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.

Abstract: The framed standard model (FSM), constructed to explain the empirical mass and mixing patterns (including CP phases) of quarks and leptons, in which it has done quite well, gives otherwise the same result as the standard model (SM) in almost all areas in particle physics where the SM has been successfully applied, except for a few specified deviations such as the W mass and the g-2 of muons, that is, just where experiment is showing departures from what SM predicts. It predicts further the existence of a hidden sector of particles some of which may function as dark matter. In this paper, we first note that the above results involve, surprisingly, the FSM undergoing a vacuum transition (VTR1) at a scale of around 17MeV, where the vacuum expectation values of the colour framons (framed vectors promoted into fields) which are all nonzero above that scale acquire some vanishing components below it. This implies that the metric pertaining to these vanishing components would vanish also. Important consequences should then ensue, but these occur mostly in the unknown hidden sector where empirical confirmation is hard at present to come by, but they give small reflections in the standard sector, some of which may have already been seen. However, one notes that if, going off at a tangent, one imagines colour to be embedded, Kaluza-Klein (KK) fashion, into a higher-dimensional space-time, then this VTR1 would cause 2 of the compactified dimensions to collapse. This might mean then that when the universe cooled to the corresponding temperature of 1011 K when it was about 10-3 s old, this VTR1 collapse would cause the three spatial dimensions of the universe to expand to compensate. The resultant expansion is estimated, using FSM parameters previously determined from particle physics, to be capable, when extrapolated backwards in time, of bringing the present universe back inside the then horizon, solving thus formally the horizon problem. Besides, VTR1 being a global phenomenon in the FSM, it would switch on and off automatically and simultaneously over all space, thus requiring seemingly no additional strategy for a graceful exit. However, this scenario has not been checked for consistency with other properties of the universe and is to be taken thus not as a candidate solution of the horizon problem but only as an observation from particle physics which might be of interest to cosmologists and experts in the early universe. For particle physicists also, it might serve as an indicator for how relevant this VTR1 can be, even if the KK assumption is not made.

Abstract: A plausible explanation for the lightness of neutrino masses is that neutrinos are massless at tree level, with their mass (typically Majorana) being generated radiatively at one or more loops. The new couplings, together with the suppression coming from the loop factors, imply that the new degrees of freedom cannot be too heavy (they are typically at the TeV scale). Therefore, in these models there are no large mass hierarchies and they can be tested using different searches, making their detailed phenomenological study very appealing. In particular, the new particles can be searched for at colliders and generically induce signals in lepton-flavor and lepton-number violating processes (in the case of Majorana neutrinos), which are not independent from reproducing correctly the neutrino masses and mixings. The main focus of the review is on Majorana neutrinos. We order the allowed theory space from three different perspectives: (i) using an effective operator approach to lepton number violation, (ii) by the number of loops at which the Weinberg operator is generated, (iii) within a given loop order, by the possible irreducible topologies. We also discuss in more detail some popular radiative models which involve qualitatively different features, revisiting their most important phenomenological implications. Finally, we list some promising avenues to pursue.

Abstract: We define a data exchange format for numerical values of Wilson coefficients of local operators parameterising low-energy effects of physics beyond the Standard Model. The format facilitates interfacing model-specific Wilson coefficient calculators, renormalisation group (RG) runners, and observable calculators. It is designed to be unambiguous (defining a non-redundant set of operators with fixed normalisation in each basis), extensible (allowing the addition of new EFTs or bases by the user), and robust (being based on industry standard file formats with parsers implemented in many programming languages). We have implemented the format for the Standard Model EFT (SMEFT) and for the weak effective theory (WET) below the electroweak scale and have added interfaces to a number of public codes dealing with SMEFT or WET. We also provide command-line utilities and a Python module for convenient manipulation of WCxf files, including translation between different bases and matching from SMEFT to WET. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract: We study the theoretical constraints on a model whose scalar sector contains one color octet and one or two color singlet SU(2)(L) doublets. To ensure unitarity of the theory, we constrain the parameters of the scalar potential for the first time at the next-to-leading order in perturbation theory. Moreover, we derive new conditions guaranteeing the stability of the potential. We employ the HEPfit package to extract viable parameter regions at the electroweak scale and test the stability of the renormalization group evolution up to the multi-TeV region. Furthermore, we set upper limits on the scalar mass splittings. All results are given for both cases with and without a second scalar color singlet.