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De Romeri, V., Fernandez-Martinez, E., & Sorel, M. (2016). Neutrino oscillations at DUNE with improved energy reconstruction. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 030–25pp.
Abstract: We study the physics reach of the long-baseline oscillation analysis of the DUNE experiment when realistic simulations are used to estimate its neutrino energy reconstruction capabilities. Our studies indicate that significant improvements in energy resolution compared to what is customarily assumed are plausible. This improved energy resolution can increase the sensitivity to leptonic CP violation in two ways. On the one hand, the CP-violating term in the oscillation probability has a characteristic energy dependence that can be better reproduced. On the other hand, the second oscillation maximum, especially sensitive to delta(CP), is better reconstructed. These effects lead to a significant improvement in the fraction of values of delta(CP) for which a 5 sigma discovery of leptonic CP-violation would be possible. The precision of the delta(CP) measurement could also be greatly enhanced, with a reduction of the maximum uncertainties from 26 degrees to 18 degrees for a 300 MW.kt.yr exposure. We therefore believe that this potential gain in physics reach merits further investigations of the detector performance achievable in DUNE.
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De Romeri, V., Fernandez-Martinez, E., Gehrlein, J., Machado, P. A. N., & Niro, V. (2017). Dark Matter and the elusive Z' in a dynamical Inverse Seesaw scenario. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 169–21pp.
Abstract: The Inverse Seesaw naturally explains the smallness of neutrino masses via an approximate B-L symmetry broken only by a correspondingly small parameter. In this work the possible dynamical generation of the Inverse Seesaw neutrino mass mechanism from the spontaneous breaking of a gauged U(1) B-L symmetry is investigated. Interestingly, the Inverse Seesaw pattern requires a chiral content such that anomaly cancellation predicts the existence of extra fermions belonging to a dark sector with large, non-trivial, charges under the U(1) B-L. We investigate the phenomenology associated to these new states and find that one of them is a viable dark matter candidate with mass around the TeV scale, whose interaction with the Standard Model is mediated by the Z' boson associated to the gauged U(1) B-L symmetry. Given the large charges required for anomaly cancellation in the dark sector, the B-L Z' interacts preferentially with this dark sector rather than with the Standard Model. This suppresses the rate at direct detection searches and thus alleviates the constraints on Z'-mediated dark matter relic abundance. The collider phenomenology of this elusive Z' is also discussed.
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de Gouvea, A., De Romeri, V., & Ternes, C. A. (2020). Probing neutrino quantum decoherence at reactor experiments. J. High Energy Phys., 08(8), 049–17pp.
Abstract: We explore how well reactor antineutrino experiments can constrain or measure the loss of quantum coherence in neutrino oscillations. We assume that decoherence effects are encoded in the size of the neutrino wave-packet, sigma. We find that the current experiments Daya Bay and the Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation (RENO) already constrain sigma >1.0x10(-4) nm and estimate that future data from the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) would be sensitive to sigma <2.1x10(-3) nm. If the effects of loss of coherence are within the sensitivity of JUNO, we expect sigma to be measured with good precision. The discovery of nontrivial decoherence effects in JUNO would indicate that our understanding of the coherence of neutrino sources is, at least, incomplete.
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de Gouvea, A., De Romeri, V., & Ternes, C. A. (2021). Combined analysis of neutrino decoherence at reactor experiments. J. High Energy Phys., 06(6), 042–12pp.
Abstract: Reactor experiments are well suited to probe the possible loss of coherence of neutrino oscillations due to wave-packets separation. We combine data from the short-baseline experiments Daya Bay and the Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation (RENO) and from the long baseline reactor experiment KamLAND to obtain the best current limit on the reactor antineutrino wave-packet width, sigma > 2.1 x 10(-4) nm at 90% CL. We also find that the determination of standard oscillation parameters is robust, i.e., it is mostly insensitive to the presence of hypothetical decoherence effects once one combines the results of the different reactor neutrino experiments.
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de Anda, F. J., Antoniadis, I., Valle, J. W. F., & Vaquera-Araujo, C. A. (2020). Scotogenic dark matter in an orbifold theory of flavor. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 190–13pp.
Abstract: We propose a flavour theory in which the family symmetry results naturally from a six-dimensional orbifold compactification. “Diracness” of neutrinos is a consequence of the spacetime dimensionality, and the fact that right-handed neutrinos live in the bulk. Dark matter is incorporated in a scotogenic way, as a result of an auxiliary Z(3) symmetry, and its stability is associated to the conservation of a “dark parity” symmetry. The model leads naturally to a “golden” quark-lepton mass relation.
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Cottin, G., Helo, J. C., Hirsch, M., Titov, A., & Wang, Z. S. (2021). Heavy neutral leptons in effective field theory and the high-luminosity LHC. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 039–34pp.
Abstract: Heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) with masses around the electroweak scale are expected to be rather long-lived particles, as a result of the observed smallness of the active neutrino masses. In this work, we study long-lived HNLs in NRSMEFT, a Standard Model (SM) extension with singlet fermions to which we add non-renormalizable operators up to dimension-6. Operators which contain two HNLs can lead to a sizable enhancement of the production cross sections, compared to the minimal case where HNLs are produced only via their mixing with the SM neutrinos. We calculate the expected sensitivities for the ATLAS detector and the future far-detector experiments: AL3X, ANUBIS, CODEX-b, FASER, MATHUSLA, and MoEDAL-MAPP in this setup. The sensitive ranges of the HNL mass and of the active-heavy mixing angle are much larger than those in the minimal case. We study both, Dirac and Majorana, HNLs and discuss how the two cases actually differ phenomenologically, for HNL masses above roughly 100 GeV.
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Consiglio, R., de Salas, P. F., Mangano, G., Miele, G., Pastor, S., & Pisanti, O. (2018). PArthENoPE reloaded. Comput. Phys. Commun., 233, 237–242.
Abstract: We describe the main features of a new and updated version of the program PArthENoPE, which computes the abundances of light elements produced during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. As the previous first release in 2008, the new one, PArthENoPE2.0, is publicly available and distributed from the code site, http://parthenope.na.infn.it . Apart from minor changes, which will be also detailed, the main improvements are as follows. The powerful, but not freely accessible, NAG routines have been substituted by ODEPACK libraries, without any significant loss in precision. Moreover, we have developed a Graphical User Interface (GUI) which allows a friendly use of the code and a simpler implementation of running for grids of input parameters. New Version program summary Program Title: PArthENoPE2.0 Program Files doi : http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/wvgr7d8yt9.1 Licensing provisions: GPLv3 Programming language: Fortran 77 and Python Supplementary material: User Manual available on the web page http://parthenope.na.infn.it Journal reference of previous version: Comput. Phys. Commun. 178 (2008) 956 971 Does the new version supersede the previous version?: Yes Reasons for the new version: Make the code more versatile and user friendly Summary of revisions: (1) Publicly available libraries (2) GUI for configuration Nature of problem: Computation of yields of light elements synthesized in the primordial universe Solution method: Livermore Solver for Ordinary Differential Equations (LSODE) for stiff and nonstiff systems
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Coloma, P., Lopez-Pavon, J., Rosauro-Alcaraz, S., & Urrea, S. (2021). New physics from oscillations at the DUNE near detector, and the role of systematic uncertainties. J. High Energy Phys., 08(8), 065–33pp.
Abstract: We study the capabilities of the DUNE near detector to probe deviations from unitarity of the leptonic mixing matrix, the 3+1 sterile formalism and Non-Standard Interactions affecting neutrino production and detection. We clarify the relation and possible mappings among the three formalisms at short-baseline experiments, and we add to current analyses in the literature the study of the nu(mu)-> nu(tau) appearance channel. We study in detail the impact of spectral uncertainties on the sensitivity to new physics using the DUNE near detector, which has been widely overlooked in the literature. Our analysis shows that this plays an important role on the results and, in particular, that it can lead to a strong reduction in the sensitivity to sterile neutrinos from nu(mu)-> nu(e) transitions, by more than two orders of magnitude. This stresses the importance of a joint experimental and theoretical effort to improve our understanding of neutrino nucleus cross sections, as well as hadron production uncertainties and beam focusing effects. Nevertheless, even with our conservative and more realistic implementation of systematic uncertainties, we find that an improvement over current bounds in the new physics frameworks considered is generally expected if spectral uncertainties are below the 5% level.
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Coloma, P., Esteban, I., Gonzalez-Garcia, M. C., & Menendez, J. (2020). Determining the nuclear neutron distribution from Coherent Elastic neutrino-Nucleus Scattering: current results and future prospects. J. High Energy Phys., 08(8), 030–22pp.
Abstract: Coherent Elastic neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CE nu NS), a process recently measured for the first time at ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source, is directly sensitive to the weak form factor of the nucleus. The European Spallation Source (ESS), presently under construction, will generate the most intense pulsed neutrino flux suitable for the detection of CE nu NS. In this paper we quantify its potential to determine the root mean square radius of the point-neutron distribution, for a variety of target nuclei and a suite of detectors. To put our results in context we also derive, for the first time, a constraint on this parameter from the analysis of the energy and timing data of the CsI detector at the COHERENT experiment.
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Coloma, P., Esteban, I., Gonzalez-Garcia, M. C., & Maltoni, M. (2020). Improved global fit to Non-Standard neutrino Interactions using COHERENT energy and timing data. J. High Energy Phys., 02(2), 023–30pp.
Abstract: We perform a global fit to neutrino oscillation and coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering data, using both timing and energy information from the COHERENT experiment. The results are used to set model-independent bounds on four-fermion effective operators inducing non-standard neutral-current neutrino interactions. We quantify the allowed ranges for their Wilson coefficients, as well as the status of the LMA-D solution, for a wide class of new physics models with arbitrary ratios between the strength of the operators involving up and down quarks. Our results are presented for the COHERENT experiment alone, as well as in combination with the global data from oscillation experiments. We also quantify the dependence of our results for COHERENT with respect to the choice of quenching factor, nuclear form factor, and the treatment of the backgrounds.
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