Escudero, M., & Witte, S. J. (2020). A CMB search for the neutrino mass mechanism and its relation to the Hubble tension. Eur. Phys. J. C, 80(4), 294–10pp.
Abstract: The majoron, a pseudo-Goldstone boson arising from the spontaneous breaking of global lepton number, is a generic feature of many models intended to explain the origin of the small neutrino masses. In this work, we investigate potential imprints in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) arising from massive majorons, should they thermalize with neutrinos after Big Bang Nucleosynthesis via inverse neutrino decays. We show that Planck2018 measurements of the CMB are currently sensitive to neutrino-majoron couplings as small as lambda similar to 10-13, which if interpreted in the context of the type-I seesaw mechanism correspond to a lepton number symmetry breaking scale vL similar to O(100)GeV Additionally, we identify parameter space for which the majoron-neutrino interactions, collectively with an extra contribution to the effective number of relativistic species Neff, can ameliorate the outstanding H0 tension.
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Escudero, M., Lopez-Pavon, J., Rius, N., & Sandner, S. (2020). Relaxing cosmological neutrino mass bounds with unstable neutrinos. J. High Energy Phys., 12(12), 119–44pp.
Abstract: At present, cosmological observations set the most stringent bound on the neutrino mass scale. Within the standard cosmological model (Lambda CDM), the Planck collaboration reports Sigma m(v)< 0.12 eV at 95 % CL. This bound, taken at face value, excludes many neutrino mass models. However, unstable neutrinos, with lifetimes shorter than the age of the universe <tau>(nu) less than or similar to t(U), represent a particle physics avenue to relax this constraint. Motivated by this fact, we present a taxonomy of neutrino decay modes, categorizing them in terms of particle content and final decay products. Taking into account the relevant phenomenological bounds, our analysis shows that 2-body decaying neutrinos into BSM particles are a promising option to relax cosmological neutrino mass bounds. We then build a simple extension of the type I seesaw scenario by adding one sterile state nu (4) and a Goldstone boson phi, in which nu (i)-> nu (4)phi decays can loosen the neutrino mass bounds up to Sigma m(v) similar to 1 eV, without spoiling the light neutrino mass generation mechanism. Remarkably, this is possible for a large range of the right-handed neutrino masses, from the electroweak up to the GUT scale. We successfully implement this idea in the context of minimal neutrino mass models based on a U(1)(mu-tau) flavor symmetry, which are otherwise in tension with the current bound on Sigma m(v).
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Escudero, M., Witte, S. J., & Rius, N. (2018). The dispirited case of gauged U(1)(B-L) dark matter. J. High Energy Phys., 08(8), 190–30pp.
Abstract: We explore the constraints and phenomenology of possibly the simplest scenario that could account at the same time for the active neutrino masses and the dark matter in the Universe within a gauged U(1)(B-L) symmetry, namely right-handed neutrino dark matter. We find that null searches from lepton and hadron colliders require dark matter with a mass below 900 GeV to annihilate through a resonance. Additionally, the very strong constraints from high-energy dilepton searches fully exclude the model for 150 GeV < m(z') < 3 TeV. We further explore the phenomenology in the high mass region (i.e. masses greater than or similar to O(1) TeV) and highlight theoretical arguments, related to the appearance of a Landau pole or an instability of the scalar potential, disfavoring large portions of this parameter space. Collectively, these considerations illustrate that a minimal extension of the Standard Model via a local U(1)(B-L) symmetry with a viable thermal dark matter candidate is difficult to achieve without fine-tuning. We conclude by discussing possible extensions of the model that relieve tension with collider constraints by reducing the gauge coupling required to produce the correct relic abundance.
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Escudero, M., Hooper, D., & Witte, S. J. (2017). Updated collider and direct detection constraints on Dark Matter models for the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 02(2), 038–21pp.
Abstract: Utilizing an exhaustive set of simplified models, we revisit dark matter scenarios potentially capable of generating the observed Galactic Center gamma-ray excess, updating constraints from the LUX and PandaX- II experiments, as well as from the LHC and other colliders. We identify a variety of pseudoscalar mediated models that remain consistent with all constraints. In contrast, dark matter candidates which annihilate through a spin-1 mediator are ruled out by direct detection constraints unless the mass of the mediator is near an annihilation resonance, or the mediator has a purely vector coupling to the dark matter and a purely axial coupling to Standard Model fermions. All scenarios in which the dark matter annihilates throught-channel processes are now ruled out by a combination of the constraints from LUX/ PandaX-II and the LHC.
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Gariazzo, S., Escudero, M., Diamanti, R., & Mena, O. (2017). Cosmological searches for a noncold dark matter component. Phys. Rev. D, 96(4), 043501–11pp.
Abstract: We explore an extended cosmological scenario where the dark matter is an admixture of cold and additional noncold species. The mass and temperature of the noncold dark matter particles are extracted from a number of cosmological measurements. Among others, we consider tomographic weak lensing data and Milky Way dwarf satellite galaxy counts. We also study the potential of these scenarios in alleviating the existing tensions between local measurements and cosmic microwave background ( CMB) estimates of the S-8 parameter, with S-8 = sigma(8)root Omega(m), and of the Hubble constant H-0. In principle, a subdominant, noncold dark matter particle with a mass m(X) similar to keV, could achieve the goals above. However, the preferred ranges for its temperature and its mass are different when extracted from weak lensing observations and from Milky Way dwarf satellite galaxy counts, since these two measurements require suppressions of the matter power spectrum at different scales. Therefore, solving simultaneously the CMB-weak lensing tensions and the small scale crisis in the standard cold dark matter picture via only one noncold dark matter component seems to be challenging.
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