New Research Suggests that a Neutrino Laser is Impossible

As cool as it would have been to wield lasers that produce a beam of neutrinos, recently two papers were published by MIT researchers that seem to dampen the likelihood …. New Research Suggests that a Neutrino Laser is Impossible. These two papers are investigated in more detail.

Although the concept behind a neutrino laser is rather simple, using the same superradiance effect involving a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) that allows for stimulation by photons to result in a synchronized direction of emitted photons, the idea of using a BEC of radioisotopes that naturally emit neutrinos in this fashion has now been effectively shot down. The problem lies in taking the leap from photons with a BEC and applying this to a BEC of radioisotopes. Whereas photons are relatively slow and low-energy at a mere 1 eV, a neutrino is extremely fast and at 1+ MeV correspondingly has a much greater kinetic effect on the particle that emitted it.

Unlike a photon emitted by an atom, this leaves precious little time for the other particles in the BEC to be affected. This first scenario is covered in the (paywalled) paper by [Yu-Kun Lu] et al. With their calculations showing that superradiance cannot occur with neutrinos in a BEC and thus a laser is impossible.