Icarus refutes Opera

Icarus collaboration has replicated the measurement of the neutrino velocity. The abstract summarizes the outcome.

The CERN-SPS accelerator has been briefly operated in a new, lower intensity neutrino mode with about 10¹² p.o.t. /pulse and with a beam structure made of four LHC-like extractions, each with a narrow width of about 3 ns, separated by 524 ns. This very tightly bunched beam structure represents a substantial progress with respect to the ordinary operation of the CNGS beam, since it allows a very accurate time-of-flight measurement of neutrinos from CERN to LNGS on an event-to-event basis. The ICARUS T600 detector has collected 7 beam-associated events, consistent with the CNGS delivered neutrino flux of 2.2× 10¹⁶ p.o.t. and in agreement with the well known characteristics of neutrino events in the LAr-TPC. The time of flight difference between the speed of light and the arriving neutrino LAr-TPC events has been analyzed. The result is compatible with the simultaneous arrival of all events with equal speed, the one of light. This is in a striking difference with the reported result of OPERA that claimed that high energy neutrinos from CERN should arrive at LNGS about 60 ns earlier than expected from luminal speed.

The TGD based explanation for the anomaly would not have been super-luminality but the dependence of the maximal signal velocity on space-time sheet (see this): the geodesics in induced metric are not geodesics of the 8-D imbedding space. In principle the time taken to move from A (say CERN) to point B (say Gran Sasso) depends on space-time sheets involved. One of these space-time sheets would be that assignable to particle beam - a good guess is "massless extremal": along this the velocity is in in the simplest case (cylindrical "massless extremals") the maximal signal velocity in M⁴×CP₂.

Other space-space-time sheets involved can be assigned to various systems such as Earth, Sun, Galaxy and they contribute to the effect (see this). It is important to understand how the physics of test particle depends on the presence of parallel space-times sheets. Simultaneous topological condensation to all the sheets is extremely probable so that at classical level forces are summed. Same happens at quantum level. The superposition of various fields assignable to parallel space-time sheets is not possible in TGD framework and is replaced with the superposition of their effects. This allows to resolve one of the strongest objections against the notion induced gauge field.

The outcome of ICARUS experiment is not able to kill this prediction since at this moment I am not able to fix the magnitude of the effect. It is really a pity that such a fantastic possibility to wake up the sleeping colleagues is lost. I feel like a parent in a nightmare seeing his child to drown and being unable to do anything.

There are other well-established effects in which the dependence of maximal signal velocity on space-time sheet is visible: one such effect is the observed slow increase of the time spend by light ray to propagate moon and back. The explanation is that the effect is not real but due to the change of the unit for velocity defined by the light-velocity assignable to the distant stars. The maximal signal velocity is for Robertson-Walker cosmology gradually increasing and the anomaly emerges as an apparent anomaly when one assumes that the natural coordinate system assignable to the solar system (Minkowski coordinates) is the natural coordinate system in cosmological scales. The size of the effect is predicted correctly. Since the cosmic signal velocity defining the unit increases, the local maximal signal velocity which is constant seems to be reducing and the measured distance to the Moon seems to be increasing.

For background see the chapter TGD and GRT of "Physics in Many-Sheeted Space-time".