We show that if global lepton number symmetry is spontaneously broken in a post inflation epoch, then it can lead to the formation of cosmological domain walls. This happens in the well-known Majoron paradigm for neutrino mass generation. We propose some realistic examples which allow spontaneous lepton number breaking to be safe from such domain walls.
We investigate the production of primordial Gravitational Waves (GWs) arising from First Order Phase Transitions (FOPTs) associated to neutrino mass generation in the context of type-I and inverse seesaw schemes. We examine both high-scale as well as
low-scale variants, with either explicit or spontaneously broken lepton number symmetry $U(1)_L$ in the neutrino sector. In the latter case, a pseudo-Goldstone majoron-like boson may provide a candidate for cosmological dark matter. We find that schemes with softly-broken $U(1)_L$ and with single Higgs-doublet scalar sector lead to either no FOPTs or too weak FOPTs, precluding the detectability of GWs in present or near future measurements. Nevertheless, we found that, in the majoron-like seesaw scheme with spontaneously broken $U(1)_L$ at finite temperatures, one can have strong FOPTs and non-trivial primordial GW spectra which can fall well within the frequency and amplitude sensitivity of upcoming experiments, including LISA, BBO and u-DECIGO. However, GWs observability clashes with invisible Higgs decay constraints from the LHC. A simple and consistent fix is to assume the majoron-like mass to lie above the Higgs-decay kinematical threshold. We also found that the majoron-like variant of the low-scale seesaw mechanism implies a different GW spectrum than the one expected in the high-scale seesaw. This feature will be testable in future experiments. Our analysis shows that GWs can provide a new and complementary portal to test the neutrino mass generation mechanism.
In this paper, we study the viability of having a fermion Dark Matter particle below the TeV mass scale in connection to the neutrino mass generation mechanism. The simplest realization is achieved within the scotogenic model where neutrino masses ar
e generated at the 1-loop level. Hence, we consider the case where the dark matter particle is the lightest $mathbb{Z}_2$-odd Majorana fermion running in the neutrino mass loop. We assume that lepton number is broken dynamically due to a lepton number carrier scalar singlet which acquires a non-zero vacuum expectation value. In the present scenario the Dark Matter particles can annihilate via $t$- and $s$-channels. The latter arises from the mixing between the new scalar singlet and the Higgs doublet. We identify three different Dark Matter mass regions below 1 TeV that can account for the right amount of dark matter abundance in agreement with current experimental constraints. We compute the Dark Matter-nucleon spin-independent scattering cross-section and find that the model predicts spin-independent cross-sections ``naturally dwelling below the current limit on direct detection searches of Dark Matter particles reported by XENON1T.
We show that the non-integer effective number of neutrinos $N^{mathrm{eff}}_ u$ can be understood as an effect of lepton $L$ asymmetry in the early Universe carried by the Dirac neutrino cosmic background. We show that $N_ u^{mathrm{eff}}=3.36pm0.34$
(CMB only) and $N_ u^{mathrm{eff}}= 3.62pm0.25$ (CMB and $H_0$) require a ratio between baryon number $B$ and lepton number to be $1.16 times 10^{-9}leqslant B/|L|leqslant 1.51 times 10^{-9}$. These values are close to the baryon-to-photon ratio $0.57times 10^{-9}leqslant B/N_gamma leqslant 0.67times10^{-9}$. Thus instead of the usual $|L|ll N_gamma$ and $Bsimeq |L|$, we propose to use $0.4 leqslant |L|/N_gammaleqslant 0.52$ and $Bll|L|$ as another natural choice, which resolves the tension between Planck-CMB and $H_0$ and leads to a non-integer value of $N_ u^{mathrm{eff}}>3$.
We investigate non-linear extensions of the holographic soft wall model proposed by Karch, Katz, Son and Stephanov [1] including non-minimal couplings in the five-dimensional action. The non-minimal couplings bring a new parameter $a_0$ which control
s the transition between spontaneous and explicit symmetry breaking near the limit of massless quarks (the chiral limit). In the physical region (positive quark mass), we show that above a critical value of the parameter $a_0$ the chiral condensate $langle bar{q} q rangle$ is finite in the chiral limit, signifying spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. This result is supported by the lightest states arising in the spectrum of the pseudoscalar mesons, which become massless in the chiral limit and are therefore intrepreted as Nambu-Goldstone bosons. Moreover, the decay constants of the pseudoscalar mesons also support this conclusion, as well as the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner (GOR) relation satisfied by the lightest states. We also calculate the spectrum of scalar, vector, and axial-vector mesons with their corresponding decay constants. We describe the evolution of masses and decay constants with the increasing of the quark mass and for the physical mass we compare our results against available experimental data. Finally, we do not find instabilities in our model for the physical region (positive quark mass).
Discrete flavor symmetry is often introduced for explaining quark/lepton masses and mixings. However, its spontaneous breaking leads to the appearance of domain walls, which is problematic for cosmology. We consider a possibility that the discrete fl
avor symmetry is anomalous under the color SU(3) so that it splits the energy levels of degenerate discrete vacua as a solution to the domain wall problem. We find that in most known models of flavor symmetry, the QCD anomaly effect can only partially remove the degeneracy and there still remain degenerate vacua.