Hernandez, P., Jones-Perez, J., & Suarez-Navarro, O. (2019). Majorana vs pseudo-Dirac neutrinos at the ILC. Eur. Phys. J. C, 79(3), 220–11pp.
Abstract: Neutrino masses could originate in seesaw models testable at colliders, with light mediators and an approximate lepton number symmetry. The minimal model of this type contains two quasi-degenerate Majorana fermions forming a pseudo-Dirac pair. An important question is to what extent future colliders will have sensitivity to the splitting between the Majorana components, since this quantity signals the breaking of lepton number and is connected to the light neutrino masses. We consider the production of these neutral heavy leptons at the ILC, where their displaced decays provide a golden signal: a forward-backward charge asymmetry, which depends crucially on the mass splitting between the two Majorana components. We show that this observable can constrain the mass splitting to values much lower than current bounds from neutrinoless double beta decay and natural loop corrections.
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Hernandez, P., Pena, C., & Romero-Lopez, F. (2019). Large Nc scaling of meson masses and decay constants. Eur. Phys. J. C, 79(10), 865–13pp.
Abstract: We perform an ab initio calculation of the Nc scaling of the low-energy couplings of the chiral Lagrangian of low-energy strong interactions, extracted from the mass dependence of meson masses and decay constants. We compute these observables on the lattice with four degenerate fermions, Nf=4, and varying number of colours, Nc=3-6, at a lattice spacing of a similar or equal to 0.075 fm. We find good agreement with the expected Nc scaling and measure the coefficients of the leading and subleading terms in the large Nc expansion. From the subleading Nc corrections, we can also infer the Nf dependence, that we use to extract the value of the low-energy couplings for different values of Nf. We find agreement with previous determinations at Nc=3 and Nf=2,3 and also, our results support a strong paramagnetic suppression of the chiral condensate in moving from Nf=2 to Nf=3.
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NEXT Collaboration(Henriques, C. A. O. et al), Alvarez, V., Benlloch-Rodriguez, J. M., Botas, A., Carcel, S., Carrion, J. V., et al. (2019). Electroluminescence TPCs at the thermal diffusion limit. J. High Energy Phys., 01(1), 027–23pp.
Abstract: The NEXT experiment aims at searching for the hypothetical neutrinoless double-beta decay from the Xe-136 isotope using a high-purity xenon TPC. Efficient discrimination of the events through pattern recognition of the topology of primary ionisation tracks is a major requirement for the experiment. However, it is limited by the diffusion of electrons. It is known that the addition of a small fraction of a molecular gas to xenon reduces electron diffusion. On the other hand, the electroluminescence (EL) yield drops and the achievable energy resolution may be compromised. We have studied the effect of adding several molecular gases to xenon (CO2, CH4 and CF4) on the EL yield and energy resolution obtained in a small prototype of driftless gas proportional scintillation counter. We have compared our results on the scintillation characteristics (EL yield and energy resolution) with a microscopic simulation, obtaining the diffusion coefficients in those conditions as well. Accordingly, electron diffusion may be reduced from about 10 for pure xenon down to 2.5 using additive concentrations of about 0.05%, 0.2% and 0.02% for CO2, CH4 and CF4, respectively. Our results show that CF4 admixtures present the highest EL yield in those conditions, but very poor energy resolution as a result of huge fluctuations observed in the EL formation. CH4 presents the best energy resolution despite the EL yield being the lowest. The results obtained with xenon admixtures are extrapolated to the operational conditions of the NEXT-100 TPC. CO2 and CH4 show potential as molecular additives in a large xenon TPC. While CO2 has some operational constraints, making it difficult to be used in a large TPC, CH4 shows the best performance and stability as molecular additive to be used in the NEXT-100 TPC, with an extrapolated energy resolution of 0.4% at 2.45 MeV for concentrations below 0.4%, which is only slightly worse than the one obtained for pure xenon. We demonstrate the possibility to have an electroluminescence TPC operating very close to the thermal diffusion limit without jeopardizing the TPC performance, if CO2 or CH4 are chosen as additives.
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Helo, J. C., Hirsch, M., & Ota, T. (2019). Proton decay at one loop. Phys. Rev. D, 99(9), 095021–14pp.
Abstract: Proton decay is usually discussed in the context of grand unified theories. However, as is well known, in the standard model effective theory proton decay appears in the form of higher-dimensional non-renormalizable operators. Here, we study systematically the one-loop decomposition of the d = 6 B + L violating operators. We exhaustively list the possible one-loop ultraviolet completions of these operators and discuss that, in general, two distinct classes of models appear. Models in the first class need an additional symmetry in order to avoid tree-level proton decay. These models necessarily contain a neutral particle, which could act as a dark matter candidate. For models in the second class the loop contribution dominates automatically over the tree-level proton decay, without the need for additional symmetries. We also discuss possible phenomenology of two example models, one from each class, and their possible connections to neutrino masses, LHC searches and dark matter.
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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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NEXT Collaboration(Novella, P. et al), Palmeiro, B., Sorel, M., Uson, A., Alvarez, V., Benlloch-Rodriguez, J. M., et al. (2019). Radiogenic backgrounds in the NEXT double beta decay experiment. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 051–26pp.
Abstract: Natural radioactivity represents one of the main backgrounds in the search for neutrinoless double beta decay. Within the NEXT physics program, the radioactivity- induced backgrounds are measured with the NEXT-White detector. Data from 37.9 days of low-background operations at the Laboratorio Subterraneo de Canfranc with xenon depleted in Xe-136 are analyzed to derive a total background rate of (0.84 +/- 0.02) mHz above 1000 keV. The comparison of data samples with and without the use of the radon abatement system demonstrates that the contribution of airborne-Rn is negligible. A radiogenic background model is built upon the extensive radiopurity screening campaign conducted by the NEXT collaboration. A spectral fit to this model yields the specific contributions of Co-60, K-40, Bi-214 and Tl-208 to the total background rate, as well as their location in the detector volumes. The results are used to evaluate the impact of the radiogenic backgrounds in the double beta decay analyses, after the application of topological cuts that reduce the total rate to (0.25 +/- 0.01) mHz. Based on the best-fit background model, the NEXT-White median sensitivity to the two-neutrino double beta decay is found to be 3.5 sigma after 1 year of data taking. The background measurement in a Q(beta beta)+/- 100 keV energy window validates the best-fit background model also for the neutrinoless double beta decay search with NEXT-100. Only one event is found, while the model expectation is (0.75 +/- 0.12) events.
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NEXT Collaboration(Ferrario, P. et al), Benlloch-Rodriguez, J. M., Kekic, M., Renner, J., Uson, A., Alvarez, V., et al. (2019). Demonstration of the event identification capabilities of the NEXT-White detector. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 052–20pp.
Abstract: In experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay, the possibility of identifying the two emitted electrons is a powerful tool in rejecting background events and therefore improving the overall sensitivity of the experiment. In this paper we present the first measurement of the efficiency of a cut based on the different event signatures of double and single electron tracks, using the data of the NEXT-White detector, the first detector of the NEXT experiment operating underground. Using a Th-228 calibration source to produce signal-like and background-like events with energies near 1.6 MeV, a signal efficiency of 71.6 +/- 1.5(stat) +/- 0.3(sys) % for a background acceptance of 20.6 +/- 0.4(stat) +/- 0.3(sys)% is found, in good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations. An extrapolation to the energy region of the neutrinoless double beta decay by means of Monte Carlo simulations is also carried out, and the results obtained show an improvement in background rejection over those obtained at lower energies.
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NEXT Collaboration(Renner, J. et al), Kekic, M., Martinez-Lema, G., Alvarez, V., Benlloch-Rodriguez, J. M., Carcel, S., et al. (2019). Energy calibration of the NEXT-White detector with 1% resolution near Q(beta beta) of Xe-136. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 230–13pp.
Abstract: Excellent energy resolution is one of the primary advantages of electroluminescent high-pressure xenon TPCs. These detectors are promising tools in searching for rare physics events, such as neutrinoless double-beta decay (beta beta 0 nu), which require precise energy measurements. Using the NEXT-White detector, developed by the NEXT (Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon TPC) collaboration, we show for the first time that an energy resolution of 1% FWHM can be achieved at 2.6 MeV, establishing the present technology as the one with the best energy resolution of all xenon detectors for beta beta 0 nu searches.
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Hatifi, M., Di Molfetta, G., Debbasch, F., & Brachet, M. (2019). Quantum walk hydrodynamics. Sci Rep, 9, 2989–7pp.
Abstract: A simple Discrete-Time Quantum Walk (DTQW) on the line is revisited and given an hydrodynamic interpretation through a novel relativistic generalization of the Madelung transform. Numerical results show that suitable initial conditions indeed produce hydrodynamical shocks and that the coherence achieved in current experiments is robust enough to simulate quantum hydrodynamical phenomena through DTQWs. An analytical computation of the asymptotic quantum shock structure is presented. The non-relativistic limit is explored in the Supplementary Material (SM).
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Guerrero, C., Tessler, M., Paul, M., Lerendegui-Marco, J., Heinitz, S., Maugeri, E. A., et al. (2019). The s-process in the Nd-Pm-Sm region: Neutron activation of Pm-147. Phys. Lett. B, 797, 134809–6pp.
Abstract: The Nd-Pm-Sm branching is of interest for the study of the s-process, related to the production of heavy elements in stars. As Sm-148 and Sm-150 are s-only isotopes, the understanding of the branching allows constraining the s-process neutron density. In this context the key physics input needed is the cross section of the three unstable nuclides in the region: Nd-147 (10.98 d half-life), Pm-147 (2.62 yr) and Pm-148 (5.37 d). This paper reports on the activation measurement of Pm-147, the longest-lived of the three nuclides. The cross section measurement has been carried out by activation at the SARAF LiLiT facility using a 56(2) μg target. Compared to the single previous measurement of Pm-147, the measurement presented herein benefits from a target 2000 times more massive. The resulting Maxwellian Averaged Cross Section (MACS) to the ground and metastable states in Pm-148 are 469(50) mb and 357(27) mb. These values are 41% higher (to the ground state) and 15% lower (to the metastable state) than the values reported so far, leading however to a total cross section of 826(107) mb consistent within uncertainties with the previous result and hence leaving unchanged the previous calculation of the s-process neutron density.
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