Abstract: Current neutrino experiments are measuring the neutrino mixing parameters with an unprecedented accuracy. The upcoming generation of neutrino experiments will be sensitive to subdominant neutrino oscillation effects that can in principle give information on the yet-unknown neutrino parameters: the Dirac CP-violating phase in the PMNS mixing matrix, the neutrino mass ordering and the octant of.23. Determining the exact values of neutrino mass and mixing parameters is crucial to test various neutrino models and flavor symmetries that are designed to predict these neutrino parameters. In the first part of this review, we summarize the current status of the neutrino oscillation parameter determination. We consider the most recent data from all solar neutrino experiments and the atmospheric neutrino data from Super-Kamiokande, IceCube, and ANTARES. We also implement the data from the reactor neutrino experiments KamLAND, Daya Bay, RENO, and Double Chooz as well as the long baseline neutrino data from MINOS, T2K, and NO.A. If in addition to the standard interactions, neutrinos have subdominant yet-unknown Non-Standard Interactions (NSI) with matter fields, extracting the values of these parameters will suffer from new degeneracies and ambiguities. We review such effects and formulate the conditions on the NSI parameters under which the precision measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters can be distorted. Like standard weak interactions, the non-standard interaction can be categorized into two groups: Charged Current (CC) NSI and Neutral Current (NC) NSI. Our focus will bemainly on neutral current NSI because it is possible to build a class of models that give rise to sizeable NC NSI with discernible effects on neutrino oscillation. These models are based on new U(1) gauge symmetry with a gauge boson of mass. 10 MeV. The UV complete model should be of course electroweak invariant which in general implies that along with neutrinos, charged fermions also acquire new interactions on which there are strong bounds. We enumerate the bounds that already exist on the electroweak symmetric models and demonstrate that it is possible to build viable models avoiding all these bounds. In the end, we review methods to test these models and suggest approaches to break the degeneracies in deriving neutrino mass parameters caused by NSI.

Abstract: Liquid scintillators are a common choice for neutrino physics experiments, but their capabilities to perform background rejection by scintillation pulse shape discrimination is generally limited in large detectors. This paper describes a novel approach for a pulse shape based event classification developed in the context of the Double Chooz reactor antineutrino experiment. Unlike previous implementations, this method uses the Fourier power spectra of the scintillation pulse shapes to obtain event-wise information. A classification variable built from spectral information was able to achieve an unprecedented performance, despite the lack of optimization at the detector design level. Several examples of event classification are provided, ranging from differentiation between the detector volumes and an efficient rejection of instrumental light noise, to some sensitivity to the particle type, such as stopping muons, ortho-positronium formation, alpha particles as well as electrons and positrons. In combination with other techniques the method is expected to allow for a versatile and more efficient background rejection in the future, especially if detector optimization is taken into account at the design level.

Abstract: Narrow resonances decaying into WW, WZ or ZZ boson pairs are searched for in 36.7 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 13 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2015 and 2016. The diboson system is reconstructed using pairs of large-radius jets with high transverse momentum and tagged as compatible with the hadronic decay of high-momentum Wor Zbosons, using jet mass and substructure properties. The search is sensitive to diboson resonances with masses in the range 1.2-5.0 TeV. No significant excess is observed in any signal region. Exclusion limits are set at the 95% confidence level on the production cross section times branching ratio to dibosons for a range of theories beyond the Standard Model. Model-dependent lower limits on the mass of new gauge bosons are set, with the highest limit set at 3.5 TeV in the context of mass-degenerate resonances that couple predominantly to bosons.

Abstract: We revisit the relation between the neutrino masses and the spontaneous breaking of the B-L gauge symmetry. We discuss the main scenarios for Dirac and Majorana neutrinos and point out two simple mechanisms for neutrino masses. In this context the neutrino masses can be generated either at tree level or at quantum level and one predicts the existence of very light sterile neutrinos with masses below the eV scale. The predictions for lepton number violating processes such as μ-> e and μ-> e gamma are discussed in detail. The impact from the cosmological constraints on the effective number of relativistic degree of freedom is investigated.

Abstract: General Relativity has shown an outstanding observational success in the scales where it has been directly tested. However, modifications have been intensively explored in the regimes where it seems either incomplete or signals its own limit of validity. In particular, the breakdown of unitarity near the Planck scale strongly suggests that General Relativity needs to be modified at high energies and quantum gravity effects are expected to be important. This is related to the existence of spacetime singularities when the solutions of General Relativity are extrapolated to regimes where curvatures are large. In this sense, Born-Infeld inspired modifications of gravity have shown an extraordinary ability to regularise the gravitational dynamics, leading to non-singular cosmologies and regular black hole spacetimes in a very robust manner and without resorting to quantum gravity effects. This has boosted the interest in these theories in applications to stellar structure, compact objects, inflationary scenarios, cosmological singularities, and black hole and wormhole physics, among others. We review the motivations, various formulations, and main results achieved within these theories, including their observational viability, and provide an overview of current open problems and future research opportunities.