Abstract: The ordering of the neutrino masses is a crucial input for a deep understanding of flavor physics, and its determination may provide the key to establish the relationship among the lepton masses and mixings and their analogous properties in the quark sector. The extraction of the neutrino mass ordering is a data-driven field expected to evolve very rapidly in the next decade. In this review, we both analyse the present status and describe the physics of subsequent prospects. Firstly, the different current available tools to measure the neutrino mass ordering are described. Namely, reactor, long-baseline (accelerator and atmospheric) neutrino beams, laboratory searches for beta and neutrinoless double beta decays and observations of the cosmic background radiation and the large scale structure of the universe are carefully reviewed. Secondly, the results from an up-to-date comprehensive global fit are reported: the Bayesian analysis to the 2018 publicly available oscillation and cosmological data sets provides strong evidence for the normal neutrino mass ordering vs. the inverted scenario, with a significance of 3.5 standard deviations. This preference for the normal neutrino mass ordering is mostly due to neutrino oscillation measurements. Finally, we shall also emphasize the future perspectives for unveiling the neutrinomass ordering. In this regard, apart from describing the expectations from the aforementioned probes, we also focus on those arising from alternative and novel methods, as 21 cm cosmology, core-collapse supernova neutrinos and the direct detection of relic neutrinos.

Abstract: A Galactic cosmic-ray transport model featuring non-homogeneous transport has been developed over the latest years. This setup is aimed at reproducing gamma-ray observations in different regions of the Galaxy (with particular focus on the progressive hardening of the hadronic spectrum in the inner Galaxy) and was shown to be compatible with the very-high-energy gamma-ray diffuse emission recently detected up to PeV energies. In this work, we extend the results previously presented to test the reliability of that model throughout the whole sky. To this aim, we compare our predictions with detailed longitude and latitude profiles of the diffuse gamma-ray emission measured by Fermi-LAT for different energies and compute the expected Galactic nu diffuse emission, comparing it with current limits from the ANTARES collaboration. We emphasize that the possible detection of a Galactic nu component will allow us to break the degeneracy between our model and other scenarios featuring prominent contributions from unresolved sources and TeV halos.

Abstract: We explore the implications of LHC and cold dark matter searches for supersymmetric particle mass spectra in two different grand unified models with left-right symmetry, SO(10) and SU(4)(c) x SU(2)(L) x SU(2)(R) (4-2-2). We identify characteristic differences between the two scenarios, which imply distinct correlations between experimental measurements and the particular structure of the GUT group. The gauge structure of 4-2-2 enhances significantly the allowed parameter space as compared to SO(10), giving rise to a variety of coannihilation scenarios compatible with the LHC data, LSP dark matter and the ongoing muon g-2 experiment.

Abstract: We review standard and non-standard neutrino physics probes that are based on nuclear measurements. We pay special attention on the discussion of prospects to extract new physics at prominent rare event measurements looking for neutrino-nucleus scattering, such as the coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CE nu NS) that may involve lepton flavor violation (LFV) in neutral-currents (NC). For the latter processes several appreciably sensitive experiments are currently pursued or have been planed to operate in the near future, like the COHERENT, CONUS, CONNIE, MINER, TEXONO, RED100, vGEN, Ricochet, NUCLEUS, etc. We provide a thorough discussion on phenomenological and theoretical studies, in particular those referring to the nuclear physics aspects in order to provide accurate predictions for the relevant experiments. Motivated by the recent discovery of CE nu NS at the COHERENT experiment and the active experimental efforts for a new measurement at reactor-based experiments, we summarize the current status of the constraints as well as the future sensitivities on nuclear and electroweak physics parameters, non-standard interactions, electromagnetic neutrino properties, sterile neutrinos and simplified scenarios with novel vector Z ' or scalar phi mediators. Indirect and direct connections of CE nu NS with astrophysics, direct Dark Matter detection and charge lepton flavor violating processes are also discussed.

Abstract: A translation of the penelope physics subroutines to C++, designed as an extension of the Geant4 toolkit, is presented. The Fortran code system penelope performs Monte Carlo simulation of coupled electron-photon transport in arbitrary materials for a wide energy range, nominally from 50 eV up to 1 GeV. Penelope implements the most reliable interaction models that are currently available, limited only by the required generality of the code. In addition, the transport of electrons and positrons is simulated by means of an elaborate class II scheme in which hard interactions (involving deflection angles or energy transfers larger than pre-defined cutoffs) are simulated from the associated restricted differential cross sections. After a brief description of the interaction models adopted for photons and electrons/positrons, we describe the details of the class-II algorithm used for tracking electrons and positrons. The C++ classes are adapted to the specific code structure of Geant4. They provide a complete description of the interactions and transport mechanics of electrons/positrons and photons in arbitrary materials, which can be activated from the G4ProcessManager to produce simulation results equivalent to those from the original penelope programs. The combined code, named PenG4, benefits from the multi-threading capabilities and advanced geometry and statistical tools of Geant4.