arXiv subjects

Silvia Pascoli

Publications and source records attributed to Silvia Pascoli.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Recipes and Ingredients for Neutrino Mass at Loop Level

The large hierarchy between the neutrino mass scale and that of the other fermions seems to be unnatural from a theoretical point of view. Various strategies have been devised in order to generate naturally small values of neutrino masses. One of these techniques is neutrino mass generation at the loop level which requires a mechanism, e.g., a symmetry, to forbid the lower order contributions. Here, we study in detail the conditions on this type of symmetries. We put special emphasis on the discrete Z_n symmetries as a simple example but our results can be also extended to more general groups. We find that regardless of the details of the symmetry, in certain cases the existence of a lower order contribution to neutrino masses can be determined by the topology of the diagrams with a given number of loops. We discuss the lepton flavor violating rare decays as well as (g-2)_μin this class of models, which generically appear at the one loop level. Typically the imposed symmetry has important implications for dark matter, with the possibility of stabilizing one or even multiple dark matter candidates.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2013

Linear perturbations in Galileon gravity models

We study the cosmology of Galileon modified gravity models in the linear perturbation regime. We derive the fully covariant and gauge invariant perturbed field equations using two different methods, which give consistent results, and solve them using a modified version of the {\tt CAMB} code. We find that, in addition to modifying the background expansion history and therefore shifting the positions of the acoustic peaks in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum, the Galileon field can cluster strongly from early times, and causes the Weyl gravitational potential to grow, rather than decay, at late times. This leaves clear signatures in the low-$l$ CMB power spectrum through the modified integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, strongly enhances the linear growth of matter density perturbations and makes distinctive predictions for other cosmological signals such as weak lensing and the power spectrum of density fluctuations. The quasi-static approximation is shown to work quite well from small to the near-horizon scales. We demonstrate that Galileon models display a rich phenomenology due to the large parameter space and the sensitive dependence of the model predictions on the Galileon parameters. Our results show that some Galileon models are already ruled out by present data and that future higher significance galaxy clustering, ISW and lensing measurements will place strong constraints on Galileon gravity.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Understanding the performance of the low energy neutrino factory: the dependence on baseline distance and stored-muon energy

Motivated by recent hints of large θ13 from the T2K, MINOS and Double Chooz experiments, we study the physics reach of a Low Energy Neutrino Factory (LENF) and its dependence on the chosen baseline distance, L, and stored-muon energy, E_μ, in order to ascertain the configuration of the optimal LENF. In particular, we study the performance of the LENF over a range of baseline distances from 1000 km to 4000 km and stored-muon energies from 4 GeV to 25 GeV, connecting the early studies of the LENF (1300 km, 4.5 GeV) to those of the conventional, high-energy neutrino factory design (4000 km and 7000 km, 25 GeV). Three different magnetized detector options are considered: a Totally-Active Scintillator Detector (TASD) and two models of a liquid-argon detector distinguished by optimistic and conservative performance estimates. In order to compare the sensitivity of each set-up, we compute the full δ-dependent discovery contours for the determination of non-zero θ13, CP-violating values of δ and the mass hierarchy. In the case of large θ13 with sin^2(2*θ13) = (few)*10^{-3}, the LENF provides a strong discovery potential over the majority of the L-E_μ parameter space and is a promising candidate for the future generation of long baseline experiments aimed at discovering CP-violation and the mass hierarchy, and at making a precise determination of the oscillation parameters.

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arXiv2012

European Strategy for Accelerator-Based Neutrino Physics

Massive neutrinos reveal physics beyond the Standard Model, which could have deep consequences for our understanding of the Universe. Their study should therefore receive the highest level of priority in the European Strategy. The discovery and study of leptonic CP violation and precision studies of the transitions between neutrino flavours require high intensity, high precision, long baseline accelerator neutrino experiments. The community of European neutrino physicists involved in oscillation experiments is strong enough to support a major neutrino long baseline project in Europe, and has an ambitious, competitive and coherent vision to propose. Following the 2006 European Strategy for Particle Physics (ESPP) recommendations, two complementary design studies have been carried out: LAGUNA/LBNO, focused on deep underground detector sites, and EUROnu, focused on high intensity neutrino facilities. LAGUNA LBNO recommends, as first step, a conventional neutrino beam CN2PY from a CERN SPS North Area Neutrino Facility (NANF) aimed at the Pyhasalmi mine in Finland. A sterile neutrino search experiment which could also be situated in the CERN north area has been proposed (ICARUS-NESSIE) using a two detector set-up, allowing a definitive answer to the 20 year old question open by the LSND experiment. EUROnu concluded that a 10 GeV Neutrino Factory, aimed at a magnetized neutrino detector situated, also, at a baseline of around 2200 km (+-30%), would constitute the ultimate neutrino facility; it recommends that the next 5 years be devoted to the R&D, preparatory experiments and implementation study, in view of a proposal before the next ESPP update. The coherence and quality of this program calls for the continuation of neutrino beams at CERN after the CNGS, and for a high priority support from CERN and the member states to the experiments and R&D program.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2012

A comparative study of long-baseline superbeams within LAGUNA for large $θ_{13}$

The Daya Bay and RENO experiments have recently observed a non-zero $θ_{13}$ at more than $5σ$ CL. This has important consequences for future neutrino oscillation experiments. We analyze these within the LAGUNA design study which considers seven possible locations for a European neutrino observatory for proton decay, neutrino, and astroparticle physics. The megaton-scale detector would be an ideal target for a CERN-based neutrino beam with baselines ranging from 130 km to 2300 km. We perform a detailed study to assess the physics reach of the three detector options - a 440 kton water Čerenkov, a 100 kton liquid argon and a 50 kton liquid scintillator detector - at each of the possible locations, taking into account the recent measurement of $θ_{13}$. We study the impact of the beam properties and detector performances on the sensitivity to CP-violation and the mass hierarchy. We find that a liquid argon or water Čerenkov detector can make a $3σ$ discovery of CP violation for $60%-70%$ of the parameter space for any of the baselines under consideration, although the results for the liquid argon detector placed at 130 km are slightly worse and only $40%-50%$ is achieved in this case. The performance of the liquid scintillator detector is affected by its level of neutral-current background at all baselines. A $3σ$ determination of the mass hierarchy is possible for all values of $δ$, for the values of $θ_{13}$ favoured at $3σ$ by Daya Bay and RENO, for almost all setups with $L\gtrsim 650$ km.

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arXiv2012

The next-generation liquid-scintillator neutrino observatory LENA

We propose the liquid-scintillator detector LENA (Low Energy Neutrino Astronomy) as a next-generation neutrino observatory on the scale of 50 kt. The outstanding successes of the Borexino and KamLAND experiments demonstrate the large potential of liquid-scintillator detectors in low-energy neutrino physics. LENA's physics objectives comprise the observation of astrophysical and terrestrial neutrino sources as well as the investigation of neutrino oscillations. In the GeV energy range, the search for proton decay and long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments complement the low-energy program. Based on the considerable expertise present in European and international research groups, the technical design is sufficiently mature to allow for an early start of detector realization.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2011

Determining the dark matter mass with DeepCore

Cosmological and astrophysical observations provide increasing evidence of the existence of dark matter in our Universe. Dark matter particles with a mass above a few GeV can be captured by the Sun, accumulate in the core, annihilate, and produce high energy neutrinos either directly or by subsequent decays of Standard Model particles. We investigate the prospects for indirect dark matter detection in the IceCube/DeepCore neutrino telescope and its capabilities to determine the dark matter mass.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Long baseline Super-Beam experiments in Europe within LAGUNA

We explore the physics reach of several possible configurations for a Super-Beam experiment in Europe, focusing on the possibilities of discovering $θ_{13}$, CP violation in the leptonic sector and the ordering of neutrino mass eigenstates. We consider the three different detector technologies: Water Čerenkov, Liquid Argon and Liquid Scintillator, and seven possible sites in Europe which would be able to host such a detector underground. The distances to these sites from CERN, where the beam would be originated, go from 130 km to 2300 km. The neutrino flux is optimized in each case as to match the first oscillation peak for each of the baselines under consideration. We also study the impact of several experimental factors in the performance of each detector technology. These include the influence of the spectral information, the rejection efficiencies for the neutral-current backgrounds, the ratio between running times in neutrino and antineutrino modes and the systematic uncertainties on the signal and backgrounds, among others.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Testing gravity using the growth of large scale structure in the Universe

Future galaxy surveys hope to distinguish between the dark energy and modified gravity scenarios for the accelerating expansion of the Universe using the distortion of clustering in redshift space. The aim is to model the form and size of the distortion to infer the rate at which large scale structure grows. We test this hypothesis and assess the performance of current theoretical models for the redshift space distortion using large volume N-body simulations of the gravitational instability process. We simulate competing cosmological models which have identical expansion histories - one is a quintessence dark energy model with a scalar field and the other is a modified gravity model with a time varying gravitational constant - and demonstrate that they do indeed produce different redshift space distortions. This is the first time this approach has been verified using a technique that can follow the growth of structure at the required level of accuracy. Our comparisons show that theoretical models for the redshift space distortion based on linear perturbation theory give a surprisingly poor description of the simulation results. Furthermore, the application of such models can give rise to catastrophic systematic errors leading to incorrect interpretation of the observations. We show that an improved model is able to extract the correct growth rate. Further enhancements to theoretical models of redshift space distortions, calibrated against simulations, are needed to fully exploit the forthcoming high precision clustering measurements.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

AMEND: A Model Explaining Neutrino masses and Dark matter testable at the LHC and MEG

Despite being very successful in explaining the wide range of precision experimental results obtained so far, the Standard Model (SM) of elementary particles fails to address two of the greatest observations of the recent decades: tiny but nonzero neutrino masses and the well-known problem of missing mass in the Universe. Typically the new models beyond the SM explain only one of these observations. Instead, in the present article, we take the view that they both point towards the same new extension of the Standard Model. The new particles introduced are responsible simultaneously for neutrino masses and for the dark matter of the Universe. The stability of dark matter and the smallness of neutrino masses are guaranteed by a U(1) global symmetry, broken to a remnant Z_2. The canonical seesaw mechanism is forbidden and neutrino masses emerge at the loop level being further suppressed by the small explicit breaking of the U(1) symmetry. The new particles and interactions are invoked at the electroweak scale and lead to rich phenomenology in colliders, in lepton flavour violating rare decays and in direct and indirect dark matter searches, making the model testable in the coming future.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2010

Modelling redshift space distortions in hierarchical cosmologies

The anisotropy of clustering in redshift space provides a direct measure of the growth rate of large scale structure in the Universe. Future galaxy redshift surveys will make high precision measurements of these distortions, and will potentially allow us to distinguish between different scenarios for the accelerating expansion of the Universe. Accurate predictions are needed in order to distinguish between competing cosmological models. We study the distortions in the redshift space power spectrum in $Λ$CDM and quintessence dark energy models, using large volume N-body simulations, and test predictions for the form of the redshift space distortions. We find that the linear perturbation theory prediction by Kaiser (1987) is a poor fit to the measured distortions, even on surprisingly large scales $k \ge 0.05 h$Mpc$^{-1}$. An improved model for the redshift space power spectrum, including the non-linear velocity divergence power spectrum, is presented and agrees with the power spectra measured from the simulations up to $k \sim 0.2 h$Mpc$^{-1}$. We have found a density-velocity relation which is cosmology independent and which relates the non-linear velocity divergence spectrum to the non-linear matter power spectrum. We provide a formula which generates the non-linear velocity divergence $P(k)$ at any redshift, using only the non-linear matter power spectrum and the linear growth factor at the desired redshift. This formula is accurate to better than 5% on scales $k<0.2 h $Mpc$^{-1}$ for all the cosmological models discussed in this paper. Our results will extend the statistical power of future galaxy surveys.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

On the improvement of the low energy neutrino factory

The low energy neutrino factory has been proposed as a very sensitive setup for future searches for CP violation and matter effects. Here we study how its performance is affected when the experimental specifications of the setup are varied. Most notably, we have considered the addition of the 'platinum' nu_{mu} -> nu_{e} channel. We find that, whilst theoretically the extra channel provides very useful complementary information and helps to lift degeneracies, its practical usefulness is lost when considering realistic background levels. Conversely, an increase in statistics in the 'golden' nu_{e} -> nu_{mu} channel and, to some extent, an improvement in the energy resolution, lead to an important increase in the performance of the facility, given the rich energy dependence of the 'golden' channel at these energies. We show that a low energy neutrino factory with a baseline of 1300 km, muon energy of 4.5 GeV, and either a 20 kton totally active scintillating detector or 100 kton liquid argon detector, can have outstanding sensitivity to the neutrino oscillation parameters theta13, delta and the mass hierarchy. For our estimated exposure of 2.8 x 10^{23} kton x decays per muon polarity, the low energy neutrino factory has sensitivity to theta13 and delta for sin^{2}(2theta13) > 10^{-4} and to the mass hierarchy for sin^{2}(2theta13) > 10^{-3}.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2009

Simulations of Quintessential Cold Dark Matter: beyond the cosmological constant

We study 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. We incorporate these effects into our simulations in stages to isolate the impact of each on the growth of structure. 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 that are different from $Λ$CDM both today and at high redshifts $(z \sim 1000)$ and which feature late $(z<2)$, rapid transitions in the equation of state, can have identical baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO) peak positions to those in $Λ$CDM. We find that these models have higher abundances of dark matter haloes at $z>0$ compared to $Λ$CDM and so measurements of the mass function should allow us to distinguish these quintessence models from a cosmological constant. However, we find that a second class of quintessence models, whose equation of state makes an early $(z>2)$ rapid transition to $w=-1$, cannot be distinguished from $Λ$CDM using measurements of the mass function or the BAO, even if these models have non-negligible amounts of dark energy at early times.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2009

The Search for Heavy Majorana Neutrinos

The Majorana nature of neutrinos can be experimentally verified only via {\it lepton-number} violating processes involving charged leptons. We study 36 lepton-number violating ($\lv$) processes from the decays of tau leptons and pseudoscalar mesons. These decays are absent in the Standard Model but, in presence of Majorana neutrinos in the mass range $\sim 100 \mev$ to $5 \gev$, the rates for these processes would be enhanced due to their resonant contribution. We calculate the transition rates and branching fractions and compare them to the current bounds from direct experimental searches for $\dl=2$ tau and rare meson decays. The experimental non-observation of such $\lv$ processes places stringent bounds on the Majorana neutrino mass and mixing and we summarize the existing limits. We also extend the search to hadron collider experiments. We find that, at the Tevatron with $8 {fb}^{-1}$ integrated luminosity, there could be $2σ$ ($5σ$) sensitivity for resonant production of a Majorana neutrino in the $μ^\pm μ^\pm$ modes in the mass range of $\sim 10 - 180 {\gev} (10 - 120 {\gev})$. This reach can be extended to $\sim 10 - 375 {\gev} (10 - 250 mbox{\gev})$ at the LHC of 14 TeV with $100 {fb}^{-1}$. The production cross section at the LHC of 10 TeV is also presented for comparison. We study the $μ^\pm e^\pm$ modes as well and find that the signal could be large enough even taking into account the current bound from neutrinoless double-beta decay. The signal from the gauge boson fusion channel $W^+ W^+\to \ell^+_1 \ell^+_2$ at the LHC is found to be very weak given the rather small mixing parameters. We comment on the search strategy when a $τ$ lepton is involved in the final state.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Sterile Neutrinos in Light of Recent Cosmological and Oscillation Data: a Multi-Flavor Scheme Approach

Light sterile neutrinos might mix with the active ones and be copiously produced in the early Universe. In the present paper, a detailed multi-flavor analysis of sterile neutrino production is performed. Making some justified approximations allows us to consider not only neutrino interactions with the primeval medium and neutrino coherence breaking effects, but also oscillation effects arising from the presence of three light (mostly-active) neutrino states mixed with two heavier (mostly-sterile) states. First, we emphasize the underlying physics via an analytical description of sterile neutrino abundances that is valid for cases with small mixing between active and sterile neutrinos. Then, we study in detail the phenomenology of (3+2) sterile neutrino models in light of short-baseline oscillation data, including the LSND and MiniBooNE results. Finally, by using the information provided by this analysis, we obtain the expected sterile neutrino cosmological abundances and then contrast them with the most recent available data from Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure observations. We conclude that (3+2) models are significantly more disfavored by the internal inconsistencies between sterile neutrino interpretations of appearance and disappearance short-baseline data themselves, rather than by the used cosmological data.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Reconstructing WIMP properties with neutrino detectors

If the dark matter of the Universe is constituted by weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP), they would accumulate in the core of astrophysical objects as the Sun and annihilate into particles of the Standard Model. High-energy neutrinos would be produced in the annihilations, both directly and via the subsequent decay of leptons, quarks and bosons. While Cherenkov neutrino detectors/telescopes can only count the number of neutrinos above some threshold energy, we study how, by exploiting their energy resolution, large magnetized iron calorimeter and, possibly, liquid argon and totally active scintillator detectors, planned for future long baseline neutrino experiments, have the capability of reconstructing the neutrino spectrum and might provide information on the dark matter properties. In particular, for a given value of the WIMP mass, we show that a future iron calorimeter could break the degeneracy between the WIMP-proton cross section and the annihilation branching ratios, present for Cherenkov detectors, and constrain their values with good accuracy.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

A Neutrino Factory for both Large and Small theta_13

An analysis of the neutrino oscillation physics capability of a low energy Neutrino Factory is presented, including a first simulation of the detector efficiency and event energy threshold. The sensitivity of the physics reach to the presence of backgrounds is also studied. We consider a representative baseline of 1480 km, we use muons with 4.12 GeV energy and we exploit a very conservative estimate of the energy resolution of the detector. Our analysis suggests an impressive physics reach for this setup, which can eliminate degenerate solutions, for both large and small values of the mixing angle theta_13, and can determine leptonic CP violation and the neutrino mass hierarchy with extraordinary sensitivity.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

MeV sterile neutrinos in low reheating temperature cosmological scenarios

It is commonly assumed that the cosmological and astrophysical bounds on the mixings of sterile with active neutrinos are much more stringent than those obtained from laboratory measurements. We point out that in scenarios with a very low reheating temperature T_RH << 100 MeV at the end of (the last episode of) inflation or entropy creation, the abundance of sterile neutrinos becomes largely suppressed with respect to that obtained within the standard framework. Thus, in this case cosmological bounds become much less stringent than usually assumed, allowing sterile neutrinos to be ``visible'' in future experiments. Here, we concentrate on massive (mostly sterile) neutrinos heavier than 1 MeV.

astro-ph↗