Folgado, M. G., Gomez-Vargas, G. A., Rius, N., & Ruiz de Austri, R. (2018). Probing the sterile neutrino portal to Dark Matter with gamma rays. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 08(8), 002–20pp.
Abstract: Sterile neutrinos could provide a link between the Standard Model particles and a dark sector, besides generating active neutrino masses via the seesaw mechanism type I. We show that, if dark matter annihilation into sterile neutrinos determines its observed relic abundance, it is possible to explain the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess reported by the Fermi-LAT Collaboration as due to an astrophysical component plus dark matter annihilations. We observe that sterile neutrino portal to dark matter provides an impressively good fit, with a p-value of 0.78 in the best fit point, to the Galactic Center gamma-ray flux, for DM masses in the range (40-80) GeV and sterile neutrino masses 20 GeV less than or similar to M-N < M-DM. Such values are compatible with the limits from Fermi-LAT observations of the dwarfs spheroidal galaxies in the Milky Way halo, which rule out dark matter masses below similar to 50 GeV ( 90 GeV), for sterile neutrino masses M-N less than or similar to MDM ( M-N << M-DM). We also estimate the impact of AMS-02 anti-proton data on this scenario.
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Montanari, D. et al, & Gadea, A. (2011). Probing the nature of particle-core couplings in Ca-49 with gamma spectroscopy and heavy-ion transfer reactions. Phys. Lett. B, 697(4), 288–293.
Abstract: Neutron rich nuclei around Ca-48 have been measured with the CLARA-PRISMA setup, making use of Ca-48 on Ni-64 binary reactions, at 5.9 MeV/A. Angular distributions of gamma rays give evidence, in several transfer channels, for a large spin alignment (approximate to 70%) perpendicular to the reaction plane, making it possible to firmly establish spin and parities of the excited states. In the case of Ca-49, states arising from different types of particle-core couplings are, for the first time, unambiguously identified on basis of angular distribution, polarization and lifetime measurements. Shell model and particle-vibration coupling calculations are used to pin down the nature of the states. Evidence is found for the presence, in the same excitation energy region, of two types of coupled states, i.e. single particle coupled to either Ca-48 or Ca-50 simple configurations, and particle-vibration coupled states based on the 3- phonon of Ca-48.
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Chun, E. J., Cvetic, G., Dev, P. S. B., Drewes, M., Fong, C. S., Garbrecht, B., et al. (2018). Probing leptogenesis. Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, 33(5-6), 1842005–99pp.
Abstract: The focus of this paper lies on the possible experimental tests of leptogenesis scenarios. We consider both leptogenesis generated from oscillations, as well as leptogenesis from out-of-equilibrium decays. As the Akhmedov-Rubakov-Smirnov (ARS) mechanism allows for heavy neutrinos in the GeV range, this opens up a plethora of possible experimental tests, e.g. at neutrino oscillation experiments, neutrinoless double beta decay, and direct searches for neutral heavy leptons at future facilities. In contrast, testing leptogenesis from out-of-equilibrium decays is a quite difficult task. We comment on the necessary conditions for having successful leptogenesis at the TeV-scale. We further discuss possible realizations and their model specific testability in extended seesaw models, models with extended gauge sectors, and supersymmetric leptogenesis. Not being able to test high-scale leptogenesis directly, we present a way to falsify such scenarios by focusing on their washout processes. This is discussed specifically for the left-right symmetric model and the observation of a heavy W-R, as well as model independently when measuring Delta L = 2 washout processes at the LHC or neutrinoless double beta decay.
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KM3NeT Collaboration(Aitllo, S. et al), Alves Garre, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Garcia Soto, A., Gozzini, S. R., et al. (2023). Probing invisible neutrino decay with KM3NeT/ORCA. J. High Energy Phys., 04(4), 090–30pp.
Abstract: In the era of precision measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters, upcoming neutrino experiments will also be sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model. KM3NeT/ORCA is a neutrino detector optimised for measuring atmospheric neutrinos from a few GeV to around 100 GeV. In this paper, the sensitivity of the KM3NeT/ORCA detector to neutrino decay has been explored. A three-flavour neutrino oscillation scenario, where the third neutrino mass state v3 decays into an invisible state, e.g. a sterile neutrino, is considered. We find that KM3NeT/ORCA would be sensitive to invisible neutrino decays with 1/alpha 3 = T3/m3 < 180 ps/eV at 90% confidence level, assuming true normal ordering. Finally, the impact of neutrino decay on the precision of KM3NeT/ORCA measurements for theta(23), Delta m(31)(2) and mass ordering have been studied. No significant effect of neutrino decay on the sensitivity to these measurements has been found.
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Bhattacharya, A., Esmaili, A., Palomares-Ruiz, S., & Sarcevic, I. (2017). Probing decaying heavy dark matter with the 4-year IceCube HESE data. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 027–36pp.
Abstract: After the first four years of data taking, the IceCube neutrino telescope has observed 54 high-energy starting events (HESE) with deposited energies between 20TeV and 2PeV. The background from atmospheric muons and neutrinos is expected to be of about 20 events, all below 100TeV, thus pointing towards the astrophysical origin of about 8 events per year in that data set. However, their precise origin remains unknown. Here, we perform a detailed analysis of this event sample (considering simultaneously the energy, hemisphere and topology of the events) by assuming two contributions for the signal events: an isotropic power-law flux and a flux from decaying heavy dark matter. We fit the mass and lifetime of the dark matter and the normalization and spectral index of an isotropic power-law flux, for various decay channels of dark matter. We find that a significant contribution from dark matter decay is always slightly favored, either to explain the excess below 100TeV, as in the case of decays to quarks or, as in the case of neutrino channels, to explain the three multi-PeV events. Also, we consider the possibility to interpret all the data by dark matter decays only, considering various combinations of two decay channels. We show that the decaying dark matter scenario provides a better fit to HESE data than the isotropic power-law flux.
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Escrihuela, F. J., Forero, D. V., Miranda, O. G., Tortola, M., & Valle, J. W. F. (2017). Probing CP violation with non-unitary mixing in long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments: DUNE as a case study. New J. Phys., 19, 093005–14pp.
Abstract: When neutrino masses arise from the exchange of neutral heavy leptons, as in most seesaw schemes, the effective lepton mixing matrix N describing neutrino propagation is non-unitary, hence neutrinos are not exactly orthonormal. New CP violation phases appear in N that could be confused with the standard phase delta(CP) characterizing the three neutrino paradigm. We study the potential of the long-baseline neutrino experiment DUNE in probing CP violation induced by the standard CP phase in the presence of non-unitarity. In order to accomplish this we develop our previous formalism, so as to take into account the neutrino interactions with the medium, important in long baseline experiments such as DUNE. We find that the expected CP sensitivity of DUNE is somewhat degraded with respect to that characterizing the standard unitary case. However the effect is weaker than might have been expected thanks mainly to the wide neutrino beam. We also investigate the sensitivity of DUNE to the parameters characterizing non-unitarity. In this case we find that there is no improvement expected with respect to the current situation, unless the near detector setup is revamped.
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LISA Cosmology Working Group(Bartolo, N. et al), & Figueroa, D. G. (2022). Probing anisotropies of the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background with LISA. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 11, 009–65pp.
Abstract: We investigate the sensitivity of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) to the anisotropies of the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background (SGWB). We first discuss the main astrophysical and cosmological sources of SGWB which are characterized by anisotropies in the GW energy density, and we build a Signal-to-Noise estimator to quantify the sensitivity of LISA to different multipoles. We then perform a Fisher matrix analysis of the prospects of detectability of anisotropic features with LISA for individual multipoles, focusing on a SGWB with a power-law frequency profile. We compute the noise angular spectrum taking into account the specific scan strategy of the LISA detector. We analyze the case of the kinematic dipole and quadrupole generated by Doppler boosting an isotropic SGWB. We find that beta Omega(GW) similar to 2 x 10(-11) is required to observe a dipolar signal with LISA. The detector response to the quadrupole has a factor similar to 10(3) beta relative to that of the dipole. The characterization of the anisotropies, both from a theoretical perspective and from a map-making point of view, allows us to extract information that can be used to understand the origin of the SGWB, and to discriminate among distinct superimposed SGWB sources.
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Alcaide, J., Banerjee, S., Chala, M., & Titov, A. (2019). Probes of the Standard Model effective field theory extended with a right-handed neutrino. J. High Energy Phys., 08(8), 031–18pp.
Abstract: If neutrinos are Dirac particles and, as suggested by the so far null LHC results, any new physics lies at energies well above the electroweak scale, the Standard Model effective field theory has to be extended with operators involving the right-handed neutrinos. In this paper, we study this effective field theory and set constraints on the different dimension-six interactions. To that aim, we use LHC searches for associated production of light (and tau) leptons with missing energy, monojet searches, as well as pion and tau decays. Our bounds are generally above the TeV for order one couplings. One particular exception is given by operators involving top quarks. These provide new signals in top decays not yet studied at colliders. Thus, we also design an LHC analysis to explore these signatures in the tt production. Our results are also valid if the right-handed neutrinos are Majorana and long-lived.
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Gariazzo, S., Mena, O., Ramirez, H., & Boubekeur, L. (2017). Primordial power spectrum features in phenomenological descriptions of inflation. Phys. Dark Universe, 17, 38–45.
Abstract: We extend an alternative, phenomenological approach to inflation by means of an equation of state and a sound speed, both of them functions of the number of e-folds and four phenomenological parameters. This approach captures a number of possible inflationary models, including those with non-canonical kinetic terms or scale-dependent non-gaussianities. We perform Markov Chain Monte Carlo analyses using the latest cosmological publicly available measurements, which include Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data from the Planck satellite. Within this parameterization, we discard scale invariance with a significance of about 10 sigma, and the running of the spectral index is constrained as alpha(s) = -0.60(-0.10)(+0.08) x 10(-3) (68% CL errors). The limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio is r < 0.005 at 95% CL from CMB data alone. We find no significant evidence for this alternative parameterization with present cosmological observations. The maximum amplitude of the equilateral non-gaussianity that we obtain, vertical bar f(NL)(equil)vertical bar < 1, is much smaller than the current Planck mission errors, strengthening the case for future high-redshift, all-sky surveys, which could reach the required accuracy on equilateral non-gaussianities.
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Sanchis-Lozano, M. A., Barbero, J. F., & Navarro-Salas, J. (2012). Prime Numbers, Quantum Field Theory and the Goldbach Conjecture. Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, 27(23), 1250136–24pp.
Abstract: Motivated by the Goldbach conjecture in number theory and the Abelian bosonization mechanism on a cylindrical two-dimensional space-time, we study the reconstruction of a real scalar field as a product of two real fermion (so-called prime) fields whose Fourier expansion exclusively contains prime modes. We undertake the canonical quantization of such prime fields and construct the corresponding Fock space by introducing creation operators b(p)(dagger) – labeled by prime numbers p – acting on the vacuum. The analysis of our model, based on the standard rules of quantum field theory and the assumption of the Riemann hypothesis, allows us to prove that the theory is not renormalizable. We also comment on the potential consequences of this result concerning the validity or breakdown of the Goldbach conjecture for large integer numbers.
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