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del Aguila, F., Aparici, A., Bhattacharya, S., Santamaria, A., & Wudka, J. (2012). A realistic model of neutrino masses with a large neutrinoless double beta decay rate. J. High Energy Phys., 05(5), 133–30pp.
Abstract: The minimal Standard Model extension with the Weinberg operator does accommodate the observed neutrino masses and mixing, but predicts a neutrinoless double beta (0 nu beta beta) decay rate proportional to the effective electron neutrino mass, which can be then arbitrarily small within present experimental limits. However, in general 0 nu beta beta decay can have an independent origin and be near its present experimental bound; whereas neutrino masses are generated radiatively, contributing negligibly to 0 nu beta beta decay. We provide a realization of this scenario in a simple, well defined and testable model, with potential LHC effects and calculable neutrino masses, whose two-loop expression we derive exactly. We also discuss the connection of this model to others that have appeared in the literature, and remark on the significant differences that result from various choices of quantum number assignments and symmetry assumptions. In this type of models lepton flavor violating rates are also preferred to be relatively large, at the reach of foreseen experiments. Interestingly enough, in our model this stands for a large third mixing angle, sin(2) theta(13) greater than or similar to 0.008, when μ-> eee is required to lie below its present experimental limit.
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Olmo, G. J., & Rubiera-Garcia, D. (2012). Nonsingular black holes in quadratic Palatini gravity. Eur. Phys. J. C, 72(8), 2098–5pp.
Abstract: We find that if general relativity is modified at the Planck scale by a Ricci-squared term, electrically charged black holes may be nonsingular. These objects concentrate their mass in a microscopic sphere of radius r(core) approximate to N(q)(1/2)l(P)/3, where l(P) is the Planck length and N-q is the number of electric charges. The singularity is avoided if the mass of the object satisfies the condition M-0(2) approximate to m(P)(2)alpha N-3/2(em)q(3)/2, where m(P) is the Planck mass and alpha(em) is the fine-structure constant. For astrophysical black holes this amount of charge is so small that their external horizon almost coincides with their Schwarzschild radius. We work within a first-order (Palatini) approach.
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BABAR Collaboration(Lees, J. P. et al), Azzolini, V., Martinez-Vidal, F., & Oyanguren, A. (2012). Study of (B)over-bar -> X(u)l(v)over-bar decays in B(B)over-bar events tagged by a fully reconstructed B-meson decay and determination of vertical bar V-ub vertical bar. Phys. Rev. D, 86(3), 032004–23pp.
Abstract: We report measurements of partial branching fractions for inclusive charmless semileptonic B decays (B) over bar -> X(u)l (v) over bar and the determination of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix element vertical bar V-ub vertical bar. The analysis is based on a sample of 467 x 10(6) Y(4S) -> B (B) over bar decays recorded with the BABAR detector at the PEP- II e(+)e(-) storage rings. We select events in which the decay of one of the B mesons is fully reconstructed and an electron or a muon signals the semileptonic decay of the other B meson. We measure partial branching fractions Delta B in several restricted regions of phase space and determine the CKM element vertical bar V-ub vertical bar based on different QCD predictions. For decays with a charged lepton momentum p(l)* > 1.0 GeV in the B meson rest frame, we obtain Delta B = (1.80 +/- 0.13(stat) +/- 0.15(sys) +/- 0.02(theo)) x 10(-3) from a fit to the two-dimensional M-X – q(2) distribution. Here, M-X refers to the invariant mass of the final state hadron X and q(2) is the invariant mass squared of the charged lepton and neutrino. From this measurement we extract vertical bar V-ub vertical bar = (4.33 +/- 0.24(exp) +/- 0.15(theo)) x 10(-3) as the arithmetic average of four results obtained from four different QCD predictions of the partial rate. We separately determine partial branching fractions for (B) over bar (0) and B- decays and derive a limit on the isospin breaking in (B) over bar -> X(u)l (v) over bar decays.
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Agullo, I., Navarro-Salas, J., & Parker, L. (2012). Enhanced local-type inflationary trispectrum from a non-vacuum initial state. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 05(5), 019–13pp.
Abstract: We compute the primordial trispectrum for curvature perturbations produced during cosmic inflation in models with standard kinetic terms, when the initial quantum state is not necessarily the vacuum state. The presence of initial perturbations enhances the trispectrum amplitude for configuration in which one of the momenta, say k(3), is much smaller than the others, k(3) << k(1,2,4). For those squeezed con figurations the trispectrum acquires the so-called local form, with a scale dependent amplitude that can get values of order epsilon(k(1)/k(3))(2). This amplitude could be larger than the prediction of the so-called Maldacena consistency relation by a factor as large as 10(6), and could reach the sensitivity of forthcoming observations, even for single-field inflationary models.
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Herrero-Garcia, J., Schwetz, T., & Zupan, J. (2012). On the annual modulation signal in dark matter direct detection. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 005–28pp.
Abstract: We derive constraints on the annual modulation signal in Dark Matter (DM) direct detection experiments in terms of the unmodulated event rate. A general bound independent of the details of the DM distribution follows from the assumption that the motion of the earth around the sun is the only source of time variation. The bound is valid for a very general class of particle physics models and also holds in the presence of an unknown unmodulated background. More stringent bounds are obtained, if modest assumptions on symmetry properties of the DM halo are adopted. We illustrate the bounds by applying them to the annual modulation signals reported by the DAMA and CoGeNT experiments in the framework of spin-independent elastic scattering. While the DAMA signal satisfies our bounds, severe restrictions on the DM mass can be set for CoGeNT.
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