Valle, J. W. F. (2015). Status and implications of neutrino masses: a brief panorama. Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, 30(13), 1530034–13pp.
Abstract: With the historic discovery of the Higgs boson our picutre of particle physics would have been complete were it nor for the neutrino sector and cosmology. I briefly discuss the role of neutrino masses and mixing upon gauge coupling unification, electroweak breaking and the flavor sector. Time is ripe for new discoveries such as leptonic CP violation, charged lepton flavor violation and neutrinoless double beta decay. Neutrinos could also play a role is elucidating the nature of dark matter and cosmic inflation.
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Bordes, J., Chan, H. M., & Tsun, S. S. (2018). A closer study of the framed standard model yielding testable new physics plus a hidden sector with dark matter candidates. Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, 33(33), 1850195–75pp.
Abstract: This closer study of the FSM (1) retains the earlier results of Ref. 1 in offering explanation for the existence of three fermion generations, as well as the hierarchical mass and mixing patterns of leptons and quarks; (II) predicts a vector boson G with mass of order TeV which mixes gamma with and Z of the standard model. The subsequent deviations from the standard mixing scheme are calculable in terms of the G mass. While these deviations for (i) mz – mw, (ii) Gamma(Z -> l (+)l( -)), and (iii) F(Z -> hadrons) are all within present experimental errors so long as mG > 1 TeV, they should soon be detectable if the G mass is not too much bigger; (III) suggests that in parallel to the standard sector familiar to us, there is another where the roles of flavour and colour are interchanged. Though quite as copiously populated and as vibrant in self-interactions as our own, it communicates but little with the standard sector except via mixing through a couple of known portals, one of which is the gamma – Z – G complex noted in (II), and the other is a scalar complex which includes the standard model Higgs. As a result, the new sectors paper. appears hidden to us as we appear hidden to them, and so its lowest members with masses of order 10 MeV, being electrically neutral and seemingly stable, but abundant, may make eligible candidates as constituents of dark matter. A more detailed summary of these results together with some remarks on the model's special theoretical features can be found in the last section of this paper.
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Bordes, J., Chan, H. M., & Tsou, S. T. (2021). Unified FSM treatment of CP physics extended to hidden sector giving (i) delta(CP) for leptons as prediction, (ii) new hints on the material content of the universe. Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, 36, 2150238–19pp.
Abstract: A unified treatment of CP physics for quarks and leptons in the framed Standard Model (FSM) is extended to include the predicted hidden sector giving as consequences: (i) that an earlier part estimate of the Jarlskog invariant J' for leptons is turned into a prediction for its actual value, i.e. J' similar to -0.012 (delta(CP)' similar to 1.11 pi), which is of the right order of magnitude, of the right sign, and in the range of values favoured by the present experiment, (ii) some novel twists to the effects of CP-violation on the material content of the universe.
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Gola, S., Mandal, S., & Sinha, N. (2022). ALP-portal majorana dark matter. Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, 37, 2250131–14pp.
Abstract: Axion like particles (ALPs) and right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) are two well-motivated dark matter (DM) candidates. However, these two particles have a completely different origin. Axion was proposed to solve the strong CP problem, whereas RHNs were introduced to explain light neutrino masses through seesaw mechanisms. We study the case of ALP portal RHN DM (Majorana DM) taking into account existing constraints on ALPs. We consider the leading effective operators mediating interactions between the ALP and Standard Model (SM) particles and three RHNs to generate light neutrino masses through type-I seesaw. Further, ALP-RHN neutrino coupling is introduced to generalize the model which is restricted by the relic density and indirect detection constraint.
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NEXT Collaboration(Renner, J. et al), Alvarez, V., Carcel, S., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Diaz, J., Ferrario, P., et al. (2015). Ionization and scintillation of nuclear recoils in gaseous xenon. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 793, 62–74.
Abstract: Ionization and scintillation produced by nuclear recoils in gaseous xenon at approximately 14 bar have been simultaneously observed in an electroluminescent time projection chamber. Neutrons from radioisotope a-Be neutron sources were used to induce xenon nuclear recoils, and the observed recoil spectra were compared to a detailed Monte Carlo employing estimated ionization and scintillation yields for nuclear recoils. The ability to discriminate between electronic and nuclear recoils using the ratio of ionization to primary scintillation is demonstrated. These results encourage further investigation on the use of xenon in the gas phase as a detector medium in dark matter direct detection experiments.
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Andreev, Y. M. et al, Molina Bueno, L., & Tuzi, M. (2023). Measurement of the intrinsic hadronic contamination in the NA64-e high-purity e+/e- beam at CERN. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 1057, 168776–8pp.
Abstract: We present the measurement of the intrinsic hadronic contamination at the CERN SPS H4 beamline configured to transport electrons and positrons at 100 GeV/c. The analysis, performed using data collected by the NA64-e experiment in 2022, is based on calorimetric measurements, exploiting the different interaction mechanisms of electrons and hadrons in the NA64 detector. We determined the contamination by comparing the results obtained using the nominal electron/positron beamline configuration with those from a dedicated setup, in which only hadrons impinged on the detector. We also obtained an estimate of the relative protons, antiprotons and pions yield by exploiting the different absorption probabilities of these particles in matter. We cross-checked our results with a dedicated Monte Carlo simulation for the hadron production at the primary T2 target, finding a good agreement with the experimental measurements.
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Moline, A., Sanchez-Conde, M. A., Palomares-Ruiz, S., & Prada, F. (2017). Characterization of subhalo structural properties and implications for dark matter annihilation signals. Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 466(4), 4974–4990.
Abstract: A prediction of the standard Lambda cold dark matter cosmology is that dark matter (DM) haloes are teeming with numerous self-bound substructure or subhaloes. The precise properties of these subhaloes represent important probes of the underlying cosmological model. We use data from Via Lactea II and Exploring the Local Volume in Simulations N-body simulations to learn about the structure of subhaloes with masses 10(6)-10(11) h(-1) M circle dot. Thanks to a superb subhalo statistics, we study subhalo properties as a function of distance to host halo centre and subhalo mass, and provide a set of fits that accurately describe the subhalo structure. We also investigate the role of subhaloes on the search for DM annihilation. Previous work has shown that subhaloes are expected to boost the DM signal of their host haloes significantly. Yet, these works traditionally assumed that subhaloes exhibit similar structural properties than those of field haloes, while it is known that subhaloes are more concentrated. Building upon our N-body data analysis, we refine the substructure boost model of Sanchez-Conde & Prada (2014), and find boosts that are a factor 2-3 higher. We further refine the model to include unavoidable tidal stripping effects on the subhalo population. For field haloes, this introduces a moderate (similar to 20-30 per cent) suppression. Yet, for subhaloes like those hosting dwarf galaxy satellites, tidal stripping plays a critical role, the boost being at the level of a few tens of percent at most. We provide a parametrization of the boost for field haloes that can be safely applied over a wide halo mass range.
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Giare, W., Di Valentino, E., Melchiorri, A., & Mena, O. (2021). New cosmological bounds on hot relics: axions and neutrinos. Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 505(2), 2703–2711.
Abstract: Axions, if realized in nature, can be copiously produced in the early universe via thermal processes, contributing to the mass-energy density of thermal hot relics. In light of the most recent cosmological observations, we analyse two different thermal processes within a realistic mixed hot dark matter scenario which includes also massive neutrinos. Considering the axion-gluon thermalization channel, we derive our most constraining bounds on the hot relic masses m(a) < 7.46 eV and Sigma m(nu) < 0.114 eV both at 95 percent CL; while studying the axion-pion scattering, without assuming any specific model for the axion-pion interactions, and remaining in the range of validity of the chiral perturbation theory, our most constraining bounds are improved to m(a) < 0.91 eV and Sigma m(nu) < 0.105 eV, both at 95 percent CL. Interestingly, in both cases, the total neutrino mass lies very close to the inverted neutrino mass ordering prediction. If future terrestrial double beta decay and/or long-baseline neutrino experiments find that the nature mass ordering is the inverted one, this could rule out a wide region in the currently allowed thermal axion window. Our results therefore, strongly support multi messenger searches of axions and neutrino properties, together with joint analyses of their expected sensitivities.
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Giare, W., Renzi, F., Melchiorri, A., Mena, O., & Di Valentino, E. (2022). Cosmological forecasts on thermal axions, relic neutrinos, and light elements. Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 511(1), 1373–1382.
Abstract: One of the targets of future cosmic microwave background (CMB) and baryon acoustic oscillation measurements is to improve the current accuracy in the neutrino sector and reach a much better sensitivity on extra dark radiation in the early Universe. In this paper, we study how these improvements can be translated into constraining power for well-motivated extensions of the standard model of elementary particles that involve axions thermalized before the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) phase transition by scatterings with gluons. Assuming a fiducial Lambda cold dark matter cosmological model, we simulate future data for Stage-IV CMB-like and Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)-like surveys and analyse a mixed scenario of axion and neutrino hot dark matter. We further account also for the effects of these QCD axions on the light element abundances predicted by big bang nucleosynthesis. The most constraining forecasted limits on the hot relic masses are m(a) less than or similar to 0.92 eV and n-ary sumation m(nu) less than or similar to 0.12 eV at 95 per cent Confidence Level, showing that future cosmic observations can substantially improve the current bounds, supporting multimessenger analyses of axion, neutrino, and primordial light element properties.
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Gammaldi, V., Zaldivar, B., Sanchez-Conde, M. A., & Coronado-Blazquez, J. (2023). A search for dark matter among Fermi-LAT unidentified sources with systematic features in machine learning. Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 520(1), 1348–1361.
Abstract: Around one-third of the point-like sources in the Fermi-LAT catalogues remain as unidentified sources (unIDs) today. Indeed, these unIDs lack a clear, univocal association with a known astrophysical source. If dark matter (DM) is composed of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), there is the exciting possibility that some of these unIDs may actually be DM sources, emitting gamma-rays from WIMPs annihilation. We propose a new approach to solve the standard, machine learning (ML) binary classification problem of disentangling prospective DM sources (simulated data) from astrophysical sources (observed data) among the unIDs of the 4FGL Fermi-LAT catalogue. We artificially build two systematic features for the DM data which are originally inherent to observed data: the detection significance and the uncertainty on the spectral curvature. We do it by sampling from the observed population of unIDs, assuming that the DM distributions would, if any, follow the latter. We consider different ML models: Logistic Regression, Neural Network (NN), Naive Bayes, and Gaussian Process, out of which the best, in terms of classification accuracy, is the NN, achieving around 93 . 3 per cent +/- 0 . 7 per cent performance. Other ML evaluation parameters, such as the True Ne gativ e and True Positive rates, are discussed in our work. Applying the NN to the unIDs sample, we find that the de generac y between some astrophysical and DM sources can be partially solved within this methodology. None the less, we conclude that there are no DM source candidates among the pool of 4FGL Fermi-LAT unIDs.
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