Bhattacharya, A., Esmaili, A., Palomares-Ruiz, S., & Sarcevic, I. (2017). Probing decaying heavy dark matter with the 4-year IceCube HESE data. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 027–36pp.
Abstract: After the first four years of data taking, the IceCube neutrino telescope has observed 54 high-energy starting events (HESE) with deposited energies between 20TeV and 2PeV. The background from atmospheric muons and neutrinos is expected to be of about 20 events, all below 100TeV, thus pointing towards the astrophysical origin of about 8 events per year in that data set. However, their precise origin remains unknown. Here, we perform a detailed analysis of this event sample (considering simultaneously the energy, hemisphere and topology of the events) by assuming two contributions for the signal events: an isotropic power-law flux and a flux from decaying heavy dark matter. We fit the mass and lifetime of the dark matter and the normalization and spectral index of an isotropic power-law flux, for various decay channels of dark matter. We find that a significant contribution from dark matter decay is always slightly favored, either to explain the excess below 100TeV, as in the case of decays to quarks or, as in the case of neutrino channels, to explain the three multi-PeV events. Also, we consider the possibility to interpret all the data by dark matter decays only, considering various combinations of two decay channels. We show that the decaying dark matter scenario provides a better fit to HESE data than the isotropic power-law flux.
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Bhattacharya, A., Esmaili, A., Palomares-Ruiz, S., & Sarcevic, I. (2019). Update on decaying and annihilating heavy dark matter with the 6-year IceCube HESE data. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(5), 051–30pp.
Abstract: In view of the IceCube's 6-year high-energy starting events (HESE) sample, we revisit the possibility that the updated data may be better explained by a combination of neutrino fluxes from dark matter decay and an isotropic astrophysical power-law than purely by the latter. We find that the combined two-component flux qualitatively improves the fit to the observed data over a purely astrophysical one, and discuss how these updated fits compare against a similar analysis done with the 4-year HESE data. We also update fits involving dark matter decay via multiple channels, without any contribution from the astrophysical flux. We find that a DM-only explanation is not excluded by neutrino data alone. Finally, we also consider the possibility of a signal from dark matter annihilations and perform analogous analyses to the case of decays, commenting on its implications.
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Blennow, M., Fernandez-Martinez, E., Hernandez-Garcia, J., Lopez-Pavon, J., Marcano, X., & Naredo-Tuero, D. (2023). Bounds on lepton non-unitarity and heavy neutrino mixing. J. High Energy Phys., 08(8), 030–41pp.
Abstract: We present an updated and improved global fit analysis of current flavour and electroweak precision observables to derive bounds on unitarity deviations of the leptonic mixing matrix and on the mixing of heavy neutrinos with the active flavours. This new analysis is motivated by new and updated experimental results on key observables such as V-ud, the invisible decay width of the Z boson and the W boson mass. It also improves upon previous studies by considering the full correlations among the different observables and explicitly calibrating the test statistic, which may present significant deviations from a & chi;(2) distribution. The results are provided for three different Type-I seesaw scenarios: the minimal scenario with only two additional right-handed neutrinos, the next to minimal one with three extra neutrinos, and the most general one with an arbitrary number of heavy neutrinos that we parametrise via a generic deviation from a unitary leptonic mixing matrix. Additionally, we also analyze the case of generic deviations from unitarity of the leptonic mixing matrix, not necessarily induced by the presence of additional neutrinos. This last case relaxes some correlations among the parameters and is able to provide a better fit to the data. Nevertheless, inducing only leptonic unitarity deviations avoiding both the correlations implied by the right-handed neutrino extension as well as more strongly constrained operators is challenging and would imply significantly more complex UV completions.
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Borexino Collaboration(Bellini, G. et al), & Pena-Garay, C. (2012). Absence of a day-night asymmetry in the Be-7 solar neutrino rate in Borexino. Phys. Lett. B, 707(1), 22–26.
Abstract: We report the result of a search for a day-night asymmetry in the Be-7 solar neutrino interaction rate in the Borexino detector at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy. The measured asymmetry is A(dn) = 0.001 +/- 0.012 (stat) +/- 0.007 (syst), in agreement with the prediction of MSW-LMA solution for neutrino oscillations. This result disfavors MSW oscillations with mixing parameters in the LOW region at more than 8.5 sigma. This region is, for the first time, strongly disfavored without the use of reactor anti-neutrino data and therefore the assumption of CPT symmetry. The result can also be used to constrain some neutrino oscillation scenarios involving new physics.
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Candela, P. M., De Romeri, V., Melas, P., Papoulias, D. K., & Saoulidou, N. (2024). Up-scattering production of a sterile fermion at DUNE: complementarity with spallation source and direct detection experiments. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 032–36pp.
Abstract: We investigate the possible production of a MeV-scale sterile fermion through the up-scattering of neutrinos on nuclei and atomic electrons at different facilities. We consider a phenomenological model that adds a new fermion to the particle content of the Standard Model and we allow for all possible Lorentz-invariant non-derivative interactions (scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, axial-vector and tensor) of neutrinos with electrons and first-generation quarks. We first explore the sensitivity of the DUNE experiment to this scenario, by simulating elastic neutrino-electron scattering events in the near detector. We consider both options of a standard and a tau-optimized neutrino beams, and investigate the impact of a mobile detector that can be moved off-axis with respect to the beam. Next, we infer constraints on the typical coupling, new fermion and mediator masses from elastic neutrino-electron scattering events induced by solar neutrinos in two current dark matter direct detection experiments, XENONnT and LZ. Under the assumption that the new mediators couple also to first-generation quarks, we further set constraints on the up-scattering production of the sterile fermion using coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering data from the COHERENT experiment. Moreover, we set additional constraints assuming that the sterile fermion may decay within the detector. We finally compare our results and discuss how these facilities are sensitive to different regions of the relevant parameter space due to kinematics arguments and can hence provide complementary information on the up-scattering production of a sterile fermion.
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Capozzi, F., & Saviano, N. (2022). Neutrino Flavor Conversions in High-Density Astrophysical and Cosmological Environments. Universe, 8(2), 94–23pp.
Abstract: Despite being a well understood phenomenon in the context of current terrestrial experiments, neutrino flavor conversions in dense astrophysical environments probably represent one of the most challenging open problems in neutrino physics. Apart from being theoretically interesting, such a problem has several phenomenological implications in cosmology and in astrophysics, including the primordial nucleosynthesis of light elements abundance and other cosmological observables, nucleosynthesis of heavy nuclei, and the explosion of massive stars. In this review, we briefly summarize the state of the art on this topic, focusing on three environments: early Universe, core-collapse supernovae, and compact binary mergers.
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Carcamo Hernandez, A. E., Vishnudath, K. N., & Valle, J. W. F. (2023). Linear seesaw mechanism from dark sector. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 046–18pp.
Abstract: We propose a minimal model where a dark sector seeds neutrino mass generation radiatively within the linear seesaw mechanism. Neutrino masses are calculable, since treelevel contributions are forbidden by symmetry. They arise from spontaneous lepton number violation by a small Higgs triplet vacuum expectation value. Lepton flavour violating processes e.g. μ-> e gamma can be sizeable, despite the tiny neutrino masses. We comment also on dark-matter and collider implications.
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Cermeño, M., Perez-Garcia, M. A., & Lineros, R. A. (2018). Enhanced neutrino emissivities in pseudoscalar-mediated dark matter annihilation in neutron stars. Astrophys. J., 863(2), 157–9pp.
Abstract: We calculate neutrino emissivities from self-annihilating dark matter (DM) (chi) in the dense and hot stellar interior of a (proto)neutron star. Using a model where DM interacts with nucleons in the stellar core through a pseudoscalar boson (a) we find that the neutrino production rates from the dominant reaction channels chi -> nu(nu) over bar or chi chi -> aa, with subsequent decay of the mediator a -> nu(nu) over bar, could locally match and even surpass those of the standard neutrinos from the modified nuclear URCA processes at early ages. We find that the emitting region can be localized in a tiny fraction of the star (less than a few percent of the core volume) and the process can last its entire lifetime for some cases under study. We discuss the possible consequences of our results for stellar cooling in light of existing DM constraints.
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Chianese, M., Fiorillo, D. F. G., Hajjar, R., Miele, G., & Saviano, N. (2021). Constraints on heavy decaying dark matter with current gamma-ray measurements. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 11(11), 035–13pp.
Abstract: Among the several strategies for indirect searches of dark matter, a very promising one is to look for the gamma-rays from decaying dark matter. Here we use the most up-to-date upper bounds on the gamma-ray flux from 10(5) to 10(11) GeV, obtained from CASA-MIA, KASCADE, KASCADE-Grande, Pierre Auger Observatory, Telescope Array and EAS-MSU. We obtain global limits on dark matter lifetime in the range of masses in m(DM) = [10(7)-10(15)] GeV. We provide the bounds for a set of decay channels chosen as representatives. The constraints derived here are new and cover a region of the parameter space not yet explored. We compare our results with the projected constraints from future neutrino telescopes, in order to quantify the improvement that will be obtained by the complementary high-energy neutrino searches.
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Chun, E. J., Cvetic, G., Dev, P. S. B., Drewes, M., Fong, C. S., Garbrecht, B., et al. (2018). Probing leptogenesis. Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, 33(5-6), 1842005–99pp.
Abstract: The focus of this paper lies on the possible experimental tests of leptogenesis scenarios. We consider both leptogenesis generated from oscillations, as well as leptogenesis from out-of-equilibrium decays. As the Akhmedov-Rubakov-Smirnov (ARS) mechanism allows for heavy neutrinos in the GeV range, this opens up a plethora of possible experimental tests, e.g. at neutrino oscillation experiments, neutrinoless double beta decay, and direct searches for neutral heavy leptons at future facilities. In contrast, testing leptogenesis from out-of-equilibrium decays is a quite difficult task. We comment on the necessary conditions for having successful leptogenesis at the TeV-scale. We further discuss possible realizations and their model specific testability in extended seesaw models, models with extended gauge sectors, and supersymmetric leptogenesis. Not being able to test high-scale leptogenesis directly, we present a way to falsify such scenarios by focusing on their washout processes. This is discussed specifically for the left-right symmetric model and the observation of a heavy W-R, as well as model independently when measuring Delta L = 2 washout processes at the LHC or neutrinoless double beta decay.
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