arXiv subjects

Sandra Robles

Publications and source records attributed to Sandra Robles.

29 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars

Neutron stars provide a cosmic laboratory to study the nature of dark matter particles and their interactions. Dark matter can be captured by neutron stars via scattering, where kinetic energy is transferred to the star. This can have a number of observational consequences, such as the heating of old neutron stars to infra-red temperatures. Previous treatments of the capture process have employed various approximation or simplifications. We present here an improved treatment of dark matter capture, valid for a wide dark matter mass range, that correctly incorporates all relevant physical effects. These include gravitational focusing, a fully relativistic scattering treatment, Pauli blocking, neutron star opacity and multi-scattering effects. We provide general expressions that enable the exact capture rate to be calculated numerically, and derive simplified expressions that are valid for particular interaction types or mass regimes and that greatly increase the computational efficiency. Our formalism is applicable to the scattering of dark matter from any neutron star constituents, or to the capture of dark matter in other compact objects.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

Searching for Sub-GeV Dark Matter in the Galactic Centre using Hyper-Kamiokande

Indirect detection of dark matter via its annihilation products is a key technique in the search for dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Strong constraints exist on the annihilation of WIMPs to highly visible Standard Model final states such as photons or charged particles. In the case of s-wave annihilation, this typically eliminates thermal relic cross sections for dark matter of mass below $\cal{O}$(10) GeV. However, such limits typically neglect the possibility that dark matter may annihilate to assumed invisible or hard-to-detect final states, such as neutrinos. This is a difficult paradigm to probe due to the weak neutrino interaction cross section. Considering dark matter annihilation in the Galactic halo, we study the prospects for indirect detection using the Hyper-Kamiokande (HyperK) neutrino experiment, for dark matter of mass below 1 GeV. We undertake a dedicated simulation of the HyperK detector, which we benchmark against results from the similar Super-Kamiokande experiment and HyperK physics projections. We provide projections for the annihilation cross-sections that can be probed by HyperK for annihilation to muon or neutrino final states, and discuss uncertainties associated with the dark matter halo profile. For neutrino final states, we find that HyperK is sensitive to thermal annihilation cross-sections for dark matter with mass around 20 MeV, assuming an NFW halo profile. We also discuss the effects of neutron tagging, and prospects for improving the reach at low mass.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Capture of Leptophilic Dark Matter in Neutron Stars

Dark matter particles will be captured in neutron stars if they undergo scattering interactions with nucleons or leptons. These collisions transfer the dark matter kinetic energy to the star, resulting in appreciable heating that is potentially observable by forthcoming infrared telescopes. While previous work considered scattering only on nucleons, neutron stars contain small abundances of other particle species, including electrons and muons. We perform a detailed analysis of the neutron star kinetic heating constraints on leptophilic dark matter. We also estimate the size of loop induced couplings to quarks, arising from the exchange of photons and Z bosons. Despite having relatively small lepton abundances, we find that an observation of an old, cold, neutron star would provide very strong limits on dark matter interactions with leptons, with the greatest reach arising from scattering off muons. The projected sensitivity is orders of magnitude more powerful than current dark matter-electron scattering bounds from terrestrial direct detection experiments.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

A Halo Merger Tree Generation and Evaluation Framework

Semi-analytic models are best suited to compare galaxy formation and evolution theories with observations. These models rely heavily on halo merger trees, and their realistic features (i.e., no drastic changes on halo mass or jumps on physical locations). Our aim is to provide a new framework for halo merger tree generation that takes advantage of the results of large volume simulations, with a modest computational cost. We treat halo merger tree construction as a matrix generation problem, and propose a Generative Adversarial Network that learns to generate realistic halo merger trees. We evaluate our proposal on merger trees from the EAGLE simulation suite, and show the quality of the generated trees.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Heating up Neutron Stars with Inelastic Dark Matter

Neutron stars can provide new insight into dark matter properties, as these dense objects capture dark matter particles very efficiently. It has recently been shown that the energy transfer in the dark matter capture process can lead to appreciable heating of neutron stars, which may be observable with forthcoming infra-red telescopes. We examine this heating in the context of inelastic dark matter, for which signals in conventional nuclear-recoil based direct detection experiments are highly suppressed when the momentum transfer is small compared to the mass splitting between dark matter states. Neutron stars permit inelastic scattering for much greater mass splittings, because dark matter particles are accelerated to velocities close to the speed of light during infall. Using an effective operator approach for fermionic DM that scatters inelastically, we show that the observation of a very cold neutron star would lead to very stringent limits on the interaction strengths that, in most cases, much stronger than any present, or future, direct detection experiment on Earth. This holds both for elastic scattering and for inelastic scattering with mass splittings up to $\sim 300 MeV$.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

The Power of Genetic Algorithms: what remains of the pMSSM?

Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are explored as a tool for probing new physics with high dimensionality. We study the 19-dimensional pMSSM, including experimental constraints from all sources and assessing the consistency of potential signals of new physics. We show that GAs excel at making a fast and accurate diagnosis of the cross-compatibility of a set of experimental constraints in such high dimensional models. In the case of the pMSSM, it is found that only ${\cal O}(10^4)$ model evaluations are required to obtain a best fit point in agreement with much more costly MCMC scans. This efficiency allows higher dimensional models to be falsified, and patterns in the spectrum identified, orders of magnitude more quickly. As examples of falsification, we consider the muon anomalous magnetic moment, and the Galactic Centre gamma-ray excess observed by Fermi-LAT, which could in principle be explained in terms of neutralino dark matter. We show that both observables cannot be explained within the pMSSM, and that they provide the leading contribution to the total goodness of the fit, with $χ^2_{δa_μ^{\mathrm{SUSY}}}\approx12$ and $χ^2_{\rm GCE}\approx 155$, respectively.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Local Quantum Thermometry using Unruh-De Witt detectors

We propose an operational definition for the local temperature of a quantum field employing Unruh-DeWitt detectors, as used in the study of the Unruh and Hawking effects. With this definition, an inhomogeneous quantum system in equilibrium can have different local temperatures, in analogy with the Tolman-Ehrenfest theorem from general relativity. We study the local temperature distribution on the ground state of hopping fermionic systems on a curved background. The observed temperature tends to zero as the thermometer-system coupling $g$ vanishes. Yet, for small but finite values of $g$, we show that the product of the observed local temperature and the logarithm of the local speed of light is approximately constant. Our predictions should be testable on ultracold atomic systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2016

Naturalness of MSSM dark matter

There exists a vast literature examining the electroweak (EW) fine-tuning problem in supersymmetric scenarios, but little concerned with the dark matter (DM) one, which should be combined with the former. In this paper, we study this problem in an, as much as possible, exhaustive and rigorous way. We have considered the MSSM framework, assuming that the LSP is the lightest neutralino, $χ_1^0$, and exploring the various possibilities for the mass and composition of $χ_1^0$, as well as different mechanisms for annihilation of the DM particles in the early Universe (well-tempered neutralinos, funnels and co-annihilation scenarios). We also present a discussion about the statistical meaning of the fine-tuning and how it should be computed for the DM abundance, and combined with the EW fine-tuning. The results are very robust and model-independent and favour some scenarios (like the h-funnel when $M_{χ_1^0}$ is not too close to $m_h/2$) with respect to others (such as the pure wino case). These features should be taken into account when one explores "natural SUSY" scenarios and their possible signatures at the LHC and in DM detection experiments.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2016

Reducing the fine-tuning of gauge-mediated SUSY breaking

Despite their appealing features, models with gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking (GMSB) typically present a high degree of fine-tuning, due to the initial absence of the top trilinear scalar couplings, $A_t=0$. In this paper, we carefully evaluate such a tuning, showing that is worse than per mil in the minimal model. Then, we examine some existing proposals to generate $A_t\neq 0$ term in this context. We find that, although the stops can be made lighter, usually the tuning does not improve (it may be even worse), with some exceptions, which involve the generation of $A_t$ at one loop or tree level. We examine both possibilities and propose a conceptually simplified version of the latter; which is arguably the optimum GMSB setup (with minimal matter content), concerning the fine-tuning issue. The resulting fine-tuning is better than one per mil, still severe but similar to other minimal supersymmetric standard model constructions. We also explore the so-called "little $A_t^2/m^2$ problem", i.e. the fact that a large $A_t$-term is normally accompanied by a similar or larger sfermion mass, which typically implies an increase in the fine-tuning. Finally, we find the version of GMSB for which this ratio is optimized, which, nevertheless, does not minimize the fine-tuning.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2015

On the importance of direct detection combined limits for spin independent and spin dependent dark matter interactions

In this work we show how the inclusion of dark matter (DM) direct detection upper bounds in a theoretically consistent manner can affect the allowed parameter space of a DM model. Traditionally, the limits from DM direct detection experiments on the elastic scattering cross section of DM particles as a function of their mass are extracted under simplifying assumptions. Relaxing the assumptions related to the DM particle nature, such as the neutron to proton ratio of the interactions, or the possibility of having similar contributions from the spin independent (SI) and spin dependent (SD) interactions can vary significantly the upper limits. Furthermore, it is known that astrophysical and nuclear uncertainties can also affect the upper bounds. To exemplify the impact of properly including all these factors, we have analysed two well motivated and popular DM scenarios: neutralinos in the NMSSM and a Z' portal with Dirac DM. We have found that the allowed parameter space of these models is subject to important variations when one includes both the SI and SD interactions at the same time, realistic neutron to proton ratios, as well as using different self-consistent speed distributions corresponding to popular DM halo density profiles, and distinct SD structure functions. Finally, we provide all the necessary information to include the upper bounds of SuperCDMS and LUX taking into account all these subtleties in the investigation of any particle physics model. The data for each experiment and example codes are available at this site http://goo.gl/1CDFYi, and their use is detailed in the appendices of this work.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2015

What is a Natural SUSY scenario?

The idea of "Natural SUSY", understood as a supersymmetric scenario where the fine-tuning is as mild as possible, is a reasonable guide to explore supersymmetric phenomenology. In this paper, we re-examine this issue in the context of the MSSM including several improvements, such as the mixing of the fine-tuning conditions for different soft terms and the presence of potential extra fine-tunings that must be combined with the electroweak one. We give tables and plots that allow to easily evaluate the fine-tuning and the corresponding naturalness bounds for any theoretical model defined at any high-energy (HE) scale. Then, we analyze in detail the complete fine-tuning bounds for the unconstrained MSSM, defined at any HE scale. We show that Natural SUSY does not demand light stops. Actually, an average stop mass below 800 GeV is disfavored, though one of the stops might be very light. Regarding phenomenology, the most stringent upper bound from naturalness is the one on the gluino mass, which typically sets the present level of fine-tuning at ${\cal O}(1\%)$. However, this result presents a strong dependence on the HE scale. E.g. if the latter is $10^7$ GeV the level of fine-tuning is $\sim$ four times less severe. Finally, the most robust result of Natural SUSY is by far that Higgsinos should be rather light, certainly below 700 GeV for a fine-tuning of ${\cal O}(1\%)$ or milder. Incidentally, this upper bound is not far from $\simeq1$ TeV, which is the value required if dark matter is made of Higgsinos.

hep-ph↗