U₃(W)-gauge theory. IV. The Kolar events

Abstract

Pursuing the starting motivation of the recently proposed U₃(W)-gauge theory of weak and electromagnetic interactions, we attempt a rough quantitative description of the origin of the unusual Kolar events reported in deep underground cosmic ray neutrino experiments by Krishnaswami et al. These events are interpreted as due to production, in ν_μ-nucleon collision, of a charged heavy muonic lepton M^- in association with hadrons carrying new heavy quark flavours named grace and taste (g, t), followed by the decay M →E+e+μ, where E is another heavy lepton of the electronic type. The production cross-sections are estimated by using the standard quark parton model. The long life of the Kolar particle is explained by taking the mass difference of the M and the E to be sufficiently small. With suitable illustrative choices of the masses of the proposed new particles involved, it is shown that the threshold for production could be rather high so that neutrinos with energy of several hundreds of GeV upwards, available in cosmic rays, may be responsible for the processes suggested here for explaining the Kolar events. Comments are made relating to the currently available accelerator neutrinos in this context. Attention is also drawn to the possible role of the above heavy leptons in interpreting the events recently observed in cosmic ray experiments at Tbilisi.