Capozzi, F., & Saviano, N. (2022). Neutrino Flavor Conversions in High-Density Astrophysical and Cosmological Environments. Universe, 8(2), 94–23pp.
Abstract: Despite being a well understood phenomenon in the context of current terrestrial experiments, neutrino flavor conversions in dense astrophysical environments probably represent one of the most challenging open problems in neutrino physics. Apart from being theoretically interesting, such a problem has several phenomenological implications in cosmology and in astrophysics, including the primordial nucleosynthesis of light elements abundance and other cosmological observables, nucleosynthesis of heavy nuclei, and the explosion of massive stars. In this review, we briefly summarize the state of the art on this topic, focusing on three environments: early Universe, core-collapse supernovae, and compact binary mergers.
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Blas, D., Caputo, A., Ivanov, M. M., & Sberna, L. (2020). No chiral light bending by clumps of axion-like particles. Phys. Dark Universe, 27, 100428–4pp.
Abstract: We study the propagation of light in the presence of a parity-violating coupling between photons and axion-like particles (ALPs). Naively, this interaction could lead to a split of light rays into two separate beams of different polarization chirality and with different refraction angles. However, by using the eikonal method we explicitly show that this is not the case and that ALP clumps do not produce any spatial birefringence. This happens due to non-trivial variations of the photon's frequency and wavevector, which absorb time-derivatives and gradients of the ALP field. We argue that these variations represent a new way to probe the ALP-photon coupling with precision frequency measurements.
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Begone, G., Deisenroth, M. P., Kim, J. S., Liem, S., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Welling, M. (2019). Accelerating the BSM interpretation of LHC data with machine learning. Phys. Dark Universe, 24, 100293–5pp.
Abstract: The interpretation of Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data in the framework of Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) theories is hampered by the need to run computationally expensive event generators and detector simulators. Performing statistically convergent scans of high-dimensional BSM theories is consequently challenging, and in practice unfeasible for very high-dimensional BSM theories. We present here a new machine learning method that accelerates the interpretation of LHC data, by learning the relationship between BSM theory parameters and data. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrate that this technique accurately predicts natural SUSY signal events in two signal regions at the High Luminosity LHC, up to four orders of magnitude faster than standard techniques. The new approach makes it possible to rapidly and accurately reconstruct the theory parameters of complex BSM theories, should an excess in the data be discovered at the LHC.
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Balbinot, R., & Fabbri, A. (2024). The Unruh Vacuum and the “In-Vacuum” in Reissner-Nordström Spacetime. Universe, 10(1), 18–14pp.
Abstract: The Unruh vacuum is widely used as a quantum state to describe black hole evaporation since, near the horizon, it reproduces the physical state of a quantum field, the so-called “in-vacuum”, in the case where a black hole is formed by gravitational collapse. We examine the relation between these two quantum states in the background spacetime of a Reissner-Nordstrom black hole (both extremal and not), highlighting the similarities and striking differences.
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Araujo Filho, A. A., Jusufi, K., Cuadros-Melgar, B., & Leon, G. (2024). Dark matter signatures of black holes with Yukawa potential. Phys. Dark Universe, 44, 101500–20pp.
Abstract: This study uses a nonsingular Yukawa-modified potential to obtain a static and spherically symmetric black hole solution with a cosmological constant. Such Yukawa-like corrections are encoded in two parameters, alpha and lambda, that modify Newton's law of gravity in large distances, and a deformation parameter l(0), which plays an essential role in short distances. The most significant effect is encoded in alpha, which modifies the total black hole mass with an extra mass proportional to alpha M, mimicking the dark matter effects at large distances from the black hole. On the other hand, the effect due to lambda is small for astrophysical values. We scrutinize the quasinormal frequencies and shadows associated with a spherically symmetric black hole and the thermodynamical behavior influenced by the Yukawa potential. In particular, the thermodynamics of this black hole displays a rich behavior, including possible phase transitions. We use the WKB method to probe the quasinormal modes of massless scalar, electromagnetic, and gravitational field perturbations. In order to check the influence of the parameters on the shadow radius, we consider astrophysical data to determine their values, incorporating information on an optically thin radiating and infalling gas surrounding a black hole to model the black hole shadow image. In particular, we consider Sgr A* black hole as an example and we find that its shadow radius changes by order of 10(-9), meaning that the shadow radius of a black hole with Yukawa potential practically gives rise to the same result encountered in the Schwarzschild black hole. Also, in the eikonal regime, using astrophysical data for Yukawa parameters, we show that the value of the real part of the QNMs frequencies changes by 10(-18). Such Yukawa-like corrections are, therefore, difficult to measure by observations of gravitational waves using the current technology.
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