de Gouvea, A., Herrero-Garcia, J., & Kobach, A. (2014). Neutrino masses, grand unification, and baryon number violation. Phys. Rev. D, 90(1), 016011–11pp.
Abstract: If grand unification is real, searches for baryon-number violation should be included on the list of observables that may reveal information regarding the origin of neutrino masses. Making use of an effective-operator approach and assuming that nature is SU(5) invariant at very short distances, we estimate the consequences of different scenarios that lead to light Majorana neutrinos for low-energy phenomena that violate baryon number minus lepton number (B – L) by two (or more) units, including neutron-antineutron oscillations and B – L violating nucleon decays. We find that, among all possible effective theories of lepton-number violation that lead to nonzero neutrino masses, only a subset is, broadly speaking, consistent with grand unification.
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Herrero-Garcia, J., Schwetz, T., & Zupan, J. (2012). Astrophysics independent bounds on the annual modulation of dark matter signals. Phys. Rev. Lett., 109(14), 141301–5pp.
Abstract: We show how constraints on the time integrated event rate from a given dark matter (DM) direct detection experiment can be used to bound the amplitude of the annual modulation signal in another experiment. The method requires only mild assumptions about the properties of the local DM distribution: that it is temporally stable on the scale of months and spatially homogeneous on the ecliptic. We apply the method to the annual modulation signal in DAMA/LIBRA, which we compare to the bounds derived from XENON10, XENON100, cryogenic DM search, and SIMPLE data. Assuming a DM mass of 10 GeV, we show that under the above assumptions about the DM halo, a DM interpretation of the DAMA/LIBRA signal is excluded for several classes of models: at 6.3 sigma (4.6 sigma) for elastic isospin conserving (violating) spin-independent interactions, and at 4.9 sigma for elastic spin-dependent interactions on protons.
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