Can lepton flavor violating interactions explain the atmospheric neutrino problem? art. no. 053005

We investigate whether flavor changing neutrino interactions (FCNIs) can be sufficiently large to provide a viable solution to the atmospheric neutrin o problem. Effective operators induced by heavy boson exchange that allow f or flavor changing neutrino scattering off quarks or electrons are related by an SU(2)(L) rotation to operators that induce anomalous tau decays. Sinc e SU(2)(L) violation is small for new physics at or above the weak scale, o ne can use the upper bounds on lepton flavor violating tau decays or on lep ton universality violation to put severe, model-independent bounds on the r elevant non-standard neutrino interactions. Also Z-induced flavor changing neutral currents, due to heavy singlet neutrinos, are too small to be relev ant for the atmospheric neutrino anomaly. We conclude that the FCNI solutio n to the atmospheric neutrino problem is ruled out.