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Caputo, A., Hernandez, P., Lopez-Pavon, J., & Salvado, J. (2017). The seesaw portal in testable models of neutrino masses. J. High Energy Phys., 06(6), 112–20pp.
Abstract: A Standard Model extension with two Majorana neutrinos can explain the measured neutrino masses and mixings, and also account for the matter-antimatter asymmetry in a region of parameter space that could be testable in future experiments. The testability of the model relies to some extent on its minimality. In this paper we address the possibility that the model might be extended by extra generic new physics which we parametrize in terms of a low-energy effective theory. We consider the effects of the operators of the lowest dimensionality, d = 5, and evaluate the upper bounds on the coefficients so that the predictions of the minimal model are robust. One of the operators gives a new production mechanism for the heavy neutrinos at LHC via higgs decays. The higgs can decay to a pair of such neutrinos that, being long-lived, leave a powerful signal of two displaced vertices. We estimate the LHC reach to this process.
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Caputo, A., Hernandez, P., Kekic, M., Lopez-Pavon, J., & Salvado, J. (2017). The seesaw path to leptonic CP violation. Eur. Phys. J. C, 77(4), 258–7pp.
Abstract: Future experiments such as SHiP and highintensity e(+)e(-) colliders will have a superb sensitivity to heavy Majorana neutrinos with masses below M-Z. We show that the measurement of the mixing to electrons and muons of one such state could establish the existence of CP violating phases in the neutrino mixing matrix, in the context of low-scale seesaw models. We quantify in the minimal model the CP reach of these future experiments, and demonstrate that CP violating phases in the mixing matrix could be established at 5 sigma CL in a very significant fraction of parameter space.
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Barducci, D., Bertuzzo, E., Caputo, A., Hernandez, P., & Mele, B. (2021). The see-saw portal at future Higgs Factories. J. High Energy Phys., 03(3), 117–32pp.
Abstract: We consider an extension of the Standard Model with two right-handed singlet fermions with mass at the electroweak scale that induce neutrino masses, plus a generic new physics sector at a higher scale Lambda. We focus on the effective operators of lowest dimension d = 5, which induce new production and decay modes for the singlet fermions. We assess the sensitivity of future Higgs Factories, such as FCC-ee, CLIC-380, ILC and CEPC, to the coefficients of these operators for various center of mass energies. We show that future lepton colliders can test the cut-off of the theory up to Lambda similar or equal to 500-1000 TeV, surpassing the reach of future indirect measurements of the Higgs and Z boson widths. We also comment on the possibility of determining the underlying model flavor structure should a New Physics signal be observed, and on the impact of higher dimensional d = 6 operators on the experimental signatures.
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Caputo, A., Esposito, A., & Polosa, A. D. (2019). Sub-MeV dark matter and the Goldstone modes of superfluid helium. Phys. Rev. D, 100(11), 116007–6pp.
Abstract: We show how a relativistic effective field theory for the superfluid phase of 4 He can replace the standard methods used to compute the production rates of low-momentum excitations due to the interaction with an external probe. This is done by studying the scattering problem of a light dark matter particle in the superfluid and comparing to some existing results. We show that the rate of emission of two phonons, the Goldstone modes of the effective theory, gets strongly suppressed for sub-MeV dark matter particles due to a fine cancellation between two different tree-level diagrams in the limit of small exchanged momenta. This phenomenon is found to be a consequence of the particular choice of the potential felt by the dark matter particle in helium. The predicted rates can vary by orders of magnitude if this potential is changed. We prove that the dominant contribution to the total emission rate is provided by excitations in the phonon branch. Finally, we analyze the angular distributions for the emissions of one and two phonons and discuss how they can be used to measure the mass of the hypothetical dark matter particle hitting the helium target.
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Caputo, A., Regis, M., & Taoso, M. (2020). Searching for sterile neutrino with X-ray intensity mapping. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 001–21pp.
Abstract: The cosmological X-ray emission associated to the possible radiative decay of sterile neutrinos is composed by a collection of lines at different energies. For a given mass, each line corresponds to a given redshift. In this work, we cross correlate such line emission with catalogs of galaxies tracing the dark matter distribution at different redshifts. We derive observational prospects by correlating the X-ray sky that will be probed by the eROSITA and Athena missions with current and near future photometric and spectroscopic galaxy surveys. A relevant and unexplored fraction of the parameter space of sterile neutrinos can be probed by this technique.
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