Search Results (6)

This review provides a succinct overview of the basic aspects of neutrino physics. The topics covered include neutrinos in the standard model and the three-neutrino mixing scheme; the current status of neutrino oscillation measurements and what remains to be determined; the seesaw mechanisms for neutrino mass generation and the associated phenomenology, including the leptogenesis mechanism to explain the observed matter–antimatter asymmetry of the Universe; and models for the origin of the pattern of neutrino mixing and lepton masses based on discrete flavour symmetries and modular invariance. Full article

The $E_6$-inspired extension of the minimal supersymmetric (SUSY) standard model (MSSM) with an extra $U{\left(1\right)}_N$ gauge symmetry, under which right-handed neutrinos have zero charge, involves exotic matter beyond the MSSM to ensure anomaly cancellation. We consider the variant of this extension (SE${}_6$SSM) in which the cold dark matter is composed of the lightest neutral exotic fermion and gravitino. The observed baryon asymmetry can be induced in this case via the decays of the lightest right-handed neutrino/sneutrino into exotic states even for relatively low reheating temperatures $T_R\lesssim {10}^{6-7}GeV$. We argue that there are some regions of the SE${}_6$SSM parameter space, which are safe from all current constraints, and discuss the implications of this model for collider phenomenology. Full article

Symmetries in the Physical Laws of Nature lead to observable effects. Beyond the regularities and conserved magnitudes, the last few decades in particle physics have seen the identification of symmetries, and their well-defined breaking, as the guiding principle for the elementary constituents of matter and their interactions. Flavour SU(3) symmetry of hadrons led to the Quark Model and the antisymmetric requirement under exchange of identical fermions led to the colour degree of freedom. Colour became the generating charge for flavour-independent strong interactions of quarks and gluons in the exact colour SU(3) local gauge symmetry. Parity Violation in weak interactions led us to consider the chiral fields of fermions as the objects with definite transformation properties under the weak isospin SU(2) gauge group of the Unifying Electro-Weak SU(2) × U(1) symmetry, which predicted novel weak neutral current interactions. CP-Violation led to three families of quarks opening the field of Flavour Physics. Time-reversal violation has recently been observed with entangled neutral mesons, compatible with CPT-invariance. The cancellation of gauge anomalies, which would invalidate the gauge symmetry of the quantum field theory, led to Quark–Lepton Symmetry. Neutrinos were postulated in order to save the conservation laws of energy and angular momentum in nuclear beta decay. After the ups and downs of their mass, neutrino oscillations were discovered in 1998, opening a new era about their origin of mass, mixing, discrete symmetries and the possibility of global lepton-number violation through Majorana mass terms and Leptogenesis as the source of the matter–antimatter asymmetry in the universe. The experimental discovery of quarks and leptons and the mediators of their interactions, with physical observables in spectacular agreement with this Standard Theory, is the triumph of Symmetries. The gauge symmetry is exact only when the particles are massless. One needs a subtle breaking of the symmetry, providing the origin of mass without affecting the excellent description of the interactions. This is the Brout–Englert–Higgs Mechanism, which produces the Higgs Boson as a remnant, discovered at CERN in 2012. Open present problems are addressed with by searching the New Physics Beyond-the-Standard-Model. Full article

Thermal Leptogenesis and the gravitino problem are reviewed in the framework of non-standard cosmologies. We consider in particular the $f\left(\mathcal{T}\right)$ cosmology, where $\mathcal{T}$ is the torsion field. We constrain the parameters space of these cosmological models consistently with thermal Leptogenesis scenario (with degenerate mass spectrum of light neutrinos), and we show that they allow to solve the gravitino problem as well. Owing to the similar characteristics to $f\left(\mathcal{T}\right)$ cosmology, we shortly discuss also the case of the shear dominated Universe. Full article

We review scenarios of baryogenesis through leptogenesis at early epochs of the universe, in string-inspired minimal extensions of the Standard Model (SM), involving heavy right-handed Majorana neutrinos. Spontaneous violation of CPT symmetry is induced by appropriate (in general, temperature-dependent) backgrounds of the Kalb–Ramond (KR) axion field, which has its origins in the (bosonic) massless string multiplet. As interesting features of the model, we also discuss two issues associated with quantum (chiral) anomalies: (i) the non-contribution of the KR axion background to the (anomalous) chiral magnetic effect, which arises in the presence of external electromagnetic fields and non-zero chiral chemical potentials of charged fermions; and (ii) the potential role of quantum fluctuations of the KR axion on the (anomalous) radiative generation of a Majorana mass for the right-handed neutrinos themselves. Full article

We consider a renormalizable extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model endowed by an R and a gauged $B-L$ symmetry. The model incorporates chaotic inflation driven by a quartic potential, associated with the Higgs field which leads to a spontaneous breaking of U(1) ${}_{B-L}$ , and yields possibly detectable gravitational waves. We employ quadratic Kähler potential with a prominent shift-symmetric part proportional to $c_{-}$ and a tiny violation, proportional to $c_{+}$ , included in a logarithm with prefactor $-N<0$ . An explanation of the $\mu$ term of the MSSM is also provided, consistently with the low energy phenomenology, under the condition that one related parameter in the superpotential is somewhat small. Baryogenesis occurs via non-thermal leptogenesis which is realized by the inflaton’s decay to the lightest or next-to-lightest right-handed neutrino with masses lower than $1.8\times {10}^{13}$ GeV. Our scenario can be confronted with the current data on the inflationary observables, the baryon asymmetry of the universe, the gravitino limit on the reheating temperature and the data on the neutrino oscillation parameters, for 0.012 ≲ $c_{+}$ / $c_{-}$ ≲ 1/N and gravitino as light as 1 TeV. Full article