Cottin, G., Helo, J. C., Hirsch, M., Pena, C., Wang, C. S. A., & Xie, S. (2023). Long-lived heavy neutral leptons with a displaced shower signature at CMS. J. High Energy Phys., 02(2), 011–16pp.
Abstract: We study the LHC discovery potential in the search for heavy neutral leptons (HNL) with a new signature: a displaced shower in the CMS muon detector, giving rise to a large cluster of hits forming a displaced shower. A new Delphes module is used to model the CMS detector response for such displaced decays. We reinterpret a dedicated CMS search for neutral long-lived particles decaying in the CMS muon endcap detectors for the minimal HNL scenario. We demonstrate that this new strategy is particularly sensitive to active-sterile mixings with tau leptons, due to hadronic tau decays. HNL masses between similar to 1-6 GeV can be accessed for mixings as low as vertical bar V-tau N vertical bar(2) similar to 10(-7), probing unique regions of parameter space in the tau sector.
|
Beltran, R., Cottin, G., Helo, J. C., Hirsch, M., Titov, A., & Wang, Z. S. (2023). Long-lived heavy neutral leptons from mesons in effective field theory. J. High Energy Phys., 01(1), 015–38pp.
Abstract: In the framework of the low-energy effective field theory of the Standard Model extended with heavy neutral leptons (HNLs), we calculate the production rates of HNLs from meson decays triggered by dimension-six operators. We consider both lepton number-conserving and lepton-number-violating four-fermion operators involving either a pair of HNLs or a single HNL. Assuming that HNLs are long-lived, we perform simulations and investigate the reach of the proposed far detectors at the high-luminosity LHC to (i) active-heavy neutrino mixing and (ii) the Wilson coefficients associated with the effective operators, for HNL masses below the mass of the B-meson. We further convert the latter to the associated new-physics scales. Our results show that scales in excess of hundreds of TeV and the active-heavy mixing squared as small as 10(-15 )can be probed by these experiments.
|
De La Torre Luque, P., Gaggero, D., Grasso, D., & Marinelli, A. (2022). Prospects for detection of a galactic diffuse neutrino flux. Front. Astron. Space Sci., 9, 1041838–9pp.
Abstract: A Galactic cosmic-ray transport model featuring non-homogeneous transport has been developed over the latest years. This setup is aimed at reproducing gamma-ray observations in different regions of the Galaxy (with particular focus on the progressive hardening of the hadronic spectrum in the inner Galaxy) and was shown to be compatible with the very-high-energy gamma-ray diffuse emission recently detected up to PeV energies. In this work, we extend the results previously presented to test the reliability of that model throughout the whole sky. To this aim, we compare our predictions with detailed longitude and latitude profiles of the diffuse gamma-ray emission measured by Fermi-LAT for different energies and compute the expected Galactic nu diffuse emission, comparing it with current limits from the ANTARES collaboration. We emphasize that the possible detection of a Galactic nu component will allow us to break the degeneracy between our model and other scenarios featuring prominent contributions from unresolved sources and TeV halos.
|
Super-Kamiokande Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), & Molina Sedgwick, S. (2022). Neutron tagging following atmospheric neutrino events in a water Cherenkov detector. J. Instrum., 17(10), P10029–41pp.
Abstract: We present the development of neutron-tagging techniques in Super-Kamiokande IV using a neural network analysis. The detection efficiency of neutron capture on hydrogen is estimated to be 26%, with a mis-tag rate of 0.016 per neutrino event. The uncertainty of the tagging efficiency is estimated to be 9.0%. Measurement of the tagging efficiency with data from an Americium-Beryllium calibration agrees with this value within 10%. The tagging procedure was performed on 3,244.4 days of SK-IV atmospheric neutrino data, identifying 18,091 neutrons in 26,473 neutrino events. The fitted neutron capture lifetime was measured as 218 +/- 9 μs.
|
ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Alves, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Gozzini, R., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., et al. (2023). Limits on the nuclearite flux using the ANTARES neutrino telescope. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 01(1), 012–19pp.
Abstract: In this work, a search for nuclearites of strange quark matter by using nine years of ANTARES data taken in the period 2009-2017 is presented. The passage through matter of these particles is simulated taking into account a detailed description of the detector response to nuclearites and of the data acquisition conditions. A down-going flux of cosmic nuclearites with Galactic velocities (beta = 10(-3)) was considered for this study. The mass threshold for detecting these particles at the detector level is 4 x 10(13) GeV/c(2). Upper limits on the nuclearite flux for masses up to 10(17) GeV/c(2) at the level of similar to 5 x 10(-17) cm(-2) s(-1) sr(-1) are obtained. These are the first upper limits on nuclearites established with a neutrino telescope and the most stringent ever set for Galactic velocities.
|
T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Antonova, M., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Molina Bueno, L., & Novella, P. (2022). Scintillator ageing of the T2K near detectors fro 2010 to 2021. J. Instrum., 17(10), P10028–36pp.
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.
|
Akhmedov, E., & Martinez-Mirave, P. (2022). Solar (v(e))over-bar flux: revisiting bounds on neutrino magnetic moments and solar magnetic field. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 144–35pp.
Abstract: The interaction of neutrino transition magnetic dipole moments with magnetic fields can give rise to the phenomenon of neutrino spin-flavour precession (SFP). For Majorana neutrinos, the combined action of SFP of solar neutrinos and flavour oscillations would manifest itself as a small, yet potentially detectable, flux of electron antineutrinos coming from the Sun. Non-observation of such a flux constrains the product of the neutrino magnetic moment μand the strength of the solar magnetic field B. We derive a simple analytical expression for the expected (v(e)) over bar appearance probability in the three-flavour framework and we use it to revisit the existing experimental bounds on μB. A full numerical calculation has also been performed to check the validity of the analytical result. We also present our numerical results in energy-binned form, convenient for analyses of the data of the current and future experiments searching for the solar (v(e)) over bar flux. In addition, we give a comprehensive compilation of other existing limits on neutrino magnetic moments and of the expressions for the probed effective magnetic moments in terms of the fundamental neutrino magnetic moments and leptonic mixing parameters.
|
Hernandez, P., Lopez-Pavon, J., Rius, N., & Sandner, S. (2022). Bounds on right-handed neutrino parameters from observable leptogenesis. J. High Energy Phys., 12(12), 012–58pp.
Abstract: We revisit the generation of a matter-antimatter asymmetry in the minimal extension of the Standard Model with two singlet heavy neutral leptons (HNL) that can explain neutrino masses. We derive an accurate analytical approximation to the solution of the complete linearized set of kinetic equations, which exposes the non-trivial parameter dependencies in the form of parameterization-independent CP invariants. The identification of various washout regimes relevant in different regions of parameter space sheds light on the relevance of the mass corrections in the interaction rates and clarifies the correlations of baryogenesis with other observables. In particular, by requiring that the measured baryon asymmetry is reproduced, we derive robust upper or lower bounds on the HNL mixings depending on their masses, and constraints on their flavour structure, as well as on the CP-violating phases of the PMNS mixing matrix, and the amplitude of neutrinoless double-beta decay. We also find certain correlations between low and high scale CP phases. Especially emphasizing the testable part of the parameter space we demonstrate that our findings are in very good agreement with numerical results. The methods developed in this work can help in exploring more complex scenarios.
|
Fiza, N., Khan Chowdhury, N. R., & Masud, M. (2023). Investigating Lorentz Invariance Violation with the long baseline experiment P2O. J. High Energy Phys., 01(1), 076–29pp.
Abstract: One of the basic propositions of quantum field theory is Lorentz invariance. The spontaneous breaking of Lorentz symmetry at a high energy scale can be studied at low energy extensions like the Standard model in a model-independent way through effective field theory (EFT). The present and future Long-baseline neutrino experiments can give a scope to observe such a Planck-suppressed physics of Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). A proposed long baseline experiment, Protvino to ORCA (dubbed “P2O”) with a baseline of 2595 km, is expected to provide good sensitivities to unresolved issues, especially neutrino mass ordering. P2O can offer good statistics even with a moderate beam power and runtime, owing to the very large (similar to 6 Mt) detector volume at KM3NeT/ ORCA. Here we discuss in detail, how the individual LIV parameters affect neutrino oscillations at P2O and DUNE baselines at the level of probability and derive analytical expressions to understand interesting degeneracies and other features. We estimate increment Delta chi(2) sensitivities to the LIV parameters, analyzing their correlations among each other, and also with the standard oscillation parameters. We calculate these results for P2O alone and also carry out a combined analysis of P2O with DUNE. We point out crucial features in the sensitivity contours and explain them qualitatively with the help of the relevant probability expressions derived here. Finally we estimate constraints on the individual LIV parameters at 95% confidence level (C.L.) intervals stemming from the combined analysis of P2O and DUNE datasets, and highlight the improvement over the existing constraints. We also find out that the additional degeneracy induced by the LIV parameter a(ee) around -22 x 10(-23) GeV is lifted by the combined analysis at 95% C.L.
|
Kim, J. S., Lopez-Fogliani, D. E., Perez, A. D., & Ruiz de Austri, R. (2023). Right-handed sneutrino and gravitino multicomponent dark matter in light of neutrino detectors. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 050–32pp.
Abstract: We investigate the possibility that right-handed (RH) sneutrinos and gravitinos can coexist and explain the dark matter (DM) problem. We compare extensions of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) and the next-to-MSSM (NMSSM) adding RH neutrinos superfields, with special emphasis on the latter. If the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) and the RH sneutrino the next-to-LSP (NLSP), the heavier particle decays to the former plus left-handed (LH) neutrinos through the mixing between the scalar partners of the LH and RH neutrinos. However, the interaction is suppressed by the Planck mass, and if the LH-RH sneutrino mixing parameter is small, << O(10-2), a long-lived RH sneutrino NLSP is possible even surpassing the age of the Universe. As a byproduct, the NLSP to LSP decay produces monochromatic neutrinos in the ballpark of current and planned neutrino telescopes like Super-Kamiokande, IceCube and Antares that we use to set constraints and show prospects of detection. In the NMSSM+RHN, assuming a gluino mass parameter M3 = 3 TeV we found the following lower limits for the gravitino mass m3/2 >= 1-600 GeV and the reheating temperature TR >= 105-3 x 107 GeV, for m nu similar to R similar to 10-800 GeV. If we take M3 = 10 TeV, then the limits on TR are relaxed by one order of magnitude.
|