedynitch

  47. Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    N. Feigl, H. Kolanoski & M. Kowalski

  48. Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    J. Gallagher

  49. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    L. Gerhardt, S. R. Klein, Y. Lyu, G. T. Przybylski, S. Robertson & T. Stezelberger

  50. Department of Physics, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea

    C. Ha

  51. Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    P. Hatch & N. Park

  52. CTSPS, Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    G. S. Japaridze

  53. Department of Physics, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA

    B. J. P. Jones, A. Negi, G. K. Parker & B. Smithers

  54. Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    A. Katil, M. Liubarska, T. McElroy, R. W. Moore, S. Sarkar & J. P. Yanez

  55. Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA

    A. Kheirandish

  56. Nevada Center for Astrophysics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA

    A. Kheirandish

  57. Département de physique nucléaire et corpusculaire, Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland

    F. Lucarelli & T. Montaruli

  58. Columbia Astrophysics and Nevis Laboratories, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    S. Marka, Z. Marka & D. Veske

  59. Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    R. Maruyama

  60. Department of Physics, Mercer University, Macon, GA, USA

    F. McNally

  61. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, Gent, Belgium

    B. Oeyen & D. Ryckbosch

  62. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK, USA

    K. Rawlins

  63. Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    S. Sarkar

  64. Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI, USA

    S. Seunarine & G. M. Spiczak

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Contributions

The IceCube Collaboration acknowledges significant contributions to this manuscript by the IceCube groups from the University of Texas at Arlington, the Niels Bohr Institute and Harvard University. The IceCube Collaboration designed, constructed and now operates the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Data processing and calibration, Monte Carlo simulations of the detector and of the theoretical models, and data analyses were performed by a large number of collaboration members, who also discussed and approved the scientific results presented here.

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Nature Physics thanks Ricardo A. Gomes, Atsuko Ichikawa and Giuseppe Gaetano Luciano for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Table 1 Summary of nuisance parameters used in the analysis
Full size table

Extended Data Fig. 1 Systematic Pulls for Phase Perturbation (top) and State Selection (bottom).

The pull is defined as the value of the nuisance parameter minus its central value, divided by the Gaussian prior width. Each of the nuisance parameters (outlined in the Methods section) is represented by four color bars, one corresponding to the best fit point under each power law n. Since the best fit point is very close to no decoherence in all power law models, the distributionsof pulls are similar in all cases.

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The IceCube Collaboration. Search for decoherence from quantum gravity with atmospheric neutrinos. Nat. Phys. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02436-w

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