Seesaw mechanism and the baryon asymmetry

I review the present understanding of connection between the non-zero neutrino masses and the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. The state-of-art results are presented for the standard thermal leptogenesis.Comment: Talk in Seesaw25, Paris, June 10-11, 200

Doubly Charged Higgsino Pair Production and Decays in e+e- Collisions

In supersymmetric grand unified theories, light higgsino multiplets generally exist in addition to the familiar chargino/neutralino multiplets of the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model. The new multiplets may include doubly charged states $\tilde\Delta^{\pm\pm}$ and $\tilde\delta^{\pm\pm}$. We study the properties and the production channels of these novel higgsinos in $e^+e^-$ and $\gamma\gamma$ collisions, and investigate how their properties can be analyzed experimentally.Comment: LATEX, 25 pages, ps figures include

Evolving Planck Mass in Classically Scale-Invariant Theories

We consider classically scale-invariant theories with non-minimally coupled scalar fields, where the Planck mass and the hierarchy of physical scales are dynamically generated. The classical theories possess a fixed point, where scale invariance is spontaneously broken. In these theories, however, the Planck mass becomes unstable in the presence of explicit sources of scale invariance breaking, such as non-relativistic matter and cosmological constant terms. We quantify the constraints on such classical models from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis that lead to an upper bound on the non-minimal coupling and require trans-Planckian field values. We show that quantum corrections to the scalar potential can stabilise the fixed point close to the minimum of the Coleman-Weinberg potential. The time-averaged motion of the evolving fixed point is strongly suppressed, thus the limits on the evolving gravitational constant from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and other measurements do not presently constrain this class of theories. Field oscillations around the fixed point, if not damped, contribute to the dark matter density of the Universe.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figures, version published in JHE

Implications of effective axial-vector coupling of gluon for ttˉt\bar{t} spin polarizations at the LHC

We analyze the impact of effective axial-vector coupling of the gluon on spin polarization observables in $t\bar{t}$ pair production at the LHC. Working at leading order in QCD, we compute the $t\bar{t}$ spin-correlation and left-right spin asymmetry coefficients in the helicity basis in the laboratory frame as functions of the new physics scale $\Lambda$ associated with this coupling. We found that the $t\bar{t}$ invariant mass dependent asymmetries are more sensitive to the scale $\Lambda$ than the corresponding inclusive ones, in particular when suitable cuts selecting high $t\bar{t}$ invariant mass regions are imposed. In the context of this scenario, we show that the LHC has potential either to confirm or to rule out the Tevatron FB top asymmetry anomaly by analyzing the $t\bar{t}$ spin-correlation and left-right polarization asymmetries. On the other hand, stringent lower bound on the new physics scale $\Lambda$ can be set in this scenario if no significant deviations from the SM predictions for those observables will be measured.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, same as published version in PRD. Few modifications in the text and one new reference adde