arXiv subjects

E. Roulet

Publications and source records attributed to E. Roulet.

17 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2011

The East-West method: an exposure-independent method to search for large scale anisotropies of cosmic rays

The measurement of large scale anisotropies in cosmic ray arrival directions at energies above 10^13 eV is performed through the detection of Extensive Air Showers produced by cosmic ray interactions in the atmosphere. The observed anisotropies are small, so accurate measurements require small statistical uncertainties, i.e. large datasets. These can be obtained by employing ground detector arrays with large extensions (from 10^4 to 10^9 m^2) and long operation time (up to 20 years). The control of such arrays is challenging and spurious variations in the counting rate due to instrumental effects (e.g. data taking interruptions or changes in the acceptance) and atmospheric effects (e.g. air temperature and pressure effects on EAS development) are usually present. These modulations must be corrected very precisely before performing standard anisotropy analyses, i.e. harmonic analysis of the counting rate versus local sidereal time. In this paper we discuss an alternative method to measure large scale anisotropies, the "East-West method", originally proposed by Nagashima in 1989. It is a differential method, as it is based on the analysis of the difference of the counting rates in the East and West directions. Besides explaining the principle, we present here its mathematical derivation, showing that the method is largely independent of experimental effects, that is, it does not require corrections for acceptance and/or for atmospheric effects. We explain the use of the method to derive the amplitude and phase of the anisotropy and we demonstrate its power under different conditions of detector operation.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2010

Effects of the galactic magnetic field upon large scale anisotropies of extragalactic Cosmic Rays

The large scale pattern in the arrival directions of extragalactic cosmic rays that reach the Earth is different from that of the flux arriving to the halo of the Galaxy as a result of the propagation through the galactic magnetic field. Two different effects are relevant in this process: deflections of trajectories and (de)acceleration by the electric field component due to the galactic rotation. The deflection of the cosmic ray trajectories makes the flux intensity arriving to the halo from some direction to appear reaching the Earth from another direction. This applies to any intrinsic anisotropy in the extragalactic distribution or, even in the absence of intrinsic anisotropies, to the dipolar Compton-Getting anisotropy induced when the observer is moving with respect to the cosmic rays rest frame. For an observer moving with the solar system, cosmic rays traveling through far away regions of the Galaxy also experience an electric force coming from the relative motion (due to the rotation of the Galaxy) of the local system in which the field can be considered as being purely magnetic. This produces small changes in the particles momentum that can originate large scale anisotropies even for an isotropic extragalactic flux.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2009

Leptogenesis, Z' bosons, and the reheating temperature of the Universe

We study the impact for leptogenesis of new U(1) gauge bosons coupled to the heavy Majorana neutrinos. They can significantly enhance the efficiency of thermal scenarios in the weak washout regime as long as the Z' masses are not much larger than the reheating temperature ($M_{Z'}<10 T_{rh}$), with the highest efficiencies obtained for Z' bosons considerably heavier than the heavy neutrinos ($M_{Z'} > 100 M_1$). We show how the allowed region of the parameter space is modified in the presence of a Z' and we also obtain the minimum reheating temperature that is required for these models to be successful.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2006

On the ultra-high energy cosmic ray horizon

We compute the ultra-high energy cosmic ray horizon, i.e. the distance up to which cosmic ray sources may significantly contribute to the fluxes above a certain threshold on the observed energies. We obtain results both for proton and heavy nuclei sources.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1996

Baryogenesis from mixed particle decays

We consider the $CP$ violating asymmetries produced in the decay of heavy particles, studying the effects of heavy particle mixing for arbitrary mass splittings. A considerable enhancement of the asymmetries is achieved when the masses of the mixed states are comparable, and the enhancement is maximal for mass splittings of the order of the widths of the decaying particles. We apply the results to the particular case of heavy scalar neutrino decays relevant for leptogenesis scenarios.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1996

Preheating and vacuum metastability in Supersymmetry

The constraints imposed by the requirement that the scalar potential of supersymmetric theories does not have unbounded directions and charge or color breaking minima deeper than the usual electroweak breaking minimum (EWM) are significantly relaxed if one just allows for a metastable EWM but with a sufficiently long lifetime. For this to be acceptable one needs however to explain how the vacuum state reaches this metastable configuration in the first place. We discuss the implications for this issue of the inflaton induced scalar masses, of the supersymmetry breaking effects generated during the preheating stage as well as of the thermal corrections to the scalar potential which appear after reheating. We show that their combined effects may efficiently drive the scalar fields to the origin, allowing them to then evolve naturally towards the EWM.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1996

CP violating decays in leptogenesis scenarios

We compute the CP violation in the decays of heavy electroweak singlet neutrinos, arising from both the one--loop vertex corrections and the wave function mixing. We extend the computation to the supersymmetric version of the model and discuss the implications for the generation of a lepton number asymmetry by the out of equilibrium decay of the heavy (s)neutrinos in the early Universe, to be reprocessed later in the observed baryon excess by anomalous electroweak processes.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1996

Microlensing

Microlensing observations have now become a useful tool in searching for non--luminous astrophysical compact objects (brown dwarfs, faint stars, neutron stars, black holes and even planets). Originally conceived for establishing whether the halo of the Galaxy is composed of this type of objects, the ongoing searches are actually also sensitive to the dark constituents of other Galactic components (thin and thick disks, outer spheroid, bulge). We discuss here the present searches for microlensing of stars in the Magellanic Clouds and in the Galactic bulge (EROS, MACHO, OGLE and DUO collaborations). We analyse the information which can be obtained regarding the spatial distribution and motion of the lensing objects as well as about their mass function and their overall contribution to the mass of the Galaxy. We also discuss the additional signals, such as the parallax due to the motion of the Earth, the effects due to the finite source size and the lensing events involving binary objects, which can further constrain the lens properties. We describe the future prospects for these searches and the further proposed observations which could help to elucidate these issues, such as microlensing of stars in the Andromeda galaxy, satellite parallax measurements and infrared observations.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1995

Vacuum decay along supersymmetric flat directions

It has been recently realized that within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, for certain patterns of superpartner masses, consistent with all the present experimental constraints, the scalar potential may develop at some scale $Q_0$ unbounded color/charge breaking directions involving the sfermion fields, and that these patterns are then excluded unless some new physics is invoked at or below the scale $Q_0$. We reanalyze this observation and point out that such patterns of superpartner masses at the weak scale are {\it not} ruled out when taking into account the probability of decay for the metastable color conserving minimum along these color breaking unbounded directions. It turns out that the color conserving minimum, although metastable, has a lifetime longer than the present age of the Universe and can survive both quantum tunneling and the effects of high temperatures in the early Universe, causing the color/charge breaking effects to be in practice not dangerous.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1995

Microlensing of disk sources

We analyse the effects on the predictions for the microlensing searches toward the Galactic bulge coming from the fact that not all the stars monitored belong to the bulge itself, but that a non--negligible fraction of them actually are in the Galactic disk. The different distribution and motions of these disk stars make their associated microlensing rates and event duration distributions to be quite different from those of the bulge stars. We discuss the uncertainties in these predictions associated to the modeling of the Galactic components and the main implications resulting from the inclusion of this second source population.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1995

Supersymmetric radiative corrections to neutrino indices of refraction

We compute the one-loop effects on the neutrino propagation through matter induced by virtual supersymmetric particles. We show that, in the minimal version of the supersymmetric standard model, a non-degeneracy between sleptons of the second and third generations can have sizeable effects on the $ν_μ$--$ν_τ$ oscillations in matter. In particular, we discuss how this could affect the detection of the energetic neutrino fluxes arising from annihilation of supersymmetric dark matter in the center of the sun.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1994

Whither do the microlensing Brown Dwarfs rove?

The EROS and MACHO collaborations have reported observations of light curves of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud that are compatible with gravitational microlensing by intervening massive objects, presumably Brown-Dwarf stars. The OGLE and MACHO teams have also seen similar events in the direction of the galactic Bulge. Current data are insufficient to decide whether the Brown-Dwarfs are dark-matter constituents of the non-luminous galactic Halo, or belong to a more conventional population, such as that of faint stars in the galactic Spheroid, in its Thin or Thick Disks, or in their possible LMC counterparts. We discuss in detail how further observations of microlensing rates, and of the moments of the distribution of event durations, can help resolve the issue of the Brown-Dwarf location, and eventually provide information on the mass function of the dark objects.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1994

Can EROS/MACHO be detecting the galactic spheroid instead of the galactic halo?

Models of our galaxy based on dynamical observations predict a spheroid component much heavier than accounted for by direct measurements of star counts and high velocity stars. If, as first suggested by Caldwell and Ostriker, this discrepancy is due to a large population of faint low-mass stars or dark objects in the spheroid, the spheroid could be responsible for microlensing events for sources in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We show that, although the rate of events is lower than predicted by a galactic halo made of microlensing objects, it is still significant for EROS/MACHO observations. Because of the different matter distributions in the halo and spheroid components, a comparison between microlensing event rates in the LMC, future measurements of microlensing in the galactic bulge and, possibly, in M31 can provide information about the amounts of dark objects in the different galactic components. If the EROS/MACHO collaborations find a deficiency with respect to their halo expectation, when more statistics are available, their detected events could be interpreted as coming from spheroid microlenses, allowing for a galactic halo composed entirely of non-baryonic dark matter.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1994

Is the halo responsible for the microlensing events?

We discuss whether the astrophysical objects responsible for the recently reported microlensing events of sources in the Large Magellanic Cloud can be identified as the brown dwarf components of the spheroid of our galaxy, rather than the constituents of a dark baryonic halo.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1994

Limits on Neutrino Mixing with new Heavy Particles

We study the effects induced by new neutral fermions below their mass threshold, due to their possible mixing with the standard neutrinos. We use as experimental constraints the recent results on lepton universality, together with the measurement of the $μ$ decay rate and the updated LEP data. In particular, the inclusion in our data set of the most recent determinations of the $τ$ branching fractions, mass and lifetime implies that a previous indication of a non-vanishing mixing for $ν_τ$ is no longer present. We obtain new stringent limits on the mixing parameters between $ν_e$, $ν_μ$, $ν_τ$ and heavy neutral states of different weak isospin. If no assumption on the type of neutrinos involved in the mixing is made, we find $\snue^2<0.0071$, $\snumu^2<0.0014$ and $\snutau^2<0.033$.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1993

Model Independent Properties and Cosmological Implications of the Dilaton and Moduli Sectors of 4-d Strings

We show that if there is a realistic 4-d string, the dilaton and moduli supermultiplets will generically acquire a small mass O(m_{3/2}), providing the only vacuum-independent evidence of low-energy physics in string theory beyond the supersymmetric standard model. The only assumptions behind this result are (i) softly broken supersymmetry at low energies with zero cosmological constant, (ii) these particles interact with gravitational strength and the scalar components have a flat potential in perturbation theory, which are well-known properties of string theories. (iii) They acquire a $vev$ of the order of the Planck scale (as required for the correct value of the gauge coupling constants and the expected compactification scale) after supersymmetry gets broken. We explore the cosmological implications of these particles. Similar to the gravitino, the fermionic states may overclose the Universe if they are stable or destroy nucleosynthesis if they decay unless their masses belong to a certain range or inflation dilutes them. For the scalar states it is known that the problem cannot be entirely solved by inflation, since oscillations around the minimum of the potential can lead to a huge entropy generation at late times. We discus some possible ways to alleviate this entropy problem, that favour low-temperature baryogenesis, and also comment on the possible role of these particles as dark matter candidates or as sources of the baryon asymmetry through their decay.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1993

Conditions on supersymmetry soft-breaking terms from GUTs

We study the effect of integrating out the heavy fields in a supersymmetric GUT which does not contain small mass parameters in the limit of exact supersymmetry. The trilinear ($A$) and bilinear ($B$) coefficients of the supersymmetry soft-breaking terms of the low-energy effective theory are related in a simple and model-independent way to those of the underlying theory. {}From these relations, we obtain the bound $|B|\ge 2$, which, together with the requirements of stability of the potential and electroweak symmetry breaking, imposes severe constraints on the space of allowed supersymmetric parameters. In models based on supergravity with a flat Kähler metric, we obtain $B=2$, instead of the relation $B=A-1$ usually used in phenomenological applications. The low-energy theory contains also a supersymmetric mass term $μ$ for the two Higgs doublets, which is of the order of the supersymmetry-breaking scale.

hep-ph↗