Archidiacono, M., Gariazzo, S., Giunti, C., Hannestad, S., & Tram, T. (2020). Sterile neutrino self-interactions: H-0 tension and short-baseline anomalies. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 12(12), 029–20pp.
Abstract: Sterile neutrinos with a mass in the eV range have been invoked as a possible explanation of a variety of short baseline (SBL) neutrino oscillation anomalies. However, if one considers neutrino oscillations between active and sterile neutrinos, such neutrinos would have been fully thermalised in the early universe, and would be therefore in strong conflict with cosmological bounds. In this study we first update cosmological bounds on the mass and energy density of eV-scale sterile neutrinos. We then perform an updated study of a previously proposed model in which the sterile neutrino couples to a new light pseudoscalar degree of freedom. Consistently with previous analyses, we find that the model provides a good fit to all cosmological data and allows the high value of H-0 measured in the local universe to be consistent with measurements of the cosmic microwave background. However, new high l polarisation data constrain the sterile neutrino mass to be less than approximately 1 eV in this scenario. Finally, we combine the cosmological bounds on the pseudoscalar model with a Bayesian inference analysis of SBL data and conclude that only a sterile mass in narrow ranges around 1 eV remains consistent with both cosmology and SBL data.
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Archidiacono, M., Giusarma, E., Hannestad, S., & Mena, O. (2013). Cosmic Dark Radiation and Neutrinos. Adv. High. Energy Phys., 2013, 191047–14pp.
Abstract: New measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by the Planck mission have greatly increased our knowledge about the universe. Dark radiation, a weakly interacting component of radiation, is one of the important ingredients in our cosmological model which is testable by Planck and other observational probes. At the moment, the possible existence of dark radiation is an unsolved question. For instance, the discrepancy between the value of the Hubble constant, H-0, inferred from the Planck data and local measurements of H-0 can to some extent be alleviated by enlarging the minimal ACDM model to include additional relativistic degrees of freedom. From a fundamental physics point of view, dark radiation is no less interesting. Indeed, it could well be one of the most accessible windows to physics beyond the standard model, for example, sterile neutrinos. Here, we review the most recent cosmological results including a complete investigation of the dark radiation sector in order to provide an overview of models that are still compatible with new cosmological observations. Furthermore, we update the cosmological constraints on neutrino physics and dark radiation properties focusing on tensions between data sets and degeneracies among parameters that can degrade our information or mimic the existence of extra species.
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Arguelles, C. A., Coloma, P., Hernandez, P., & Muñoz, V. (2020). Searches for atmospheric long-lived particles. J. High Energy Phys., 02(2), 190–34pp.
Abstract: Long-lived particles are predicted in extensions of the Standard Model that involve relatively light but very weakly interacting sectors. In this paper we consider the possibility that some of these particles are produced in atmospheric cosmic ray showers, and their decay intercepted by neutrino detectors such as IceCube or Super-Kamiokande. We present the methodology and evaluate the sensitivity of these searches in various scenarios, including extensions with heavy neutral leptons in models of massive neutrinos, models with an extra U(1) gauge symmetry, and a combination of both in a U(1)(B-L) model. Our results are shown as a function of the production rate and the lifetime of the corresponding long-lived particles.
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Arguelles, C. A., Kelly, K. J., & Muñoz, V. M. (2021). Millicharged particles from the heavens: single- and multiple-scattering signatures. J. High Energy Phys., 11(11), 099–34pp.
Abstract: For nearly a century, studying cosmic-ray air showers has driven progress in our understanding of elementary particle physics. In this work, we revisit the production of millicharged particles in these atmospheric showers and provide new constraints for XENON1T and Super-Kamiokande and new sensitivity estimates of current and future detectors, such as JUNO. We discuss distinct search strategies, specifically studies of single-energy-deposition events, where one electron in the detector receives a relatively large energy transfer, as well as multiple-scattering events consisting of (at least) two relatively small energy depositions. We demonstrate that these atmospheric search strategies especially the multiple-scattering signature – provide significant room for improvement beyond existing searches, in a way that is complementary to anthropogenic, beam-based searches for MeV-GeV millicharged particles. Finally, we also discuss the implementation of a Monte Carlo simulation for millicharged particle detection in large-volume neutrino detectors, such as IceCube.
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Arguelles, C. A., Muñoz, V., Shoemaker, I. M., & Takhistov, V. (2022). Hadrophilic light dark matter from the atmosphere. Phys. Lett. B, 833, 137363–6pp.
Abstract: Light sub-GeV dark matter (DM) constitutes an underexplored target, beyond the optimized sensitivity of typical direct DM detection experiments. We comprehensively investigate hadrophilic light DM produced from cosmic-ray collisions with the atmosphere. The resulting relativistic DM, originating from meson decays, can be efficiently observed in variety of experiments, such as XENON1T. We include for the first time decays of eta, eta' and K+ mesons, leading to improved limits for DM masses above few hundred MeV. We incorporate an exact treatment of the DM attenuation in Earth and demonstrate that nuclear form factor effects can significantly impact the resulting testable DM parameter space. Further, we establish projections for upcoming experiments, such as DARWIN, over a wide range of DM masses below the GeV scale.
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Arguelles, C. A., Palomares-Ruiz, S., Schneider, A., Wille, L., & Yuan, T. L. (2018). Unified atmospheric neutrino passing fractions for large-scale neutrino telescopes. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 047–41pp.
Abstract: The atmospheric neutrino passing fraction, or self-veto, is defined as the probability for an atmospheric neutrino not to be accompanied by a detectable muon from the same cosmic-ray air shower. Building upon previous work, we propose a redefinition of the passing fractions by unifying the treatment for muon and electron neutrinos. Several approximations have also been removed. This enables performing detailed estimations of the uncertainties in the passing fractions from several inputs: muon losses, cosmic-ray spectrum, hadronic-interaction models and atmosphere-density profiles. We also study the passing fractions under variations of the detector configuration: depth, surrounding medium and muon veto trigger probability. The calculation exhibits excellent agreement with passing fractions obtained from Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, we provide a general software framework to implement this veto technique for all large-scale neutrino observatories.
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Arina, C., Di Mauro, M., Fornengo, N., Heisig, J., Jueid, A., & Ruiz de Austri, R. (2024). CosmiXs: cosmic messenger spectra for indirect dark matter searches. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 035–41pp.
Abstract: The energy spectra of particles produced from dark matter (DM) annihilation or decay are one of the fundamental ingredients to calculate the predicted fluxes of cosmic rays and radiation searched for in indirect DM detection. We revisit the calculation of the source spectra for annihilating and decaying DM using the VINCIA shower algorithm in PYTHIA to include QED and QCD final state radiation and diagrams for the EW corrections with massive bosons, not present in the default PYTHIA shower model. We take into account the spin information of the particles during the entire EW shower and the off -shell contributions from massive gauge bosons. Furthermore, we perform a dedicated tuning of the VINCIA and PYTHIA parameters to LEP data on the production of pions, photons, and hyperons at the Z resonance and discuss the underlying uncertainties. To enable the use of our results in DM studies, we provide the tabulated source spectra for the most relevant cosmic messenger particles, namely antiprotons, positrons, gamma rays and the three neutrino flavors, for all the fermionic and bosonic channels and DM masses between 5 GeV and 100 TeV, on github.
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Aristizabal Sierra, D., Bazzocchi, F., de Medeiros Varzielas, I., Merlo, L., & Morisi, S. (2010). Tri/Bi-maximal lepton mixing and leptogenesis. Nucl. Phys. B, 827(1-2), 34–58.
Abstract: In models with flavour symmetries added to the gauge group of the Standard Model the CP-violating asymmetry necessary for leptogenesis may be related with low-energy parameters. A particular case of interest is when the flavour symmetry produces exact Tri/Bi-maximal lepton mixing leading to a vanishing CP-violating asymmetry. In this paper we present a model-independent discussion that confirms this always occurs for unflavoured leptogenesis in type I see-saw scenarios, noting however that Tri/Bi-maximal mixing does not imply a vanishing asymmetry in general scenarios where there is interplay between type I and other see-saws. We also consider a specific model where the exact Tri/Bi-maximal mixing is lifted by corrections that can be parametrised by a small number of degrees of freedom and analyse in detail the existing link between low and high-energy parameters – focusing on how the deviations from Tri/Bi-maximal are connected to the parameters governing leptogenesis.
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Aristizabal Sierra, D., De Romeri, V., Flores, L. J., & Papoulias, D. K. (2020). Light vector mediators facing XENON1T data. Phys. Lett. B, 809, 135681–5pp.
Abstract: Recently the XENON1T collaboration has released new results on searches for new physics in low-energy electronic recoils. The data shows an excess over background in the low-energy tail, particularly pronounced at about 2-3 keV. With an exposure of 0.65 tonne-year, large detection efficiency and energy resolution, the detector is sensitive as well to solar neutrino backgrounds, with the most prominent contribution given by pp neutrinos. We investigate whether such signal can be explained in terms of new neutrino interactions with leptons mediated by a light vector particle. We find that the excess is consistent with this interpretation for vector masses below less than or similar to 0.1 MeV. The region of parameter space probed by the XENON1T data is competitive with constraints from laboratory experiments, in particular GEMMA, Borexino and TEXONO. However we point out a severe tension with astrophysical bounds and cosmological observations.
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Aristizabal Sierra, D., De Romeri, V., & Papoulias, D. K. (2022). Consequences of the Dresden-II reactor data for the weak mixing angle and new physics. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 076–22pp.
Abstract: The Dresden-II reactor experiment has recently reported a suggestive evidence for the observation of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, using a germanium detector. Given the low recoil energy threshold, these data are particularly interesting for a low-energy determination of the weak mixing angle and for the study of new physics leading to spectral distortions at low momentum transfer. Using two hypotheses for the quenching factor, we study the impact of the data on: (i) The weak mixing angle at a renormalization scale of similar to 10 MeV, (ii) neutrino generalized interactions with light mediators, (iii) the sterile neutrino dipole portal. The results for the weak mixing angle show a strong dependence on the quenching factor choice. Although still with large uncertainties, the Dresden-II data provide for the first time a determination of sin(2)theta(W) at such scale using coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering data. Tight upper limits are placed on the light vector, scalar and tensor mediator scenarios. Kinematic constraints implied by the reactor anti-neutrino flux and the ionization energy threshold allow the sterile neutrino dipole portal to produce up-scattering events with sterile neutrino masses up to similar to 8 MeV. In this context, we find that limits are also sensitive to the quenching factor choice, but in both cases competitive with those derived from XENON1T data and more stringent that those derived with COHERENT data, in the same sterile neutrino mass range.
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