King, S. F., Marfatia, D., & Rahat, M. H. (2024). Toward distinguishing Dirac from Majorana neutrino mass with gravitational waves. Phys. Rev. D, 109(3), 035014–13pp.
Abstract: We propose a new method toward distinguishing the Dirac versus Majorana nature of neutrino masses from the spectrum of gravitational waves (GWs) associated with neutrino mass genesis. Motivated by the principle of generating small neutrino masses without tiny Yukawa couplings, we assume generic seesaw mechanisms for both Majorana and Dirac neutrino masses. For Majorana neutrinos, we further assume a spontaneously broken gauged U(1)B-L symmetry, independently of the type of Majorana seesaw mechanism, which gives a cosmic string induced GW signal flat over a wide range of frequencies. For Dirac neutrinos, we assume the spontaneous breaking of a Z2 symmetry, the minimal symmetry choice associated with all Dirac seesaw mechanisms, which is softly broken, generating a peaked GW spectrum from the annihilation of the resulting domain walls. In fact, the GW spectra for all types of Dirac seesaws with such a broken Z2 symmetry are identical, subject to a mild caveat. As an illustrative example, we study the simplest respective type-I seesaw mechanisms, and show that the striking difference in the shapes of the GW spectra can help differentiate between these Dirac and Majorana seesaws, complementing results of neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. We also discuss detailed implications of the recent NANOGrav data for Majorana and Dirac seesaw models.
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Kaur, D., Khan Chowdhury, N. R., & Rahaman, U. (2024). Effect of non-unitary mixing on the mass hierarchy and CP violation determination at the Protvino to ORCA experiment. Eur. Phys. J. C, 84(2), 118–18pp.
Abstract: In this paper, we have estimated the neutrino mass ordering and the CP violation sensitivity of the proposed Protvino to ORCA (P2O) experiment after 6 years of data-taking. Both unitary and non-unitary 3x3\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$3\times 3$$\end{document} neutrino mass mixing have been considered in the simulations. A forecast analysis deriving possible future constraints on non-unitary parameters at P2O have been performed.
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Karan, A., Miralles, V., & Pich, A. (2024). Updated global fit of the aligned two-Higgs-doublet model with heavy scalars. Phys. Rev. D, 109(3), 035012–29pp.
Abstract: An updated global fit on the parameter-space of the aligned two-Higgs-doublet model is performed with the help of the open-source package HEPfit, assuming the Standard-Model Higgs to be the lightest scalar. No new sources of CP violation, other than the phase in the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix of the Standard Model, are considered. A similar global fit was previously performed by O. Eberhardt et al. [Global fits in the aligned two-Higgs-doublet model, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2021) 005] with a slightly different set of parameters. Our updated fit incorporates improved analyses of the theoretical constraints required for the perturbative unitarity and boundedness of the scalar potential from below, additional flavor observables and updated data on direct searches for heavy scalars at the LHC, Higgs signal strengths, and electroweak precision observables. Although not included in the main fit, the implications of the CDF measurement of the W +/- mass are also discussed.
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Kalliokoski, M., Mitsou, V. A., de Montigny, M., Mukhopadhyay, A., Ouimet, P. P. A., Pinfold, J., et al. (2024). Searching for minicharged particles at the energy frontier with the MoEDAL-MAPP experiment at the LHC. J. High Energy Phys., 04(4), 137–22pp.
Abstract: The MoEDAL's Apparatus for Penetrating Particles (MAPP) Experiment is designed to expand the search for new physics at the LHC, significantly extending the physics program of the baseline MoEDAL Experiment. The Phase-1 MAPP detector (MAPP-1) is currently undergoing installation at the LHC's UA83 gallery adjacent to the LHCb/MoEDAL region at Interaction Point 8 and will begin data-taking in early 2024. The focus of the MAPP experiment is on the quest for new feebly interacting particles – avatars of new physics with extremely small Standard Model couplings, such as minicharged particles (mCPs). In this study, we present the results of a comprehensive analysis of MAPP-1's sensitivity to mCPs arising in the canonical model involving the kinetic mixing of a massless dark U(1) gauge field with the Standard Model hypercharge gauge field. We focus on several dominant production mechanisms of mCPs at the LHC across the mass-mixing parameter space of interest to MAPP: Drell-Yan pair production, direct decays of heavy quarkonia and light vector mesons, and single Dalitz decays of pseudoscalar mesons. The 95% confidence level background-free sensitivity of MAPP-1 for mCPs produced at the LHC's Run 3 and the HL-LHC through these mechanisms, along with projected constraints on the minicharged strongly interacting dark matter window, are reported. Our results indicate that MAPP-1 exhibits sensitivity to sizable regions of unconstrained parameter space and can probe effective charges as low as 8 x 10 -4 e and 6 x 10 -4 e for Run 3 and the HL-LHC, respectively.
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Jungclaus, A., Doornenbal, P., Acosta, J., Vaquero, V., Browne, F., Cortes, M. L., et al. (2024). Position of the single-particle 3/2- state in 135Sn and the N = 90 subshell closure. Phys. Lett. B, 851, 138561–5pp.
Abstract: The decay of excited states of the nucleus Sn-135, with three neutrons outside the doubly-magic Sn-132 core, was studied in an experiment performed at the Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory at RIKEN. Several gamma rays emitted from excited Sn-135 ions were observed following one-neutron and one-neutron-one-proton removal from Sn-136 and Sb-137 beams, respectively, on a beryllium target at relativistic energies. Based on the analogy to 133Sn populated via one-neutron removal from Sn-134, an excitation energy of 695(15) keV is assigned to the 3/2(-) state with strongest single-particle character in 135Sn. This result provides the first direct information about the evolution of the neutron shell structure beyond N = 82 and thus allows for a crucial test of shellmodel calculations in this region. The experimental findings are in full agreement with calculations performed employing microscopic effective two-body interactions derived from CD-Bonn and N3LO nucleon-nucleon potentials, which do not predict a pronounced subshell gap at neutron number N=90. The occurrence of such a gap in Sn-140, i.e., when the 1f(7/2) orbital is completely filled, had been proposed in the past, in analogy to the magicity of Ca-48, featuring a completely filled 0f(7/2) orbital one harmonic oscillator shell below.
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Jungclaus, A. et al, Gadea, A., & Montaner-Piza, A. (2024). Excited-State Half-Lives in 130 Cd and the Isospin Dependence of Effective Charges. Phys. Rev. Lett., 132(22), 222501–7pp.
Abstract: The known I pi = 8 & thorn; 1 , E x = 2129-keV isomer in the semimagic nucleus 130 Cd 82 was populated in the projectile fission of a 238 U beam at the Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory at RIKEN. The high counting statistics of the accumulated data allowed us to determine the excitation energy, E x = 2001.2(7) keV, and half-life, T 1 =2 = 57(3) ns, of the I pi = 6 & thorn; 1 state based on gamma gamma coincidence information. Furthermore, the halflife of the 8 & thorn; 1 state, T 1 =2 = 224(4) ns, was remeasured with high precision. The new experimental information, combined with available data for 134 Sn and large-scale shell model calculations, allowed us to extract proton and neutron effective charges for 132 Sn, a doubly magic nucleus far -off stability. A comparison to analogous information for 100 Sn provides first reliable information regarding the isospin dependence of the isoscalar and isovector effective charges in heavy nuclei.
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Jueid, A., Kip, J., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Skands, P. (2024). The Strong Force meets the Dark Sector: a robust estimate of QCD uncertainties for anti-matter dark matter searches. J. High Energy Phys., 02(2), 119–48pp.
Abstract: In dark-matter annihilation channels to hadronic final states, stable particles – such as positrons, photons, antiprotons, and antineutrinos – are produced via complex sequences of phenomena including QED/QCD radiation, hadronisation, and hadron decays. These processes are normally modelled by Monte Carlo (MC) event generators whose limited accuracy imply intrinsic QCD uncertainties on the predictions for indirect-detection experiments like Fermi-LAT, Pamela, IceCube or Ams-02. In this article, we perform a comprehensive analysis of QCD uncertainties, meaning both perturbative and nonperturbative sources of uncertainty are included – estimated via variations of MC renormalization-scale and fragmentation-function parameters, respectively – in antimatter spectra from dark-matter annihilation, based on parametric variations of the Pythia 8 event generator. After performing several retunings of light-quark fragmentation functions, we define a set of variations that span a conservative estimate of the QCD uncertainties. We estimate the effects on antimatter spectra for various annihilation channels and final-state particle species, and discuss their impact on fitted values for the dark-matter mass and thermally-averaged annihilation cross section. We find dramatic impacts which can go up to O(10%) for the annihilation cross section. We provide the spectra in tabulated form including QCD uncertainties and code snippets to perform fast dark-matter fits, in this github repository.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo, F. L., Castillo Gimenez, V., et al. (2024). Search for quantum black hole production in lepton plus jet final states using proton-proton collisions at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector. Phys. Rev. D, 109(3), 032010–28pp.
Abstract: A search for quantum black holes in electron + jet and muon + jet invariant mass spectra is performed with 140 fb(-1) of data collected by the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at root s = 13 TeV at the Large Hadron Collider. The observed invariant mass spectrum of lepton + jet pairs is consistent with Standard Model expectations. Upper limits are set at 95% confidence level on the production cross section times branching fractions for quantum black holes decaying into a lepton and a quark in a search region with invariant mass above 2.0 TeV. The resulting quantum black hole lower mass threshold limit is 9.2 TeV in the Arkani-Hamed-Dimopoulos-Dvali model, and 6.8 TeV in the Randall-Sundrum model.
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Irles, A., Marquez, J. P., Pöschl, R., Richard, F., Saibel, A., Yamamoto, H., et al. (2024). Probing gauge-Higgs unification models at the ILC with quark-antiquark forward-backward asymmetry at center-of-mass energies above the Z mass. Eur. Phys. J. C, 84(5), 537–17pp.
Abstract: The International Linear Collider (ILC) will allow the precise study of e(-)e(+)-> q (q) over bar interactions at different center-of-mass energies from the Z-pole to 1 TeV. In this paper, we discuss the experimental prospects for measuring differential observables in e(-)e(+)-> b (b) over bar and e(-)e(+) -> c (c) over bar at the ILC baseline energies, 250 and 500 GeV. The study is based on full simulation and reconstruction of the International Large Detector (ILD) concept. Two gauge-Higgs unification models predicting new high-mass resonances beyond the Standard Model are discussed. These models predict sizable deviations of the forward-backward observables at the ILC running above the Z mass and with longitudinally polarized electron and positron beams. The ability of the ILC to probe these models via high-precision measurements of the forward-backward asymmetry is discussed. Alternative scenarios at other energies and beam polarization schemes are also discussed, extrapolating the estimated uncertainties from the two baseline scenarios.
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Illana, A. et al, & Perez-Vidal, R. M. (2024). Octupole correlations in the N = Z+2=56 110Xe nucleus. Phys. Lett. B, 848, 138371–7pp.
Abstract: This letter reports on the first observation of an octupole band in the neutron-deficient (N = Z + 2) nucleus Xe-110. The Xe-110 nuclei were produced via the Fe-54(Ni-58,2n) fusion-evaporation reaction. The emitted gamma rays were detected using the jurogam 3 gamma-ray spectrometer, while the fusion-evaporation residues were separated with the MARA separator at the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Jyv & auml;skyl & auml;, Finland. The experimental observation of the low-lying 3(-) and 5(-) states and inter-band E1 transitions between the ground-state band and the octupole band proves the importance of octupole correlations in this region. These new experimental data combined with theoretical calculations using the symmetry-conserving configuration-mixing method, based on a Gogny energy density functional, have been interpreted as an evidence of enhanced octupole correlations in neutron-deficient xenon isotopes.
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