No Arabic abstract
Motivated by the scenario of resonant leptogenesis in which lepton number creation in the electroweak-scale is relevant, we investigate the spectral properties and possible collective nature of the standard model neutrinos at electroweak scale temperature (T). We adopt the R_xi gauge fixing, which includes the unitary gauge as a limiting case, and allows us to study the broken as well as the restored phases of the gauge symmetry in a unified way. We show that the spectral density of the neutrino has a three-peak structure in the low-momentum region due to the scattering with the thermally excited particles (i.e., Landau damping) when T becomes comparable to the weak-boson masses in the plasma. The three peaks are identified with a novel ultrasoft mode, the usual quasiparticle, and antiplasmino modes. Varying the gauge-fixing parameter, we show that the three-peak structure appears independently of the gauge fixing and thus has a physical significance. We discuss possible implications of the neutrino spectral density obtained in the present work on particle cosmology, in particular in the context of resonant leptogenesis.
A first principle derivation is given of the neutrino damping rate in real-time thermal field theory. Starting from the discontinuity of the neutrino self energy at the two loop level, the damping rate can be expressed as integrals over space phase of amplitudes squared, weighted with statistical factors that account for the possibility of particle absorption or emission from the medium. Specific results for a background composed of neutrinos, leptons, protons and neutrons are given. Additionally, for the real part of the dispersion relation we discuss the relation between the results obtained from the thermal field theory, and those obtained by the thermal average of the forward scattering amplitude.
We consider origins of the baryon asymmetry which we observe today. We review the progress of electroweak-scale baryogenesis, and show a new mechanism, string-scale baryogenesis.
Conventional scenarios of electroweak (EW) baryogenesis are strongly constrained by experimental searches for CP violation beyond the SM. We propose an alternative scenario where the EW phase transition and baryogenesis occur at temperatures of the order of a new physics threshold $Lambda$ far above the Fermi scale, say, in the $100-1000$ TeV range. This way the needed new sources of CP-violation, together with possible associated flavor-violating effects, decouple from low energy observables. The key ingredient is a new CP- and flavor-conserving sector at the Fermi scale that ensures the EW symmetry remains broken and sphalerons suppressed at all temperatures below $Lambda$. We analyze a minimal incarnation based on a linear $O(N)$ model. We identify a specific large-$N$ limit where the effects of the new sector are vanishingly small at zero temperature while being significant at finite temperature. This crucially helps the construction of realistic models. A number of accidental factors, ultimately related to the size of the relevant SM couplings, force $N$ to be above $sim 100$. Such a large $N$ may seem bizarre, but it does affect the simplicity of the model and in fact it allows us to carry out a consistent re-summation of the leading contributions to the thermal effective potential. Extensions of the SM Higgs sector can be compatible with smaller values $Nsim 20-30$. Collider signatures are all parametrically suppressed by inverse powers of $N$ and may be challenging to probe, but present constraints from direct dark matter searches cannot be accommodated in the minimal model. We discuss various extensions that satisfy all current bounds. One of these involves a new gauge force confining at scales between $sim1$ GeV and the weak scale.
We propose a simple extension of the Standard Model (SM) by adding an extra U(1) symmetry which is hidden from the SM sector. Such a hidden U(1) has not been considered before, and its existence at the TeV scale can be explored at the LHC. This hidden U(1) does not couple directly to the SM particles, and couples only to new SU(2)_L singlet exotic quarks and singlet Higgs bosons, and is broken at the TeV scale. The dominant signals at the high energy hadron colliders are multi lepton and multi b-jet final states with or without missing energy. We calculate the signal rates as well as the corresponding Standard Model background for these final states. A very distinctive signal is 6 high p_T b-jets in the final state with no missing energy. For a wide range of the exotic quarks masses the signals are observable above the background at the LHC.
We propose a minimal model that can explain the electroweak scale, neutrino masses, Dark Matter (DM), and successful inflation all at once based on the multicritical-point principle (MPP). The model has two singlet scalar fields that realize an analogue of the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism, in addition to the Standard Model with heavy Majorana right-handed neutrinos. By assuming a $Z_2 $ symmetry, one of the scalars becomes a DM candidate whose property is almost the same as the minimal Higgs-portal scalar DM. In this model, the MPP can naturally realize a saddle point in the Higgs potential at high energy scales. By the renormalization-group analysis, we study the critical Higgs inflation with non-minimal coupling $xi |H|^2 R$ that utilizes the saddle point of the Higgs potential. We find that it is possible to realize successful inflation even for $xi=25$ and that the heaviest right-handed neutrino is predicted to have a mass around $10^{14}$ GeV to meet the current cosmological observations. Such a small value of $xi$ can be realized by the Higgs-portal coupling $lambda_{SH}simeq 0.32$ and the vacuum expectation value of the additional neutral scalar $langlephiranglesimeq 2.7$ TeV, which correspond to the dark matter mass 2.0 TeV, its spin-independent cross section $1.8times10^{-9}$ pb, and the mass of additional neutral scalar 190 GeV.