Abstract: The cosmic microwave background (CMB) has proven to be an invaluable tool for studying the properties and interactions of neutrinos, providing insight not only into the sum of neutrino masses but also the free streaming nature of neutrinos prior to recombination. The CMB is a particularly powerful probe of new eV-scale bosons interacting with neutrinos, as these particles can thermalizewith neutrinos via the inverse decay process, v (v) over bar -> X, and suppress neutrino free streaming near recombination – even for couplings as small as lambda(v) similar to O(10(-13)). Here, we revisit CMB constraints on such bosons, improving upon a number of approximations previously adopted in the literature and generalizing the constraints to a broader class of models. This includes scenarios in which the boson is either spin-0 or spin-1, the number of interacting neutrinos is either N-int = 1, 2 or 3, and the case in which a primordial abundance of the species is present. We apply these bounds to well-motivatedmodels, such as the singlet majoron model or a light U(1) L-mu- L-t gauge boson, and find that they represent the leading constraints for masses m(X) similar to 1 eV. Finally, we revisit the extent to which neutrinophilic bosons can ameliorate the Hubble tension, and find that recent improvements in the understanding of how such bosons damp neutrino free streaming reduces the previously found success of this proposal.

Abstract: A search for heavy right-handed Majorana or Dirac neutrinos N-R and heavy right-handed gauge bosons W-R is performed in events with energetic electrons or muons, with the same or opposite electric charge, and energetic jets. The search is carried out separately for topologies of clearly separated final-state products (“resolved” channel) and topologies with boosted final states with hadronic and/or leptonic products partially overlapping and reconstructed as a large-radius jet (“boosted” channel). The events are selected from pp collision data at the LHC with an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1) collected by the ATLAS detector at root s = 13 TeV. No significant deviations from the Standard Model predictions are observed. The results are interpreted within the theoretical framework of a left-right symmetric model, and lower limits are set on masses in the heavy right-handed W-R boson and N-R plane. The excluded region extends to about m(W-R) = 6.4 TeV for both Majorana and Dirac N-R neutrinos at m(N-R) < 1 TeV. N-R with masses of less than 3.5 (3.6) TeV are excluded in the electron (muon) channel at m(W-R) = 4.8 TeV for the Majorana neutrinos, and limits of m(N-R) up to 3.6 TeV for m(W-R) = 5.2 (5.0) TeV in the electron (muon) channel are set for the Dirac neutrinos. These constitute the most stringent exclusion limits to date for the model considered.

Abstract: The very rare D*(2007)(0) -> mu(+) mu(-) decay is searched for by analysing B- -> pi (-) mu(+) mu(-) decays. The analysis uses a sample of beautymesons produced in protonproton collisions collected with the LHCb detector between 2011 and 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9 fb(-1). The signal signature corresponds to simultaneous peaks in the mu(+) mu(-) and pi(-) mu(+) mu(-) invariant masses. No evidence for an excess of events over background is observed and an upper limit is set on the branching fraction of the decay at B(D-*(2007)(0) -> mu(+) mu(-)) < 2.6 x 10(-8) at 90% confidence level. This is the first limit on the branching fraction of D*(2007)(0) -> mu(+) mu(-) decays and the most stringent limit on D* (2007)(0) decays to leptonic final states. The analysis is the first search for a rare charm-meson decay exploiting production via beauty decays.