254 research outputs found
The sign of the day-night asymmetry for solar neutrinos
A qualitative understanding of the day-night asymmetry for solar neutrinos is
provided. The greater night flux in nu_e is seen to be a consequence of the
fact that the matter effect in the sun and that in the earth have the same
sign. It is shown in the adiabatic approximation for the sun that for all
values of the mixing angle theta_V between 0 and pi/2, the night flux of
neutrinos is greater than the day flux. Only for small values of theta_V where
the adiabatic approximation badly fails does the sign of the day-night
asymmetry reverse.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, typos corrected and references adde
On a Light Spinless Particle Coupled to Photons
A pseudoscalar or scalar particle that couples to two photons but not
to leptons, quarks and nucleons would have effects in most of the experiments
searching for axions, since these are based on the coupling.
We examine the laboratory, astrophysical and cosmological constraints on
and study whether it may constitute a substantial part of the dark matter. We
also generalize the interactions to possess gauge
invariance, and analyze the phenomenological implications.Comment: LaTex, 20p., 6 figures. Changes in sections 4, 5 and figure 2, our
bounds are now more stringent. To be published in Physical Review
Nonexotic Neutral Gauge Bosons
We study theoretical and experimental constraints on electroweak theories
including a new color-singlet and electrically-neutral gauge boson. We first
note that the electric charges of the observed fermions imply that any such Z'
boson may be described by a gauge theory in which the Abelian gauge groups are
the usual hypercharge along with another U(1) component in a kinetic-diagonal
basis. Assuming that the observed quarks and leptons have
generation-independent U(1) charges, and that no new fermions couple to the
standard model gauge bosons, we find that their U(1) charges form a
two-parameter family consistent with anomaly cancellation and viable fermion
masses, provided there are at least three right-handed neutrinos. We then
derive bounds on the Z' mass and couplings imposed by direct production and
Z-pole measurements. For generic charge assignments and a gauge coupling of
electromagnetic strength, the strongest lower bound on the Z' mass comes from
Z-pole measurements, and is of order 1 TeV. If the new U(1) charges are
proportional to B-L, however, there is no tree-level mixing between the Z and
Z', and the best bounds come from the absence of direct production at LEPII and
the Tevatron. If the U(1) gauge coupling is one or two orders of magnitude
below the electromagnetic one, these bounds are satisfied for most values of
the Z' mass.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures. A comparison with the LEP bounds on sneutrino
resonances is include
Inflation, cold dark matter, and the central density problem
A problem with high central densities in dark halos has arisen in the context
of LCDM cosmologies with scale-invariant initial power spectra. Although n=1 is
often justified by appealing to the inflation scenario, inflationary models
with mild deviations from scale-invariance are not uncommon and models with
significant running of the spectral index are plausible. Even mild deviations
from scale-invariance can be important because halo collapse times and
densities depend on the relative amount of small-scale power. We choose several
popular models of inflation and work out the ramifications for galaxy central
densities. For each model, we calculate its COBE-normalized power spectrum and
deduce the implied halo densities using a semi-analytic method calibrated
against N-body simulations. We compare our predictions to a sample of dark
matter-dominated galaxies using a non-parametric measure of the density. While
standard n=1, LCDM halos are overdense by a factor of 6, several of our example
inflation+CDM models predict halo densities well within the range preferred by
observations. We also show how the presence of massive (0.5 eV) neutrinos may
help to alleviate the central density problem even with n=1. We conclude that
galaxy central densities may not be as problematic for the CDM paradigm as is
sometimes assumed: rather than telling us something about the nature of the
dark matter, galaxy rotation curves may be telling us something about inflation
and/or neutrinos. An important test of this idea will be an eventual consensus
on the value of sigma_8, the rms overdensity on the scale 8 h^-1 Mpc. Our
successful models have values of sigma_8 approximately 0.75, which is within
the range of recent determinations. Finally, models with n>1 (or sigma_8 > 1)
are highly disfavored.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. Minor changes made to reflect referee's
Comments, error in Eq. (18) corrected, references updated and corrected,
conclusions unchanged. Version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D,
scheduled for 15 August 200
Decay of Z into Two Light Higgs Bosons
If the standard electroweak gauge model is extended to include two or more
Higgs doublets, there may be a neutral Higgs boson which is light (with a
mass of say 10 GeV) but the coupling is suppressed so that it has so far
escaped experimental detection. However, the effective coupling is
generally unsuppressed, hence the decay of Z into two light Higgs bosons plus a
fermion-antifermion pair may have an observable branching fraction, especially
if decays invisibly as for example in the recently proposed doublet Majoron
model.Comment: 10 pages, LaTex, figures available upon request to
[email protected]
Electromagnetic Polarization Effects due to Axion Photon Mixing
We investigate the effect of axions on the polarization of electromagnetic
waves as they propagate through astronomical distances. We analyze the change
in the dispersion of the electromagnetic wave due to its mixing with axions. We
find that this leads to a shift in polarization and turns out to be the
dominant effect for a wide range of frequencies. We analyze whether this effect
or the decay of photons into axions can explain the large scale anisotropies
which have been observed in the polarizations of quasars and radio galaxies. We
also comment on the possibility that the axion-photon mixing can explain the
dimming of distant supernovae.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur
Three-Neutrino Mixing and Combined Vacuum Oscillations and MSW Transitions of Solar Neutrinos
Assuming three flavour neutrino mixing takes place in vacuum, we investigate
the possibility that the solar nu_e take part in MSW transitions in the Sun due
to Delta m^2_{31} from 10^{-7} eV^2 to 10^{-4} eV^2, followed by long wave
length vacuum oscillations on the way to the Earth, triggered by Delta m^2_{21}
(or Delta m^2_{32}) from 10^{-12} eV^2 to 10^{-10} eV^2, Delta m^2_{31} and
Delta m^2_{21} (Delta m^2_{32}) being the corresponding neutrino mass squared
differences. The solar nu_e survival probability is shown to be described in
this case by a simple analytic expression. Depending on whether the vacuum
oscillations are due to Delta m^2_{21} or Delta m^2_{32} there are two very
different types of interplay between the MSW transitions and the vacuum
oscillations of the solar nu_e. Performing an analysis of the most recently
published solar neutrino data we have found several qualitatively new solutions
of the solar neutrino problem of the hybrid MSW transitions + vacuum
oscillations type. The solutions differ in the way the pp, 7Be and 8B neutrino
fluxes are affected by the transitions in the Sun and the oscillations in
vacuum. The specific features of the new solutions are discussed.Comment: 37 pages Latex, 16 Postscript Figure
Muon anomalous magnetic moment in the standard model with two Higgs doublets
The muon anomalous magnetic moment is investigated in the standard model with
two Higgs doublets (S2HDM) motivated from spontaneous CP violation. Thus all
the effective Yukawa couplings become complex. As a consequence of the non-zero
phase in the couplings, the one loop contribution from the neutral scalar
bosons could be positive and negative relying on the CP phases. The
interference between one and two loop diagrams can be constructive in a large
parameter space of CP-phases. This will result in a significant contribution to
muon anomalous magnetic moment even in the flavor conserving process with a
heavy neutral scalar boson ( 200 GeV) once the effective muon Yukawa
coupling is large (). In general, the one loop contributions
from lepton flavor changing scalar interactions become more important. In
particular, when all contributions are positive in a reasonable parameter space
of CP phases, the recently reported 2.6 sigma experiment vs. theory deviation
can be easily explained even for a heavy scalar boson with a relative small
Yukawa coupling in the S2HDM.Comment: 8 pages, RevTex file, 5 figures, published version Phys. Rev. D 54
(2001) 11501
A complete 3D numerical study of the effects of pseudoscalar-photon mixing on quasar polarizations
We present the results of three-dimensional simulations of quasar
polarizations in the presence of pseudoscalar-photon mixing in the
intergalactic medium. The intergalactic magnetic field is assumed to be
uncorrelated in wave vector space but correlated in real space. Such a field
may be obtained if its origin is primordial. Furthermore we assume that the
quasars, located at cosmological distances, have negligible initial
polarization. In the presence of pseudoscalar-photon mixing we show, through a
direct comparison with observations, that this may explain the observed large
scale alignments in quasar polarizations within the framework of big bang
cosmology. We find that the simulation results give a reasonably good fit to
the observed data.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, significant changes, to appear in EPJ
Effective Lagrangian Approach to the Theory of Eta Photoproduction in the Region
We investigate eta photoproduction in the resonance region
within the effective Lagrangian approach (ELA), wherein leading contributions
to the amplitude at the tree level are taken into account. These include the
nucleon Born terms and the leading -channel vector meson exchanges as the
non-resonant pieces. In addition, we consider five resonance contributions in
the - and - channel; besides the dominant , these are:
and . The amplitudes for the
and the photoproduction near threshold have significant
differences, even as they share common contributions, such as those of the
nucleon Born terms. Among these differences, the contribution to the
photoproduction of the -channel excitation of the is the most
significant. We find the off-shell properties of the spin-3/2 resonances to be
important in determining the background contributions. Fitting our effective
amplitude to the available data base allows us to extract the quantity
, characteristic of the
photoexcitation of the resonance and its decay into the
-nucleon channel, of interest to precise tests of hadron models. At the
photon point, we determine it to be from
the old data base, and from a
combination of old data base and new Bates data. We obtain the helicity
amplitude for to be from the old data base, and from the combination of the old data base and new Bates
data, compared with the results of the analysis of pion photoproduction
yielding , in the same units.Comment: 43 pages, RevTeX, 9 figures available upon request, to appear in
Phys. Rev.
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