arXiv subjects

Ann E. Nelson

Publications and source records attributed to Ann E. Nelson.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2020

A Supersymmetric Theory of Baryogenesis and Sterile Sneutrino Dark Matter from $B$ Mesons

Low-scale baryogenesis and dark matter generation can occur via the production of neutral $B$ mesons at MeV temperatures in the early Universe, which undergo CP-violating oscillations and subsequently decay into a dark sector. In this work, we discuss the consequences of realizing this mechanism in a supersymmetric model with an unbroken $U(1)_R$ symmetry which is identified with baryon number. $B$ mesons decay into a dark sector through a baryon number conserving operator mediated by TeV scale squarks and a GeV scale Dirac bino. The dark sector particles can be identified with sterile neutrinos and their superpartners in a type-I seesaw framework for neutrino masses. The sterile sneutrinos are sufficiently long lived and constitute the dark matter. The produced matter-antimatter asymmetry is directly related to observables measurable at $B$ factories and hadron colliders, the most relevant of which are the semileptonic-leptonic asymmetries in neutral $B$ meson systems and the inclusive branching fraction of $B$ mesons into hadrons and missing energy. We discuss model independent constraints on these experimental observables before quoting predictions made in the supersymmetric context. Constraints from astrophysics, neutrino physics and flavor observables are studied, as are potential LHC signals with a focus on novel long lived particle searches which are directly linked to properties of the dark sector.

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arXiv2019

Baryogenesis from B Meson Oscillations

We show how CP violating B meson oscillations in conjunction with baryon number violating decays can generate the cosmological asymmetry between matter and anti-matter, and explore the parameter space of a simple, self-contained model, which can be tested via exotic B meson decays, and via the charge asymmetry in semi-leptonic decays of neutral B mesons.

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arXiv2019

Baryogenesis and Dark Matter from $B$ Mesons

We present a new mechanism of Baryogenesis and dark matter production in which both the dark matter relic abundance and the baryon asymmetry arise from neutral $B$ meson oscillations and subsequent decays. This set-up is testable at hadron colliders and $B$-factories. In the early Universe, decays of a long lived particle produce $B$ mesons and anti-mesons out of thermal equilibrium. These mesons/anti-mesons then undergo CP violating oscillations before quickly decaying into visible and dark sector particles. Dark matter will be charged under Baryon number so that the visible sector baryon asymmetry is produced without violating the total baryon number of the Universe. The produced baryon asymmetry will be directly related to the leptonic charge asymmetry in neutral $B$ decays; an experimental observable. Dark matter is stabilized by an unbroken discrete symmetry, and proton decay is simply evaded by kinematics. We will illustrate this mechanism with a model that is unconstrained by di-nucleon decay, does not require a high reheat temperature, and would have unique experimental signals -- a positive leptonic asymmetry in $B$ meson decays, a new decay of $B$ mesons into a baryon and missing energy, and a new decay of $b$-flavored baryons into mesons and missing energy. These three observables are testable at current and upcoming collider experiments, allowing for a distinct probe of this mechanism.

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arXiv2019

Lattice-Friendly Gauge Completion of a Composite Higgs with Top Partners

We give an explicit example of a composite Higgs model with a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone Higgs in which the top Yukawa coupling is generated via the partial compositeness mechanism. This mechanism requires composite top partners which are relatively light compared to the typical mass scale of the strongly coupled theory. While most studies of the phenomenology of such models have focused on a bottom-up approach with a minimal effective theory, a top-down approach suggests that that the theory should contain a limit in which an unbroken global chiral symmetry protects the mass of the top partners, and the spectrum of the partners satisfies `t Hooft matching conditions. We therefore consider a model for the UV gauge group which could provide a solution to the matching conditions, and note that the relatively light fermions and pseudo-Goldstone bosons fall into complete multiplets of a large approximate global symmetry. This implies that the spectrum of particles lighter than a few TeV is non-minimal. Our example illustrates likely features of a composite Higgs theory, and also serves as an example of a non-chiral theory with no sign problem and a possible solution to `t Hooft matching conditions. It would therefore be very interesting for a lattice exploration. We find in this example that for some low-energy parameters in the effective theory the top partners can decay into high multiplicity final states, which could be difficult for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to constrain. This may potentially allow for the top partners to be lighter than those in more minimal models.

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arXiv2018

Axion Cosmology with Early Matter Domination

The default assumption of early universe cosmology is that the postinflationary universe was radiation dominated until it was about 47000 years old. Direct evidence for the radiation dominated epoch extends back until nucleosynthesis, which began during the first second. However there are theoretical reasons to prefer a period of earlier matter domination, prior to nucleosynthesis, e.g. due to late decaying massive particles needed to explain baryogenesis. Axion cosmology is quantitatively affected by an early period of matter domination, with a different axion mass range preferred and greater inhomogeneity produced on small scales. In this work we show that such increased inhomogeneity can lead to the formation of axion miniclusters in axion parameter ranges that are different from those usually assumed. If the reheating temperature is below $58$ MeV, axion miniclusters can form even if the axion field is present during inflation and has been previously homogenized. The upper bound on the typical initial axion minicluster mass is raised from $10^{-10} M_{\odot}$ to $10^{-7} M_{\odot}$, where $M_{\odot}$ is a solar mass. These results may have consequences for indirect detection of axion miniclusters, and could conceivably probe the thermal history of the universe before nucleosynthesis.

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arXiv2018

Reducing the Quadratic Divergence in the Higgs Mass Squared Without Top Partners

We examine a model with multiple scalar fields to see whether it is possible to reduce the fine- tuning of the SM Higgs mass without introducing low scale top partners. Our approach may be regarded as a generalization of the condition proposed by Veltman, who attempted to predict the Higgs mass using the criterion that the various low energy contributions to the quadratic divergence of the Higgs mass cancel. Although the Veltman condition predicts the wrong Higgs mass in the Standard Model, it can still be adapted to extended Higgs sectors. Furthermore, theories with additional Higgs bosons can lead to suppressed Yukawa couplings of the top quark to the 125 GeV Higgs, making the associated one-loop divergence smaller. Here, we review possible extensions of the Standard Model where the Veltman condition could be realized, and study in detail one minimal model with two extra scalar fields. For this model and for a cutoff of 5 TeV, we show that the overall fine-tuning can be considerably lowered without introducing low-scale Landau poles, albeit the Higgs sector will be strongly coupled at the cutoff. Models where the top Yukawa coupling is reduced, in particular, will be within the reach of the upcoming LHC searches.

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arXiv2018

Hidden-Sector Spectroscopy with Gravitational Waves from Binary Neutron Stars

We show that neutron star binaries can be ideal laboratories to probe hidden sectors with a long range force. In particular, it is possible for gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO and Virgo to resolve the correction of waveforms from ultralight dark gauge bosons coupled to neutron stars. We observe that the interaction of the hidden sector affects both the gravitational wave frequency and amplitude in a way that cannot be fitted by pure gravity.

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arXiv2018

Neutron stars exclude light dark baryons

Exotic new particles carrying baryon number and with mass of order the nucleon mass have been proposed for various reasons including baryogenesis, dark matter, mirror worlds, and the neutron lifetime puzzle. We show that the existence of neutron stars with mass greater than 0.7 $M_\odot$ places severe constraints on such particles, requiring them to be heavier than 1.2 GeV or to have strongly repulsive self-interactions.

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arXiv2017

Baryogenesis from Oscillations of Charmed or Beautiful Baryons

We propose a model for CP violating oscillations of neutral, heavy-flavored baryons into antibaryons at rates which are within a few orders of magnitude of their lifetimes. The flavor structure of the baryon violation suppresses neutron oscillations and baryon number violating nuclear decays to experimentally allowed rates. We also propose a scenario for producing such baryons in the early Universe via the out-of-equilibrium decays of a neutral particle, after hadronization but before nucleosynthesis. We find parameters where CP violating baryon oscillations at a temperature of a few MeV could result in the observed asymmetry between baryons and antibaryons. Furthermore, part of the relevant parameter space for baryogenesis is potentially testable at Belle II via decays of heavy flavor baryons into an exotic neutral fermion. The model introduces four new particles: three light Majorana fermions and a colored scalar. The lightest of these fermions is typically long lived on collider timescales and may be produced in decays of bottom and possibly charmed hadrons.

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arXiv2016

Probing nonstandard neutrino cosmology with terrestrial neutrino experiments

Neutrino masses and the number of light neutrino species can be tested in a variety of laboratory experiments and also can be constrained by particle astrophysics and precision cosmology. A conflict between these various results could be an indication of new physics in the neutrino sector. In this paper we explore the possibility for reconciliation of otherwise discrepant results in a simple model containing a light scalar field which produces Mass Varying Neutrinos (MaVaNs). We extend previous work on MaVaNs to consider issues of neutrino clumping, the effects of additional contributions to neutrino mass, and reconciliation of eV mass sterile neutrinos with cosmology.

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arXiv2016

CP Violating Baryon Oscillations

We enumerate the conditions necessary for $CP$ violation to be manifest in $n$-$\bar n$ oscillations, and build a simple model that can give rise to such effects. We discuss a possible connection between neutron oscillations and dark matter, provided the mass of the latter lies between $m_p-m_e$ and $m_p+m_e$. We apply our results to a possible baryogenesis scenario involving $CP$ violation in the oscillations of the $Ξ^0$.

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arXiv2016

750 GeV Diphotons from Supersymmetry with Dirac Gauginos

Motivated by the recent excess in the diphoton invariant mass near 750 GeV, we explore a supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model that includes the minimal set of superpartners as well as additional Dirac partner chiral superfields in the adjoint representation for each gauge group. The bino partner pseudoscalar is identified as the 750 GeV resonance, while superpotential interactions between it and the gluino (wino) partners yield production via gluon fusion (decay to photon pairs) at one-loop. The gauginos and these additional adjoint superpartners are married by a Dirac mass and must also have Majorana masses. While a large wino partner Majorana mass is necessary to explain the excess, the gluino can be approximately Dirac-like, providing benefits consistent with being both "supersoft" (loop corrections to the scalar masses from Dirac gauginos are free of logarithmic enhancements) and "supersafe" (the experimental limits on the squark/gluino masses can be relaxed due to the reduced production rate). Consistency with the measured Standard Model-like Higgs boson mass is imposed, and a numerical exploration of the parameter space is provided. Models that can account for the diphoton excess are additionally characterized by having couplings that can remain perturbative up to very high scales, while remaining consistent with experimental constraints, the Higgs boson mass, and an electroweak scale which is not excessively fine tuned.

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arXiv2015

Baryogenesis via Mesino Oscillations

We propose a new mechanism for baryogenesis at the 1-200 MeV scale. Enhancement of CP violation takes place via interference between oscillations and decays of mesinos--bound states of a scalar quark and antiquark and their CP conjugates. We present the mechanism in a simplified model with four new fundamental particles, with masses between 300 GeV and 10 TeV, and show that some of the experimentally allowed parameter space can give the observed baryon-to-entropy ratio.

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arXiv2015

New Supersoft Supersymmetry Breaking Operators and a Solution to the $μ$ Problem

We propose the framework, "generalized supersoft supersymmetry breaking". "Supersoft" models, with $D$-type supersymmetry breaking and heavy Dirac gauginos, are considerably less constrained by the LHC searches than the well studied MSSM. These models also ameliorate the supersymmetric flavor and $CP$ problems. However, previously considered mechanisms for obtaining a natural size Higgsino mass parameter (namely, $μ$) in supersoft models have been relatively complicated and contrived. Obtaining a $125\gev$ for the mass of the lightest Higgs boson has also been difficult. Additional issues with the supersoft scenario arise from the fact that these models contain new scalars in the adjoint representation of the standard model, which may obtain negative squared-masses, breaking color and generating too large a $T$-parameter. In this work we introduce new operators into supersoft models which can potentially solve all these issues. A novel feature of this framework is that the new $μ$-term can give unequal masses to the up and down type Higgs fields, and the Higgsinos can be much heavier than the Higgs boson without fine-tuning. However, unequal Higgs and Higgsino masses also remove some attractive features of supersoft susy.

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arXiv2014

Reducing cosmological small scale structure via a large dark matter-neutrino interaction: constraints and consequences

Cold dark matter explains a wide range of data on cosmological scales. However, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence for discrepancies between simulations and observations at scales smaller than galaxy clusters. Solutions to these small scale structure problems may indicate that simulations need to improve how they include feedback from baryonic matter, or may imply that dark matter properties differ from the standard cold, noninteracting scenario. One promising way to affect structure formation on small scales is a relatively strong coupling of dark matter to neutrinos. We construct an experimentally viable, simple, renormalizable, model with new interactions between neutrinos and dark matter. We show that addressing the small scale structure problems requires dark matter with a mass that is tens of MeV, and a present-day density determined by an initial particle-antiparticle asymmetry in the dark sector. Generating a sufficiently large dark matter-neutrino coupling requires a new heavy neutrino with a mass around 100 MeV. The heavy neutrino is mostly sterile but has a substantial $τ$ neutrino component, while the three nearly massless neutrinos are partly sterile. We provide the first discussion of how such dark matter-neutrino interactions affect neutrino (especially $τ$ neutrino) phenomenology. This model can be tested by future astrophysical, particle physics, and neutrino oscillation data. A feature in the neutrino energy spectrum and flavor content from a future nearby supernova would provide strong evidence of neutrino-dark matter interactions. Promising signatures include anomalous matter effects in neutrino oscillations due to nonstandard interactions and a component of the $τ$ neutrino with mass around 100 MeV.

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arXiv2014

A Renormalizable Model for the Galactic Center Gamma Ray Excess from Dark Matter Annihilation

Evidence for an excess of gamma rays with O(GeV) energy coming from the center of our galaxy has been steadily accumulating over the past several years. Recent studies of the excess in data from the Fermi telescope have cast doubt on an explanation for the excess arising from unknown astrophysical sources. A potential source of the excess is the annihilation of dark matter into standard model final states, giving rise to gamma ray production. The spectrum of the excess is well fit by 30 GeV dark matter annihilating into a pair of b quarks with a cross section of the same order of magnitude as expected for a thermal relic. Simple models that can lead to this annihilation channel for dark matter are in strong tension with null results from direct detection experiments. We construct a renormalizable model where dark matter-standard model interactions are mediated by a pseudoscalar that mixes with the CP-odd component of a pair of Higgs doublets, allowing for the gamma ray excess to be explained while suppressing the direct detection signal. We consider implications for this scenario from Higgs decays, rare B meson decays and monojet searches and also comment on some difficulties that any dark matter model explaining the gamma ray excess via direct annihilation into quarks will encounter.

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arXiv2014

CP Violation in Pseudo-Dirac Fermion Oscillations

Supersymmetric theories with a $U(1)_R$ symmetry have Dirac gauginos, solve the supersymmetric flavor and CP problems, and have distinctive collider signatures. However when supergravity is included, the $U(1)_R$ must be broken, adding small Majorana mass terms which split the mass of the two components of the Dirac gaugino and lead to oscillations between $U(1)_R$ charge eigenstates. We present a general study of fermion-antifermion oscillations in this system, including the effects of decays and CP violation. We consider the effects of such oscillations in the case where the two $U(1)_R$ charge eigenstates can decay into the same final state, and show that $O(1)$ CP violation is allowed. In the case of decays into final states containing leptons such CP violation can be observed as a same sign dilepton asymmetry.

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arXiv2014

Effects of Mass Varying Neutrinos on Cosmological Parameters as determined from the Cosmic Microwave Background

In models with a light scalar field (the `acceleron') coupled to neutrinos, neutrino masses depend on neutrino density. The resulting coupled system of mass varying neutrinos (MaVaNs) and the acceleron can act as a negative pressure fluid and is a candidate for dark energy \cite{Fardon:2003eh} . MaVaNs also allow for higher $Σ$m$_ν$ than terrestrial bounds, giving late forming warm dark matter. In this paper we study the effect of increasing neutrino mass on the CMB spectrum, implementing MaVaNs cosmology using CMBEASY. We find that the CMB spectrum is only affected at very low multipoles. Cosmic variance allows for significant warm dark matter at late times. This implies that in MaVaNs cosmology $σ_8$ as determined by the CMB may not be a good determinant of structure evolution at late times, potentially reducing the tension between $σ$$_{8}$ as reported by Planck Collaboration \cite{PlanckSZ:2013} without increasing the tension in the Planck determined value of Hubble's constant. In addition, in MaVaNs theories, CMB data do not necessarily constrain possible neutrino mass results in terrestrial experiments.

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