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Lopez-Honorez, L., Mena, O., & Villanueva-Domingo, P. (2019). Dark matter microphysics and 21 cm observations. Phys. Rev. D, 99(2), 023522–12pp.
Abstract: Dark matter interactions with massless or very light standard model particles, as photons or neutrinos, may lead to a suppression of the matter power spectrum at small scales and of the number of low mass haloes. Bounds on the dark matter scattering cross section with light degrees of freedom in such interacting dark matter (IDM) scenarios have been obtained from e.g., early time cosmic microwave background physics and large scale structure observations. Here we scrutinize dark matter microphysics in light of the claimed 21 cm EDGES 78 MHz absorption signal. IDM is expected to delay the 21 cm absorption features due to collisional damping effects. We identify the astrophysical conditions under which the existing constraints on the dark matter scattering cross section could be largely improved due to the IDM imprint on the 21 cm signal, providing also an explicit comparison to the WDM scenario.
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Heisenberg, L., Ramirez, H., & Tsujikawa, S. (2019). Inflation with mixed helicities and its observational imprint on CMB. Phys. Rev. D, 99(2), 023505–14pp.
Abstract: In the framework of effective field theories with prominent helicity-0 and helicity-1 fields coupled to each other via a dimension-3 operator, we study the dynamics of inflation driven by the helicity-0 mode, with a given potential energy, as well as the evolution of cosmological perturbations, influenced by the presence of a mixing term between both helicities. In this scenario, the temporal component of the helicity-1 mode is an auxiliary field and can be integrated out in terms of the time derivative of the helicity-0 mode, so that the background dynamics effectively reduces to that in single-field inflation modulated by a parameter beta associated to the coupling between helicity-0 and helicity-1 modes. We discuss the evolution of a longitudinal scalar perturbation psi and an inflaton fluctuation delta phi, and we explicitly show that a particular combination of these two, which corresponds to an isocurvature mode, is subject to exponential suppression by the vector mass comparable to the Hubble expansion rate during inflation. Furthermore, we find that the effective single-field description corrected by beta also holds for the power spectrum of curvature perturbations generated during inflation. We compute the standard inflationary observables such as the scalar spectral index n(s), and the tensorto-scalar ratio r and confront several inflaton potentials with the recent observational data provided by Planck 2018. Our results show that the coupling between helicity-0 and helicity-1 modes can lead to a smaller value of the tensor-to-scalar ratio especially for small-field inflationary models, so our scenario exhibits even better compatibility with the current observational data.
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Carames, T. F., Vijande, J., & Valcarce, A. (2019). Exotic bc(q)over-bar(q)over-bar four-quark states. Phys. Rev. D, 99(1), 014006–9pp.
Abstract: We carry out a systematic study of exotic QQ'(q) over bar(q) over bar four-quark states containing distinguishable heavy flavors, b and c. Different generic constituent models are explored in an attempt to extract general conclusions. The results are robust, predicting the same sets of quantum numbers as the best candidates to lodge bound states independently of the model used, the isoscalar J(P) = 0(+) and J(P) = 1(+) states. The first state would be strong and electromagnetic-interaction stable, while the second would decay electromagnetically to (B) over barD gamma. Isovector states are found to be unbound, preventing the existence of charged partners. The interest on exotic heavy-light tetraquarks with nonidentical heavy flavors comes reinforced by the recent estimation of the production rate of the isoscalar bc (u) over bar(d) over bar J(P) = 1(+) state, 2 orders of magnitude larger than that of the bb (u) over bar(d) over bar analogous state.
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Begone, G., Deisenroth, M. P., Kim, J. S., Liem, S., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Welling, M. (2019). Accelerating the BSM interpretation of LHC data with machine learning. Phys. Dark Universe, 24, 100293–5pp.
Abstract: The interpretation of Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data in the framework of Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) theories is hampered by the need to run computationally expensive event generators and detector simulators. Performing statistically convergent scans of high-dimensional BSM theories is consequently challenging, and in practice unfeasible for very high-dimensional BSM theories. We present here a new machine learning method that accelerates the interpretation of LHC data, by learning the relationship between BSM theory parameters and data. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrate that this technique accurately predicts natural SUSY signal events in two signal regions at the High Luminosity LHC, up to four orders of magnitude faster than standard techniques. The new approach makes it possible to rapidly and accurately reconstruct the theory parameters of complex BSM theories, should an excess in the data be discovered at the LHC.
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Masud, M., Bishai, M., & Mehta, P. (2019). Extricating New Physics Scenarios at DUNE with Higher Energy Beams. Sci Rep, 9, 352–9pp.
Abstract: The proposed Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) utilizes a wide-band on-axis tunable muon-(anti) neutrino beam with a baseline of 1300 km to search for CP violation with high precision. Given the long baseline, DUNE is also sensitive to effects due to matter induced non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) which can interfere with the standard three-flavor oscillation paradigm. Hence it is desirable to design strategies to disentangle effects due to NSI from standard oscillations. In this article, we exploit the tunability of the DUNE neutrino beam over a wide-range of energies to devise an experimental strategy for separating oscillation effects due to NSI from the standard three-flavor oscillation scenario. Using chi(2) analysis, we obtain an optimal combination of beam tunes and distribution of run times in neutrino and anti-neutrino modes that would enable DUNE to isolate new physics scenarios from the standard. We can distinguish scenarios at 3 sigma (5 sigma) level for almost all (similar to 50%) values of delta. To the best of our knowledge, our strategy is entirely new and has not been reported elsewhere.
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