Addazi, A., Marciano, A., Morais, A. P., Pasechnik, R., Srivastava, R., & Valle, J. W. F. (2020). Gravitational footprints of massive neutrinos and lepton number breaking. Phys. Lett. B, 807, 135577–8pp.
Abstract: We investigate the production of primordial Gravitational Waves (GWs) arising from First Order Phase Transitions (FOPTs) associated to neutrino mass generation in the context of type-I and inverse seesaw schemes. We examine both “high-scale” as well as “low-scale” variants, with either explicit or spontaneously broken lepton number symmetry U(1)(L), in the neutrino sector. In the latter case, a pseudo-Goldstone majoron-like boson may provide a candidate for cosmological dark matter. We find that schemes with softly-broken U(1)(L), and with single Higgs-doublet scalar sector lead to either no FOPTs or too weak FOPTs, precluding the detestability of GWs in present or near future measurements. Nevertheless, we found that, in the majoron-like seesaw scheme with spontaneously broken U(1)(L), at finite temperatures, one can have strong FOPTs and non-trivial primordial GW spectra which can fall well within the frequency and amplitude sensitivity of upcoming experiments, including LISA, BBO and u-DECIGO. However, GWs observability clashes with invisible Higgs decay constraints from the LHC. A simple and consistent fix is to assume the majoron-like mass to lie above the Higgs-decay kinematical threshold. We also found that the majoron-like variant of the low-scale seesaw mechanism implies a different GW spectrum than the one expected in the high-scale seesaw. This feature will be testable in future experiments. Our analysis shows that GWs can provide a new and complementary portal to test the neutrino mass generation mechanism.
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NA62 Collaboration(Cortina Gil, E. et al), & Husek, T. (2020). Search for heavy neutral lepton production in K+ decays to positrons. Phys. Lett. B, 807, 135599–9pp.
Abstract: A search for heavy neutral lepton (N) production in K+ -> e(+)N decays using the data sample collected by the NA62 experiment at CERN in 2017-2018 is reported. Upper limits of the extended neutrino mixing matrix element vertical bar U-e4 vertical bar(2) are established at the level of 10(-9) over most of the accessible heavy neutral lepton mass range 144-462 MeV/c(2), with the assumption that the lifetime exceeds 50 ns. These limits improve significantly upon those of previous production and decay searches. The vertical bar U-e4 vertical bar(2) range favoured by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis is excluded up to a mass of about 340 MeV/c(2).
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Leite, J., Morales, A., Valle, J. W. F., & Vaquera-Araujo, C. A. (2020). Scotogenic dark matter and Dirac neutrinos from unbroken gauged B – L symmetry. Phys. Lett. B, 807, 135537–5pp.
Abstract: We propose a simple extension of the standard model where neutrinos get naturally small “scotogenic” Dirac masses from an unbroken gauged B – L symmetry, ensuring dark matter stability. The associated gauge boson gets mass through the Stueckelberg mechanism. Two scenarios are identified, and the resulting phenomenology briefly sketched.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo, F. L., Castillo Gimenez, V., et al. (2020). Measurement of the t(t)over-bar production cross-section in the lepton plus jets channel at root s=13 TeV with the ATLAS experiment. Phys. Lett. B, 810, 135797–22pp.
Abstract: The top anti-top quark production cross-section is measured in the lepton+jets channel using proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 13 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1). Events with exactly one charged lepton and four or more jets in the final state, with at least one jet containing b-hadrons, are used to determine the a production cross-section through a profile-likelihood t (t) over bar. The inclusive cross-section is measured to be alpha(inc) = 830 +/- 0.4 (stat.) +/- 36 (syst.) +/- 14 (lumi.) pb with a relative uncertainty of 4.6%. The result is consistent with theoretical calculations at next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. The fiducial t (t) over bar cross-section within the experimental acceptance is also measured.
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Dias, A. G., Leite, J., Valle, J. W. F., & Vaquera-Araujo, C. A. (2020). Reloading the axion in a 3-3-1 setup. Phys. Lett. B, 810, 135829–12pp.
Abstract: We generalize the idea of the axion to an extended electroweak gauge symmetry setup. We propose a minimal axion extension of the Singer-Valle-Schechter (SVS) theory, in which the standard model fits in SU(3)(L) circle times U(1)(X), the number of families results from anomaly cancellation, and the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) solution to the strong-CP problem is implemented. Neutrino masses arise from a type-I Dirac seesaw mechanism, suppressed by the ratio of SVS and PQ scales, suggesting the existence of new physics at a moderate SVS scale. Novel features include an enhanced axion coupling to photons when compared to the DFSZ axion, as well as flavor-changing axion couplings to quarks.
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