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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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Leite, J., Sadhukhan, S., & Valle, W. F. (2024). Dynamical scoto-seesaw mechanism with gauged B – L symmetry. Phys. Rev. D, 109(3), 035023–17pp.
Abstract: We propose a dynamical scoto-seesaw mechanism using a gauged B – L symmetry. Dark matter is reconciled with neutrino mass generation, in such a way that the atmospheric scale arises a la seesaw, while the solar scale is scotogenic, arising radiatively from the exchange of “dark” states. This way we “explain” the solar-to-atmospheric scale ratio. The TeV-scale seesaw mediator and the two dark fermions carry different B – L charges. Dark matter stability follows from the residual matter parity that survives B – L breaking. Besides having collider tests, the model implies sizable charged lepton flavor violating (cLFV) phenomena, including Goldstone boson emission processes.
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Alexandre, J., Mavromatos, N. E., Mitsou, V. A., & Musumeci, E. (2024). Resummation schemes for high-electric-charge objects leading to improved experimental mass limits. Phys. Rev. D, 109(3), 036026–20pp.
Abstract: High-electric-charge compact objects (HECOs) appear in several theoretical particle physics models beyond the Standard Model, and are actively searched for in current colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. In such searches, mass bounds of these objects have been placed, using Drell-Yan and photon-fusion processes at tree level so far. However, such mass-bound estimates are not reliable, given that, as a result of the large values of the electric charge of the HECO, perturbative quantum electrodynamics calculations break down. In this work, we perform a Dyson-Schwinger resummation scheme (as opposed to lattice strong-coupling approach), which makes the computation of the pertinent HECO-production cross sections reliable, thus allowing us to extract improved mass bounds for such objects from ATLAS and MoEDAL searches.
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Fajfer, S., Solomonidi, E., & Vale Silva, L. (2024). S-wave contribution to rare D0 → π+ π- l+ l- decays in the standard model and sensitivity to new physics. Phys. Rev. D, 109(3), 036027–24pp.
Abstract: Physics of the up-type flavor offers unique possibilities of testing the standard model (SM) compared to the down-type flavor sector. Here, we discuss SM and new physics (NP) contributions to the rare charmmeson decay D0 -> x+x- l+l-. In particular, we discuss the effect of including the lightest scalar isoscalar resonance in the SM picture, namely, the f0(500), which manifests in a big portion of the allowed phase space. Other than showing in the total branching ratio at an observable level of about 20%, the f0(500) resonance manifests as interference terms with the vector resonances, such as at high invariant mass of the leptonic pair in distinct angular observables. Recent data from LHCb optimize the sensitivity to P-wave contributions that we analyze in view of the inclusion of vector resonances. We propose the measurement of alternative observables that are sensitive to the S-wave and are straightforward to implement experimentally. This leads to a new set of null observables that vanish in the SM due to its gauge and flavor structures. Finally, we study observables that depend on the SM interference with generic NP contributions from semileptonic four-fermion operators in the presence of the S-wave.
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Maso-Ferrando, A., Sanchis-Gual, N., Font, J. A., & Olmo, G. J. (2024). Numerical evolutions of boson stars in Palatini f(R) gravity. Phys. Rev. D, 109(4), 044042–14pp.
Abstract: We investigate the time evolution of spherically symmetric boson stars in Palatini f(R) gravity through numerical relativity computations. Employing a novel approach that establishes a correspondence between modified gravity with scalar matter and general relativity with modified scalar matter, we are able to use the techniques of numerical relativity to simulate these systems. Specifically, we focus on the quadratic theory f(R) = R + xi R2 and compare the obtained solutions with those in general relativity, exploring both positive and negative values of the coupling parameter xi. Our findings reveal that boson stars in Palatini f(R) gravity exhibit both stable and unstable evolutions. The latter give rise to three distinct scenarios: migration toward a stable configuration, complete dispersion, and gravitational collapse leading to the formation of a baby universe structure.
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