Kaluza-Klein spectroscopy from neutron oscillations into hidden dimensions

Abstract

Neutrons and neutrinos are natural probes for new physics. Since they carry no conserved gauge quantum numbers, both can easily mix with the fermions from hidden sectors. A particularly interesting effect is the oscillation of a neutron or a neutrino into a fermion propagating in large extra dimensions. In fact, such a mixing has been identified as the possible origin of small neutrino mass. In this paper, we study neutron oscillations into an extradimensional fermion and show that this effect provides a resonance imaging of the Kaluza-Klein tower. The remarkable feature of this phenomenon is its generic nature: because of a fine spacing of the Kaluza-Klein tower, neutrons at a variety of energy levels, both free or within nuclei, find a bulk oscillation partner. In particular, the partner can be a Kaluza-Klein mode of the same species that gives mass to the neutrino. The existence of bulk states matching the neutron energy levels of nuclear spectra gives rise to tight constraints as well as to potentially observable effects. For a free neutron, we predict recurrent resonant oscillations occurring with the values of the magnetic field correlated with the KK levels. We derive bounds on extra dimensions from ultracold neutron experiments and suggest signatures for refined measurements, which, in particular, can probe the parameter space motivated by the hierarchy problem. Ultracold neutron experiments offer a unique way of Kaluza-Klein spectroscopy. Published by the American Physical Society 2024