Villanueva-Domingo, P., Mena, O., & Palomares-Ruiz, S. (2021). A Brief Review on Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter. Front. Astron. Space Sci., 8, 681084–10pp.
Abstract: Primordial black holes (PBHs) represent a natural candidate for one of the components of the dark matter (DM) in the Universe. In this review, we shall discuss the basics of their formation, abundance and signatures. Some of their characteristic signals are examined, such as the emission of particles due to Hawking evaporation and the accretion of the surrounding matter, effects which could leave an impact in the evolution of the Universe and the formation of structures. The most relevant probes capable of constraining their masses and population are discussed.
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PTOLEMY Collaboration(Betti, M. G. et al), de Salas, P. F., Gariazzo, S., & Pastor, S. (2019). A design for an electromagnetic filter for precision energy measurements at the tritium endpoint. Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys., 106, 120–131.
Abstract: We present a detailed description of the electromagnetic filter for the PTOLEMY project to directly detect the Cosmic Neutrino Background (CNB). Starting with an initial estimate for the orbital magnetic moment, the higher-order drift process of E x B is configured to balance the gradient-B drift motion of the electron in such a way as to guide the trajectory into the standing voltage potential along the mid-plane of the filter. As a function of drift distance along the length of the filter, the filter zooms in with exponentially increasing precision on the transverse velocity component of the electron kinetic energy. This yields a linear dimension for the total filter length that is exceptionally compact compared to previous techniques for electromagnetic filtering. The parallel velocity component of the electron kinetic energy oscillates in an electrostatic harmonic trap as the electron drifts along the length of the filter. An analysis of the phase-space volume conservation validates the expected behavior of the filter from the adiabatic invariance of the orbital magnetic moment and energy conservation following Liouville's theorem for Hamiltonian systems. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Di Valentino, E., & Mena, O. (2021). A fake interacting dark energy detection? Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 500(1), L22–L26.
Abstract: Models involving an interaction between the dark matter and the dark energy sectors have been proposed to alleviate the long-standing Hubble constant tension. In this paper, we analyse whether the constraints and potential hints obtained for these interacting models remain unchanged when using simulated Planck data. Interestingly, our simulations indicate that a dangerous fake detection for a non-zero interaction among the dark matter and the dark energy fluids could arise when dealing with current cosmic microwave background (CMB) Planck measurements alone. The very same hypothesis is tested against future CMB observations, finding that only cosmic variance limited polarization experiments, such as PICO or PRISM, could be able to break the existing parameter degeneracies and provide reliable cosmological constraints. This paper underlines the extreme importance of confronting the results arising from data analyses with those obtained with simulations when extracting cosmological limits within exotic cosmological scenarios.
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BRIKEN Collaboration(Tolosa-Delgado, A. et al), Agramunt, J., Tain, J. L., Algora, A., Domingo-Pardo, C., Morales, A. I., et al. (2019). Commissioning of the BRIKEN detector for the measurement of very exotic beta-delayed neutron emitters. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 925, 133–147.
Abstract: A new detection system has been installed at the RIKEN Nishina Center (Japan) to investigate decay properties of very neutron-rich nuclei. The setup consists of three main parts: a moderated neutron counter, a detection system sensitive to the implantation and decay of radioactive ions, and gamma-ray detectors. We describe here the setup, the commissioning experiment and some selected results demonstrating its performance for the measurement of half-lives and beta-delayed neutron emission probabilities. The methodology followed in the analysis of the data is described in detail. Particular emphasis is placed on the correction of the accidental neutron background.
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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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