PLE$ u$M: A global and distributed monitoring system of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos

High-energy astrophysical neutrinos, discovered by IceCube, are now regularly observed, albeit at a low rate due to their low flux. As a result, open questions about high-energy neutrino astrophysics and particle physics remain limited by statistics at best, or unanswered at worst. Fortunately, this situation will improve soon: in the next few years, a host of new neutrino telescopes, currently under planning and construction, will come online. It is natural to combine their collected observing power: we propose the Planetary Neutrino Monitoring System (PLE$ u$M), a concept for a global repository of high-energy neutrino observations, in order to finally give firm answers to open questions. PLE$ u$M will reach up to four times the exposure available today by combining the exposures of current and future neutrino telescopes distributed around the world -- IceCube, IceCube-Gen2, Baikal-GVD, KM3NeT, and P-ONE. Depending on the declination and spectral index, PLE$ u$M will improve the sensitivity to astrophysical neutrinos by up to two orders of magnitude. We present first estimates on the capability of PLE$ u$M to discover Galactic and extragalactic sources of astrophysical neutrinos and to characterize the diffuse flux of high-energy neutrinos in unprecedented detail.

Testing the Inverted Neutrino Mass Ordering with Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay

We quantify the extent to which future experiments will test the existence of neutrinoless double-beta decay mediated by light neutrinos with inverted-ordered masses. While it remains difficult to compare measurements performed with different isotopes, we find that future searches will fully test the inverted ordering scenario, as a global, multi-isotope endeavor. They will also test other possible mechanisms driving the decay, including a large uncharted region of the allowed parameter space assuming that neutrino masses follow the normal ordering.

New Constraints on Supersymmetry Using Neutrino Telescopes

We demonstrate that megaton-mass neutrino telescopes are able to observe the signal from long-lived particles beyond the Standard Model, in particular the stau, the supersymmetric partner of the tau lepton. Its signature is an excess of charged particle tracks with horizontal arrival directions and energy deposits between 0.1 and 1 TeV inside the detector. We exploit this previously-overlooked signature to search for stau particles in the publicly available IceCube data. The data shows no evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model. We derive a new lower limit on the stau mass of $320$ GeV (95% C.L.) and estimate that this new approach, when applied to the full data set available to the IceCube collaboration, will reach world-leading sensitivity to the stau mass ($m_{tilde{tau}}=450,mathrm{GeV}$).

Modeling of GERDA Phase II data

The GERmanium Detector Array (GERDA) experiment at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory (LNGS) of INFN is searching for neutrinoless double-beta ($0 ubetabeta$) decay of $^{76}$Ge. The technological challenge of GERDA is to operate in a background-free regime in the region of interest (ROI) after analysis cuts for the full 100$,$kg$cdot$yr target exposure of the experiment. A careful modeling and decomposition of the full-range energy spectrum is essential to predict the shape and composition of events in the ROI around $Q_{betabeta}$ for the $0 ubetabeta$ search, to extract a precise measurement of the half-life of the double-beta decay mode with neutrinos ($2 ubetabeta$) and in order to identify the location of residual impurities. The latter will permit future experiments to build strategies in order to further lower the background and achieve even better sensitivities. In this article the background decomposition prior to analysis cuts is presented for GERDA Phase II. The background model fit yields a flat spectrum in the ROI with a background index (BI) of $16.04^{+0.78}_{-0.85} cdot 10^{-3},$cts/(kg$cdot$keV$cdot$yr) for the enriched BEGe data set and $14.68^{+0.47}_{-0.52} cdot 10^{-3},$cts/(kg$cdot$keV$cdot$yr) for the enriched coaxial data set. These values are similar to the one of Gerda Phase I despite a much larger number of detectors and hence radioactive hardware components.

Discovery probability of next-generation neutrinoless double-$beta$ decay experiments

The Bayesian discovery probability of future experiments searching for neutrinoless double-$beta$ decay is evaluated under the popular assumption that neutrinos are their own antiparticles. A Bayesian global fit is performed to construct a probability distribution for the effective Majorana mass, the observable of interest for these experiments. This probability distribution is then combined with the sensitivity of each experiment derived from a heuristic counting analysis. The discovery probability is found to be higher than previously considered, but strongly depends on whether the neutrino mass ordering is normal or inverted. For the inverted ordering, next-generation experiments are likely to observe a signal already during their first operational stages. Even for the normal ordering, in the absence of neutrino mass mechanisms that drive the lightest state or the effective Majorana mass to zero, the probability of discovering neutrinoless double-$beta$ decay can reach $sim$50% or more in the most promising experiments.