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De Romeri, V., Martinez-Mirave, P., & Tortola, M. (2021). Signatures of primordial black hole dark matter at DUNE and THEIA. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 10(10), 051–21pp.
Abstract: Primordial black holes (PBHs) are a potential dark matter candidate whose masses can span over many orders of magnitude. If they have masses in the 10(15)-10(17) g range, they can emit sizeable fluxes of MeV neutrinos through evaporation via Hawking radiation. We explore the possibility of detecting light (non-)rotating PBHs with future neutrino experiments. We focus on two next generation facilities: the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) and THEIA. We simulate the expected event spectra at both experiments assuming different PBH mass distributions and spins, and we extract the expected 95% C.L. sensitivities to these scenarios. Our analysis shows that future neutrino experiments like DUNE and THEIA will be able to set competitive constraints on PBH dark matter, thus providing complementary probes in a part of the PBH parameter space currently constrained mainly by photon data.
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de Salas, P. F., Gariazzo, S., Lesgourgues, J., & Pastor, S. (2017). Calculation of the local density of relic neutrinos. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 09(9), 034–24pp.
Abstract: Nonzero neutrino masses are required by the existence of flavour oscillations, with values of the order of at least 50 meV. We consider the gravitational clustering of relic neutrinos within the Milky Way, and used the N – one-body simulation technique to compute their density enhancement factor in the neighbourhood of the Earth with respect to the average cosmic density. Compared to previous similar studies, we pushed the simulation down to smaller neutrino masses, and included an improved treatment of the baryonic and dark matter distributions in the Milky Way. Our results are important for future experiments aiming at detecting the cosmic neutrino background, such as the Princeton Tritium Observatory for Light, Early-universe, Massive-neutrino Yield (PTOLEMY) proposal. We calculate the impact of neutrino clustering in the Milky Way on the expected event rate for a PTOLEMY-like experiment. We find that the effect of clustering remains negligible for the minimal normal hierarchy scenario, while it enhances the event rate by 10 to 20% (resp. a factor 1.7 to 2.5) for the minimal inverted hierarchy scenario (resp. a degenerate scenario with 150 meV masses). Finally we compute the impact on the event rate of a possible fourth sterile neutrino with a mass of 1.3 eV.
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de Salas, P. F., Gariazzo, S., Laveder, M., Pastor, S., Pisanti, O., & Truong, N. (2018). Cosmological bounds on neutrino statistics. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 050–18pp.
Abstract: We consider the phenomenological implications of the violation of the Pauli exclusion principle for neutrinos, focusing on cosmological observables such as the spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies, Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and the primordial abundances of light elements. Neutrinos that behave (at least partly) as bosonic particles have a modified equilibrium distribution function that implies a different influence on the evolution of the Universe that, in the case of massive neutrinos, can not be simply parametrized by a change in the effective number of neutrinos. Our results show that, despite the precision of the available cosmological data, only very weak bounds can be obtained on neutrino statistics, disfavouring a more bosonic behaviour at less than 2 sigma.
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de Salas, P. F., & Pastor, S. (2016). Relic neutrino decoupling with flavour oscillations revisited. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 051–18pp.
Abstract: We study the decoupling process of neutrinos in the early universe in the presence of three-flavour oscillations. The evolution of the neutrino spectra is found by solving the corresponding momentum-dependent kinetic equations for the neutrino density matrix, including for the first time the proper collision integrals for both diagonal and off-diagonal elements. This improved calculation modifies the evolution of the off-diagonal elements of the neutrino density matrix and changes the deviation from equilibrium of the frozen neutrino spectra. However, it does not vary the contribution of neutrinos to the cosmological energy density in the form of radiation, usually expressed in terms of the effective number of neutrinos, N-eff. We find a value of N-eff = 3.045, in agreement with previous theoretical calculations and consistent with the latest analysis of Planck data. This result does not depend on the ordering of neutrino masses. We also consider the effect of non-standard neutrino-electron interactions (NSI), predicted in many theoretical models where neutrinos acquire mass. For two sets of NSI parameters allowed by present data, we find that Neff can be reduced down to 3.040 or enhanced up to 3.059.
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Delhom, A., Olmo, G. J., & Singh, P. (2023). A diffeomorphism invariant family of metric-affine actions for loop cosmologies. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 06(6), 059–21pp.
Abstract: In loop quantum cosmology (LQC) the big bang singularity is generically resolved by a big bounce. This feature holds even when modified quantization prescriptions of the Hamiltonian constraint are used such as in mLQC-I and mLQC-II. While the later describes an effective description qualitatively similar to that of standard LQC, the former describes an asymmetric evolution with an emergent Planckian de-Sitter pre-bounce phase even in the absence of a potential. We consider the potential relation of these canonically quantized non-singular models with effective actions based on a geometric description. We find a 3-parameter family of metric-affine f (R) theories which accurately approximate the effective dynamics of LQC and mLQC-II in all regimes and mLQC-I in the post-bounce phase. Two of the parameters are fixed by enforcing equivalence at the bounce, and the background evolution of the relevant observables can be fitted with only one free parameter. It is seen that the non-perturbative effects of these loop cosmologies are universally encoded by a logarithmic correction that only depends on the bounce curvature of the model. In addition, we find that the best fit value of the free parameter can be very approximately written in terms of fundamental parameters of the underlying quantum description for the three models. The values of the best fits can be written in terms of the bounce density in a simple manner, and the values for each model are related to one another by a proportionality relation involving only the Barbero-Immirzi parameter.
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