Abstract: Massive neutrinos demand to ask whether they are Dirac or Majorana particles. Majorana neutrinos are an irrefutable proof of physics beyond the Standard Model. Neutrinoless double electron capture is not a process but a virtual Delta L = 2 mixing between a parent (A)Z atom and a daughter (A)(Z – 2) excited atom with two electron holes. As a mixing between two neutral atoms and the observable signal in terms of emitted two-hole X-rays, the strategy, experimental signature and background are different from neutrinoless double beta decay. The mixing is resonantly enhanced for almost degeneracy and, under these conditions, there is no irreducible background from the standard two-neutrino channel. We reconstruct the natural time history of a nominally stable parent atom since its production either by nature or in the laboratory. After the time periods of atom oscillations and the decay of the short-lived daughter atom, at observable times the relevant 'stationary" states are the mixed metastable long-lived state and the non-orthogonal short-lived excited state, as well as the ground state of the daughter atom. We find that they have a natural population inversion which is most appropriate for exploiting the bosonic nature of the observed atomic transitions radiation. Among different observables of the atom Majorana mixing, we include the enhanced rate of stimulated X-ray emission from the long-lived metastable state by a high-intensity X-ray beam: a gain factor of 100 can be envisaged at current XFEL facilities. On the other hand, the historical population of the daughter atom ground state can be probed by exciting it with a current pulsed optical laser, showing the characteristic absorption lines: the whole population can be excited in a shorter time than typical pulse duration.

Abstract: Observables of neutrino oscillations in matter have, in general, contributions from the effective matter potential. It contaminates the CP violation asymmetry adding a fake effect that has been recently disentangled from the genuine one by their different behavior under T and CPT. Is the genuine T-odd CPT-invariant component of the CP asymmetry coincident with the T asymmetry? Contrary to CP, matter effects in uniform matter cannot induce by themselves a non-vanishing T asymmetry; however, the question of the title remained open. We demonstrate that, in the presence of genuine CP violation, there is a new non-vanishing CP-even, and so CPT-odd, component in the T asymmetry in matter, which is of odd-parity in both the phase delta of the flavor mixing and the matter parameter a. The two disentangled components, genuine A(alpha beta)(T;CP) and fake A(alpha beta)(T;CPT), could be experimentally separated by the measurement of the two T asymmetries in matter (nu(alpha) <-> nu(beta)) and ((nu) over bar <-> (nu) over bar (beta)). For the (nu(mu) <-> nu(e)) transitions, the energy dependence of the new A(mu e)(T;CPT) component is like the matter-induced term A(mu e)(CP;CPT) of the CP asymmetry which is odd under a change of the neutrino mass hierarchy. We have thus completed the physics involved in all observable asymmetries in matter by means of their disentanglement into the three independent components, genuine A(alpha beta)(CP;T) and fake A(alpha beta)(CP;CPT) and A(alpha beta)(T;CPT).

Abstract: In this paper we present a novel CPT symmetry test in the neutral kaon system based, for the first time, on the direct comparison of the probabilities of a transition and its CPT reverse. The required interchange of in <-> out states for a given process is obtained exploiting the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations of neutral kaon pairs produced at a phi-factory. The observable quantities have been constructed by selecting the two semileptonic decays for flavour tag, the pi and 3 pi(0) decays for CP tag and the time orderings of the decay pairs. The interpretation in terms of the standard Weisskopf-Wigner approach to this system, directly connects CPT violation in these observables to the violating R delta parameter in the mass matrix of K-0 – (K) over bar (0), a genuine CPT violating effect independent of Delta Gamma and not requiring the decay as an essential ingredient. Possible spurious effects induced by CP violation in the decay and/or a violation of the Delta S = Delta Q rule have been shown to be well under control. The proposed test is thus fully robust, and might shed light on possible new CPT violating mechanisms, or further improve the precision of the present experimental limits. It could be implemented at the DA Phi NE facility in Frascati, where the KLOE-2 experiment might reach a statistical sensitivity of O (10(-3)) on the newly proposed observable quantities.

Abstract: We present an update of the determination of the solar neutrino fluxes from a global analysis of the solar and terrestrial neutrino data in the framework of three-neutrino mixing. Using a Bayesian analysis we reconstruct the posterior probability distribution function for the eight normalization parameters of the solar neutrino fluxes plus the relevant masses and mixing, with and without imposing the luminosity constraint. We then use these results to compare the description provided by different Standard Solar Models. Our results show that, at present, both models with low and high metallicity can describe the data with equivalent statistical agreement. We also argue that even with the present experimental precision the solar neutrino data have the potential to improve the accuracy of the solar model predictions.

Abstract: We compute analytically the tree-level annihilation rates of a collection of non-relativistic neutralino and chargino two-particle states in the general MSSM, including the previously unknown off-diagonal rates. The results are prerequisites to the calculation of the Sommerfeld enhancement in the MSSM, which will be presented in subsequent work. They can also be used to obtain concise analytic expressions for MSSM dark matter pair annihilation in the present Universe for a large number of exclusive two-particle final states.