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Some supersymmetric models after the recent LHC reports are reviewed. This includes the strong CP solution with axions, an extra Z Prime from GUTs, and the scalar and pseudoscalar Higgs bosons in supersymmetric extension of the standard model. We also comment on the maximal weak CP violation.
Since about a decade the european physics community interested in neutrino and neutrino-astrophysics develops a plan to conceive the next generation large underground neutrino observatory. Recently, the LAGUNA-LBNO collaboration made the outcome of the FP7 design study public which shows a clear path for the realization of such experiment. In this paper the LAGUNA and LAGUNA-LBNO Design studies, resulting in a proposal for the LBNO experiment, will be discussed. The author will focus on the long baseline neutrino oscillation search, especially on the potential to discover the neutrino mass ordering and the search for CP violation in the lepton sector.
The search for a new source of CP violation is one of the most important endeavors in particle physics. A particularly interesting way to perform this search is to probe the CP phase in the $h\tau\tau$ coupling, as the phase is currently completely unconstrained by all existing data. Recently, a novel variable $\Theta$ was proposed for measuring the CP phase in the $h\tau\tau$ coupling through the $\tau^\pm \to \pi^\pm \pi^0 \nu$ decay mode. We examine two crucial questions that the real LHC detectors must face, namely, the issue of neutrino reconstruction and the effects of finite detector resolution. For the former, we find strong evidence that the collinear approximation is the best for the $\Theta$ variable. For the latter, we find that the angular resolution is actually not an issue even though the reconstruction of $\Theta$ requires resolving the highly collimated $\pi^\pm$'s and $\pi^0$'s from the $\tau$ decays. Instead, we find that it is the missing transverse energy resolution that significantly limits the LHC reach for measuring the CP phase via $\Theta$.
Working in the framework of the Standard Model effective field theory, we study chirality-flipping couplings of the top quark to Higgs and gauge bosons. In this paper, we discuss in detail the renormalization-group evolution to lower energies and investigate direct and indirect contributions to high- and low-energy $CP$-conserving and $CP$-violating observables. Our analysis includes constraints from collider observables, precision electroweak tests, flavor physics, and electric dipole moments. We find that indirect probes are competitive or dominant for both $CP$-even and $CP$-odd observables, even after accounting for uncertainties associated with hadronic and nuclear matrix elements, illustrating the importance of including operator mixing in constraining the Standard Model effective field theory. We also study scenarios where multiple anomalous top couplings are generated at the high scale, showing that while the bounds on individual couplings relax, strong correlations among couplings survive. In conclusion, we find that enforcing minimal flavor violation does not significantly affect the bounds on the top couplings.
Phenomenological relations for masses, angles, and CP phases in the neutrino mixing matrix are proposed with allowance for available experimental data. For the case of CP violation in the lepton sector, an analysis of the possible structure of the neutrino mass matrix and a calculation of the neutrino mass features and the Dirac CP phase for the bimodal-neutrino model are performed. The values obtained in this way can be used to interpret and predict the results of various neutrino experiments.
The Hyper-Kamiokande (Hyper-K) detector is a next generation underground water Chrenkov detector. The J-PARC to Hyper-K experiment has good potential for precision measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters and discovery reach for CP violation in the lepton sector. With a total exposure of 10 years to a neutrino beam produced by the 750 kW J-PARC proton synchrotron, it is expected that the CP phase δ can be determined to better than 18 degree for all possible values of δ if sin{sup 2} 2θ{sub 13} > 0.03 and the mass hierarchy is known. Control of systematic uncertainties is critical to make maximum use of the Hyper-K potential. Based on learning from T2K experience, a strategy to reduce systematic uncertainties in J-PARC/Hyper-K are developed.
Type-II seesaw is a simple scenario in which Majorana neutrino masses are generated by the exchange of a heavy scalar electroweak triplet. When endowed with additional heavy fields, such as right-handed neutrinos or extra triplets, it also provides a compelling framework for baryogenesis via leptogenesis. We derive in this context the full network of Boltzmann equations for studying leptogenesis in the flavored regime. To this end we determine the relations which hold among the chemical potentials of the various particle species in the thermal bath. This takes into account the standard model Yukawa interactions of both leptons and quarks as well as sphaleron processes which, depending on the temperature, may be classified as faster or slower than the Universe Hubble expansion. We find that when leptogenesis is enabled by the presence of an extra triplet, lepton flavor effects allow the production of the B-L asymmetry through lepton number conserving CP asymmetries. This scenario becomes dominant as soon as the triplets couple more to leptons than to standard model scalar doublets. In this case, the way the B-L asymmetry is created through flavor effects is novel: instead of invoking the effect of L-violating inverse decays faster than the Hubble rate, it involves the effect of L-violating decays slower than the Hubble rate. We also analyze the more general situation where lepton number violating CP asymmetries are present and actively participate in the generation of the B-L asymmetry, pointing out that as long as L-violating triplet decays are still in thermal equilibrium when the triplet gauge scattering processes decouple, flavor effects can be striking, allowing to avoid all washout suppression effects from seesaw interactions. In this case the amount of B-L asymmetry produced is limited only by a universal gauge suppression effect, which nevertheless goes away for large triplet decay rates.
The bright objects we observe in the night sky make up less than 20% of the matter in the Universe. More than 80% of matter is invisible dark matter [1], which was postulated because the amount of visible matter in galaxy clusters could not account for the galaxies’ velocities [2]. Observations from cosmology and astrophysics that converge on the existence of dark matter include the cosmic microwave background power spectrum [3], cluster and galactic rotation curves [2], gravitational lensing [4,5] and large-scale structure formation [6]. The existence of dark matter is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in physics, providing concrete evident for physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. Many particle candidates have been introduced, including weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and ultralight bosons, such as the axion [7]. No candidates have been discovered, despite many searches, and the nature of dark matter is still unknown. The axion is a new fundamental spin-0 particle, which was originally motivated by explaining the strong charge-parity ( CP ) problem of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) [7], the theory of the strong nuclear force within nucleons. The CP -violating term in QCD within the SM is expected to generate a sizable neutron electric dipole moment (EDM), while the experimental upper bound is roughly one trillionth that size [8]. The strong CP problem is the non-observation of this neutron EDM. Discovery of axions would aid in understanding both the cosmological dark matter problem and the strong CP problem.
A measurement of the time-integrated CP asymmetry in the Cabibbo-suppressed decay D 0 → K - K + is performed using pp collision data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3 fb -1 , collected with the LHCb detector at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. The flavour of the charm meson at production is determined from the charge of the pion in D *+ →D 0 π + and D* - →$\bar{D}$ 0 π - decays. The time-integrated CP asymmetry A CP (K - K + ) is obtained assuming negligible CP violation in charm mixing and in Cabibbo-favoured D 0 →K - π + , D + →K - π + π + and D + →$\bar{K}$ 0 π + decays used as calibration channels. It is found to be A CP (K - K + )=(0.14±0.15 (stat)±0.10 (syst))%. A combination of this result with previous LHCb measurements yields A CP (K - K + )=(0.04±0.12 (stat)±0.10 (syst))%, A CP (π - π + )=(0.07±0.14 (stat)±0.11 (syst))%. These are the most precise measurements from a single experiment. The result for A CP (K - K + ) is the most precise determination of a time-integrated CP asymmetry in the charm sector to date, and neither measurement shows evidence of CP asymmetry.
The Boston University Neutrino Physics and Particle Astrophysics Group investigates the fundamental laws of particle physics using natural and man-made neutrinos and rare processes such as proton decay. The primary instrument for this research is the massive Super-Kamiokande (SK) water Cherenkov detector, operating since 1996 at the Kamioka Neutrino Observatory, one kilometer underground in a mine in Japan. We study atmospheric neutrinos from cosmic rays, which were first used to discover that neutrinos have mass, as recognized by the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics. Our latest measurements with atmospheric neutrinos are giving valuable information, complementary to longbaseline experiments, on the ordering of massive neutrino states and as to whether neutrinos violate CP symmetry. We have studied a variety of proton decay modes, including the most frequently predicted modes such as p → e + π 0 and p → ν K + , as well as more exotic baryon number violating processes such as dinucleon decay and neutronantineutron oscillation. We search for neutrinos from dark matter annihilation or decay in the universe. Our group has made significant contributions to detector operation, particularly in the area of electronics. Most recently, we have contributed to planning for an upgrade to the SK detector by the addition of gadolinium to the water, which will enable efficient neutron capture detection.
Two Higgs doublet models (2HDM) provide the low energy effective theory (EFT) description in many well motivated extensions of the Standard Model. It is therefore relevant to study their properties, as well as the theoretical constraints on these models. In this article we concentrate on three relevant requirements for the validity of the 2HDM framework, namely the perturbative unitarity bounds, the bounded from below constraints, and the vacuum stability constraints. In this study, we concentrate on the most general renormalizable version of the 2HDM — without imposing any parity symmetry, which may be violated in many UV extensions. We derive novel analytical expressions that generalize those previously obtained in more restrictive scenarios to the most general case. We also discuss the phenomenological implications of these bounds, focusing on CP violation.
We measure the time-dependent CP asymmetry in the radiative-penguin decay B 0 → K S 0 π - π + γ , using a sample of 471×10 6 Υ(4S)→BB-events recorded with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II e+e- storage ring at SLAC. Using events with m Kππ < 1.8 GeV/c 2 , we measure the branching fractions of B+→K+π-π+γ and B0→K0π-π+γ, the branching fractions of the kaonic resonances decaying to K+π-π+, as well as the overall branching fractions of the B+→ρ0K+γ, B+→K*0π+γ and S-wave B+→(Kπ)0*0π+γ components. For events from the ρ mass band, we measure the CP-violating parameters SKS0π+π-γ=0.14±0.25±0.03 and CKS0π+π-γ=-0.39±0.20-0.02+0.03, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second are systematic. We extract from this measurement the time-dependent CP asymmetry related to the CP eigenstate ρ0KS0 and obtain SKS0ργ=-0.18±0.32-0.05+0.06, which provides information on the photon polarization in the underlying b→sγ transition.
Neutrino-nucleus cross-sections are as of today the main source of systematic errors for oscillation experiments together with neutrino flux uncertainties. Despite recent experimental and theoretical developments, future experiments require even higher precisions in their search of CP violation. We will review the experimental status and explore possible future developments required by next generation of experiments.
NOvA is a long-baseline accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiment that is optimized for $\nu_e$ measurements. It uses the upgraded NuMI beam from Fermilab and measures electron-neutrino appearance and muon-neutrino disappearance at its Far Detector in Ash River, Minnesota. The $\nu_e$ appearance analysis at NOvA aims to resolve the neutrino mass hierarchy problem and to constrain the CP-violating phase. The first measurement of electron-neutrino appearance in NOvA based on its first year's data was produced in 2015, providing solid evidence of $\nu_e$ oscillation with the NuMI beam line and some hints on mass-hierarchy and CP. This talk will discuss the second $\nu_e$ oscillation analysis at NOvA, which is based on 2 years of data.
Dark matter particles interacting via the exchange of very light spin-0 mediators can have large self-interaction rates and obtain their relic abundance from thermal freeze-out. At the same time, these models face strong bounds from direct and indirect probes of dark matter as well as a number of constraints on the properties of the mediator. We investigate whether these constraints can be consistent with having observable effects from dark matter self-interactions in astrophysical systems. For the case of a mediator with purely scalar couplings we point out the highly relevant impact of low-threshold direct detection experiments like CRESST-II, which essentially rule out the simplest realization of this model. These constraints can be significantly relaxed if the mediator has CP-violating couplings, but then the model faces strong constraints from CMB measurements, which can only be avoided in special regions of parameter space.
We consider the strong dynamics associated with a composite Higgs model that simultaneously produces dynamical axions and solves the strong CP problem. The strong dynamics arises from a new Sp or SU(4) hypercolor gauge group containing QCD colored hyperfermions that confines at a high scale. The hypercolor global symmetry is weakly gauged by the Standard Model electroweak gauge group and an enlarged color group, SU(N + 3) × SU(N)'. When hyperfermion condensates form, they not only lead to an SU(5)/SO(5) composite Higgs model but also spontaneously break the enlarged color group to SU(3) c × SU(N) D . At lower energies, the SU(N) D group confines, producing two dynamical axions that eliminates all CP violation. Furthermore, small instantons from the SU(N)' group can enhance the axion mass, giving rise to TeV scale axion masses that can be detected at collider experiments. Our model provides a way to unify the composite Higgs with dynamical axions, without introducing new elementary scalar fields, while also extending the range of axion masses that addresses the strong CP problem.
We show that both the baryon asymmetry of the Universe and the dark matter abundance can be explained within a single framework that makes use of maximally helical hypermagnetic fields produced during pseudoscalar inflation and the chiral anomaly in the Standard Model. We consider a minimal asymmetric dark matter model free from anomalies and constraints. We find that the observed baryon and the dark matter abundances are achieved for a wide range of inflationary parameters, and the dark matter mass ranges between 7–15 GeV . The novelty of our mechanism stems from the fact that the same source of CP violation occurring during inflation explains both baryonic and dark matter in the Universe with two inflationary parameters, hence addressing all the initial condition problems in an economical way.