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Francesco Sannino

Publications and source records attributed to Francesco Sannino.

At least 217 records · Page 12Linked to original sources

Charge Asymmetric Cosmic Rays as a probe of Flavor Violating Asymmetric Dark Matter

The recently introduced cosmic sum rules combine the data from PAMELA and Fermi-LAT cosmic ray experiments in a way that permits to neatly investigate whether the experimentally observed lepton excesses violate charge symmetry. One can in a simple way determine universal properties of the unknown component of the cosmic rays. Here we attribute a potential charge asymmetry to the dark sector. In particular we provide models of asymmetric dark matter able to produce charge asymmetric cosmic rays. We consider spin zero, spin one and spin one-half decaying dark matter candidates. We show that lepton flavor violation and asymmetric dark matter are both required to have a charge asymmetry in the cosmic ray lepton excesses. Therefore, an experimental evidence of charge asymmetry in the cosmic ray lepton excesses implies that dark matter is asymmetric.

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Cosmic Ray Electron and Positron Excesses from a Fourth Generation Heavy Majorana Neutrino

Unexpected features in the energy spectra of cosmic rays electrons and positrons have been recently observed by PAMELA and Fermi-LAT satellite experiments, opening to the exciting possibility of an indirect manifestation of new physics. A TeV-scale fourth lepton family is a natural extension of the Standard Model leptonic sector (also linked to the hierarchy problem in Minimal Walking Technicolor models). The heavy Majorana neutrino of this setup mixes with Standard Model charged leptons through a weak charged current interaction. Here, we first study analytically the energy spectrum of the electrons and positrons originated in the heavy Majorana neutrino decay modes, also including polarization effects. We then compare the prediction of this model with the experimental data, exploiting both the standard direct method and our recently proposed Sum Rules method. We find that the decay modes involving the tau and/or the muon charged leptons as primary decay products fit well the PAMELA and Fermi-LAT lepton excesses while there is tension with respect to the antiproton to proton fraction constrained by PAMELA.

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S-parameter at Non-Zero Temperature and Chemical Potential

We compute the finite-temperature and matter density corrections to the S-parameter at the one loop level. At non-zero temperature T and matter density Lorentz symmetry breaks and therefore we suggest a suitable generalization of the S-parameter. By computing the plasma correction, we discover a reduction of the S-parameter in the physically relevant region of small external momenta for any non-zero chemical potential and T. In particular, the S-parameter vanishes at small m/T, where m is the mass of the fermions, due to the finite extent of the temporal direction. Our results are directly applicable to the determination of the S-parameter via first principle lattice simulations performed with anti-periodic boundary conditions in the temporal direction.

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The Standard Model is Natural as Magnetic Gauge Theory

We suggest that the Standard Model can be viewed as the magnetic dual of a gauge theory featuring only fermionic matter content. We show this by first introducing a Pati-Salam like extension of the Standard Model and then relating it to a possible dual electric theory featuring only fermionic matter. The absence of scalars in the electric theory indicates that the associated magnetic theory is free from quadratic divergences. Our novel solution to the Standard Model hierarchy problem leads also to a new insight on the mystery of the observed number of fundamental fermion generations by naturally explaining why it has to be at least three.

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Interfering Composite Asymmetric Dark Matter for DAMA and CoGeNT

We provide a simple mechanism for reconciling the direct dark matter experimental results. We consider light asymmetric composite dark matter which scatters off nuclei via Higgs and photon exchange. We demonstrate that the interference between these two channels naturally accommodates the experimental results. We discover that this happens for a compositeness scale of the order of the electroweak. We also provide a model realization based on strong dynamics at the electroweak scale.

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Cosmic Sum Rules

We introduce new sum rules allowing to determine universal properties of the unknown component of the cosmic rays and show how they can be used to predict the positron fraction at energies not yet explored by current experiments and to constrain specific models.

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Flavor Dependence of the S-parameter

We extend the results of [arXiv:1006.0207 [hep-lat]] by computing the S-parameter at two loops in the perturbative region of the conformal window. Consistently using the expression for the location of the infra-red fixed point at the two-loop order we express the S-parameter in terms of the number of flavors, colors and matter representation. We show that S, normalized to the number of flavors, increases as we decrease the number of flavors. Our findings support the conjecture presented in [arXiv:1006.0207 [hep-lat]] according to which the normalized value of the S-parameter at the upper end of the conformal window constitutes the lower bound across the entire phase diagram for the given underlying asymptotically free gauge theory. We also show that the non-trivial dependence on the number of flavors merges naturally with the non-perturbative estimate of the S-parameter close to the lower end of the conformal window obtained using gauge duality [arXiv:1007.0254 [hep-ph]]. Our results are natural benchmarks for lattice computations of the S-parameter for vector-like gauge theories.

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Beta Function and Anomalous Dimensions

We demonstrate that it is possible to determine the coefficients of an all-order beta function linear in the anomalous dimensions using as data the two-loop coefficients together with the first one of the anomalous dimensions which are universal. The beta function allows to determine the anomalous dimension of the fermion masses at the infrared fixed point, and the resulting values compare well with the lattice determinations.

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Magnetic Fixed Points and Emergent Supersymmetry

We establish the existence of fixed points for certain gauge theories candidate to be magnetic duals of QCD with one adjoint Weyl fermion. In the perturbative regime of the magnetic theory the existence of a very large number of fixed points is unveiled. We classify them by analyzing their basin of attraction. The existence of several nonsupersymmetric fixed points for the magnetic gauge theory lends further support towards the existence of gauge-gauge duality beyond supersymmetry. We also discover that among these very many fixed points there are supersymmetric ones emerging from a generic nonsupersymmetric renormalization group flow. We therefore conclude that supersymmetry naturally emerges as a fixed point theory from a nonsupersymmetric Lagrangian without the need for fine-tuning of the bare couplings. Our results suggest that supersymmetry can be viewed as an emergent phenomenon in field theory. In particular there should be no need for fine-tuning the bare couplings when performing Lattice simulations aimed to investigate supersymmetry on the Lattice.

hep-th↗

Vanilla Technicolor at Linear Colliders

We analyze the reach of Linear Colliders (LC)s for models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking. We show that LCs can efficiently test the compositeness scale, identified with the mass of the new spin-one resonances, till the maximum energy in the center-of-mass of the colliding leptons. In particular we analyze the Drell-Yan processes involving spin-one intermediate heavy bosons decaying either leptonically or into two Standard Model (SM) gauge bosons. We also analyze the light Higgs production in association with a SM gauge boson stemming also from an intermediate spin-one heavy vector.

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Minimal Composite Inflation

We investigate models in which the inflaton emerges as a composite field of a four dimensional, strongly interacting and nonsupersymmetric gauge theory featuring purely fermionic matter. We show that it is possible to obtain successful inflation via non-minimal coupling to gravity, and that the underlying dynamics is preferred to be near conformal. We discover that the compositeness scale of inflation is of the order of the grand unified energy scale.

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Composite Higgs to two Photons and Gluons

We introduce a simple framework to estimate the composite Higgs boson coupling to two-photon in Technicolor extensions of the standard model. The same framework allows us to predict the composite Higgs to two-gluon process. We compare the decay rates with the standard model ones and show that the corrections are typically of order one. We suggest, therefore, that the two-photon decay process can be efficiently used to disentangle a light composite Higgs from the standard model one. We also show that the Tevatron results for the gluon-gluon fusion production of the Higgs either exclude the techniquarks to carry color charges to the 95% confidence level, if the composite Higgs is light, or that the latter must be heavier than around 200 GeV.

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Dual of QCD with One Adjoint Fermion

We construct the magnetic dual of QCD with one adjoint Weyl fermion. The dual is a consistent solution of the 't Hooft anomaly matching conditions, allows for flavor decoupling and remarkably constitutes the first nonsupersymmetric dual valid for any number of colors. The dual allows to bound the anomalous dimension of the Dirac fermion mass operator to be less than one in the conformal window.

hep-th↗

Magnetic S-parameter

We propose a direct test of the existence of gauge duals for nonsupersymmetric asymptotically free gauge theories developing an infrared fixed point by computing the S-parameter in the electric and dual magnetic description. In particular we show that at the lower bound of the conformal window the magnetic S-parameter, i.e. the one determined via the dual magnetic gauge theory, assumes a simple expression in terms of the elementary magnetic degrees of freedom. The results further support our recent conjecture of the existence of a universal lower bound on the S parameter and indicates that it is an ideal operator for counting the active physical degrees of freedom within the conformal window. Our results can be directly used to unveil possible four dimensional gauge duals and constitute the first explicit computation of a nonperturbative quantity, in the electric variables, via nonsupersymmetric gauge duality.

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Hot Conformal Gauge Theories

We compute the nonzero temperature free energy up to the order g^6 \ln(1/g) in the coupling constant for vector like SU(N) gauge theories featuring matter transforming according to different representations of the underlying gauge group. The number of matter fields, i.e. flavors, is arranged in such a way that the theory develops a perturbative stable infrared fixed point at zero temperature. Due to large distance conformality we trade the coupling constant with its fixed point value and define a reduced free energy which depends only on the number of flavors, colors and matter representation. We show that the reduced free energy changes sign, at the second, fifth and sixth order in the coupling, when decreasing the number of flavors from the upper end of the conformal window. If the change in sign is interpreted as signal of an instability of the system then we infer a critical number of flavors. Surprisingly this number, if computed to the order g^2, agrees with previous predictions for the lower boundary of the conformal window for nonsupersymmetric gauge theories. The higher order results tend to predict a higher number of critical flavors. These are universal properties, i.e. they are independent on the specific matter representation.

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Technicolor and Beyond: Unification in Theory Space

The salient features of models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking are reviewed. The ideal walking idea is introduced according to which one should carefully take into account the effects of the extended technicolor dynamics on the technicolor dynamics itself. The effects amount at the enhancement of the anomalous dimension of the mass of the techniquarks allowing to decouple the Flavor Changing Neutral Currents problem from the one of the generation of the top mass. Precision data constraints are reviewed focussing on the latest crucial observation that the S-parameter can be computed exactly near the upper end of the conformal window (Conformal S-parameter) with relevant consequences on the selection of nature's next strong force. We will then introduce the Minimal Walking Technicolor (MWT) models. In the second part of this review we consider the interesting possibility to marry supersymmetry and technicolor. The reason is to provide a unification of different extensions of the standard model. For example, this means that one can recover, according to the parameters and spectrum of the theory distinct extensions of the standard model, from supersymmetry to technicolor and unparticle physiscs. A surprising result is that a minimal (in terms of the smallest number of fields) supersymmetrization of the MWT model leads to the maximal supersymmetry in four dimensions, i.e. N=4 SYM.

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Extreme Technicolor & The Walking Critical Temperature

We map the phase diagram of gauge theories of fundamental interactions in the flavor-temperature plane using chiral perturbation theory to estimate the relation between the pion decaying constant and the critical temperature above which chiral symmetry is restored. We then investigate the impact of our results on models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking and therefore on the electroweak early universe phase transition.

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Nonperturbative Results for Yang-Mills Theories

Some non perturbative aspects of the pure SU(3) Yang-Mills theory are investigated assuming a specific form of the beta function, based on a recent modification by Ryttov and Sannino of the known one for supersymmetric gauge theories. The characteristic feature is a pole at a particular value of the coupling constant, g. First it is noted, using dimensional analysis, that physical quantities behave smoothly as one travels from one side of the pole to the other. Then it is argued that the form of the integrated beta function g(m), where m is the mass scale, determines the mass gap of the theory. Assuming the usual QCD value one finds it to be 1.67 GeV, which is in surprisingly good agreement with a quenched lattice calculation. A similar calculation is made for the supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory where the corresponding beta function is considered to be exact.

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