Historical research guide · 0810 · 2009
Relic High Frequency gravitational waves, neutrino physics, and icecube
Andrew Beckwith · Glen A. Robertson
In one minute
Andrew Beckwith and Glen Robertson, writing for a propulsion and energy sciences meeting in Huntsville, put two very different observatories side by side and ask whether they are looking at the same thing. One is IceCube, a cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice instrumented to catch neutrinos. The other is the Li-Baker detector, a proposed instrument that would catch gravitational waves at gigahertz frequencies by letting them cross a strong static magnetic field and counting the photons that come out. Beckwith and Robertson review the upper limits that theory and observation place on the mass of the neutrino and on the mass of the graviton, and argue that if both are small but not zero, the two channels become comparable in a specific way: with careful analysis, a reading from a Li-Baker detector could be exchanged against an IceCube data set. The point is a cross-check on the earliest instants of the universe, from two independent directions.
Connection
Chapter 4 cares about the highest-frequency ripples in the metric, and this paper is a proposal for how to confirm one detector’s claim with a completely different instrument. Chapter 13’s ledger is built on exactly that habit: a result counts when a second, unrelated measurement can be made to agree with it.
From the source
The paper reviews the upper bounds that theoretical and phenomenological considerations place on two masses at once — the mass of the neutrino and the mass of the graviton.Author abstract, AIP Conference Proceedings 1103, pages 564 to 570
The authors’ central argument is that the masses so implied make neutrino detection and high-frequency gravitational-wave detection interchangeable in principle: the two channels carry information about the same early-universe epoch, so a measurement in one can stand in for a measurement in the other.Author abstract, AIP Conference Proceedings 1103, pages 564 to 570
The concrete proposal is a data-level one. With careful analysis, measurements from a Li-Baker high-frequency gravitational-wave detector could be made interchangeable with IceCube neutrino physics data sets — that is, the two observatories could be cross-calibrated against one another rather than read separately.Author abstract, AIP Conference Proceedings 1103, pages 564 to 570
The instrument assumed is the Li-Baker design, in which a passing gravitational wave crossing a strong static magnetic field produces a small photon flux read out on a fractal membrane — the inverse Gertsenshtein effect used as a detector. The authors set it out in their companion paper at the same meeting.Companion paper, arXiv 0809.1454v3, sections on the Li-Baker HFGW detector
What the pairing is for is falsification rather than discovery. In the companion paper the authors state the aim plainly: comparing relic-graviton counts against relic-neutrino data at the South Pole would begin to give criteria for ruling different inflation models in or out.Companion paper, arXiv 0809.1454v3, abstract and introduction
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3115566How to cite it
Andrew Beckwith, Glen A. Robertson (2009) Relic High Frequency gravitational waves, neutrino physics, and icecube doi:10.1063/1.3115566