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Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday

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A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Black Holes".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2024) | Viewed by 9739

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Prof. Dr. Thomas W. Kephart

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Guest Editor

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
Interests: theoretical elementary particle physics; field theory; cosmology

Prof. Dr. Paul Howard Frampton

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Guest Editor

Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica “Ennio De Giorgi”, Università del Salento and INFN-Lecce, Via Arnesano, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Interests: particle theory; theoretical cosmology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This volume is dedicated to Paul Frampton's 80th birthday and his long, productive career in theoretical physics. His Oxford DPhil thesis in 1968 focused on current algebra and superconvergence sum rules, while other early work concerned the dual resonance model. He held postdoc positions at the University of Chicago, CERN, Syracuse, UCLA, and Harvard before settling at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980. Paul has made many contributions to a wide range of research areas, including particle theory, quantum field theory, string theory and cosmology. These include the chiral color model, the 331 model, models of family and flavor symmetry, anomalies in higher dimensions, the black hole entropy, the cyclic cosmology model, and primordial black hole dark matter theory. He has published over 500 papers, collaborated with 166 co-authors, including 3 Nobel winners, giving innumerable conference talks, colloquia and seminars. Paul is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. In 1987, he was the project director for the Superconducting Supercollider in North Carolina. From 1996, until his retirement, he was the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently affiliated with the Department of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Salento, in Italy. Consequently, topics covered in this volume range widely, covering theoretical physics and including particle theory, particle phenomenology, BSM models, astro-particle physics, dark matter, dark energy, black hole entropy, early-universe thermodynamics, and cosmology. Submissions should also fall within the scope of the journal, i.e., that manuscripts contain entropy/thermodynamic-related content.

Prof. Dr. Thomas W. Kephart
Prof. Dr. Paul Howard Frampton
Guest Editors

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Keywords

particle theory
gauge anomalies
particle phenomenology
BSM models
331 model
string phenomenology
astro-particle physics
dark matter
dark energy
black hole entropy
early universe thermodynamics and cosmology

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Published Papers (12 papers)

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Research

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20 pages, 408 KiB

Open AccessArticle

String Invention, Viable 3-3-1 Model, Dark Matter Black Holes

by Holger B. Nielsen

Entropy 2024, 26(10), 830; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26100830 - 30 Sep 2024

Abstract

With our very limited memories, we provide a brief review of Paul Frampton’s memories of the discovery of the Veneziano model, with this indeed being string theory, with Y. Nambu, and, secondly, his 3-3-1 theory. The latter is, indeed, a non-excluded replacement for the Standard Model with triangle anomalies being cancelled, as they must in a truly viable theory. It even needs (essentially) three as the family number! Moreover, primordial black holes as dark matter is mentioned. We end with a review of my own very speculative, utterly recent idea that for the purpose of the classical approximation, we could, using the functional integral as our rudimentary assumption taken over from quantum mechanics, obtain the equations of motion without the, in our opinion, very mysterious imaginary unit i, which usually occurs as a factor in the exponent of the functional integrand, which is this i times the action. The functional integral without the mysterious i leads to the prediction of some of the strongest features in cosmology, and also seems to argue for as few black holes as possible and for the cosmological constant being zero. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

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11 pages, 276 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Status of Electromagnetically Accelerating Universe

by Paul H. Frampton

Entropy 2024, 26(8), 629; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26080629 - 26 Jul 2024

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 444

Abstract

To describe the dark side of the universe, we adopt a novel approach where dark energy is explained as an electrically charged majority of dark matter. Dark energy, as such, does not exist. The Friedmann equation at the present time coincides with that in a conventional approach, although the cosmological “constant” in the Electromagnetic Accelerating Universe (EAU) Model shares a time dependence with the matter component. Its equation of state is ω ≡ P/ρ ≡ −1 within observational accuracy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

9 pages, 243 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Flipped Quartification: Product Group Unification with Leptoquarks

by James B. Dent, Thomas W. Kephart, Heinrich Päs and Thomas J. Weiler

Entropy 2024, 26(7), 533; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26070533 - 21 Jun 2024

Viewed by 467

Abstract

The quartification model is an

S U {(3)}^{4}

extension with a bi-fundamental fermion sector of the well-known

S U {(3)}^{3}

bi-fundamentalfication model. An alternative “flipped” version of the quartification model is obtained by rearrangement of the particle [...] Read more.

The quartification model is an

S U {(3)}^{4}

extension with a bi-fundamental fermion sector of the well-known

S U {(3)}^{3}

bi-fundamentalfication model. An alternative “flipped” version of the quartification model is obtained by rearrangement of the particle assignments. The flipped model has two standard (bi-fundamentalfication) families and one flipped quartification family. In contrast to traditional product group unification models, flipped quartification stands out by featuring leptoquarks and thus allows for new mechanisms to explain the generation of neutrino masses and possible hints of lepton-flavor non-universality. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

15 pages, 290 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Analytic Formulae for T Violation in Neutrino Oscillations

by Osamu Yasuda

Entropy 2024, 26(6), 472; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26060472 - 29 May 2024

Viewed by 464

Abstract

Recently, a concept known as

μ

TRISTAN, which involves the acceleration of

μ^{+}

, has been proposed. This initiative has led to considerations of a new design for a neutrino factory. Additionally, leveraging the polarization of

μ^{+}

, measurements of T [...] Read more.

Recently, a concept known as

μ

TRISTAN, which involves the acceleration of

μ^{+}

, has been proposed. This initiative has led to considerations of a new design for a neutrino factory. Additionally, leveraging the polarization of

μ^{+}

, measurements of T violation in neutrino oscillations are also being explored. In this paper, we present analytical expressions for T violation in neutrino oscillations within the framework of standard three-flavor neutrino oscillations, a scenario involving nonstandard interactions, and a case of unitarity violation. We point out that examining the energy spectrum of T violation may be useful for probing new physics effects. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

9 pages, 260 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dark Matter and Mirror World

by Rabindra N. Mohapatra

Entropy 2024, 26(4), 282; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26040282 - 26 Mar 2024

Viewed by 1042

Abstract

Overwhelming astronomical evidence for dark matter and absence of any laboratory evidence for it despite many dedicated searches have fueled speculation that dark matter may reside in a parallel universe interacting with the familiar universe only via gravitational interactions as well as possibly via some ultra-weak forces. In this scenario, we postulate that the visible universe co-exists with a mirror world consisting of an identical duplicate of forces and matter of our world, obeying a mirror symmetry. This picture, motivated by particle physics considerations, not only provides a natural candidate for dark matter but also has the potential to explain the matter dark matter coincidence problem, i.e., why the dark matter content of the universe is only a few times the visible matter content. One requirement for mirror models is that the mirror world must be colder than our world to maintain the success of big bang nucleosynthesis. After a review of the basic features of the model, we present several new results: first is that the consistency between the coldness of the mirror world and the explanation of the matter dark matter coincidence implies an upper bound on the inflation reheat temperature of the universe to be around

10^{6.5}

GeV. We also argue that the coldness implies the mirror world consists mainly of mirror Helium and very little mirror hydrogen, which is the exact opposite of what we see in the visible world. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

12 pages, 794 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Weak Scale Supersymmetry Emergent from the String Landscape

by Howard Baer, Vernon Barger, Dakotah Martinez and Shadman Salam

Entropy 2024, 26(3), 275; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26030275 - 21 Mar 2024

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 939

Abstract

Superstring flux compactifications can stabilize all moduli while leading to an enormous number of vacua solutions, each leading to different

4 - d

laws of physics. While the string landscape provides at present the only plausible explanation for the size of the cosmological [...] Read more.

Superstring flux compactifications can stabilize all moduli while leading to an enormous number of vacua solutions, each leading to different

4 - d

laws of physics. While the string landscape provides at present the only plausible explanation for the size of the cosmological constant, it may also predict the form of weak scale supersymmetry which is expected to emerge. Rather general arguments suggest a power-law draw to large soft terms, but these are subject to an anthropic selection of a not-too-large value for the weak scale. The combined selection allows one to compute relative probabilities for the emergence of supersymmetric models from the landscape. Models with weak scale naturalness appear most likely to emerge since they have the largest parameter space on the landscape. For finetuned models such as high-scale SUSY or split SUSY, the required weak scale finetuning shrinks their parameter space to tiny volumes, making them much less likely to appear compared to natural models. Probability distributions for sparticle and Higgs masses from natural models show a preference for Higgs mass

m_{h} \sim 125

GeV, with sparticles typically beyond the present LHC limits, in accord with data. From these considerations, we briefly describe how natural SUSY is expected to be revealed at future LHC upgrades. This article is a contribution to the Special Edition of the journal Entropy, honoring Paul Frampton on his 80th birthday. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

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22 pages, 347 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Bilocal Field Theory for Composite Scalar Bosons

by Christopher T. Hill

Entropy 2024, 26(2), 146; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26020146 - 8 Feb 2024

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 934

Abstract

We give a bilocal field theory description of a composite scalar with an extended binding potential that reduces to the Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model in the pointlike limit. This provides a description of the internal dynamics of the bound state and features a static [...] Read more.

ϕ (\vec{r})

, in the center-of-mass frame that satisfies a Schrödinger–Klein–Gordon equation with eigenvalues

m^{2}

. We analyze the “coloron” model (single perturbative massive gluon exchange) which yields a UV completion of the NJL model. This has a BCS-like enhancement of its interaction,

\propto N_{c}

the number of colors, and is classically critical with

g_{c r i t i c a l}

remarkably close to the NJL quantum critical coupling. Negative eigenvalues for

m^{2}

lead to spontaneous symmetry breaking, and the Yukawa coupling of the bound state to constituent fermions is emergent. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

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10 pages, 333 KiB

Open AccessReview

Hunting for Bileptons at Hadron Colliders

by Gennaro Corcella

Entropy 2024, 26(10), 850; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26100850 - 8 Oct 2024

Abstract

I review possible signals at hadron colliders of bileptons, namely doubly charged vectors or scalars with lepton number

L = \pm 2

, as predicted by a 331 model, based on a [...] Read more.

I review possible signals at hadron colliders of bileptons, namely doubly charged vectors or scalars with lepton number

L = \pm 2

, as predicted by a 331 model, based on a

S U {(3)}_{c} \times S U {(3)}_{L} \times U {(1)}_{X}

symmetry. In particular, I account for a version of the 331 model wherein the embedding of the hypercharge is obtained with the addition of three exotic quarks and vector bileptons. Furthermore, a sextet of

S U {(3)}_{L}

, necessary to provide masses to leptons, yields an extra scalar sector, including a doubly charged Higgs, i.e., scalar bileptons. As bileptons are mostly produced in pairs at hadron colliders, their main signal is provided by two same-sign lepton pairs at high invariant mass. Nevertheless, they can also decay according to non-leptonic modes, such as a TeV-scale heavy quark, charged 4/3 or 5/3, plus a Standard Model quark. I explore both leptonic and non-leptonic decays and the sensitivity to the processes of the present and future hadron colliders. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

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28 pages, 509 KiB

Open AccessReview

The SU(3)_C × SU(3)_L × U(1)_X (331) Model: Addressing the Fermion Families Problem within Horizontal Anomalies Cancellation

by Claudio Corianò and Dario Melle

Entropy 2024, 26(5), 420; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26050420 - 14 May 2024

Viewed by 877

Abstract

One of the most important and unanswered problems in particle physics is the origin of the three generations of quarks and leptons. The Standard Model does not provide any hint regarding its sequential charge assignments, which remain a fundamental mystery of Nature. One possible solution of the puzzle is to look for charge assignments, in a given gauge theory, that are inter-generational, by employing the cancellation of the gravitational and gauge anomalies horizontally. The 331 model, based on an

S U {(3)}_{C} \times S U {(3)}_{L} \times U {(1)}_{X}

does this in an economical way and defines a possible extension of the Standard Model, where the number of families has necessarily to be three. We review the model in Pisano, Pleitez, and Frampton’s formulation, which predicts the existence of bileptons. Another characteristics of the model is to unify the

S U {(3)}_{C} \times S U {(2)}_{L} \times U {(1)}_{X}

into the 331 symmetry at a scale that is in the TeV range. Expressions of the scalar mass eigenstates and of the renormalization group equations of the model are also presented. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

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16 pages, 1187 KiB

Open AccessReview

Flavor’s Delight

by Hans Peter Nilles and Saúl Ramos-Sánchez

Entropy 2024, 26(5), 355; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26050355 - 24 Apr 2024

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 803

Abstract

Discrete flavor symmetries provide a promising approach to understand the flavor sector of the standard model of particle physics. Top-down (TD) explanations from string theory reveal two different types of such flavor symmetries: traditional and modular flavor symmetries that combine to the eclectic flavor group. There have been many bottom-up (BU) constructions to fit experimental data within this scheme. We compare TD and BU constructions to identify the most promising groups and try to give a unified description. Although there is some progress in joining BU and TD approaches, we point out some gaps that have to be closed with future model building. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

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6 pages, 163 KiB

Open AccessPerspective

Quo Vadis Particula Physica?

by Xavier Calmet

Entropy 2024, 26(5), 366; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26050366 - 26 Apr 2024

Viewed by 801

Abstract

In this brief paper, I give a very personal account on the state of particle physics on the occasion of Paul Frampton’s 80th birthday. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

9 pages, 273 KiB

Open AccessPerspective

Particle Physics and Cosmology Intertwined

by Pran Nath

Entropy 2024, 26(2), 110; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26020110 - 25 Jan 2024

Viewed by 886

Abstract

While the standard model accurately describes data at the electroweak scale without the inclusion of gravity, beyond the standard model, physics is increasingly intertwined with gravitational phenomena and cosmology. Thus, the gravity-mediated breaking of supersymmetry in supergravity models leads to sparticle masses, which are gravitational in origin, observable at TeV scales and testable at the LHC, and supergravity also provides a candidate for dark matter, a possible framework for inflationary models and for models of dark energy. Further, extended supergravity models and string and D-brane models contain hidden sectors, some of which may be feebly coupled to the visible sector, resulting in heat exchange between the visible and hidden sectors. Because of the couplings between the sectors, both particle physics and cosmology are affected. The above implies that particle physics and cosmology are intrinsically intertwined in the resolution of essentially all of the cosmological phenomena, such as dark matter and dark energy, and in the resolution of cosmological puzzles, such as the Hubble tension and the EDGES anomaly. Here, we give a brief overview of the intertwining and its implications for the discovery of sparticles, as well as the resolution of cosmological anomalies and the identification of dark matter and dark energy as major challenges for the coming decades. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday)

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Particle Theory and Theoretical Cosmology—Dedicated to Professor Paul Howard Frampton on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday

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