Abstract: Measurements of spin correlation in top quark pair production are presented using data collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC with proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 fb(-1). Events are selected in final states with two charged leptons and at least two jets and in final states with one charged lepton and at least four jets. Four different observables sensitive to different properties of the top quark pair production mechanism are used to extract the correlation between the top and antitop quark spins. Some of these observables are measured for the first time. The measurements are in good agreement with the Standard Model prediction at next-to-leading-order accuracy.

Abstract: Measurements of the top-antitop quark pair production charge asymmetry in the dilepton channel, characterized by two high-p(T) leptons (electrons or muons), are presented using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb(-1) from pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy root s = 8 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Inclusive and differential measurements as a function of the invariant mass, transverse momentum, and longitudinal boost of the tt system arc performed both in the full phase space and in a fiducial phase space closely matching the detector acceptance. Two observables are studied: A(c)(ll) based on the selected leptons and A(c)(tt) based on the reconstructed tt final state. The inclusive asymmetries are measured in the full phase space to be A(c)(ll)= 0.008 +/- 0.006 and A(c)(tt)= 0.021 +/- 0.016, which are in agreement with the Standard Model predictions of A(c)(ll)= 0.0064 +/- 0.0003 and A(c)(tt)= 0.0111 +/- 0.0004.

Abstract: Measuring core-collapse supernova neutrinos, both from individual supernovae within the Milky Way and from past core collapses throughout the Universe (the diffuse supernova neutrino background, or DSNB), is one of the main goals of current and next generation neutrino experiments. Detecting the heavy -lepton flavor (muon and tau types, collectively nu x) component of the flux is particularly challenging due to small statistics and large backgrounds. While the next galactic neutrino burst will be observed in a plethora of neutrino channels, allowing us to measure a small number of nu x events, only upper limits are anticipated for the diffuse nu x flux even after decades of data taking with conventional detectors. However, paleo detectors could measure the time-integrated flux of neutrinos from galactic core-collapse supernovae via flavor-blind neutral current interactions. In this work, we show how combining a measurement of the average galactic core-collapse supernova flux with paleo detectors and measurements of the DSNB electron -type neutrino fluxes with the next-generation water Cherenkov detector Hyper-Kamiokande and the liquid noble gas detector DUNE will allow to determine the mean supernova nu x flux parameters with precision of order ten percent. Realizing this potential requires both the cosmic supernova rate out to z -1 and the integrated Galactic supernova rate over the last-1 Gyr to be established at the-10% level.

Abstract: Minimal dark energy models, described by the same number of free parameters of the standard cosmological model with cold dark matter plus a cosmological constant to parametrize the dark energy component, constitute very appealing scenarios which may solve long-standing, pending tensions. On the one hand, they alleviate significantly the tension between cosmological observations and the presence of one sterile neutrino motivated by the short-baseline anomalies: we obtain a 95% CL cosmological bound on the mass of a fully thermalized fourth sterile neutrino (N-eff = 4) equal to m(s) < 0.65(1.3) eV within the Phenomenologically Emergent Dark Energy (PEDE) and Vacuum Metamorphosis (VM) scenarios under consideration. Interestingly, these limits are in agreement with the observations at short-baseline experiments, and the PEDE scenario is favored with respect to the Lambda CDM case when the full data combination is considered. On the other hand, the Hubble tension is satisfactorily solved in almost all the minimal dark energy schemes explored here. These phenomenological scenarios may therefore shed light on differences arising from near and far Universe probes, and also on discrepancies between cosmological and laboratory sterile neutrino searches.

Abstract: Model-independent mass limits assess the robustness of current cosmological measurements of the neutrino mass scale. Consistency between high-multipole and low-multiple cosmic microwave background observations measuring such scale further valuates the constraining power of present data. We derive here up-to-date limits on neutrino masses and abundances exploiting either the Data Release 4 of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) or the South Pole Telescope polarization measurements from SPT-3G, envisaging different nonminimal background cosmologies and marginalizing over them. By combining these high-l observations with supernova Ia, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), redshift space distortions (RSD) and a prior on the reionization optical depth fromWMAP data, we find that the marginalized bounds are competitive with those from Planck analyses. We obtain Sigma m(nu) < 0.139 eV and N-eff = 2.82 +/- 0.25 in a dark energy quintessence scenario, both at 95% CL. These limits translate into Sigma m(nu) < 0.20 eV and N-eff = 2.79(-0.28)(+0.30) after marginalizing over a plethora of well-motivated fiducial models. Our findings reassess both the strength and the reliability of cosmological neutrino mass constraints.