Fu, B. W., King, S. F., Marsili, L., Pascoli, S., Turner, J., & Zhou, Y. L. (2025). Non-Abelian domain walls and gravitational waves. J. High Energy Phys., 04(4), 142–29pp.
Abstract: We investigate the properties of domain walls arising from non-Abelian discrete symmetries, which we refer to as non-Abelian domain walls. We focus on S4, one of the most commonly used groups in lepton flavour mixing models. The spontaneous breaking of S4 leads to distinct vacua preserving a residual Z2 or Z3 symmetry. Five types of domain walls are found, labelled as SI, SII, TI, TII, and TIII, respectively, the former two separating Z2 vacua and the latter three separating Z3 vacua. We highlight that SI, TI and TIII may be unstable for some regions of the parameter space and decay to stable domain walls. Stable domain walls can collapse and release gravitational radiation for a suitable size of explicit symmetry breaking. A symmetry-breaking scale of order 100 TeV may explain the recent discovery of nanohertz gravitational waves by PTA experiments. For the first time, we investigate the properties of these domain walls, which we obtain numerically with semi-analytical formulas applied to compute the tension and thickness across a wide range of parameter space. We estimate the resulting gravitational wave spectrum and find that, thanks to their rich vacuum structure, non-Abelian domain walls manifest in a very interesting and complex phenomenology.
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King, S. F., Leontaris, G. K., Marsili, L., & Zhou, Y. L. (2024). Leptogenesis in realistic flipped SU(5). J. High Energy Phys., 12(12), 211–18pp.
Abstract: We study thermal leptogenesis in realistic supersymmetric flipped SU(5) x U(1) unification. As up-type quarks and neutrinos are arranged in the same multiplets, they exhibit strong correlations, and it is commonly believed that the masses of right-handed (RH) neutrinos are too hierarchical to fit the low-energy neutrino data. This pattern generally predicts a lightest RH neutrino too light to yield successful leptogenesis, with any lepton-antilepton asymmetry generated from heavier neutrinos being washed out unless special flavour structures are assumed. We propose a different scenario in which the lightest two RH neutrinos N1 and N2 have nearby masses of order 109 GeV, with thermal leptogenesis arising non-resonantly from both N1 and N2. We show that this pattern is consistent with all data on fermion masses and mixing and predicts the lightest physical left-handed neutrino mass to be smaller than about 10-7 eV. The Dirac phase, which does not take the maximal CP-violating value, plays an important role in leptogenesis.
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Kumar, R., Nath, N., & Srivastava, R. (2024). Cutting the scotogenic loop: adding flavor to dark matter. J. High Energy Phys., 12(12), 036–37pp.
Abstract: We introduce a framework for hybrid neutrino mass generation, wherein scotogenic dark sector particles, including dark matter, are charged non-trivially under the A4 flavor symmetry. The spontaneous breaking of the A4 group to residual Z2 subgroup results in the “cutting” of the radiative loop. As a consequence the neutrinos acquire mass through the hybrid “scoto-seesaw” mass mechanism, combining aspects of both the tree-level seesaw and one-loop scotogenic mechanisms, with the residual Z2 subgroup ensuring the stability of the dark matter. The flavor symmetry also leads to several predictions including the normal ordering of neutrino masses and “generalized μ- tau reflection symmetry” in leptonic mixing. Additionally, it gives testable predictions for neutrinoless double beta decay and a lower limit on the lightest neutrino mass. Finally, A4 -> Z2 breaking also leaves its imprint on the dark sector and ties it with the neutrino masses and mixing. The model allows only scalar dark matter, whose mass has a theoretical upper limit of less than or similar to 600 GeV, with viable parameter space satisfying all dark matter constraints, available only up to about 80 GeV. Conversely, fermionic dark matter is excluded due to constraints from the neutrino sector. Various aspects of this highly predictive framework can be tested in both current and upcoming neutrino and dark matter experiments.
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Morisi, S., & Valle, J. W. F. (2013). Neutrino masses and mixing: a flavour symmetry roadmap. Fortschritte Phys.-Prog. Phys., 61(4-5), 466–492.
Abstract: Over the last ten years tri-bimaximal mixing has played an important role in modeling the flavour problem. We give a short review of the status of flavour symmetry models of neutrino mixing. We concentrate on non-Abelian discrete symmetries, which provide a simple way to account for the TBM pattern. We discuss phenomenological implications such as neutrinoless double beta decay, lepton flavour violation as well as theoretical aspects such as the possibility to explain quarks and leptons within a common framework, such as grand unified models.
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Roy, S., Morisi, S., Singh, N. N., & Valle, J. W. F. (2015). The Cabibbo angle as a universal seed for quark and lepton mixings. Phys. Lett. B, 748, 1–4.
Abstract: A model-independent ansatz to describe lepton and quark mixing in a unified way is suggested based upon the Cabibbo angle. In our framework neutrinos mix in a “Bi-Large” fashion, while the charged leptons mix as the “down-type” quarks do. In addition to the standard Wolfenstein parameters (lambda, A) two other free parameters (psi, delta) are needed to specify the physical lepton mixing matrix. Through this simple assumption one makes specific predictions for the atmospheric angle as well as leptonic CP violation in good agreement with current observations.
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Valle, J. W. F. (2015). Status and implications of neutrino masses: a brief panorama. Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, 30(13), 1530034–13pp.
Abstract: With the historic discovery of the Higgs boson our picutre of particle physics would have been complete were it nor for the neutrino sector and cosmology. I briefly discuss the role of neutrino masses and mixing upon gauge coupling unification, electroweak breaking and the flavor sector. Time is ripe for new discoveries such as leptonic CP violation, charged lepton flavor violation and neutrinoless double beta decay. Neutrinos could also play a role is elucidating the nature of dark matter and cosmic inflation.
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