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Lobo, F. S. N., Olmo, G. J., & Rubiera-Garcia, D. (2013). Semiclassical geons as solitonic black hole remnants. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 011–10pp.
Abstract: We find that the end state of black hole evaporation could be represented by non-singular and without event horizon stable solitonic remnants with masses of the order the Planck scale and up to similar to 16 units of charge. Though these objects are locally indistinguishable from spherically symmetric, massive electric (or magnetic) charges, they turn out to be sourceless geons containing a wormhole generated by the electromagnetic field. Our results are obtained by interpreting semiclassical corrections to Einstein's theory in the first-order (Palatini) formalism, which yields second-order equations and avoids the instabilities of the usual (metric) formulation of quadratic gravity. We also discuss the potential relevance of these solutions for primordial black holes and the dark matter problem.
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Bernal, N., Martin-Albo, J., & Palomares-Ruiz, S. (2013). A novel way of constraining WIMPs annihilations in the Sun: MeV neutrinos. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 08(8), 011–19pp.
Abstract: Annihilation of dark matter particles accumulated in the Sun would produce a flux of high-energy neutrinos whose prospects of detection in neutrino telescopes and detectors have been extensively discussed in the literature. However, for annihilations into Standard Model particles, there would also be a flux of neutrinos in the MeV range from the decays at rest of muons and positively charged pions. These low-energy neutrinos have never been considered before and they open the possibility to also constrain dark matter annihilation in the Sun into e(+)e(-), mu(+)mu(-) or light quarks. Here we perform a detailed analysis using the recent Super-Kamiokande data in the few tens of MeV range to set limits on the WIMP-nucleon scattering cross section for different annihilation channels and computing the evaporation rate of WIMPs from the Sun for all values of the scattering cross section in a consistent way.
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Gariazzo, S., Archidiacono, M., de Salas, P. F., Mena, O., Ternes, C. A., & Tortola, M. (2018). Neutrino masses and their ordering: global data, priors and models. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 011–22pp.
Abstract: We present a full Bayesian analysis of the combination of current neutrino oscillation, neutrinoless double beta decay and Cosmic Microwave Background observations. Our major goal is to carefully investigate the possibility to single out one neutrino mass ordering, namely Normal Ordering or Inverted Ordering, with current data. Two possible parametrizations (three neutrino masses versus the lightest neutrino mass plus the two oscillation mass splittings) and priors (linear versus logarithmic) are exhaustively examined. We find that the preference for NO is only driven by neutrino oscillation data. Moreover, the values of the Bayes factor indicate that the evidence for NO is strong only when the scan is performed over the three neutrino masses with logarithmic priors; for every other combination of parameterization and prior, the preference for NO is only weak. As a by-product of our Bayesian analyses, we are able to (a) compare the Bayesian bounds on the neutrino mixing parameters to those obtained by means of frequentist approaches, finding a very good agreement; (b) determine that the lightest neutrino mass plus the two mass splittings parametrization, motivated by the physical observables, is strongly preferred over the three neutrino mass eigenstates scan and (c) find that logarithmic priors guarantee a weakly-to-moderately more efficient sampling of the parameter space. These results establish the optimal strategy to successfully explore the neutrino parameter space, based on the use of the oscillation mass splittings and a logarithmic prior on the lightest neutrino mass, when combining neutrino oscillation data with cosmology and neutrinoless double beta decay. We also show that the limits on the total neutrino mass Sigma m(nu) can change dramatically when moving from one prior to the other. These results have profound implications for future studies on the neutrino mass ordering, as they crucially state the need for self-consistent analyses which explore the best parametrization and priors, without combining results that involve different assumptions.
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Olmo, G. J., & Rubiera-Garcia, D. (2014). Semiclassical geons at particle accelerators. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 02(2), 010–25pp.
Abstract: We point out that in certain four-dimensional extensions of general relativity constructed within the Palatini formalism stable self-gravitating objects with a discrete mass and charge spectrum may exist. The incorporation of nonlinearities in the electromagnetic field may effectively reduce their mass spectrum by many orders of magnitude. As a consequence, these objects could be within (or near) the reach of current particle accelerators. We provide an exactly solvable model to support this idea.
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Gariazzo, S., Gerbino, M., Brinckmann, T., Lattanzi, M., Mena, O., Schwetz, T., et al. (2022). Neutrino mass and mass ordering: no conclusive evidence for normal ordering. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 10(10), 010–18pp.
Abstract: The extraction of the neutrino mass ordering is one of the major challenges in particle physics and cosmology, not only for its implications for a fundamental theory of mass generation in nature, but also for its decisive role in the scale of future neutrinoless double beta decay experimental searches. It has been recently claimed that current oscillation, beta decay and cosmological limits on the different observables describing the neutrino mass parameter space provide robust decisive Bayesian evidence in favor of the normal ordering of the neutrino mass spectrum [1]. We further investigate these strong claims using a rich and wide phenomenology, with different sampling techniques of the neutrino parameter space. Contrary to the findings of Jimenez et al. [1], no decisive evidence for the normal mass ordering is found. Neutrino mass ordering analyses must rely on priors and parameterizations that are ordering-agnostic: robust results should be regarded as those in which the preference for the normal neutrino mass ordering is driven exclusively by the data, while we find a difference of up to a factor of 33 in the Bayes factors among the different priors and parameterizations exploited here. An ordering-agnostic prior would be represented by the case of parameterizations sampling over the two mass splittings and a mass scale, or those sampling over the individual neutrino masses via normal prior distributions only. In this regard, we show that the current significance in favor of the normal mass ordering should be taken as 2.7 sigma (i.e. moderate evidence), mostly driven by neutrino oscillation data. Let us stress that, while current data favor NO only mildly, we do not exclude the possibility that this may change in the future. Eventually, upcoming oscillation and cosmological data may (or may not) lead to a more significant exclusion of IO.
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