Bodeker, D., Kuhnel, F., Oldengott, I. M., & Schwarz, D. J. (2021). Lepton flavor asymmetries and the mass spectrum of primordial black holes. Phys. Rev. D, 103(6), 063506–6pp.
Abstract: We study the influence of lepton flavor asymmetries on the formation and the mass spectrum of primordial black holes. We estimate the detectability of their mergers with LIGO/Virgo and show that the currently published gravitational wave events may actually be described by a primordial black hole spectrum from nonzero asymmetries. We suggest to use gravitational-wave astronomy as a novel tool to probe how lepton flavor asymmetric the Universe has been before the onset of neutrino oscillations.
|
Nieves, J., Pavao, R., & Sakai, S. (2019). Lambda(b) decays into Lambda cl(nu)over-barl and Lambda c*pi(-) [ Lambda(c)* = Lambda(c)( 2595) and Lambda(c)(2625)] and heavy quark spin symmetry. Eur. Phys. J. C, 79(5), 417–20pp.
Abstract: We study the implications for bc=c(2595) and c(2625)] decays that can be deduced from heavy quark spin symmetry (HQSS). Identifying the odd parity c(2595) and c(2625) resonances as HQSS partners, with total angular momentum-parity jqP=1- for the light degrees of freedom, we find that the ratios (bc(2595)-)/(bc(2625)-) and (bc(2595)) agree, within errors, with the experimental values given in the Review of Particle Physics. We discuss how future, and more precise, measurements of the above branching fractions could be used to shed light into the inner HQSS structure of the narrow c(2595) odd-parity resonance. Namely, we show that such studies would constrain the existence of a sizable jqP</mml:msubsup>=0- component in its wave-function, and/or of a two-pole pattern, in analogy to the case of the similar (1405) resonance in the strange sector, as suggested by most of the approaches that describe the c(2595) as a hadron molecule. We also investigate the lepton flavor universality ratios R[c]=B( may be affected by a new source of potentially large systematic errors if there are two) poles.
|
Figueroa, D. G., Raatikainen, S., Rasanen, S., & Tomberg, E. (2022). Implications of stochastic effects for primordial black hole production in ultra-slow-roll inflation. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 05(5), 027–48pp.
Abstract: We study the impact of stochastic noise on the generation of primordial black hole (PBH) seeds in ultra-slow-roll (USR) inflation with numerical simulations. We consider the non-linearity of the system by consistently taking into account the noise dependence on the inflaton perturbations, while evolving the perturbations on the coarse-grained background affected by the noise. We capture in this way the non-Markovian nature of the dynamics, and demonstrate that non-Markovian effects are subleading. Using the Delta N formalism, we find the probability distribution P(R) of the comoving curvature perturbation R. We consider inflationary potentials that fit the CMB and lead to PBH dark matter with i) asteroid, ii) solar, or iii) Planck mass, as well as iv) PBHs that form the seeds of supermassive black holes. We find that stochastic effects enhance the PBH abundance by a factor of O(10)-O(10(8)), depending on the PBH mass. We also show that the usual approximation, where stochastic kicks depend only on the Hubble rate, either underestimates or overestimates the abundance by orders of magnitude, depending on the potential. We evaluate the gauge dependence of the results, discuss the quantum-to-classical transition, and highlight open issues of the application of the stochastic formalism to USR inflation.
|
Khosa, C. K., & Sanz, V. (2022). On the Impact of the LHC Run 2 Data on General Composite Higgs Scenarios. Adv. High. Energy Phys., 2022, 8970837–13pp.
Abstract: We study the impact of Run 2 LHC data on general composite Higgs scenarios, where nonlinear effects, mixing with additional scalars, and new fermionic degrees of freedom could simultaneously contribute to the modification of Higgs properties. We obtain new experimental limits on the scale of compositeness, the mixing with singlets and doublets with the Higgs, and the mass and mixing angle of top-partners. We also show that for scenarios where new fermionic degrees of freedom are involved in electroweak symmetry breaking, there is an interesting interplay among Higgs coupling measurements, boosted Higgs properties, SMEFT global analyses, and direct searches for single and double production of vector-like quarks.
|
Oldengott, I. M., Barenboim, G., Kahlen, S., Salvado, J., & Schwarz, D. J. (2019). How to relax the cosmological neutrino mass bound. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 049–18pp.
Abstract: We study the impact of non-standard momentum distributions of cosmic neutrinos on the anisotropy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background and the matter power spectrum of the large scale structure. We show that the neutrino distribution has almost no unique observable imprint, as it is almost entirely degenerate with the effective number of neutrino flavours, N-eff, and the neutrino mass, m(nu). Performing a Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis with current cosmological data, we demonstrate that the neutrino mass bound heavily depends on the assumed momentum distribution of relic neutrinos. The message of this work is simple and has to our knowledge not been pointed out clearly before: cosmology allows that neutrinos have larger masses if their average momentum is larger than that of a perfectly thermal distribution. Here we provide an example in which the mass limits are relaxed by a factor of two.
|