Beltran-Palau, P., Navarro-Salas, J., & Pla, S. (2020). Adiabatic regularization for Dirac fields in time-varying electric backgrounds. Phys. Rev. D, 101(10), 105014–15pp.
Abstract: The adiabatic regularization method was originally proposed by Parker and Fulling to renormalize the energy-momentum tensor of scalar fields in expanding universes. It can be extended to renormalize the electric current induced by quantized scalar fields in a time-varying electric background. This can be done in a way consistent with gravity if the vector potential is considered as a variable of adiabatic order one. Assuming this, we further extend the method to deal with Dirac fields in four space-time dimensions. This requires a self-consistent ansatz for the adiabatic expansion, in presence of a prescribed time-dependent electric field, which is different from the conventional expansion used for scalar fields. Our proposal is consistent, in the massless limit, with the conformal anomaly. We also provide evidence that our proposed adiabatic expansion for the fermionic modes parallels the Schwinger-DeWitt adiabatic expansion of the two-point function. We give the renormalized expression of the electric current and analyze, using numerical and analytical tools, the pair production induced by a Sauter-type electric pulse. We also analyze the scaling properties of the current for a large field strength.
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Arbelaez, C., Cottin, G., Helo, J. C., & Hirsch, M. (2020). Long-lived charged particles and multilepton signatures from neutrino mass models. Phys. Rev. D, 101(9), 095033–13pp.
Abstract: Lepton number violation (LNV) is usually searched for by the LHC collaborations using the same-sign dilepton plus jet signature. In this paper, we discuss multilepton signals of LNV that can arise with experimentally interesting rates in certain loop models of neutrino mass generation. Interestingly, in such models, the observed smallness of the active neutrino masses, together with the high multiplicity of the final states, leads in large parts of the viable parameter space of such models to the prediction of long-lived charged particles, which leave highly ionizing tracks in the detectors. We focus on one particular one-loop neutrino mass model in this class and discuss its LHC phenomenology in some detail.
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Caputo, A., Millar, A. J., & Vitagliano, E. (2020). Revisiting longitudinal plasmon-axion conversion in external magnetic fields. Phys. Rev. D, 101(12), 123004–13pp.
Abstract: In the presence of an external magnetic field, the axion and the photon mix. In particular, the dispersion relation of a longitudinal plasmon always crosses the dispersion relation of the axion (for small axion masses), thus leading to a resonant conversion. Using thermal field theory, we concisely derive the axion emission rate, applying it to astrophysical and laboratory scenarios. For the Sun, depending on the magnetic field profile, plasmon-axion conversion can dominate over Primakoff production at low energies (less than or similar to 200 eV). This both provides a new axion source for future helioscopes and, in the event of discovery, would probe the magnetic field structure of the Sun. In the case of white dwarfs (WDs), plasmon-axion conversion provides a pure photon coupling probe of the axion, which may contribute significantly for low-mass WDs. Finally, we rederive and confirm the axion absorption rate of the recently proposed plasma haloscopes.
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T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Antonova, M., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Fernandez, P., Izmaylov, A., & Novella, P. (2020). First combined measurement of the muon neutrino and antineutrino charged-current cross section without pions in the final state at T2K. Phys. Rev. D, 101(11), 112001–44pp.
Abstract: This paper presents the first combined measurement of the double-differential muon neutrino and antineutrino charged-current cross sections with no pions in the final state on hydrocarbon at the off-axis near detector of the T2K experiment. The data analyzed in this work comprise 5.8 x 10(20) and 6.3 x 10(20) protons on target in neutrino and antineutrino mode respectively, at a beam energy peak of 0.6 GeV. Using the two measured cross sections, the sum, difference, and asymmetry were calculated with the aim of better understanding the nuclear effects involved in such interactions. The extracted measurements have been compared with the prediction from different Monte Carlo generators and theoretical models showing that the difference between the two cross sections have interesting sensitivity to nuclear effects.
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Gisbert, H., & Ruiz Vidal, J. (2020). Improved bounds on heavy quark electric dipole moments. Phys. Rev. D, 101(11), 115010–5pp.
Abstract: New bounds on the electric dipole moment (EDM) of charm and bottom quarks are derived using the stringent limits on their chromo-EDMs. The new limits, vertical bar d(c)vertical bar < 1.5 x 10(-21) e cm and vertical bar d(b)vertical bar < 1.2 x 10(-20) e cm, improve the previous ones by about 3 orders of magnitude. These indirect bounds have implications for different models of new physics, including two-Higgs-doublet, leptoquarks, and supersymmetry models.
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BABAR Collaboration(Lees, J. P. et al), Martinez-Vidal, F., & Oyanguren, A. (2020). Search for lepton-flavor-violating decays D-0 -> X(0)e(+/-)mu(-/+). Phys. Rev. D, 101(11), 112003–11pp.
Abstract: We present a search for seven lepton-flavor-violating neutral charm meson decays of the type D-0 -> X(0)e(+/-)mu(-/+), where X-0 represents a pi(0), K-S(0), (K) over bar*(0), rho(0), phi, omega, or eta meson. The analysis is based on 468 fb(-1) of e(+)e(-) annihilation data collected at or close to the Upsilon(4S) resonance with the BABAR detector at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. No significant signals are observed, and we establish 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fractions in the range (5.0-22.5) x 10(-7). The limits are between 1 and 2 orders of magnitude more stringent than previous measurements.
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Lu, J. N., Liu, X. G., & Ding, G. J. (2020). Modular symmetry origin of texture zeros and quark-lepton unification. Phys. Rev. D, 101(11), 115020–27pp.
Abstract: The even-weight modular forms of level N can be arranged into the common irreducible representations of the inhomogeneous finite modular group Gamma(N) and the homogeneous finite modular group Gamma(N)' which is the double covering of Gamma(N) , and the odd-weight modular forms of level N transform in the new representations of Gamma(N)'. We find that the above structure of modular forms can naturally generate texture zeros of the fermion mass matrices if we properly assign the representations and weights of the matter fields under the modular group. We perform a comprehensive analysis for the Gamma(3)' congruent to T' modular symmetry. The three generations of left-handed quarks are assumed to transform as a doublet and a singlet of T', and we find six possible texture-zero structures of the quark mass matrix up to row and column permutations. We present five benchmark quark models which can produce very good fits to the experimental data. These quark models are further extended to include the lepton sector, and the resulting models can give a unified description of both quark and lepton masses and flavor mixing simultaneously, although they contain a smaller number of free parameters than the observables.
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T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Antonova, M., Cervera-Villanueva, A., & Novella, P. (2020). Simultaneous measurement of the muon neutrino charged-current cross section on oxygen and carbon without pions in the final state at T2K. Phys. Rev. D, 101(11), 112004–32pp.
Abstract: This paper reports the first simultaneous measurement of the double differential muon neutrino chargedcurrent cross section on oxygen and carbon without pions in the final state as a function of the outgoing muon kinematics, made at the ND280 off-axis near detector of the T2K experiment. The ratio of the oxygen and carbon cross sections is also provided to help validate various models' ability to extrapolate between carbon and oxygen nuclear targets, as is required in T2K oscillation analyses. The data are taken using a neutrino beam with an energy spectrum peaked at 0.6 GeV. The extracted measurement is compared with the prediction from different Monte Carlo neutrino-nucleus interaction event generators, showing particular model separation for very forward-going muons. Overall, of the models tested, the result is best described using local Fermi gas descriptions of the nuclear ground state with RPA suppression.
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de Anda, F. J., Nath, N., Valle, J. W. F., & Vaquera-Araujo, C. A. (2020). Probing the predictions of an orbifold theory of flavor. Phys. Rev. D, 101(11), 116012–8pp.
Abstract: We examine the implications of a recently proposed theory of fermion masses and mixings in which an A(4) family symmetry emerges from orbifold compactification. We analyze two variant schemes concerning their predictions for neutrino oscillations, neutrinoless double-beta decay, and the golden quark-lepton unification mass relation. We find that upcoming experiments DUNE as well as LEGEND and nEXO offer good chances of exploring a substantial region of neutrino parameters.
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Mandal, S., Srivastava, R., & Valle, J. W. F. (2020). Consistency of the dynamical high-scale type-I seesaw mechanism. Phys. Rev. D, 101(11), 115030–15pp.
Abstract: We analyze the consistency of electroweak breaking within the simplest high-scale SU(3)(c) circle times SU(2)(L) circle times U(1)(Y) type-I seesaw mechanism. We derive the full two-loop renormalization group equations of the relevant parameters, including the quartic Higgs self-coupling of the Standard Model. For the simplest case of bare “right-handed” neutrino mass terms we find that, with large Yukawa couplings, the Higgs quartic self-coupling becomes negative much below the seesaw scale, so that the model may be inconsistent even as an effective theory. We show, however, that the “dynamical” type-I high-scale seesaw with spontaneous lepton number violation has better stability properties.
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