Soderstrom, P. A. et al, Agramunt, J., Egea, J., Gadea, A., & Huyuk, T. (2019). Neutron detection and gamma-ray suppression using artificial neural networks with the liquid scintillators BC-501A and BC-537. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 916, 238–245.
Abstract: In this work we present a comparison between the two liquid scintillators BC-501A and BC-537 in terms of their performance regarding the pulse-shape discrimination between neutrons and gamma rays. Special emphasis is put on the application of artificial neural networks. The results show a systematically higher gamma-ray rejection ratio for BC-501A compared to BC-537 applying the commonly used charge comparison method. Using the artificial neural network approach the discrimination quality was improved to more than 95% rejection efficiency of gamma rays over the energy range 150 to 1000 keV for both BC-501A and BC-537. However, due to the larger light output of BC-501A compared to BC-537, neutrons could be identified in BC-501A using artificial neural networks down to a recoil proton energy of 800 keV compared to a recoil deuteron energy of 1200 keV for BC-537. We conclude that using artificial neural networks it is possible to obtain the same gamma-ray rejection quality from both BC-501A and BC-537 for neutrons above a low-energy threshold. This threshold is, however, lower for BC-501A, which is important for nuclear structure spectroscopy experiments of rare reaction channels where low-energy interactions dominates.
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Escudero, M., Hooper, D., Krnjaic, G., & Pierre, M. (2019). Cosmology with a very light Lmu – Ltau gauge boson. J. High Energy Phys., 03(3), 071–29pp.
Abstract: In this paper, we explore in detail the cosmological implications of an abelian L – L gauge extension of the Standard Model featuring a light and weakly coupled Z. Such a scenario is motivated by the longstanding approximate to 4 sigma discrepancy between the measured and predicted values of the muon's anomalous magnetic moment, (g – 2), as well as the tension between late and early time determinations of the Hubble constant. If sufficiently light, the Z population will decay to neutrinos, increasing the overall energy density of radiation and altering the expansion history of the early universe. We identify two distinct regions of parameter space in this model in which the Hubble tension can be significantly relaxed. The first of these is the previously identified region in which a approximate to 10 – 20 MeV Z reaches equilibrium in the early universe and then decays, heating the neutrino population and delaying the process of neutrino decoupling. For a coupling of g (-) similar or equal to (3 – 8) x 10(-4), such a particle can also explain the observed (g – 2) anomaly. In the second region, the Z is very light (mZ approximate to 1eV to MeV) and very weakly coupled (g (-) approximate to 10(-13) to 10(-9)). In this case, the Z population is produced through freeze-in, and decays to neutrinos after neutrino decoupling. Across large regions of parameter space, we predict a contribution to the energy density of radiation that can appreciably relax the reported Hubble tension, N-eff similar or equal to 0.2.
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Campanario, F., Czyz, H., Gluza, J., Jelinski, T., Rodrigo, G., Tracz, S., et al. (2019). Standard model radiative corrections in the pion form factor measurements do not explain the a(mu) anomaly. Phys. Rev. D, 100(7), 076004–5pp.
Abstract: In this paper, we address the question of whether the almost four standard deviations difference between theory and experiment for the muon anomalous magnetic moment a(mu) can be explained as a higher-order Standard Model perturbation effect in the pion form factor measurements. This question has, until now, remained open, obscuring the source of discrepancies between the measurements. We calculate the last radiative corrections for the extraction of the pion form factor, which were believed to be potentially substantial enough to explain the data within the Standard Model. We find that the corrections are too small to diminish existing discrepancies in the determination of the pion form factor for different kinematical configurations of low-energy BABAR, BES-III and KLOE experiments. Consequently, they cannot noticeably change the previous predictions for a(mu) and decrease the deviations between theory and direct measurements. To solve the above issues, new data and better understanding of low-energy experimental setups are needed, especially as new direct a(mu) measurements at Fermilab and J-PARC will provide new insights and substantially shrink the experimental error.
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de Azcarraga, J. A., Gutiez, D., & Izquierdo, J. M. (2019). Extended D=3 Bargmann supergravity from a Lie algebra expansion. Nucl. Phys. B, 946, 114706–14pp.
Abstract: In this paper we show how the method of Lie algebra expansions may be used to obtain, in a simple way, both the extended Bargmann Lie superalgebra and the Chern-Simons action associated to it in three dimensions, starting from D = 3, N = 2 superPoincare and its corresponding Chern-Simons supergravity. (C) 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.
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Barenboim, G., Denton, P. B., Parke, S. J., & Ternes, C. A. (2019). Neutrino oscillation probabilities through the looking glass. Phys. Lett. B, 791, 351–360.
Abstract: In this paper we review different expansions for neutrino oscillation probabilities in matter in the context of long-baseline neutrino experiments. We examine the accuracy and computational efficiency of different exact and approximate expressions. We find that many of the expressions used in the literature are not precise enough for the next generation of long-baseline experiments, but several of them are while maintaining comparable simplicity. The results of this paper can be used as guidance to both phenomenologists and experimentalists when implementing the various oscillation expressions into their analysis tools.
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Chen, P., Centelles Chulia, S., Ding, G. J., Srivastava, R., & Valle, J. W. F. (2019). CP symmetries as guiding posts: Revamping tribimaximal mixing. II. Phys. Rev. D, 100(5), 053001–15pp.
Abstract: In this follow up of arXiv:1812.04663 we analyze the generalized CP symmetries of the charged lepton mass matrix compatible with the complex version of the tribimaximal (TBM) lepton mixing pattern. These symmetries are used to “revamp” the simplest TBM Ansatz in a systematic way. Our generalized patterns share some of the attractive features of the original TBM matrix and are consistent with current oscillation experiments. We also discuss their phenomenological implications both for upcoming neutrino oscillation and neutrinoless double beta decay experiments.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Barrios-Marti, J., Coleiro, A., Colomer, M., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., et al. (2019). The search for high-energy neutrinos coincident with fast radio bursts with the ANTARES neutrino telescope. Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 482(1), 184–193.
Abstract: In the past decade, a new class of bright transient radio sources with millisecond duration has been discovered. The origin of these so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) is still a mystery, despite the growing observational efforts made by various multiwavelength and multimessenger facilities. To date, many models have been proposed to explain FRBs, but neither the progenitors nor the radiative and the particle acceleration processes at work have been clearly identified. In this paper, we assess whether hadronic processes may occur in the vicinity of the FRB source. If they do, FRBs may contribute to the high-energy cosmic-ray and neutrino fluxes. A search for these hadronic signatures was carried out using the ANTARES neutrino telescope. The analysis consists in looking for high-energy neutrinos, in the TeV-PeV regime, that are spatially and temporally coincident with the detected FRBs. Most of the FRBs discovered in the period 2013-2017 were in the field of view of the ANTARES detector, which is sensitive mostly to events originating from the Southern hemisphere. From this period, 12 FRBs were selected and no coincident neutrino candidate was observed. Upper limits on the per-burst neutrino fluence were derived using a power-law spectrum, dN/DE nu proportional to E-nu(-gamma), for the incoming neutrino flux, assuming spectral indexes gamma = 1.0, 2.0, 2.5. Finally, the neutrino energy was constrained by computing the total energy radiated in neutrinos, assuming different distances for the FRBs. Constraints on the neutrino fluence and on the energy released were derived from the associated null results.
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Coppola, M., Gomez Dumm, D., Noguera, S., & Scoccola, N. N. (2019). Neutral and charged pion properties under strong magnetic fields in the NJL model. Phys. Rev. D, 100(5), 054014–17pp.
Abstract: In the framework of the Nambu-Jona-Lasino (NJL) model, we study the effect of an intense external uniform magnetic field on neutral and charged pion masses and decay form factors. In particular, the treatment of charged pions is carried out on the basis of the Ritus eigenfunction approach to magnetized relativistic systems. Our analysis shows that in the presence of the magnetic field three and four nonvanishing pion-to-vacuum hadronic form factors can be obtained for the case of the neutral and charged pions, respectively. As expected, it is seen that for nonzero magnetic field the pi(0) meson can still be treated as a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson, and consequently the corresponding form factors are shown to satisfy various chiral relations. For definite parametrizations of the model, numerical results for pi(0) and pi(+/-) masses and decay constants are obtained and compared with previous calculations given in the literature.
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Heisenberg, L., Ramirez, H., & Tsujikawa, S. (2019). Inflation with mixed helicities and its observational imprint on CMB. Phys. Rev. D, 99(2), 023505–14pp.
Abstract: In the framework of effective field theories with prominent helicity-0 and helicity-1 fields coupled to each other via a dimension-3 operator, we study the dynamics of inflation driven by the helicity-0 mode, with a given potential energy, as well as the evolution of cosmological perturbations, influenced by the presence of a mixing term between both helicities. In this scenario, the temporal component of the helicity-1 mode is an auxiliary field and can be integrated out in terms of the time derivative of the helicity-0 mode, so that the background dynamics effectively reduces to that in single-field inflation modulated by a parameter beta associated to the coupling between helicity-0 and helicity-1 modes. We discuss the evolution of a longitudinal scalar perturbation psi and an inflaton fluctuation delta phi, and we explicitly show that a particular combination of these two, which corresponds to an isocurvature mode, is subject to exponential suppression by the vector mass comparable to the Hubble expansion rate during inflation. Furthermore, we find that the effective single-field description corrected by beta also holds for the power spectrum of curvature perturbations generated during inflation. We compute the standard inflationary observables such as the scalar spectral index n(s), and the tensorto-scalar ratio r and confront several inflaton potentials with the recent observational data provided by Planck 2018. Our results show that the coupling between helicity-0 and helicity-1 modes can lead to a smaller value of the tensor-to-scalar ratio especially for small-field inflationary models, so our scenario exhibits even better compatibility with the current observational data.
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Gariazzo, S., de Salas, P. F., & Pastor, S. (2019). Thermalisation of sterile neutrinos in the early universe in the 3+1 scheme with full mixing matrix. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 014–30pp.
Abstract: In the framework of a 3+1 scheme with an additional inert state, we consider the thermalisation of sterile neutrinos in the early Universe taking into account the full 4 x 4 mixing matrix. The evolution of the neutrino energy distributions is found solving the momentum-dependent kinetic equations with full diagonal collision terms, as in previous analyses of flavour neutrino decoupling in the standard case. The degree of thermalisation of the sterile state is shown in terms of the effective number of neutrinos, N-eff, and its dependence on the three additional mixing angles (theta(14), theta(24), theta(34)) and on the squared mass difference Delta m(41)(2) is discussed. Our results are relevant for fixing the contribution of a fourth light neutrino species to the cosmological energy density, whose value is very well constrained by the final Planck analysis. For the preferred region of active-sterile mixing parameters from short-baseline neutrino experiments, we find that the fourth state is fully thermalised (N-eff similar or equal to 4).
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