No Arabic abstract
In a simple extension of the standard electroweak theory where the phenomenon of lepton flavor mixing is described by a 3x3 unitary matrix V, the electric and magnetic dipole moments of three active neutrinos are suppressed not only by their tiny masses but also by the Glashow-Iliopoulos-Maiani (GIM) mechanism. We show that it is possible to lift the GIM suppression if the canonical seesaw mechanism of neutrino mass generation, which allows V to be slightly non-unitary, is taken into account. In view of current experimental constraints on the non-unitarity of V, we find that the effective electromagnetic transition dipole moments of three light Majorana neutrinos and the rates of their radiative decays can be maximally enhanced by a factor of O(10^2) and a factor of O(10^4), respectively. This important observation reveals an intrinsic and presumably significant correlation between the electromagnetic properties of massive neutrinos and the origin of their small masses.
From a theoretical point of view, there is a strong motivation to consider an MeV-scale reheating temperature induced by long-lived massive particles with masses around the weak scale, decaying only through gravitational interaction. In this study, we investigate lower limits on the reheating temperature imposed by big-bang nucleosynthesis assuming both radiative and hadronic decays of such massive particles. For the first time, effects of neutrino self-interactions and oscillations are taken into account in the neutrino thermalization calculations. By requiring consistency between theoretical and observational values of light element abundances, we find that the reheating temperature should conservatively be $T_{rm RH} gtrsim 1.8$ MeV in the case of the 100% radiative decay, and $T_{rm RH} gtrsim$ 4-5 MeV in the case of the 100% hadronic decays for particle masses in the range of 10 GeV to 100 TeV.
Light new physics weakly coupled to the Higgs can induce a strong first-order electroweak phase transition (EWPT). Here, we argue that scenarios in which the EWPT is driven first-order by a light scalar with mass between $sim 10$ GeV - $m_h/2$ and small mixing with the Higgs will be conclusively probed by the high-luminosity LHC and future Higgs factories. Our arguments are based on analytic and numerical studies of the finite-temperature effective potential and provide a well-motivated target for exotic Higgs decay searches at the LHC and future lepton colliders.
The lepton flavour violating charged lepton decays mu to e + gamma and thermal leptogenesis are analysed in the minimal supersymmetric standard model with see-saw mechanism of neutrino mass generation and soft supersymmetry breaking terms with universal boundary conditions. Hierarchical spectrum of heavy Majorana neutrino masses, M_1 << M_2 << M_3, is considered. In this scenario, the requirement of successful thermal leptogenesis implies a lower bound on M_1. For the natural GUT values of the heaviest right-handed Majorana neutrino mass, M_3 > 5 times 10^{13} GeV, and supersymmetry particle masses in the few times 100 GeV range, the predicted mu to e + gamma decay rate exceeds by few order of magnitude the experimental upper limit. This problem is avoided if the matrix of neutrino Yukawa couplings has a specific structure. The latter leads to a correlation between the baryon asymmetry of the Universe predicted by leptogenesis, BR(mu to e + gamma) and the effective Majorana mass in neutrinoless double beta decay.
Dark matter (DM) scattering and its subsequent capture in the Sun can boost the local relic density, leading to an enhanced neutrino flux from DM annihilations that is in principle detectable at neutrino telescopes. We calculate the event rates expected for a radiative seesaw model containing both scalar triplet and singlet-doublet fermion DM candidates. In the case of scalar DM, the absence of a spin dependent scattering on nuclei results in a low capture rate in the Sun, which is reflected in an event rate of less than one per year in the current IceCube configuration with 86 strings. For singlet-doublet fermion DM, there is a spin dependent scattering process next to the spin independent one, which significantly boosts the event rate and thus makes indirect detection competitive with respect to the direct detection limits imposed by PICO-60. Due to a correlation between both scattering processes, the limits on the spin independent cross section set by XENON1T exclude also parts of the parameter space that can be probed at IceCube. Previously obtained limits by ANTARES, IceCube and Super-Kamiokande from the Sun and the Galactic Center are shown to be much weaker.
We calculate a dipole-dipole potential between fermions mediated by a light pseudoscalar, axion, paying a particular attention to the overall sign. While the sign of the potential is physical and important for experiments to discover or constrain the axion coupling to fermions, there is often a sign error in the literature. The purpose of this short note is to clarify the sign issue of the axion-mediated dipole-dipole potential. As a by-product, we find a sign change of the dipole-dipole potenital due to the different spin of the mediating particle.