Abstract: All extensions of the standard model that generate Majorana neutrino masses at the electroweak scale introduce some heavy mediators, either fermions and/or scalars, weakly coupled to leptons. Here, by “heavy,” we mean implicitly the mass range between a few 100 GeV up to, say, roughly 2 TeV, such that these particles can be searched for at the LHC. We study decay widths of these mediators for several different tree-level neutrino mass models. The models we consider range from the simplest d = 5 seesaw up to d = 11 neutrino mass models. For each of the models, we identify the most interesting parts of the parameter space, where the heavy mediator fields are particularly long lived and can decay with experimentally measurable decay lengths. One has to distinguish two different scenarios, depending on whether fermions or scalars are the lighter of the heavy particles. For fermions, we find that the decay lengths correlate with the inverse of the overall neutrino mass scale. Thus, since no lower limit on the lightest neutrino mass exists, nearly arbitrarily long decay lengths can be obtained for the case in which fermions are the lighter of the heavy particles. For charged scalars, on the other hand, there exists a maximum value for the decay length in these models. This maximum value depends on the model and on the electric charge of the scalar under consideration but can at most be of the order of a few millimeters. Interestingly, independent of the model, this maximum occurs always in a region of parameter space, where leptonic and gauge boson final states have similar branching ratios, i.e., where the observation of lepton number-violating final states from scalar decays is possible.

Abstract: We discuss the connection between the origin of neutrino masses and the properties of dark matter candidates in the context of gauge extensions of the Standard Model. We investigate minimal gauge theories for neutrino masses where the neutrinos arc predicted to be Dirac or Majorana fermions. We find that the upper bound on the effective number of relativistic species provides a strong constraint in the scenarios with Dirac neutrinos. In the context of theories where the lepton number is a local gauge symmetry spontaneously broken at the low scale, the existence of dark matter is predicted from the condition of anomaly cancellation. Applying the cosmological bound on the dark matter relic density, we find an upper bound on the symmetry breaking scale in the multi-TeV region. These results imply that we could test simple gauge theories for neutrino masses at current or future experiments.

Abstract: This paper reports on the search for heavy neutrinos with masses in the range 140 < M-N < 493 MeV/c(2) using the off-axis near detector ND280 of the T2K experiment. These particles can be produced from kaon decays in the standard neutrino beam and then subsequently decay in ND280. The decay modes under consideration are N -> l(alpha)(+/-)pi(-/+) and N -> l(alpha)(+)l(beta)nu (-(-))= (alpha, beta = e, mu). A search for such events has been made using the Time Projection Chambers of ND280, where the background has been reduced to less than two events in the current dataset in all channels. No excess has been observed in the signal region. A combined Bayesian statistical approach has been applied to extract upper limits on the mixing elements of heavy neutrinos to electron-, muon- and tau- flavored currents (U-e(2), U-mu(2), U-tau(2)) as a function of the heavy neutrino mass, e.g., U-e(2) < 10(-9) at 90% C.L. for a mass of 390 MeV/c(2). These constraints are competitive with previous experiments.

Abstract: We derive constraints on millicharged dark matter and axionlike particles using pulsar timing and fast radio burst observations. For dark matter particles of charge epsilon e, the constraint from time of arrival (TOA) of waves is epsilon/m(milli) less than or similar to 10(-8) eV(-1), for masses m(milli) greater than or similar to 10(-6) eV. For axionlike particles, the polarization of the signals from pulsars yields a bound in the axial coupling g/ m(a) less than or similar to 10(-13) Gev(-1)/(10(-22) eV),for m(a) less than or similar to 10(-19) eV. Both bounds scale as (rho/rho(dm))(1/2 )for fractions of the total dark matter energy density rho(dm). We make a precise study of these bounds using TOA from several pulsars, FRB 121102, and polarization measurements of PSR J0437 – 4715. Our results rule out a new region of the parameter space for these dark matter models.

Abstract: Black hole evaporation is studied using wave packets for the modes. These allow for approximate frequency and time resolution. The leading order late time behavior gives the well-known Hawking radiation that is independent of how the black hole formed. The focus here is on the higher order terms and the rate at which they damp at late times. Some of these terms carry information about how the black hole formed. A general argument is given which shows that the damping is significantly slower (power law) than what might be naively expected from a stationary phase approximation (exponential). This result is verified by numerical calculations in the cases of 2D and 4D black holes that form from the collapse of a null shell.