arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Chee Sheng Fong.
We summarize progress made in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology over the past decade and areas of interest for the coming decade. This Report is prepared as the TF09 "Astrophysics and Cosmology" topical group summary for the Theory Frontier as part of the Snowmass 2021 process.
We explore the neutrino sector of the minimal left-right symmetric model, with the additional charge conjugation discrete symmetry, in the tuned regime where type-I and type-II seesaw mechanisms are equally responsible for the light neutrino masses. We show that unless the charged lepton mixing matrix is the identity and the right handed neutrino mass matrix has no phases, we expect sizable lepton flavor violation and electron dipole moment in this region. We use results from recent neutrino oscillation fits, bounds on neutrinoless double beta decay, $μ\to e γ$, $μ\to 3 e$, $μ\to e$ conversion in nuclei, the muon anomalous magnetic moment, the electron electric dipole moment and cosmology to determine the viability of this region. We derive stringent limits on the heavy neutrino masses and mixing angles as well as on the vacuum expectation value $v_L$, which drives the type-II seesaw contribution, using the current data. We discuss the perspectives of probing the remaining parameter space by future experiments.
We explore the interplay between light primordial black holes (PBH) and high-scale baryogenesis, with a particular emphasis on leptogenesis. We first review a generic baryogenesis scenario where a heavy particle, $X$, with mass, $M_X$, produced solely from PBH evaporation decays to generate a baryon asymmetry. We show that the viable parameter space is bounded from above by $M_X \lesssim 10^{17}$ GeV and increases with decreasing $M_X$. We demonstrate that regions of the leptogenesis parameter space where the lightest right-handed neutrino (RHN) mass $M_{N_{1}}\gtrsim 10^{15}\,{\rm GeV}$ and neutrino mass scale $m_ν\gtrsim 0.1$ eV, excluded in standard cosmology due to $ΔL=2$ washout processes, becomes viable with the assistance of light PBHs. This scenario of PBH-assisted leptogenesis occurs because the PBHs radiate RHNs via Hawking evaporation late in the Universe's evolution when the temperature of the thermal plasma is low relative to the RHN mass. Subsequently, these RHNs can decay and produce a lepton asymmetry while the washout processes are suppressed.
In the early Universe above the weak scale, both baryon $B$ and lepton $L$ numbers are violated by nonperturabive effects in the Standard Model while $B-L$ remains conserved. Introducing new physics which violates perturbatively $L$ and/or $B$, one can generate dynamically a nonzero $B-L$ charge and hence a nonzero $B$ charge. In this work, we focus on the former scenario which is also known as leptogenesis. We show how to describe the evolutions of lepton flavor charges taking into account the complete Standard Model lepton flavor and spectator effects in a unified and lepton flavor basis-independent way. The recipe we develop can be applied to any leptogenesis model with arbitrary number of new scalars carrying nonzero hypercharges and is valid for cosmic temperature ranging from $10^{15}$ GeV down to the weak scale. We demonstrate that in order to describe the physics in a basis-independent manner and to include lepton flavor effect consistently it is necessary to describe both left-handed and right-handed lepton charges in terms of density matrices. This is a crucial point since physics should be basis independent. As examples, we apply the formalism to type-I and type-II leptogenesis models where in the latter case, a flavor-covariant formalism is indispensable.
We investigate low-scale resonant leptogenesis in an $SU(5) \times \mathcal{T}_{13}$ model where a single high energy phase in the complex Tribimaximal seesaw mixing produces the yet-to-be-observed low energy Dirac and Majorana ${CP}$ phases. A fourth right-handed neutrino, required to generate viable light neutrino masses within this scenario, also turns out to be necessary for successful resonant leptogenesis where $CP$ asymmetry is produced by the same high energy phase. We derive a lower bound on the right-handed neutrino mass spectrum in the $\mathrm{GeV}$ range, where part of the parameter space, although in tension with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis constrains, can be probed in planned high intensity experiments like DUNE. We also find the existence of a curious upper bound ($\text{TeV}$-scale) on the right-handed neutrino mass spectrum in majority of the parameter space due to significant washout of the resonant asymmetry by lighter right-handed neutrinos. While in most of the parameter space of our model classical Boltzmann equations are sufficient, when right-handed neutrino masses are below the electroweak sphalerons freeze-out temperature we resort to the more general density matrix formalism to take into account decays and oscillations of the right-handed neutrinos as well as their helicities which are relevant when they are relativistic.
In this work, we classify all the effective $U(1)$ symmetries and their associated Noether charges in the Standard Model (SM) and its minimal supersymmetric extension (MSSM) from the highest scale after inflation down to the weak scale. We then demonstrate that the discovery of the violation of baryon minus lepton number ($B-L$) which pinpoints to its violation in primordial Universe at any cosmic temperature above $30$ TeV will open up a new window of baryogenesis in these effective charges above this scale. While the fast SM baryon number violation in the early Universe could be the first piece to solve the puzzle of cosmic baryon asymmetry, $(B-L)$ violation could be the second important piece. In the background of expanding Universe, there is ample opportunity for out-of-equilibrium processes to generate an asymmetry in the numerous effective charges in the SM or the MSSM, making a baryon asymmetric Universe almost unavoidable. Finally we provide examples in the SM and the MSSM where baryogenesis can proceed through out-of-equilibrium dynamics without explicitly breaking baryon nor lepton number.
Since the gravitational interaction is universal, any particle that ever existed, if kinematically accessible, has to be produced through her. We explore the possibility that dark matter is generated purely from gravitational scatterings together with heavy Majorana right-handed neutrinos that are long-lived. Their late decay could inject significant entropy into the thermal bath, diluting both the dark matter abundance and the cosmic baryon asymmetry, thereby imposing various constraints on the reheating dynamics. Additionally to the entropy injection, long-lived right-handed neutrinos could also be responsible for generating the baryon asymmetry through leptogenesis, and hence establish some nontrivial relations between the dark matter and the right-handed properties, and the reheating dynamics
We formulate three-flavor type-I leptogenesis in the $μτ$ basis which is convenient because in the three-flavor regime, both $μ$ and $τ$ charged lepton Yukawa interactions are in thermal equilibrium and the thermal bath is symmetric under the exchange $μ\leftrightarrow τ$. We apply this formalism to models with $μτ$-reflection $\mathsf{CP}^{μτ}$ symmetry. We confirm the previous result that leptogenesis fails in the three-flavor regime with exact $\mathsf{CP}^{μτ}$ symmetry. Allowing $\mathsf{CP}^{μτ}$ symmetry to be broken to various degrees, we show that leptogenesis can be successful in the three-flavor regime only in certain tuned parameter space, which could further imply additional symmetry is at play. As a bonus, we derive analytical expressions which could be utilized whenever the branching ratios for the decays to $μ$ and $τ$ flavors are equal or approximately so.
We consider a mirror world scenario, in which light Dirac neutrinos are generated from a seesaw mechanism and leptogenesis occurs at high scale without violating lepton number. After leptogenesis, the conservation laws of the theory imply the visible baryon-minus-lepton asymmetry to be equal to the mirror baryon-minus-lepton asymmetry. We extend previous work by presenting a detailed study of this Dirac leptogenesis mechanism by constructing the full set of Boltzmann Equations for both cases of unflavored and flavored regimes. We show that $Z_2$ breaking and lepton/mirror lepton flavor effects can be exploited to enhance the final baryon-minus-lepton asymmetry in our world by several orders of magnitude.
We present a comprehensive study of the three-active plus $N$ sterile neutrino model as a framework for constraining leptonic unitarity violation induced at energy scales much lower than the electroweak scale. We formulate a perturbation theory with expansion in small unitarity violating matrix element $W$ while keeping (non-$W$ suppressed) matter effect to all orders. We show that under the same condition of sterile state masses $0.1\, \text{eV}^2 \lesssim m^2_{J} \lesssim (1-10)\, \text{GeV}^2$ as in vacuum, assuming typical accelerator based long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment, one can derive a very simple form of the oscillation probability which consists only of zeroth-order terms with the unique exception of probability leaking term $\mathcal{C}_{αβ}$ of $\mathcal{O} (W^4)$. We argue, based on our explicit computation to fourth-order in $W$, that all the other terms are negligibly small after taking into account the suppression due to the mass condition for sterile states, rendering the oscillation probability {\em sterile-sector model independent}. Then, we identify a limited energy region in which this suppression is evaded and the effects of order $W^2$ corrections may be observable. Its detection would provide another way, in addition to detecting $\mathcal{C}_{αβ}$, to distinguish between low-scale and high-scale unitarity violation. We also solve analytically the zeroth-order system in matter with uniform density to provide a basis for numerical evaluation of non-unitary neutrino evolution.
We develop an extension of the basic inverse seesaw model which addresses simultaneously two of its drawbacks, namely, the lack of explanation of the tiny Majorana mass term $μ$ for the TeV-scale singlet fermions and the difficulty in achieving successful leptogenesis. Firstly, we investigate systematically leptogenesis within the inverse (and the related linear) seesaw models and show that a successful scenario requires either small Yukawa couplings, implying loss of experimental signals, and/or quasi-degeneracy among singlets mass of different generations, suggesting extra structure must be invoked. Then we move to the analysis of our new framework, which we refer to as hybrid seesaw. This combines the TeV degrees of freedom of the inverse seesaw with those of a high-scale ($M_N\gg$ TeV) seesaw module in such a way as to retain the main features of both pictures: naturally small neutrino masses, successful leptogenesis, and accessible experimental signatures. We show how the required structure can arise from a more fundamental theory with a gauge symmetry or from warped extra dimensions/composite Higgs. We provide a detailed derivation of all the analytical formulae necessary to analyze leptogenesis in this new framework, and discuss the entire gamut of possibilities our scenario encompasses: including scenarios with singlet masses in the enlarged range $M_N \sim 10^6 - 10^{16}$ GeV. The idea of hybrid seesaw was proposed by us in arXiv:1804.06847; here, we substantially elaborate upon and extend earlier results.
Based on a previous work on scenarios where the Standard Model and dark matter particles share a common asymmetry through effective operators at early time in the Universe and later on decouple from each other (not care), in this work, we study in detail the collider phenomenology of these scenarios. In particular, we use the experimental results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to constrain the viable parameter space. Besides effective operators, we also constrain the parameter space of some representative ultraviolet complete models with experimental results from both the LHC and the Large Electron-Positron Collider. Specifically, we use measurements related to jets + missing transverse energy (MET), di-jets and photon + MET. In the case of ultraviolet models, depending on the assumptions on the couplings and masses of mediators, the derived constraints can become more or less stringent. We consider also the situation where one of the mediators has mass below 100 GeV, in this case we use the ultraviolet model to construct a new effective operator responsible for the sharing of the asymmetry and study its phenomenology.
Recent results from the Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Reionization Signature (EDGES) show an anomalous spectral feature at redshifts $z\sim 15-20$ in its 21-cm absorption signal. This deviation from cosmological predictions can be understood as a consequence of physics that either lower the hydrogen spin temperature or increases the radiation temperature through the injection of soft photons in the bath. In the latter case, standard model neutrino decays $ν_i \to ν_j\,γ$ induced by effective magnetic and electric transition moments ($μ_\text{eff}$) are precluded by the tight astrophysical constraints on $μ_\text{eff}$. We show that if mirror neutrinos are present in the bath at early times, an analogous mechanism in the mirror sector can lead to a population of mirror photons that are then "processed" into visible photons through resonant conversion, thus accounting for the EDGES signal. We point out that the mechanism can work for mirror neutrinos which are either heavier than or degenerate with the standard model (SM) neutrinos, a scenario naturally realized in mirror twin Higgs models.
Leptogenesis could have occurred at temperatures much lower than generally thought, if the cosmological history of the Universe underwent a period of accelerated expansion, as is predicted for example in a class of scalar-tensor theories of gravitation. We discuss how non-standard cosmologies can open new pathways for low scale leptogenesis. Within these scenarios, direct tests of leptogenesis could also provide information on the very early times Universe evolution, corresponding to temperatures larger than the TeV.
The appealing feature of inverse seesaw models is that the Standard Model (SM) neutrino mass emerges from the exchange of TeV scale singlets with sizable Yukawa couplings, which can be tested at colliders. However, the tiny Majorana mass splitting between TeV singlets, introduced to accommodate small neutrino masses, is left unexplained. Moreover, we argue that these models suffer from a structural limitation that prevents a successful leptogenesis if one insists on having unsuppressed Yukawa couplings and TeV scale singlets. In this work we propose a hybrid seesaw model, where we replace the mass splitting with a coupling to a high scale seesaw module including a TeV scalar. We show that this structure achieves the goal of filling both the above gaps with couplings of order unity. The necessary structure automatically arises embedding the seesaw mechanism in composite Higgs models, but may also be enforced by new gauge symmetries in a weakly-coupled theory. Our hybrid seesaw models have distinguishing features compared to the standard high scale type-I seesaw and inverse seesaw. Firstly, they have much richer phenomenology. Indeed, they generally predict new TeV scale physics (including scalars) potentially accessible at present and future colliders, whereas weakly-coupled versions may also have astrophysical and cosmological signatures due to the presence of a light Nambu-Goldstone boson coupled to neutrinos. Secondly, our scenario features an interesting interplay between high scale and TeV scale physics in leptogenesis and enlarges the range of allowed high scale singlet masses beyond the usual $\sim 10^9-10^{ 15 }$ GeV, without large hierarchies in the Yukawa couplings nor small mass splitting among the singlets.
In this work, we investigate a scenario in which heavy Majorana Right-Handed Neutrinos (RHNs) are in thermal equilibrium with a dark sector with temperature higher than the Standard Model (SM) thermal bath. Specifically, we consider the scenario in which thermal Dark Matter (DM) abundance is fixed from the freeze-out of DM annihilations into RHNs. Due to the inert nature of the RHNs, we show that it is possible for the two sectors to remain thermally decoupled by having more than two generations of the RHNs. The hotter temperature implies higher abundances of DM and RHNs with the following consequences. For leptogenesis, an enhancement in efficiency up to a factor of 51.6 can be obtained, though a resonant enhancement of CP violation is still required due to an upper mass bound of about 4 TeV for the RHNs. For the DM, an enhanced annihilation cross section up to a factor of 51.6 is required to obtain the correct DM abundance. This scenario can be probed via indirect detection of DM annihilating into RHNs, which then decay into $h\,ν$, $Z\,ν$ and $W^{\pm} \ell^{\mp}$ with an enhanced annihilation cross section above the typical thermal value.
If leptonic unitarity is violated by new physics at an energy scale much lower than the electroweak scale, which we call low-scale unitarity violation, it has different characteristic features from those expected in unitarity violation at high-energy scales. They include maintaining flavor universality and absence of zero-distance flavor transition. We present a framework for testing such unitarity violation at low energies by neutrino oscillation experiments. Starting from the unitary 3 active plus $N$ (arbitrary integer) sterile neutrino model we show that by restricting the active-sterile and sterile-sterile neutrino mass squared differences to $\gtrsim$ 0.1 eV$^2$ the oscillation probability in the $(3+N)$ model becomes insensitive to details of the sterile sector, providing a nearly model-independent framework for testing low-scale unitarity violation. Yet, the presence of the sterile sector leaves trace as a constant probability leaking term, which distinguishes low-scale unitarity violation from the high-scale one. The non-unitary mixing matrix in the active neutrino subspace is common for the both cases. We analyze how severely the unitarity violation can be constrained in $ν_{e}$-row by taking a JUNO-like setting to simulate medium baseline reactor experiments. Possible modification of the features of the $(3+N)$ model due to matter effect is discussed to first order in the matter potential.
We consider scenarios where Dark Matter (DM) particles carry baryon and/or lepton numbers, which can be defined if there exist operators connecting the dark to the visible sector. As a result, the DM fields become intimately linked to the Standard Model (SM) ones and can be maximally asymmetric just like the ordinary matter. In particular, we discuss minimal scenarios where the DM is a complex scalar or a Dirac fermion coupled to operators with nonzero baryon and/or lepton numbers, and that consist of only SM fields. We consider an initial asymmetry stored in either the SM or the DM sector; the main role of these operators is to properly $share$ the asymmetry between the two sectors, in accordance with observations. After the chemical decoupling, the DM and SM sectors do $not$ $care$ about each other as there is only an ineffective communication between them. Once the DM mass is specified, the Wilson coefficients of these operators are fixed by the requirement of the correct transfer of the asymmetry. We study the phenomenology of this framework at colliders, direct detection and indirect detection experiments. In particular, the LHC phenomenology is very rich and can be tested in different channels such as the two same-sign leptons with two jets, monojet and monojet with a monolepton.