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Caputo, A., Millar, A. J., & Vitagliano, E. (2020). Revisiting longitudinal plasmon-axion conversion in external magnetic fields. Phys. Rev. D, 101(12), 123004–13pp.
Abstract: In the presence of an external magnetic field, the axion and the photon mix. In particular, the dispersion relation of a longitudinal plasmon always crosses the dispersion relation of the axion (for small axion masses), thus leading to a resonant conversion. Using thermal field theory, we concisely derive the axion emission rate, applying it to astrophysical and laboratory scenarios. For the Sun, depending on the magnetic field profile, plasmon-axion conversion can dominate over Primakoff production at low energies (less than or similar to 200 eV). This both provides a new axion source for future helioscopes and, in the event of discovery, would probe the magnetic field structure of the Sun. In the case of white dwarfs (WDs), plasmon-axion conversion provides a pure photon coupling probe of the axion, which may contribute significantly for low-mass WDs. Finally, we rederive and confirm the axion absorption rate of the recently proposed plasma haloscopes.
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Caputo, A. (2019). Radiative axion inflation. Phys. Lett. B, 797, 134824–7pp.
Abstract: Planck data robustly exclude the simple lambda phi(4) scenario for inflation. This is also the case for models of “Axion Inflation” in which the inflaton field is the radial part of the Peccei-Quinn complex scalar field. In this letter we show that for the KSVZ model it is possible to match the data taking into account radiative corrections to the tree level potential. After writing down the 1-loop Coleman-Weinberg potential, we show that a radiative plateau is easily generated thanks to the fact that the heavy quarks are charged under SU(3)(c) in order to solve the strong CP problem. We also give a numerical example for which the inflationary observables are computed and the heavy quarks are predicted to have a mass m(Q) greater than or similar to 10(2) TeV.
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Blas, D., Caputo, A., Ivanov, M. M., & Sberna, L. (2020). No chiral light bending by clumps of axion-like particles. Phys. Dark Universe, 27, 100428–4pp.
Abstract: We study the propagation of light in the presence of a parity-violating coupling between photons and axion-like particles (ALPs). Naively, this interaction could lead to a split of light rays into two separate beams of different polarization chirality and with different refraction angles. However, by using the eikonal method we explicitly show that this is not the case and that ALP clumps do not produce any spatial birefringence. This happens due to non-trivial variations of the photon's frequency and wavevector, which absorb time-derivatives and gradients of the ALP field. We argue that these variations represent a new way to probe the ALP-photon coupling with precision frequency measurements.
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Caputo, A., Liu, H. W., Mishra-Sharma, S., & Ruderman, J. T. (2020). Modeling dark photon oscillations in our inhomogeneous Universe. Phys. Rev. D, 102(10), 103533–26pp.
Abstract: A dark photon may kinetically mix with the Standard Model photon, leading to observable cosmological signatures. The mixing is resonantly enhanced when the dark photon mass matches the primordial plasma frequency, which depends sensitively on the underlying spatial distribution of electrons. Crucially, inhomogeneities in this distribution can have a significant impact on the nature of resonant conversions. We develop and describe, for the first time, a general analytic formalism to treat resonant oscillations in the presence of inhomogeneities. Our formalism follows from the theory of level crossings of random fields and only requires knowledge of the one-point probability density function (PDF) of the underlying electron number density fluctuations. We validate our formalism using simulations and illustrate the photon-to-dark photon conversion probability for several different choices of PDFs that are used to characterize the low-redshift Universe.
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Barducci, D., Bertuzzo, E., Caputo, A., & Hernandez, P. (2020). Minimal flavor violation in the see-saw portal. J. High Energy Phys., 06(6), 185–28pp.
Abstract: We consider an extension of the Standard Model with two singlet leptons, with masses in the electroweak range, that induce neutrino masses via the see-saw mechanism, plus a generic new physics sector at a higher scale, A. We apply the minimal flavor violation (MFV) principle to the corresponding Effective Field Theory (nu SMEFT) valid at energy scales E << A. We identify the irreducible sources of lepton flavor and lepton number violation at the renormalizable level, and apply the MFV ansatz to derive the scaling of the Wilson coefficients of the nu SMEFT operators up to dimension six. We highlight the most important phenomenological consequences of this hypothesis in the rates for exotic Higgs decays, the decay length of the heavy neutrinos, and their production modes at present and future colliders. We also comment on possible astrophysical implications.
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