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Arbelaez, C., Cottin, G., Helo, J. C., & Hirsch, M. (2020). Long-lived charged particles and multilepton signatures from neutrino mass models. Phys. Rev. D, 101(9), 095033–13pp.
Abstract: Lepton number violation (LNV) is usually searched for by the LHC collaborations using the same-sign dilepton plus jet signature. In this paper, we discuss multilepton signals of LNV that can arise with experimentally interesting rates in certain loop models of neutrino mass generation. Interestingly, in such models, the observed smallness of the active neutrino masses, together with the high multiplicity of the final states, leads in large parts of the viable parameter space of such models to the prediction of long-lived charged particles, which leave highly ionizing tracks in the detectors. We focus on one particular one-loop neutrino mass model in this class and discuss its LHC phenomenology in some detail.
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Archidiacono, M., Gariazzo, S., Giunti, C., Hannestad, S., & Tram, T. (2020). Sterile neutrino self-interactions: H-0 tension and short-baseline anomalies. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 12(12), 029–20pp.
Abstract: Sterile neutrinos with a mass in the eV range have been invoked as a possible explanation of a variety of short baseline (SBL) neutrino oscillation anomalies. However, if one considers neutrino oscillations between active and sterile neutrinos, such neutrinos would have been fully thermalised in the early universe, and would be therefore in strong conflict with cosmological bounds. In this study we first update cosmological bounds on the mass and energy density of eV-scale sterile neutrinos. We then perform an updated study of a previously proposed model in which the sterile neutrino couples to a new light pseudoscalar degree of freedom. Consistently with previous analyses, we find that the model provides a good fit to all cosmological data and allows the high value of H-0 measured in the local universe to be consistent with measurements of the cosmic microwave background. However, new high l polarisation data constrain the sterile neutrino mass to be less than approximately 1 eV in this scenario. Finally, we combine the cosmological bounds on the pseudoscalar model with a Bayesian inference analysis of SBL data and conclude that only a sterile mass in narrow ranges around 1 eV remains consistent with both cosmology and SBL data.
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Ares, F., Esteve, J. G., Falceto, F., & Uson, A. (2020). Complex behavior of the density in composite quantum systems. Phys. Rev. B, 102(16), 165121–13pp.
Abstract: In this paper, we study how the probability of presence of a particle is distributed between the two parts of a composite fermionic system. We uncover that the difference of probability depends on the energy in a striking way and show the pattern of this distribution. We discuss the main features of the latter and explain analytically those that we understand. In particular, we prove that it is a nonperturbative property and we find out a large/small coupling constant duality. We also find and study features that may connect our problem with certain aspects of nonlinear classical dynamics, such as the existence of resonances and sensitive dependence on the state of the system. We show that the latter has, indeed, a similar origin than in classical mechanics: the appearance of small denominators in the perturbative series. Inspired by the proof of the Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theorem, we are able to deal with this problem by introducing a cutoff in energies that eliminates these small denominators. We also formulate some conjectures that we are not able to prove at present but can be supported by numerical experiments.
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Arguelles, C. A., Coloma, P., Hernandez, P., & Muñoz, V. (2020). Searches for atmospheric long-lived particles. J. High Energy Phys., 02(2), 190–34pp.
Abstract: Long-lived particles are predicted in extensions of the Standard Model that involve relatively light but very weakly interacting sectors. In this paper we consider the possibility that some of these particles are produced in atmospheric cosmic ray showers, and their decay intercepted by neutrino detectors such as IceCube or Super-Kamiokande. We present the methodology and evaluate the sensitivity of these searches in various scenarios, including extensions with heavy neutral leptons in models of massive neutrinos, models with an extra U(1) gauge symmetry, and a combination of both in a U(1)(B-L) model. Our results are shown as a function of the production rate and the lifetime of the corresponding long-lived particles.
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Aristizabal Sierra, D., De Romeri, V., Flores, L. J., & Papoulias, D. K. (2020). Light vector mediators facing XENON1T data. Phys. Lett. B, 809, 135681–5pp.
Abstract: Recently the XENON1T collaboration has released new results on searches for new physics in low-energy electronic recoils. The data shows an excess over background in the low-energy tail, particularly pronounced at about 2-3 keV. With an exposure of 0.65 tonne-year, large detection efficiency and energy resolution, the detector is sensitive as well to solar neutrino backgrounds, with the most prominent contribution given by pp neutrinos. We investigate whether such signal can be explained in terms of new neutrino interactions with leptons mediated by a light vector particle. We find that the excess is consistent with this interpretation for vector masses below less than or similar to 0.1 MeV. The region of parameter space probed by the XENON1T data is competitive with constraints from laboratory experiments, in particular GEMMA, Borexino and TEXONO. However we point out a severe tension with astrophysical bounds and cosmological observations.
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