No Arabic abstract
In recent experiments conducted by the OPERA collaboration, researchers claimed the observation of neutrinos propagating faster than the light speed in vacuum. If correct, their results raise several issues concerning the special theory of relativity and the standard model of fundamental particles. Here, the physical consequences of superluminal neutrinos described by a tachyonic Dirac lagrangian, are explored within the standard model of electroweak interactions. If neutrino tachyonic behavior is allowed, it could provide a simple explanation for the parity violation in weak interactions and why electroweak theory has a chiral aspect, leading to invariance under a $SU_{L}(2)times U_{Y}(1)$ gauge group. Right-handed neutrino becomes sterile and decoupled from the other particles quite naturally.
From the data release of OPERA - CNGS experiment, and publicly announced on 23 September 2011, we cast a phenomenological model based on a Majorana neutrino state carrying a fictitious imaginary mass term, already discussed by Majorana in 1932. This mass term can be induced by the interaction with the matter of the Earths crust during the 735 Km travel. Within the experimental errors, we prove that the model fits with OPERA, MINOS and supernova SN1987a data. Possible violations to Lorentz invariance due to quantum gravity effects have been considered.
We show that the more energetic superluminal neutrinos with quadratically dispersed superluminalities delta=beta^2-1, for beta=v/c where v is the neutrino velocity, also lose significant energy to radiation to the u+e^-+e^+ final state in travelling from CERN to Gran Sasso as has been shown to occur for those with constant superluminality by Cohen and Glashow if indeed delta simeq 5times 10^{-5}. In addition, we clarify the dependence of such radiative processes on the size of the superluminality.
The spectrum of the non-backtracking matrix plays a crucial role in determining various structural and dynamical properties of networked systems, ranging from the threshold in bond percolation and non-recurrent epidemic processes, to community structure, to node importance. Here we calculate the largest eigenvalue of the non-backtracking matrix and the associated non-backtracking centrality for uncorrelated random networks, finding expressions in excellent agreement with numerical results. We show however that the same formulas do not work well for many real-world networks. We identify the mechanism responsible for this violation in the localization of the non-backtracking centrality on network subgraphs whose formation is highly unlikely in uncorrelated networks, but rather common in real-world structures. Exploiting this knowledge we present an heuristic generalized formula for the largest eigenvalue, which is remarkably accurate for all networks of a large empirical dataset. We show that this newly uncovered localization phenomenon allows to understand the failure of the message-passing prediction for the percolation threshold in many real-world structures.
We explore the scalar phenomenology of a model of electroweak scale neutrinos that incorporates the presence of a lepton number violating singlet scalar. An analysis of the pseudoscalar-Majoron field associated to this singlet field is carried out in order to verify the viability of the model and to restrict its parameter space. In particular we study the Majoron decay $J to u u$ and use the bounds on the Majoron mass and width obtained in a modified Majoron Decaying Dark Matter scenario.
We propose a complex extension of $mutau$ permutation antisymmetry in the neutrino Majorana matrix $M_ u$. The latter can be realized for the Lagrangian by appropriate CP transformations on the neutrino fields. The resultant form of $M_ u$ is shown to be simply related to that with a complex (CP) extension of $mutau$ permutation symmetry, with identical phenomenological consequences, though their group theoretic origins are quite different. We investigate those consequences in detail for the minimal seesaw induced by two strongly hierarchical right-chiral neutrinos $N_1$ and $N_2$ with the result that the Dirac phase is maximal while the two Majorana phases are either 0 or $pi$. We further provide an uptodate discussion of the $betabeta0 u$ process vis-a-vis ongoing and forthcoming experiments. Finally, a thorough treatment is given of baryogenesis via leptogenesis in this scenario, primarily with the assumption that the lepton asymmetry produced by the decays of $N_1$ only matters here with the asymmetry produced by $N_2$ being washed out. Tight upper and lower bounds on the mass of $N_1$ are obtained from the constraint of obtaining the correct observed range of the baryon asymmetry parameter and the role played by $N_2$ is elucidated thereafter. The mildly hierarchical right-chiral neutrino case (including the quasidegenerate possibility) is discussed in an Appendix.