Abstract: The framed standard model (FSM), constructed to explain, with some success, why there should be three and apparently only three generations of quarks and leptons in nature falling into a hierarchical mass and mixing pattern,(10) suggests also, among other things, a scalar boson U, with mass around 17 MeV and small couplings to quarks and leptons,(11) which might explain(9) the g – 2 anomaly reported in experiment.(12) The U arises in FSM initially as a state in the predicted “hidden sector” with mass around 17 MeV, which mixes with the standard model (SM) Higgs h(W), acquiring thereby a coupling to quarks and leptons and a mass just below 17 MeV. The initial purpose of this paper is to check whether this proposal is compatible with experiment on semileptonic decays of Ks and Bs where the U can also appear. The answer to this we find is affirmative, in that the contribution of U to new physics as calculated in the FSM remains within the experimental bounds, but only if m(U) lies within a narrow range just below the unmixed mass. As a result from this, one has an estimate m(U) similar to 15-17 MeV for the mass of U, and from some further considerations the estimate Gamma(U) similar to 0.02 eV for its width, both of which may be useful for an eventual search for it in experiment. If found, it will be, for the FSM, not just the discovery of a predicted new particle, but the opening of a window into a whole “hidden sector” containing at least some, perhaps even the bulk, of the dark matter in the universe.

Abstract: Gamma-ray bursts are thought to be sites of hadronic acceleration, thus neutrinos are expected from the decay of charged particles, produced in p gamma interactions. The methods and results of a search for muon neutrinos in the data of the ANTARES neutrino telescope from four bright GRBs (GRB 080916C, GRB 110918A, GRB 130427A and GRB 130505A) observed between 2008 and 2013 are presented. Two scenarios of the fireball model have been investigated: the internal shock scenario, leading to the production of neutrinos with energies mainly above 100 TeV, and the photospheric scenario, characterized by a low-energy component in neutrino spectra due to the assumption of neutrino production closer to the central engine. Since no neutrino events have been detected in temporal and spatial coincidence with these bursts, upper limits at 90 per cent confidence level on the expected neutrino fluxes are derived. The non-detection allows for directly constraining the bulk Lorentz factor of the jet Gamma and the baryon loading f(p).

Abstract: The T2K experiment widely uses plastic scintillator as a target for neutrino interactions and an active medium for the measurement of charged particles produced in neutrino interactions at its near detector complex. Over 10 years of operation the measured light yield recorded by the scintillator based subsystems has been observed to degrade by 0.9-2.2% per year. Extrapolation of the degradation rate through to 2040 indicates the recorded light yield should remain above the lower threshold used by the current reconstruction algorithms for all subsystems. This will allow the near detectors to continue contributing to important physics measurements during the T2K-II and Hyper-Kamiokande eras. Additionally, work to disentangle the degradation of the plastic scintillator and wavelength shifting fibres shows that the reduction in light yield can be attributed to the ageing of the plastic scintillator. The long component of the attenuation length of the wavelength shifting fibres was observed to degrade by 1.3-5.4% per year, while the short component of the attenuation length did not show any conclusive degradation.