arXiv subjects

A. Pilaftsis

Publications and source records attributed to A. Pilaftsis.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Tri-Resonant Leptogenesis

We present a class of leptogenesis models where the light neutrinos acquire their observed mass through a symmetry-motivated construction. We consider an extension of the Standard Model, which includes three singlet neutrinos which have mass splittings comparable to their decay widths. We show that this tri-resonant structure leads to an appreciable increase in the observed CP asymmetry over that found previously in typical bi-resonant models. To analyse such tri-resonant scenarios, we solve a set of coupled Boltzmann equations, crucially preserving the variations in the relativistic degrees of freedom. We highlight the fact that small variations at high temperatures can have major implications for the evolution of the baryon asymmetry when the singlet neutrino mass scale is below $100$ GeV. We then illustrate how this variation can significantly affect the ability to find successful leptogenesis at these low masses. Finally, the parameter space for viable leptogenesis is delineated, and comparisons are made with current and future experiments.

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arXiv2022

Tri-Resonant Leptogenesis in a Seesaw Extension of the Standard Model

We study a class of leptogenesis models where the light neutrinos acquire their observed small masses by a symmetry-motivated construction. This class of models may naturally include three nearly degenerate heavy Majorana neutrinos that can strongly mix with one another and have mass differences comparable to their decay widths. We find that such a tri-resonant heavy neutrino system can lead to leptonic CP asymmetries which are further enhanced than those obtained in the usual bi-resonant approximation. Moreover, we solve the Boltzmann equations by paying special attention to the temperature dependence of the relativistic degrees of freedom of the plasma. The latter results in significant corrections to the evolution equations for the heavy neutrinos and the lepton asymmetry that have been previously ignored in the literature. We show the importance of these corrections to accurately describe the dynamical evolution of the baryon-to-photon ratio $η_B$ for heavy neutrino masses at and below $100$ GeV, and demonstrate that successful leptogenesis at lower masses can be significantly affected by the variation of the relativistic dofs. The parameter space for the leptogenesis model is discussed, and it could be probed in future experimental facilities searching for charged lepton flavour violation and heavy neutrinos in future $Z$-boson factories.

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arXiv2017

A White Paper on keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter

We present a comprehensive review of keV-scale sterile neutrino Dark Matter, collecting views and insights from all disciplines involved - cosmology, astrophysics, nuclear, and particle physics - in each case viewed from both theoretical and experimental/observational perspectives. After reviewing the role of active neutrinos in particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, we focus on sterile neutrinos in the context of the Dark Matter puzzle. Here, we first review the physics motivation for sterile neutrino Dark Matter, based on challenges and tensions in purely cold Dark Matter scenarios. We then round out the discussion by critically summarizing all known constraints on sterile neutrino Dark Matter arising from astrophysical observations, laboratory experiments, and theoretical considerations. In this context, we provide a balanced discourse on the possibly positive signal from X-ray observations. Another focus of the paper concerns the construction of particle physics models, aiming to explain how sterile neutrinos of keV-scale masses could arise in concrete settings beyond the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. The paper ends with an extensive review of current and future astrophysical and laboratory searches, highlighting new ideas and their experimental challenges, as well as future perspectives for the discovery of sterile neutrinos.

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arXiv2016

CP Violation in Heavy MSSM Higgs Scenarios

We introduce and explore new heavy Higgs scenarios in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with explicit CP violation, which have important phenomenological implications that may be testable at the LHC. For soft supersymmetry-breaking scales M_S above a few TeV and a charged Higgs boson mass M_H+ above a few hundred GeV, new physics effects including those from explicit CP violation decouple from the light Higgs boson sector. However, such effects can significantly alter the phenomenology of the heavy Higgs bosons while still being consistent with constraints from low-energy observables, for instance electric dipole moments. To consider scenarios with a charged Higgs boson much heavier than the Standard Model (SM) particles but much lighter than the supersymmetric particles, we revisit previous calculations of the MSSM Higgs sector. We compute the Higgs boson masses in the presence of CP violating phases, implementing improved matching and renormalization group (RG) effects, as well as two-loop RG effects from the effective two-Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM) scale M_H+ to the scale M_S. We illustrate the possibility of non-decoupling CP-violating effects in the heavy Higgs sector using new benchmark scenarios named CPX4LHC.

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arXiv2013

CPsuperH2.3: an Updated Tool for Phenomenology in the MSSM with Explicit CP Violation

We describe the Fortran code CPsuperH2.3, which incorporates the following updates compared with its predecessor CPsuperH2.0. It implements improved calculations of the Higgs-boson masses and mixing including stau contributions and finite threshold effects on the tau-lepton Yukawa coupling. It incorporates the LEP limits on the processes e^+ e^- to H_i Z, H_i H_j and the CMS limits on H_i to tau^+ tau^- obtained from 4.6/fb of data at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. It also includes the decay mode H_i to Z gamma and the Schiff-moment contributions to the electric dipole moments of Mercury and Radium225, with several calculational options for the case of Mercury. These additions make CPsuperH2.3 a suitable tool for analyzing possible CP-violating effects in the MSSM in the era of the LHC and a new generation of EDM experiments

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arXiv2011

Handbook of LHC Higgs Cross Sections: 1. Inclusive Observables

This Report summarizes the results of the first 10 months' activities of the LHC Higgs Cross Sections Working Group. The main goal of the working group was to present the status-of-art on Higgs Physics at the LHC integrating all new results that have appeared in the last few years. The Report is more than a mere collection of the proceedings of the general meetings. The subgroups have been working in different directions. An attempt has been made to present the first Report from these subgroups in a complete and homogeneous form. The subgroups' contributions correspondingly comprise the main parts of the Report. A significant amount of work has been performed in providing higher-order corrections to the Higgs-boson cross sections and pinning down the theoretical uncertainty of the Standard Model predictions. This Report comprises explicit numerical results on total cross sections, leaving the issues of event selection cuts and differential distributions to future publications. The subjects for further study are identified.

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arXiv2010

The Hunt for New Physics at the Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider presents an unprecedented opportunity to probe the realm of new physics in the TeV region and shed light on some of the core unresolved issues of particle physics. These include the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking, the origin of mass, the possible constituent of cold dark matter, new sources of CP violation needed to explain the baryon excess in the universe, the possible existence of extra gauge groups and extra matter, and importantly the path Nature chooses to resolve the hierarchy problem - is it supersymmetry or extra dimensions. Many models of new physics beyond the standard model contain a hidden sector which can be probed at the LHC. Additionally, the LHC will be a top factory and accurate measurements of the properties of the top and its rare decays will provide a window to new physics. Further, the LHC could shed light on the origin of neutralino masses if the new physics associated with their generation lies in the TeV region. Finally, the LHC is also a laboratory to test the hypothesis of TeV scale strings and D-brane models. An overview of these possibilities is presented in the spirit that it will serve as a companion to the Technical Design Reports (TDRs) by the particle detector groups ATLAS and CMS to facilitate the test of the new theoretical ideas at the LHC. Which of these ideas stands the test of the LHC data will govern the course of particle physics in the subsequent decades.

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arXiv2010

Strangephilic Higgs Bosons in the MSSM

We suggest a new CPX-derived scenario for the search of strangephilic MSSM Higgs bosons at the Tevatron and the LHC, in which all neutral and charged Higgs bosons decay predominantly into pairs of strange quarks and into a strange and a charm quark, respectively. The proposed scenario is realized within a particular region of the MSSM parameter space and requires large values of tan(beta), where threshold radiative corrections are significant to render the effective strange-quark Yukawa coupling dominant. Experimental searches for neutral Higgs bosons based on the identification of b-quark jets or tau leptons may miss a strangephilic Higgs boson and its existence could be inferred indirectly by searching for hadronically decaying charged Higgs bosons. Potential strategies and experimental challenges to search for strangephilic Higgs bosons at the Tevatron and the LHC are discussed.

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arXiv2008

CPsuperH2.0: an Improved Computational Tool for Higgs Phenomenology in the MSSM with Explicit CP Violation

We describe the Fortran code CPsuperH2.}, which contains several improvements and extensions of its predecessor CPsuperH. It implements improved calculations of the Higgs-boson pole masses, notably a full treatment of the 4 times 4 neutral Higgs propagator matrix including the Goldstone boson and a more complete treatment of threshold effects in self-energies and Yukawa couplings, improved treatments of two-body Higgs decays, some important three-body decays, and two-loop Higgs-mediated contributions to electric dipole moments. CPsuperH2.0 also implements an integrated treatment of several B-meson observables, including the branching ratios of B_s to mu^+ mu^-, B_d to tau^+ tau^-, B_u to tau nu, B to X_s gamma and the latter's CP-violating asymmetry A_CP, and the supersymmetric contributions to the B^0_{s,d} - \bar B^0_{s,d} mass differences. These additions make CPsuperH2.0 an attractive integrated tool for analyzing supersymmetric CP and flavour physics as well as searches for new physics at high-energy colliders such as the Tevatron, LHC and linear colliders. The program may be obtained from http://www.hep.man.ac.uk/u/jslee/CPsuperH.html

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arXiv2006

Les Houches "Physics at TeV Colliders 2005'' Beyond the Standard Model working group: summary report

The work contained herein constitutes a report of the "Beyond the Standard Model'' working group for the Workshop "Physics at TeV Colliders", Les Houches, France, 2-20 May, 2005. We present reviews of current topics as well as original research carried out for the workshop. Supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric models are studied, as well as computational tools designed in order to facilitate their phenomenology.

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arXiv2005

Theory of Neutrinos: A White Paper

During 2004, four divisions of the American Physical Society commissioned a study of neutrino physics to take stock of where the field is at the moment and where it is going in the near and far future. Several working groups looked at various aspects of this vast field. The summary was published as a main report entitled ``The Neutrino Matrix'' accompanied by short 50 page versions of the report of each working group. Theoretical research in this field has been quite extensive and touches many areas and the short 50 page report provided only a brief summary and overview of few of the important points. The theory discussion group felt that it may be of value to the community to publish the entire study as a white paper and the result is the current article. After a brief overview of the present knowledge of neutrino masses and mixing and some popular ways to probe the new physics implied by recent data, the white paper summarizes what can be learned about physics beyond the Standard Model from the various proposed neutrino experiments. It also comments on the impact of the experiments on our understanding of the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe and the basic nature of neutrino interactions as well as the existence of possible additional neutrinos. Extensive references to original literature are provided.

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arXiv2004

Theory of Neutrinos

After a brief overview of the present knowledge of neutrino masses and mixing, we summarize what can be learned about physics beyond the standard model from the various proposed neutrino experiments. We also comment on the impact of the experiments on our understanding of the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe as well as what can be learned from some experiments outside the domain of neutrinos.

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arXiv2004

Double beta decay and the extra-dimensional seesaw mechanism

We study the model-building conditions under which an observable 0vBB decay signal is predicted due to Kaluza-Klein singlet neutrinos in theories with large extra dimensions. Our analysis is based on 5-dimensional singlet-neutrino models compactified on an S^1/Z_2 orbifold, where the Standard-Model fields are localized on a 3-brane. We show that sizeable 0vBB rates within the above minimal 5-dimensional framework would require a non-vanishing shift of the 3-brane from the orbifold fixed points by an amount smaller than the typical scale 100 inverse MeV characterizing the Fermi nuclear momentum. The resulting 5-dimensional models predict a sizeable effective Majorana-neutrino mass that could be several orders of magnitude larger than the light neutrino masses.

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arXiv2003

CPsuperH: a Computational Tool for Higgs Phenomenology in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with Explicit CP Violation

We provide a detailed description of the Fortran code CPsuperH, a newly--developed computational package that calculates the mass spectrum and decay widths of the neutral and charged Higgs bosons in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with explicit CP violation. The program is based on recent renormalization-group-improved diagrammatic calculations that include dominant higher--order logarithmic and threshold corrections, b-quark Yukawa-coupling resummation effects and Higgs-boson pole-mass shifts. The code CPsuperH is self--contained (with all subroutines included), is easy and fast to run, and is organized to allow further theoretical developments to be easily implemented. The fact that the masses and couplings of the charged and neutral Higgs bosons are computed at a similar high-precision level makes it an attractive tool for Tevatron, LHC and LC studies, also in the CP-conserving case.

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arXiv2003

Observing a Light CP-Violating Higgs Boson in Diffraction

Light CP-violating Higgs bosons with mass lower than 70 GeV might have escaped detection in direct searches at the LEP collider. They may remain undetected in conventional search channels at the Tevatron and LHC. In this Letter we show that exclusive diffractive reactions may be able to probe for the existence of these otherwise elusive Higgs particles. As a prototype example, we calculate diffractive production cross-sections of the lightest Higgs boson within the framework of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with explicit CP violation. Our analysis shows that the challenging regions of parameter space corresponding to a light CP-violating Higgs boson might be accessible at the LHC provided suitable proton tagging detectors are installed.

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arXiv2003

Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay from Singlet Neutrinos in Extra Dimensions

We study the model-building conditions under which a sizeable $0νββ$-decay signal to the recently reported level of~0.4 eV is due to Kaluza--Klein singlet neutrinos in theories with large extra dimensions. Our analysis is based on 5-dimensional singlet-neutrino models compactified on an $S^1/Z_2$ orbifold, where the Standard--Model fields are localized on a 3-brane. We show that a successful interpretation of a positive signal within the above minimal 5-dimensional framework would require a non-vanishing shift of the 3-brane from the orbifold fixed points by an amount smaller than the typical scale (100 MeV)$^{-1}$ characterizing the Fermi nuclear momentum. The resulting 5-dimensional models predict a sizeable effective Majorana-neutrino mass that could be several orders of magnitude larger than the light neutrino masses. Most interestingly, the brane-shifted models with only one bulk sterile neutrino also predict novel trigonometric textures leading to mass scenarios with hierarchical active neutrinos and large $ν_μ$-$ν_τ$ and $ν_e$-$ν_μ$ mixings that can fully explain the current atmospheric and solar neutrino data.

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arXiv2002

Collider Probes of the MSSM Higgs Sector with Explicit CP Violation

We investigate the hadron collider phenomenology of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with explicit CP violation for Higgs bosons that can be observed in Standard Model search channels: W/ZH(->b-bbar) at the Tevatron, and gg->H(->gamma-gamma), t-tbar-H(->b-bbar) and WW->H(->tau+tau-) at the LHC. Our numerical analysis is based on a benchmark scenario proposed earlier called CPX, which has been designed to showcase the effects of CP violation in the MSSM, and on several variant benchmarks. In most of the CPX parameter space, these hadron colliders will find one of the neutral MSSM Higgs bosons. However, there are small regions of parameter space in which none of the neutral Higgs bosons can be detected in the standard channels at the Tevatron and the LHC. This occurs because the neutral Higgs boson with the largest coupling to W and Z bosons decays predominantly into either two lighter Higgs bosons or a Higgs boson and a gauge boson, whilst the lighter Higgs boson has only small couplings to the W and Z bosons and the top quark. For other choices of CP-violating parameters, all three neutral Higgs bosons can have significant couplings to W and Z bosons, producing overlapping signatures: these may or may not be distinguishable from backgrounds. The existence of these regions of parameters provides a strong motivation for a detailed experimental simulation of these channels.

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arXiv2002

Minimal Nonminimal Supersymmetric Standard Model

We review the basic field-theoretic and phenomenological features of the recently introduced Minimal Nonminimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MNSSM). The introduced model is the simplest and most economic version among the proposed nonminimal supersymmetric models, in which the so-called $μ$-problem can be successfully addressed. As opposed to the MSSM and the frequently-discussed NMSSM, the MNSSM can naturally predict the existence of a light charged Higgs boson with a mass smaller than 100 GeV. Such a possible realization of the Higgs sector can be soon be tested at the upgraded Run II phase of the Tevatron collider.

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