Matter Effects in Solar Neutrino Active-Sterile Oscillations

We study the matter effects for solar neutrino oscillations in a general scheme, without any constraint on the number of sterile neutrinos and the mixing matrix elements, only assuming a realistic hierarchy of neutrino squared-mass differences in which the smallest squared-mass difference is effective in solar neutrino oscillations. The validity of the analytic results are illustrated with a numerical solution of the evolution equation in the simplest case of four-neutrino mixing with the realistic matter density profile inside the Sun.Comment: 3 pages 1 figure, based on talk YFL gave at Erice 2009 Neutrinos in Cosmology, in Astro-, Particle- and Nuclear Physic

Strongly first order phase transition in the singlet fermionic dark matter model after LUX

We investigate an extension of the standard model (SM) with a singlet fermionic dark matter (DM) particle which interacts with the SM sector through a real singlet scalar. The presence of a new scalar provides the possibility of generating a strongly first order phase transition needed for electroweak baryogenesis. Taking into account the latest Higgs search results at the LHC and the upper limits from the DM direct detection experiments especially that from the LUX experiment, and combining the constraints from the LEP experiment and the electroweak precision test, we explore the parameter space of this model which can lead to the strongly first order phase transition. Both the tree- and loop-level barriers are included in the calculations. We find that the allowed mass of the second Higgs particle is in the range $\sim 30-350\hbox{ GeV}$. The allowed mixing angle $\alpha$ between the SM-like Higgs particle and the second Higgs particle is constrained to $\alpha \lesssim 28^{\circ}$. The DM particle mass is predicted to be in the range $\sim 15-350\hbox{ GeV}$. The future XENON1T experiment can rule out a significant proportion of the parameter space of this model. The constraint can be relaxed only when the mass of the SM-like Higgs particle is degenerate with that of the second Higgs particle, or the mixing angle is small enough.Comment: 37 pages, 9 figures; v4: the version accepted by JHE