Abstract: We provide a scenario where naturally small and calculable neutrino masses arise from a supersymmetry-breaking renormalization-group-induced vacuum expectation value. The construction consists of an extended version of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model and the mechanism is illustrated for a universal choice of the soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters. The lightest supersymmetric particle can be an isosinglet scalar neutrino state, potentially viable as WIMP dark matter through its Higgs new boson coupling. The scenario leads to a plethora of new phenomenological implications at accelerators including the Large Hadron Collider.

Abstract: In models with flavour symmetries added to the gauge group of the Standard Model the CP-violating asymmetry necessary for leptogenesis may be related with low-energy parameters. A particular case of interest is when the flavour symmetry produces exact Tri/Bi-maximal lepton mixing leading to a vanishing CP-violating asymmetry. In this paper we present a model-independent discussion that confirms this always occurs for unflavoured leptogenesis in type I see-saw scenarios, noting however that Tri/Bi-maximal mixing does not imply a vanishing asymmetry in general scenarios where there is interplay between type I and other see-saws. We also consider a specific model where the exact Tri/Bi-maximal mixing is lifted by corrections that can be parametrised by a small number of degrees of freedom and analyse in detail the existing link between low and high-energy parameters – focusing on how the deviations from Tri/Bi-maximal are connected to the parameters governing leptogenesis.

Abstract: The spectrum of the negative-parity spin-1/2 Lambda baryons is studied using lattice QCD and hadronic effective theory in a unitarized coupled-channel framework. A direct comparison between the two approaches is possible by considering the hadronic effective theory in a finite volume and with hadron masses and mesonic decay constants that correspond to the situation studied on the lattice. Comparing the energy level spectrum and SU(3) flavor decompositions of the individual states, it is found that the lowest two states extracted from lattice QCD can be associated with one of the two Lambda(1405)-poles and the Lambda(1670) resonance. The quark mass dependences of these two lattice QCD levels are in good agreement with their effective theory counterparts. However, as current lattice QCD studies still rely on three-quark operators to generate the physical states, clear signals corresponding to the meson-baryon scattering states, that appear in the finite volume effective theory calculation, are not yet seen.