arXiv subjects

Pouya Asadi

Publications and source records attributed to Pouya Asadi.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Chiral Nelson--Barr Models: Quality and Cosmology

It was recently shown that domain walls from the spontaneous breaking of CP symmetry are exactly stable, and must be inflated away to recover a viable cosmology. We investigate the phenomenological implications of this result in Nelson--Barr solutions of the strong CP problem. Combined with the upper bound on the scale of spontaneous CP breaking necessary to suppress contributions from dangerous, nonrenormalizable operators to $\barθ$, this puts an upper bound on the scale of inflation and the reheating temperature after inflation. Minimal Nelson--Barr models are therefore in tension with thermal leptogenesis, models of large-field inflation, or potential future observations of signals from topological remnants of an unrelated, subsequent phase transition. We study how extending Nelson--Barr models with a new, continuous chiral gauge symmetry can ameliorate this tension by forbidding the dangerous dimension-five operators. In particular, we show that gauging a linear combination of baryon number and hypercharge allows for an economic, anomaly-free extension of the minimal Nelson--Barr model, and discuss the phenomenological implications.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

1+1D Hadrons Minimize their Biparton Renyi Free Energy

We use a variational method to calculate the spectrum and the parton distribution function of ground state hadrons of various gauge theories in 1+1 dimensions. The template functions in our method minimize a free energy functional defined as a combination of free valence partons' kinetic energy on the lightcone and the Renyi entanglement entropy of biparton subsystems. Our results show that hadrons in these theories minimize the proposed free energy. The success of this technique motivates applying it to confining gauge theories in higher dimensions.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Entanglement and the Thermal Hadron

This paper tests how effectively the bound states of strongly interacting gauge theories are amenable to an emergent description as a thermal ensemble. This description can be derived from a conjectured minimum free energy principle, with the entanglement entropy of two-parton subsystems playing the role of thermodynamic entropy. This allows us to calculate the ground state hadron spectrum and wavefunction over a wide range of parton masses without solving the Schrödinger equation. We carry out this analysis for certain illustrative models in 1+1 dimensions and discuss prospects for higher dimensions.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2022

Capture and Decay of Electroweak WIMPonium

The spectrum of Weakly-Interacting-Massive-Particle (WIMP) dark matter generically possesses bound states when the WIMP mass becomes sufficiently large relative to the mass of the electroweak gauge bosons. The presence of these bound states enhances the annihilation rate via resonances in the Sommerfeld enhancement, but they can also be produced directly with the emission of a low-energy photon. In this work we compute the rate for SU(2) triplet dark matter (the wino) to bind into WIMPonium -- which is possible via single-photon emission for wino masses above 5 TeV for relative velocity v < O(10^{-2}) -- and study the subsequent decays of these bound states. We present results with applications beyond the wino case, e.g. for dark matter inhabiting a nonabelian dark sector; these include analytic capture and transition rates for general dark sectors in the limit of vanishing force carrier mass, efficient numerical routines for calculating positive and negative-energy eigenstates of a Hamiltonian containing interactions with both massive and massless force carriers, and a study of the scaling of bound state formation in the short-range Hulthen potential. In the specific case of the wino, we find that the rate for bound state formation is suppressed relative to direct annihilation, and so provides only a small correction to the overall annihilation rate. The soft photons radiated by the capture process and by bound state transitions could permit measurement of the dark matter's quantum numbers; for wino-like dark matter, such photons are rare, but might be observable by a future ground-based gamma-ray telescope combining large effective area and a low energy threshold.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Early-Universe Model Building

Theoretical investigations into the evolution of the early universe are an essential part of particle physics that allow us to identify viable extensions to the Standard Model as well as motivated parameter space that can be probed by various experiments and observations. In this white paper, we review particle physics models of the early universe. First, we outline various models that explain two essential ingredients of the early universe (dark matter and baryon asymmetry) and those that seek to address current observational anomalies. We then discuss dynamics of the early universe in models of neutrino masses, axions, and several solutions to the electroweak hierarchy problem. Finally, we review solutions to naturalness problems of the Standard Model that employ cosmological dynamics.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Glueballs in a Thermal Squeezeout Model

It has been shown that a first order confinement phase transition can drastically change the relic dark matter abundance in confining dark sectors with only heavy dark quarks. We study the phenomenology of one such model with a Z' portal to Standard Model. We find that dark glueballs are long-lived in this setup and dilute the dark matter abundance after their decay to Standard Model. With this effect, the correct relic abundance is obtained with dark matter masses up to $\mathcal{O}(10^6)$~TeV. We find that while a part of the parameter space is already ruled out by direct detection and collider searches, there is still a broad space of viable scenarios that can be probed by future experiments.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

The physics case of a 3 TeV muon collider stage

In the path towards a muon collider with center of mass energy of 10 TeV or more, a stage at 3 TeV emerges as an appealing option. Reviewing the physics potential of such muon collider is the main purpose of this document. In order to outline the progression of the physics performances across the stages, a few sensitivity projections for higher energy are also presented. There are many opportunities for probing new physics at a 3 TeV muon collider. Some of them are in common with the extensively documented physics case of the CLIC 3 TeV energy stage, and include measuring the Higgs trilinear coupling and testing the possible composite nature of the Higgs boson and of the top quark at the 20 TeV scale. Other opportunities are unique of a 3 TeV muon collider, and stem from the fact that muons are collided rather than electrons. This is exemplified by studying the potential to explore the microscopic origin of the current $g$-2 and $B$-physics anomalies, which are both related with muons.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Thermal Squeezeout of Dark Matter

We carry out a detailed study of the confinement phase transition in a dark sector with a $SU(N)$ gauge group and a single generation of dark heavy quark. We focus on heavy enough quarks such that their abundance freezes out before the phase transition and the phase transition is of first-order. We find that during this phase transition the quarks are trapped inside contracting pockets of the deconfined phase and are compressed enough to interact at a significant rate, giving rise to a second stage of annihilation that can dramatically change the resulting dark matter abundance. As a result, the dark matter can be heavier than the often-quoted unitarity bound of $\sim100~$TeV. Our findings are almost completely independent of the details of the portal between the dark sector and the Standard Model. We comment briefly on possible signals of such a sector. Our main findings are summarized in a companion letter, while here we provide further details on different parts of the calculation.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Oblique Lessons from the $W$ Mass Measurement at CDF II

The CDF collaboration recently reported a new precise measurement of the $W$ boson mass $M_W$ with a central value significantly larger than the SM prediction. We explore the effects of including this new measurement on a fit of the Standard Model (SM) to electroweak precision data. We characterize the tension of this new measurement with the SM and explore potential beyond the SM phenomena within the electroweak sector in terms of the oblique parameters $S$, $T$ and $U$. We show that the large $M_W$ value can be accommodated in the fit by a large, nonzero value of $U$, which is difficult to construct in explicit models. Assuming $U = 0$, the electroweak fit strongly prefers large, positive values of $T$. Finally, we study how the preferred values of the oblique parameters may be generated in the context of models affecting the electroweak sector at tree- and loop-level. In particular, we demonstrate that the preferred values of $T$ and $S$ can be generated with a real SU(2)$_L$ triplet scalar, the humble "swino," which can be heavy enough to evade current collider constraints, or by (multiple) species of a singlet-doublet fermion pair. We highlight challenges in constructing other simple models, such as a dark photon, for explaining a large $M_W$ value, and several directions for further study.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

WIMPs Without Weakness: Generalized Mass Window with Entropy Injection

We study general freeze-out scenarios where an arbitrary number of initial and final dark matter particles participate in the number-changing freeze-out interaction. We consider a simple sector with two particle species undergoing such a thermal freeze-out; one of the relics is stable and gives rise to the dark matter today, while the other one decays to the Standard Model, injecting significant entropy into the thermal bath that dilutes the dark matter abundance. We show that this setup can lead to a stable relic population that reproduces the observed dark matter abundance without requiring weak scale masses or couplings. The final dark matter abundance is estimated analytically. We carry out this calculation for arbitrary temperature dependence in the freeze-out process and identify the viable dark matter mass and cross section ranges that explain the observed dark matter abundance. This setup can be used to open parameter space for both heavy (above the unitarity bound) or light (sub-GeV) dark matter candidates. We point out that the best strategy for probing most parts of our parameter space is to look for signatures of an early matter-dominant epoch.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Spontaneous CP Violation and Horizontal Symmetry in the MSSM: Toward Lepton Flavor Naturalness

We study the contributions of supersymmetric models with a $U(1)$ horizontal symmetry and only spontaneous CP breaking to various lepton flavor observables, such as $μ\to eγ$ and the electron electric dipole moment. We show that both a horizontal symmetry and a lack of explicit CP violation can alleviate the existing bounds from such observables. The undetermined $\mathcal{O}(1)$ coefficients in such mass matrix models muddle the interpretation of the bounds from various flavor observables. To overcome this, we define a new fine-tuning measure for different observables in such setups. This allows us to study how naturally the observed IR flavor observables can emerge from a given mass matrix model. We use our flavor-naturalness measure in study of our supersymmetric models and quantify the degree of fine tuning required by the bounds from various lepton flavor observables at each mass scale of sleptons, neutralinos, and charginos.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Searching for Leptoquarks at Future Muon Colliders

A high energy muon collider can provide new and complementary discovery potential to the LHC or future hadron colliders. Leptoquarks are a motivated class of exotic new physics models, with distinct production channels at hadron and lepton machines. We study a vector leptoquark model at a muon collider with $\sqrt{s} = 3, 14$ TeV within a set of both UV and phenomenologically motivated flavor scenarios. We compute which production mechanism has the greatest reach for various values of the leptoquark mass and the coupling between leptoquark and Standard Model fermions. We find that we can probe leptoquark masses up to an order of magnitude beyond $\sqrt{s}$ with perturbative couplings. Additionally, we can also probe regions of parameter space unavailable to flavor experiments. In particular, all of the parameter space of interest to explain recent low-energy anomalies in B meson decays would be covered even by a $\sqrt{s} = 3$ TeV collider.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Accidentally Asymmetric Dark Matter

We study the effect of a first-order phase transition in a confining $SU(N)$ dark sector with heavy dark quarks. The baryons of this sector are the dark matter candidate. During the confinement phase transition the heavy quarks are trapped inside isolated, contracting pockets of the deconfined phase, giving rise to a second stage of annihilation that dramatically suppresses the dark quark abundance. The surviving abundance is determined by the local accidental asymmetry in each pocket. The correct dark matter abundance is obtained for $\mathcal{O}(1-100)$ PeV dark quarks, above the usual unitarity bound.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

A Complete Framework for Tau Polarimetry in $B\to D^{(*)}τν$ Decays

The meson decays $B\to Dτν$ and $B\to D^* τν$ are sensitive probes of the $b\to cτν$ transition. In this work we present a complete framework to obtain the maximum information on the physics of $B\to D^{(*)}τν$ with polarized $τ$ leptons and unpolarized $D^{(*)}$ mesons. Focusing on the hadronic decays $τ\to πν$ and $τ\toρν$, we show how to extract seven $τ$ asymmetries from a fully differential analysis of the final-state kinematics. At Belle II with $50~\text{ab}^{-1}$ of data, these asymmetries could potentially be measured with percent level statistical uncertainty. This would open a new window into possible new physics contributions in $b\to cτν$ and would allow us to decipher its Lorentz and gauge structure.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Maximizing the Impact of New Physics in $b\rightarrow c τν$ Anomalies

We develop a rigorous, semi-analytical method for maximizing any $b\to cτν$ observable in the full 20-real-dimensional parameter space of the dimension 6 effective Hamiltonian, given some fixed values of $R_{D^{(*)}}$. We apply our method to find the maximum allowed values of $F^L_{D^*}$ and $R_{J/ψ}$, two observables which have both come out higher than their SM predictions in recent measurements by the Belle and LHCb collaborations. While the measurements still have large error bars, they add to the existing $R_{D^{(*)}}$ anomaly, and it is worthwhile to consider NP explanations. It has been shown that none of the existing, minimal models in the literature can explain the observed values of $F^L_{D^*}$ and $R_{J/ψ}$. Using our method, we will generalize beyond the minimal models and show that there is no combination of dimension 6 Wilson operators that can come within $1σ$ of the observed $R_{J/ψ}$ value. By contrast, we will show that the observed value of $F^L_{D^*}$ can be achieved, but only with sizable contributions from tensor and mixed-chirality vector Wilson coefficients.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

It's all right(-handed neutrinos): a new $W'$ model for the $R_{D^{(*)}}$ anomaly

The measured $B$-meson semi-leptonic branching ratios $R_{D}$ and $R_{D^*}$ have long-standing deviations between theory and experiment. We introduce a model which explains both anomalies through a single interaction by introducing a right-handed neutrino as the missing energy particle. This interaction is mediated by a heavy charged vector boson ($W'$) which couples only to right-handed quarks and leptons of the Standard Model through the mixing of these particles with new vector-like fermions. Previous $W'$ models for the $R_{D^{(*)}}$ anomaly were strongly constrained from flavor changing neutral currents and direct collider searches for $Z'\toττ$ resonances. We show that relying on right-handed fermion mixing enables us to avoid these constraints, as well as other severe bounds from electroweak precision tests and neutrino mixing.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Asymmetry Observables and the Origin of $R_{D^{(*)}}$ Anomalies

The $R_{D^{(*)}}$ anomalies are among the longest-standing and most statistically significant hints of physics beyond the Standard Model. Many models have been proposed to explain these anomalies, including the interesting possibility that right-handed neutrinos could be involved in the $B$ decays. In this paper, we investigate future measurements at Belle II that can be used to tell apart the various new physics scenarios. Focusing on a number of $τ$ asymmetry observables (forward-backward asymmetry and polarization asymmetries) which can be reconstructed at Belle II, we calculate the contribution of the most general dimension 6 effective Hamiltonian (including right-handed neutrinos) to all of these asymmetries. We show that Belle II can use these asymmetries to distinguish between new-physics scenarios that use right- and left-handed neutrinos, and in most cases can likely distinguish the specific model itself.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Twin Turtles

We present an ultraviolet extension of the Twin Higgs in which the radial mode of twin symmetry breaking is itself a pseudo-goldstone boson. This "turtle" structure raises the scale of new colored particles in exchange for additional states in the Higgs sector, making multiple Higgs-like scalars the definitive signature of naturalness in this context. We explore the parametrics and phenomenology of a concrete Twin Turtle model and demonstrate its robustness in two different supersymmetric completions. Along the way, we also introduce a new mechanism for inducing hard twin symmetry-breaking quartics via soft supersymmetry breaking.

hep-ph↗