arXiv subjects

S. Pascoli

Publications and source records attributed to S. Pascoli.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

nuSTORM - Neutrinos from STORed Muons: Proposal to the Fermilab PAC

The nuSTORM facility has been designed to deliver beams of electron neutrinos and muon neutrinos (and their anti-particles) from the decay of a stored muon beam with a central momentum of 3.8 GeV/c and a momentum acceptance of 10%. The facility is unique in that it will: 1. Allow searches for sterile neutrinos of exquisite sensitivity to be carried out; 2. Serve future long- and short-baseline neutrino-oscillation programs by providing definitive measurements of electron neutrino and muon neutrino scattering cross sections off nuclei with percent-level precision; and 3. Constitutes the crucial first step in the development of muon accelerators as a powerful new technique for particle physics. The document describes the facility in detail and demonstrates its physics capabilities. This document was submitted to the Fermilab Physics Advisory Committee in consideration for Stage I approval.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2013

Neutrinos from Stored Muons nuSTORM: Expression of Interest

The nuSTORM facility has been designed to deliver beams of electron and muon neutrinos from the decay of a stored muon beam with a central momentum of 3.8 GeV/c and a momentum spread of 10%. The facility is unique in that it will: serve the future long- and short-baseline neutrino-oscillation programmes by providing definitive measurements of electron-neutrino- and muon-neutrino-nucleus cross sections with percent-level precision; allow searches for sterile neutrinos of exquisite sensitivity to be carried out; and constitute the essential first step in the incremental development of muon accelerators as a powerful new technique for particle physics. Of the world's proton-accelerator laboratories, only CERN and FNAL have the infrastructure required to mount nuSTORM. Since no siting decision has yet been taken, the purpose of this Expression of Interest (EoI) is to request the resources required to: investigate in detail how nuSTORM could be implemented at CERN; and develop options for decisive European contributions to the nuSTORM facility and experimental programme wherever the facility is sited. The EoI defines a two-year programme culminating in the delivery of a Technical Design Report.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2013

Can heavy neutrinos dominate neutrinoless double beta decay?

We study whether a dominant contribution to neutrinoless double beta decay coming from extra heavy degrees of freedom, introduced to generate the light neutrino masses, can dominate over the light neutrino contribution. It has been shown that this may occur at tree-level if the light neutrino contribution partially cancels out. Here we focus on this case, specifically in the context of type-I seesaw models paying special attention to the one-loop corrections to light neutrino masses, their contribution to the process and correlation with the heavy sector. We perform a general analysis without restricting the study to any particular region of the parameter space, although interesting limits associated with inverse and extended seesawlike models are discussed in more detail. It turns out that the heavy neutrinos can dominate the process only in those limits. For the inverse seesaw limit, we find a very constrained allowed region of the parameter space, with heavy neutrino masses around 5 GeV. The extended seesaw case allows for a larger region, but in general, a hierarchical spectrum of heavy neutrinos with masses above and below $\sim100$ MeV is required.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

EUROnu-WP6 2010 Report

This is a summary of the work done by the Working Package 6 (Physics) of the EU project "EUROnu" during the second year of activity of the project.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

nuSTORM: Neutrinos from STORed Muons

The results of LSND and MiniBooNE, along with the recent papers on a possible reactor neutrino flux anomaly give tantalizing hints of new physics. Models beyond the neutrino-SM have been developed to explain these results and involve one or more additional neutrinos that are non-interacting or "sterile." Neutrino beams produced from the decay of muons in a racetrack-like decay ring provide a powerful way to study this potential new physics. In this Letter of Intent, we describe a facility, nuSTORM, "Neutrinos from STORed Muons," and an appropriate far detector for neutrino oscillation searches at short baseline. We present sensitivity plots that indicated that this experimental approach can provide over 10 sigma confirmation or rejection of the LSND/MinBooNE results. In addition we indicate how the facility can be used to make precision neutrino interaction cross section measurements important to the next generation of long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2011

Testing dark energy using pairs of galaxies in redshift space

The distribution of angles subtended between pairs of galaxies and the line of sight,which is uniform in real space, is distorted by their peculiar motions, and has been proposed as a probe of cosmic expansion. We test this idea using N-body simulations of structure formation in a cold dark matter universe with a cosmological constant and in two variant cosmologies with different dark energy models. We find that the distortion of the distribution of angles is sensitive to the nature of dark energy. However, for the first time, our simulations also reveal dependences of the normalization of the distribution on both redshift and cosmology that have been neglected in previous work. This introduces systematics that severely limit the usefulness of the original method. Guided by our simulations, we devise a new, improved test of the nature of dark energy. We demonstrate that this test does not require prior knowledge of the background cosmology and that it can even distinguish between models that have the same baryonic acoustic oscillations and dark matter halo mass functions. Our technique could be applied to the completed BOSS galaxy redshift survey to constrain the expansion history of the Universe to better than 2%. The method will also produce different signals for dark energy and modified gravity cosmologies even when they have identical expansion histories, through the different peculiar velocities induced in these cases.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

How BAO measurements can fail to detect quintessence

We model the nonlinear growth of cosmic structure in different dark energy models, using large volume N-body simulations. We consider a range of quintessence models which feature both rapidly and slowly varying dark energy equations of state, and compare the growth of structure to that in a universe with a cosmological constant. The adoption of a quintessence model changes the expansion history of the universe, the form of the linear theory power spectrum and can alter key observables, such as the horizon scale and the distance to last scattering. The difference in structure formation can be explained to first order by the difference in growth factor at a given epoch; this scaling also accounts for the nonlinear growth at the 15% level. We find that quintessence models which feature late $(z<2)$, rapid transitions towards $w=-1$ in the equation of state, can have identical baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO) peak positions to those in $Λ$CDM, despite being very different from $Λ$CDM both today and at high redshifts $(z \sim 1000)$. We find that a second class of models which feature non-negligible amounts of dark energy at early times cannot be distinguished from $Λ$CDM using measurements of the mass function or the BAO. These results highlight the need to accurately model quintessence dark energy in N-body simulations when testing cosmological probes of dynamical dark energy.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2009

The LAGUNA design study- towards giant liquid based underground detectors for neutrino physics and astrophysics and proton decay searches

The feasibility of a next generation neutrino observatory in Europe is being considered within the LAGUNA design study. To accommodate giant neutrino detectors and shield them from cosmic rays, a new very large underground infrastructure is required. Seven potential candidate sites in different parts of Europe and at several distances from CERN are being studied: Boulby (UK), Canfranc (Spain), Fréjus (France/Italy), Pyhäsalmi (Finland), Polkowice-Sieroszowice (Poland), Slanic (Romania) and Umbria (Italy). The design study aims at the comprehensive and coordinated technical assessment of each site, at a coherent cost estimation, and at a prioritization of the sites within the summer 2010.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2009

A combined beta-beam and electron capture neutrino experiment

The next generation of long baseline neutrino experiments will aim at determining the value of the unknown mixing angle, theta_{13}, the type of neutrino mass hierarchy and the presence of CP-violation in the lepton sector. Beta-beams and electron capture experiments have been studied as viable candidates for long baseline experiments. They use a very clean electron neutrino beam from the beta-decays or electron capture decays of boosted ions. In the present article we consider an hybrid setup which combines a beta-beam with an electron capture beam by using boosted Ytterbium ions. We study the sensitivity to the CP-violating phase delta and the theta_{13} angle, the CP-discovery potential and the reach to determine the type of neutrino mass hierarchy for this type of long baseline experiment. The analysis is performed for different neutrino beam energies and baselines. Finally, we also discuss how the results would change if a better knowledge of some of the assumed parameters was achieved by the time this experiment could take place.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

Majorana Neutrinos, Neutrino Mass Spectrum and the | | ~ 0.001 eV Frontier in Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

If future neutrino oscillation experiments show that the neutrino mass spectrum is with normal ordering, m1 < m2 < m3, and the searches for neutrinoless double beta-decay with sensitivity to values of the effective Majorana mass | | > 0.01 eV give negative results, the next frontier in the quest for neutrinoless double beta-decay will correspond to | | ~ 0.001 eV. Assuming that massive neutrinos are Majorana particles and their exchange is the dominant mechanism generating neutrinoless double beta-decay, we analise the conditions under which | |, in the case of three neutrino mixing and neutrino mass spectrum with normal ordering, would satisfy | | > 0.001 eV. We consider the specific cases of i) normal hierarchical neutrino mass spectrum, ii) of relatively small value of the CHOOZ angle theta13 as well as iii) the general case of spectrum with normal ordering, partial hierarchy and a value of theta13 close to the existing upper limit. We study the ranges of the lightest neutrino mass m1 and/or of sin^2 theta13, for which | |> 0.001 eV and discuss the phenomenological implications of such scenarios. We provide also an estimate of | | when the three neutrino masses and the neutrino mixing originate from neutrino mass term of Majorana type for the (left-handed) flavour neutrinos and m1 Ue1^2 + m2 U_e2^2 + m3 Ue3^2 =0, but there does not exist a symmetry which forbids the neutrinoless double beta-decay.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

Leptogenesis and Low Energy CP Violation in Neutrino Physics

Taking into account the recent progress in the understanding of the lepton flavour effects in leptogenesis, we investigate in detail the possibility that the CP-violation necessary for the generation of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe is due exclusively to the Dirac and/or Majorana CP-violating phases in the PMNS neutrino mixing matrix U, and thus is directly related to the low energy CP-violation in the lepton sector (e.g., in neutrino oscillations, etc.). We first derive the conditions of CP-invariance of the neutrino Yukawa couplings lambda in the see-saw Lagrangian, and of the complex orthogonal matrix R in the ``orthogonal'' parametrisation of lambda. We show, e.g. that under certain conditions i) real R and specific CP-conserving values of the Majorana and Dirac phases can imply CP-violation, and ii) purely imaginary R does not necessarily imply breaking of CP-symmetry. We study in detail the case of hierarchical heavy Majorana neutrino mass spectrum, presenting results for three possible types of light neutrino mass spectrum: i) normal hierarchical, ii) inverted hierarchical, and iii) quasi-degenerate. Results in the alternative case of quasi-degenerate in mass heavy Majorana neutrinos, are also derived. The minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Theory with right-handed Majorana neutrinos and see-saw mechanism of neutrino mass generation is discussed as well. We illustrate the possible correlations between the baryon asymmetry of the Universe and i) the rephasing invariant J_CP controling the magnitude of CP-violation in neutrino oscillations, or ii) the effective Majorana mass in neutrinoless double beta decay, in the cases when the only source of CP-violation is respectively the Dirac or the Majorana phases in the neutrino mixing matrix.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

Are small neutrino masses unveiling the missing mass problem of the Universe?

We present a scenario in which a remarkably simple relation linking dark matter properties and neutrino masses naturally emerges. This framework points towards a low energy theory where the neutrino mass originates from the existence of a light scalar dark matter particle in the MeV mass range. A very surprising aspect of this scenario is that the required MeV dark matter is one of the favoured candidates to explain the mysterious emission of 511 keV photons in the centre of our galaxy. A possible interpretation of these findings is that dark matter is the stepping stone of a theory beyond the standard model instead of being an embarrassing relic whose energy density must be accounted for in any successful model building.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2006

Connecting Low Energy Leptonic CP-violation to Leptogenesis

It was commonly thought that the observation of low energy leptonic CP-violating phases would not automatically imply the existence of a baryon asymmetry in the leptogenesis scenario. This conclusion does not generically hold when the issue of flavour is relevant and properly taken into account in leptogenesis. We illustrate this point with various examples studying the correlation between the baryon asymmetry and the CP-violating asymmetry in neutrino oscillations and the effective Majorana mass in neutrinoless double beta decay.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2005

The Absolute Neutrino Mass Scale, Neutrino Mass Spectrum, Majorana CP-Violation and Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay

Assuming 3-$ν$ mixing, massive Majorana neutrinos and neutrinoless double-beta (\betabeta-) decay generated only by the (V-A) charged current weak interaction via the exchange of the three Majorana neutrinos, we briefly review the predictions for the effective Majorana mass $\meff$ in \betabeta-decay and reanalyse the physics potential of future \betabeta-decay experiments to provide information on the type of neutrino mass spectrum, the absolute scale of neutrino masses, and Majorana CP-violation in the lepton sector. Using as input the most recent experimental results on neutrino oscillation parameters and the prospective precision that can be achieved in future measurements of the latter, we perform a statistical analysis of a \betabeta-decay half-life measurement taking into account experimental and theoretical errors, as well as the uncertainty implied by the imprecise knowledge of the corresponding nuclear matrix element (NME). We show, in particular, how the possibility to discriminate between the different types of neutrino mass spectra and the constraints on the absolute neutrino mass scale depend on the mean value and the experimental error of $\meff$ and on the NME uncertainty. The constraints on Majorana CP-violation phases in the neutrino mixing matrix, which can be obtained from a measurement of $\meff$ and additional data on the sum of neutrino masses, are also investigated in detail. We estimate the required experimental accuracies on both types of measurements, and the required precision in the NME permitting to address the issue of Majorana CP-violation in the lepton sector.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2005

Theory of Neutrinos: A White Paper

During 2004, four divisions of the American Physical Society commissioned a study of neutrino physics to take stock of where the field is at the moment and where it is going in the near and far future. Several working groups looked at various aspects of this vast field. The summary was published as a main report entitled ``The Neutrino Matrix'' accompanied by short 50 page versions of the report of each working group. Theoretical research in this field has been quite extensive and touches many areas and the short 50 page report provided only a brief summary and overview of few of the important points. The theory discussion group felt that it may be of value to the community to publish the entire study as a white paper and the result is the current article. After a brief overview of the present knowledge of neutrino masses and mixing and some popular ways to probe the new physics implied by recent data, the white paper summarizes what can be learned about physics beyond the Standard Model from the various proposed neutrino experiments. It also comments on the impact of the experiments on our understanding of the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe and the basic nature of neutrino interactions as well as the existence of possible additional neutrinos. Extensive references to original literature are provided.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2004

Theory of Neutrinos

After a brief overview of the present knowledge of neutrino masses and mixing, we summarize what can be learned about physics beyond the standard model from the various proposed neutrino experiments. We also comment on the impact of the experiments on our understanding of the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe as well as what can be learned from some experiments outside the domain of neutrinos.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2004

Low reheating temperature and the visible sterile neutrino

We present here a scenario, based on a low reheating temperature T_R << 100 MeV at the end of (the last episode of) inflation, in which the coupling of sterile neutrinos to active neutrinos can be as large as experimental bounds permit (thus making this neutrino ``visible'' in future experiments). In previous models this coupling was forced to be very small to prevent a cosmological overabundance of sterile neutrinos. Here the abundance depends on how low the reheating temperature is. For example, the sterile neutrino required by the LSND result does not have any cosmological problem within our scenario.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2003

Addendum: The SNO Solar Neutrino Data, Neutrinoless Double Beta-Decay and Neutrino Mass Spectrum

We update our earlier study in [1], which was inspired by the 2002 SNO data, on the implications of the results of the solar neutrino experiments for the predictions of the effective Majorana mass in neutrinoless double beta-decay, | |. We obtain predictions for | | using the values of the neutrino oscillation parameters, obtained in the analyzes of the presently available solar neutrino data, including the just published data from the salt phase of the SNO experiment, the atmospheric neutrino and CHOOZ data and the first data from the KamLAND experiment. The main conclusion reached in ref. [1] of the existence of significant lower bounds on | | in the cases of neutrino mass spectrum of inverted hierarchical (IH) and quasi-degenerate (QD) type is strongly reinforced by fact that combined solar neutrino data i) exclude the possibility of cos(2 θ_\odot)=0 at more than 5 s.d., ii) determine as a best fit value cos(2 θ_\odot)=0.40, and ii) imply at 95% C.L. that cos(2 θ_\odot) \geq 0.22, θ_\odot being the solar neutrino mixing angle. For the IH and QD spectra we get using, e.g., the 90% C.L. allowed ranges of values of the oscillation parameters, | | \geq 0.010 eV and | | \geq 0.043 eV, respectively. We also comment on the possibility to get information on the neutrino mass spectrum and on the CP-violation in the lepton sector due to Majorana CP-violating phases.

hep-ph↗