The Absorptive Extra Dimensions

Abstract

It is well known that gravity and neutrino oscillation can be used to probe large extra dimensions in a braneworld scenario. We argue that neutrino oscillation remains a useful probe even when the extra dimensions are small, because the brane-bulk coupling is likely to be large. Neutrino oscillation in the presence of a strong brane-bulk coupling is vastly different from the usual case of a weak coupling. In particular, some active neutrinos could be absorbed by the bulk when they oscillate from one kind to another, a signature which can be taken as the presence of an extra dimension. In a very large class of models which we shall discuss, the amount of absorption for all neutrino oscillations is controlled by a single parameter, a property which distinguishes extra dimensions from other mechanisms for losing neutrino fluxes.Comment: Introduction enlarged; conclusions added. To appear in Phys. Rev.