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Vincenzo Cirigliano

Publications and source records attributed to Vincenzo Cirigliano.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

Superfluid Heat Conduction and the Cooling of Magnetized Neutron Stars

We report on a new mechanism for heat conduction in the neutron star crust. We find that collective modes of superfluid neutron matter, called superfluid phonons (sPhs), can influence heat conduction in magnetized neutron stars. They can dominate the heat conduction transverse to magnetic field when the magnetic field $B \gsim 10^{13}$ G. At density $ρ\simeq 10^{12}-10^{14} $ g/cm$^3$ the conductivity due to sPhs is significantly larger than that due to lattice phonons and is comparable to electron conductivity when temperature $\simeq 10^8$ K. This new mode of heat conduction can limit the surface anisotropy in highly magnetized neutron stars. Cooling curves of magnetized neutron stars with and without superfluid heat conduction could show observationally discernible differences.

nucl-th↗

Electromagnetic effects in Kl3 decays

We study the radiative corrections to all Kl3 decay modes to leading non-trivial order in the chiral effective field theory, working with a fully inclusive prescription on real photon emission. We present new results for Kmu3 modes and update previous results on Ke3 modes. Our analysis provides important theoretical input for the extraction of the CKM element Vus from Kl3 decays.

hep-ph↗

Quantum Resonant Leptogenesis and Minimal Lepton Flavour Violation

It has been recently shown that the quantum Boltzmann equations may be relevant for the leptogenesis scenario. In particular, they lead to a time-dependent CP asymmetry which depends upon the previous dynamics of the system. This memory effect in the CP asymmetry is particularly important in resonant leptogenesis where the asymmetry is generated by the decays of nearly mass-degenerate right-handed neutrinos. We study the impact of the non-trivial time evolution of the CP asymmetry in the so-called Minimal Lepton Flavour Violation framework where the charged-lepton and the neutrino Yukawa couplings are the only irreducible sources of lepton-flavour symmetry breaking and resonant leptogenesis is achieved. We show that significant quantitative differences arise with respect to the case in which the time dependence of the CP asymmetry is neglected.

hep-ph↗

pi/K -> e nu branching ratios to O(e^2 p^4) in Chiral Perturbation Theory

We calculate the ratios R_{e/mu}^{(P)} = Gamma(P -> e nu)/Gamma (P -> mu nu) (P=pi,K) in Chiral Perturbation Theory to order e^2 p^4. We complement the one- and two-loop effective theory results with a matching calculation of the local counterterm, performed within the large-$N_C$ expansion. We find R_{e/mu}^{(π)} = (1.2352 \pm 0.0001)*10^{-4} and R_{e/mu}^{(K)} = (2.477 \pm 0.001)*10^{-5}, with uncertainty induced by the matching procedure and chiral power counting. Given the sensitivity of upcoming new measurements, our results provide a clean baseline to detect or constrain effects from weak-scale new physics in these rare decays. As a by-product, we also update the theoretical analysis of the individual pi/K -> \ell nu modes.

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The Standard Model prediction for R_{e/mu}^{(pi,K)}

We study the ratios R_{e/mu}^{(P)} = Gamma(P -> e nu [gamma])/Gamma(P -> mu nu [gamma]) (P=pi,K) in Chiral Perturbation Theory to order e^2 p^4. We complement the two-loop effective theory results with a matching calculation of the counterterm, finding R_{e/mu}^{(pi)} = (1.2352 \pm 0.0001)*10^(-4) and R_{e/mu}^{(K)} = (2.477 \pm 0.001)*10^(-5).

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CP violation and Leptogenesis in models with Minimal Lepton Flavour Violation

We investigate the viability of leptogenesis in models with three heavy right-handed neutrinos, where the charged-lepton and the neutrino Yukawa couplings are the only irreducible sources of lepton-flavour symmetry breaking (Minimal Lepton Flavour Violation hypothesis). We show that in this framework a specific type of resonant leptogenesis can be successfully accomplished. For natural values of the free parameters, this mechanism requires a high right-handed neutrino mass scale ($M_ν\gsim 10^{12}$ GeV). By means of a general effective field theory approach, we analyse the impact of the CP violating phases responsible for leptogenesis on the low-energy FCNC observables and derive bounds on the scale of flavour violating new physics interactions. As a result of the high value of the scale of total lepton-number violation, in this class of models the $μ\to eγ$ decay is expected to be close to the present exclusion limit (under the additional assumption of new particles carrying lepton flavour at the TeV scale).

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Grand Unification and the Principle of Minimal Flavor Violation

Minimal Flavor Violation is an attractive approach to suppress unacceptably large flavor changing neutral currents from beyond the standard model physics at the TeV scale. It can be used in theories with low energy supersymmetry, multi Higgs doublet theories and other extensions of the minimal standard model. We show how minimal flavor violation can be implemented in Grand Unified theories.

hep-ph↗

Baryogenesis, Electric Dipole Moments and Dark Matter in the MSSM

We study the implications for electroweak baryogenesis (EWB) within the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) of present and future searches for the permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) of the electron, for neutralino dark matter, and for supersymmetric particles at high energy colliders. We show that there exist regions of the MSSM parameter space that are consistent with both present two-loop EDM limits and the relic density and that allow for successful EWB through resonant chargino and neutralino processes at the electroweak phase transition. We also show that under certain conditions the lightest neutralino may be simultaneously responsible for both the baryon asymmetry and relic density. We give present constraints on chargino/neutralino-induced EWB implied by the flux of energetic neutrinos from the Sun, the prospective constraints from future neutrino telescopes and ton-sized direct detection experiments, and the possible signatures at the Large Hadron Collider and International Linear Collider.

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Yukawa and Tri-scalar Processes in Electroweak Baryogenesis

We derive the contributions to the quantum transport equations for electroweak baryogenesis due to decays and inverse decays induced by tri-scalar and Yukawa interactions. In the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), these contributions give rise to couplings between Higgs and fermion supermultiplet densities, thereby communicating the effects of CP-violation in the Higgs sector to the baryon sector. We show that the decay and inverse decay-induced contributions that arise at zeroth order in the strong coupling, α_s, can be substantially larger than the O(α_s) terms that are generated by scattering processes and that are usually assumed to dominate. We revisit the often-used approximation of fast Yukawa-induced processes and show that for realistic parameter choices it is not justified. We solve the resulting quantum transport equations numerically with special attention on the impact of Yukawa rates and study the dependence of the baryon-to-entropy ratio Y_B on MSSM parameters.

hep-ph↗

Phenomenology of Minimal Lepton Flavor Violation

We extend the effective theory of Minimal Lepton Flavor Violation (MLFV) by including four-lepton operators. We compute the rates for mu -> 3 e and tau -> 3 ell decays and point out several new ways to test the hypothesis of MLFV. We also investigate to what extent it will be possible from (future) experimental information to pin down the contributions of different effective operators. In particular we look for experimental handles on quark-lepton operators of the type $\bar{ell}_i Γ\ell_j \times \bar q Γq$ by working out their contribution to hadronic processes such as tau -> mu pi^0, pi^0 -> mu^- e^+, Y -> tau^- mu^+, as well as to purely leptonic decays such as mu -> 3 e through loop effects.

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How Magnetic is the Dirac Neutrino?

We derive model-independent, "naturalness" upper bounds on the magnetic moments μ_νof Dirac neutrinos generated by physics above the scale of electroweak symmetry breaking. In the absence of fine-tuning of effective operator coefficients, we find that current information on neutrino mass implies that |μ_ν| < 10^(-14) Bohr magnetons. This bound is several orders of magnitude stronger than those obtained from analyses of solar and reactor neutrino data and astrophysical observations.

hep-ph↗

Factorization in exclusive semileptonic radiative B decays

We derive a new factorization relation for the semileptonic radiative decay B -> π\ell νγin the kinematical region of a slow pion p_π~ Λand an energetic photon E_γ>> Λ, working at leading order in Λ/m_b. In the limit of a soft pion, the nonperturbative matrix element appearing in this relation can be computed using chiral perturbation theory. We present a phenomenological study of this decay, which may be important for a precise determination of the exclusive nonradiative decay.

hep-ph↗

Minimal Flavor Violation in the Lepton Sector

We extend the notion of Minimal Flavor Violation to the lepton sector. We introduce a symmetry principle which allows us to express lepton flavor violation in the charged lepton sector in terms of neutrino masses and mixing angles. We explore the dependence of the rates for flavor changing radiative charged lepton decays (ell(i) -> ell(j) + gamma) and mu-to-e conversion in nuclei on the scales for total lepton number violation, lepton flavor violation and the neutrino masses and mixing angles. Measurable rates are obtained when the scale for total lepton number violation is much larger than the scale for lepton flavor violation.

hep-ph↗

Resonant Relaxation in Electroweak Baryogenesis

We compute the leading, chiral charge-changing relaxation term in the quantum transport equations that govern electroweak baryogenesis using the closed time path formulation of non-equilibrium quantum field theory. We show that the relaxation transport coefficients may be resonantly enhanced under appropriate conditions on electroweak model parameters and that such enhancements can mitigate the impact of similar enhancements in the CP-violating source terms. We also develop a power counting in the time and energy scales entering electroweak baryogenesis and include effects through second order in ratios $ε$ of the small and large scales. We illustrate the implications of the resonantly enhanced ${\cal O}(ε^2)$ terms using the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, focusing on the interplay between the requirements of baryogenesis and constraints obtained from collider studies, precision electroweak data, and electric dipole moment searches.

hep-ph↗

Improved Determination of the Electroweak Penguin Contribution to epsilon'/epsilon in the Chiral Limit

We perform a finite energy sum rule analysis of the flavor ud two-point V-A current correlator, Delta Pi (Q^2). The analysis, which is performed using both the ALEPH and OPAL databases for the V-A spectral function, Delta rho, allows us to extract the dimension six V-A OPE coefficient, a_6, which is related to the matrix element of the electroweak penguin operator, Q_8, by chiral symmetry. The result for a_6 leads directly to the improved (chiral limit) determination epsilon'/epsilon = (- 15.0 +- 2.7) 10^{-4}. Determination of higher dimension OPE contributions also allows us to perform an independent test using a low-scale constrained dispersive analysis, which provides a highly nontrivial consistency check of the results.

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Comment on `Analysis of O(p^2) Corrections to <2pi|Q_{7,8}|K>'

We extend in several respects our earlier work on O(p^2) corrections to matrix elements of the electroweak penguin operator O_{ewp}. First, to facilitate comparison with certain lattice studies we calculate O(p^2) corrections to in the SU(3) limit of equal light quark masses. Next, we demonstrate how an apparent disagreement in the literature regarding whether higher order chiral contributions increase or decrease <2pi_{I=2}|O_{ewp}|K> is simply a consequence of how the leading order chiral amplitude is defined. Finally, we address an aspect of the epsilon'/epsilon problem by estimating O(p^2) corrections to recent determinations of <2pi_{I=2}|Q_{7,8}|K> which were carried out in the chiral limit.

hep-ph↗

Determination of <2pi_{I=2}|Q_{7,8}|K0> in the Chiral Limit

We reconsider the dispersive evaluation of the weak matrix elements <2pi_{I=2}|Q_{7,8}|K0> in the chiral limit. The perturbative matching is accomplished fully within the scheme dependence used in the two loop weak OPE calculations. The effects of dimension eight (and higher dimension) operators are fully accounted for. We perform a numerical determination of the weak matrix elements using our dispersive sum rules fortified by constraints from the classical chiral sum rules. A careful assessment of the attendant uncertainties is given.

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