The Invisible Dilaton

International audienceWe analyse the dynamics of a light scalar field responsible for the $\mu$ term of the Higgs potential and coupled to matter via the Higgs-portal mechanism. We find that this dilaton model is stable under radiative corrections induced by the standard model particle masses. When the background value of the scalar field is stabilised at the minimum of the scalar potential, the scalar field fluctuations only couple quadratically to the massive fields of the standard model preventing the scalar direct decay into standard model particles. Cosmologically and prior to the electroweak symmetry breaking, the scalar field rolls down along its effective potential before eventually oscillating and settling down at the electroweak minimum. These oscillations can be at the origin of dark matter due to the initial misalignment of the scalar field compared to the electroweak minimum, and we find that, when the mass of the scalar field is less than the eV scale and acts as a condensate behaving like dark matter on large scales, the scalar particles cannot thermalise with the standard model thermal bath. As matter couples in a composition-dependent manner to the oscillating scalar, this could lead to a violation of the equivalence principle aboard satellites such as the MICROSCOPE experiment and the next generation of tests of the equivalence principle. Local gravitational tests are evaded thanks to the weakness of the quadratic coupling in the dark matter halo, and we find that, around other sources, these dilaton models could be subject to a screening akin to the symmetron mechanism

SKA-Phase 1 sensitivity to synchrotron radio emission from multi-TeV Dark Matter candidates

In the era of radio astronomy, the high sensitivity of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) could play a decisive role in the detection of new radio sources. In this work, we study the SKA sensitivity to the synchrotron radio emission expected by the annihilation of TeV DM candidate in the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy. On the one hand, we consider model-independent DM candidates: we find out that with 1000 h of data-taking, SKA1-MID will be able to exclude up to 10 TeV thermal DM candidates that annihilate in W+W− and bb¯ channels. We also study as these constraints improve by including a density enhancement due to a DM-spike associated with an intermediate-mass black hole in Draco. On the other hand, we consider extra-dimensional brane-world DM candidates, dubbed branons. In this specific scenario, SKA allows us to set constraints on the branon parameter space (f , M), where f is related to the coupling of the branon to the Standard Model particles and M is the mass of the branon itself. In particular, we consider two different branon DM candidates. We find out that SKA will be able to set more stringent constraints on the branon DM candidate required in order to fit the AMS-02 data, yet the sensitivity of the instrument should be improved in order to study the branon candidate for the Galactic Centre. Nonetheless, we show that SKA represents - among other detectors - the most promising instrument for multi-wavelength detection of synchrotron radio emission by annihilating multi-TeV DMThis work was partly supported by the projects FIS2014-52837-P (Spanish MINECO) and FIS2016-78859-P (AEI/FEDER, UE). AdlCD acknowledges financial support from projects FPA2 014-53375-C2-1-P Spanish Ministry of Economy and Science, CA15117 CANTATA and CA16104 COST Actions EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020, CSIC I-LINK1019 Project, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Science, University of Cape Town Launching Grants Programme and National Research Foundation grants 99077 2016–2018 (Ref. No. CSUR150628121624), 110966 Ref. No. BS1705-09230233 and the NRF Incentive Funding for Rated Researchers, Ref. No. IFR170131220846. VG’s contribution to this work has been supported by Juan de la Cierva-Formación FJCI-2016-29213 grant, the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación through the grants FPA2015-65929-P (MINECO/FEDER, UE) and IFT Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa SEV-2016-0597, INFN project QGSKY, the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and partially by the H2020 CSA Twinning project No. 692194 ORBI-T-WINNINGO. VG thanks S. Camera, D. Gaggero, P. Ullio and the DAMASCO group for useful discussions and also acknowledges the support of the Spanish Red Consolider MultiDark FPA2017-90566-RED

Analysis of branon dark matter and extra-dimensional models with AMS-02

In the context of brane-world extra-dimensional theories, we compute the positron production from branon dark matter annihilations and compare with the AMS-02 data. Three different scenarios have been considered; the first two assume that either pulsars or dark matter may explain separately the whole positron fraction as measured by AMS-02, whereas the third one assumes that a suitable combination of these two contributions is needed. For all of them, exclusion diagrams for the brane mass and the tension of the brane, were obtained. Our analysis has been performed for a minimal, a medium and a maximum diffusion model in one extra dimension for both pseudo-Isothermal and Navarro–Frenk–White dark matter halos. Combined with previous cosmological analyses and experimental data in colliders, constraints here enable us to set further bounds on the parameter space of branons. In particular, in the case when pulsars fit the whole AMS-02 data, we have excluded mass-tension regions for masses and tensions smaller than 60.75 TeV and 8.56 TeV respectively. With regard to the scenario in which AMS-02 data are explained by a combination of dark matter and pulsars, masses and tensions smaller than 27.32 TeV and 3.85 TeV respectively turn out to be excluded. Finally, in the scenario with no pulsar contribution, a branon with a mass 38.1±0.2 TeV and a tension 4.99±0.04 TeV can fit well the experimental data

Modified Gravity and Cosmology: An Update by the CANTATA Network

General Relativity and the $\Lambda$CDM framework are currently the standard lore and constitute the concordance paradigm. Nevertheless, long-standing open theoretical issues, as well as possible new observational ones arising from the explosive development of cosmology the last two decades, offer the motivation and lead a large amount of research to be devoted in constructing various extensions and modifications. All extended theories and scenarios are first examined under the light of theoretical consistency, and then are applied to various geometrical backgrounds, such as the cosmological and the spherical symmetric ones. Their predictions at both the background and perturbation levels, and concerning cosmology at early, intermediate and late times, are then confronted with the huge amount of observational data that astrophysics and cosmology are able to offer recently. Theories, scenarios and models that successfully and efficiently pass the above steps are classified as viable and are candidates for the description of Nature. We list the recent developments in the fields of gravity and cosmology, presenting the state of the art, high-lighting the open problems, and outlining the directions of future research. Its realization is performed in the framework of the COST European Action "Cosmology and Astrophysics Network for Theoretical Advances and Training Actions"

Cosmology with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) has two scientific objectives of cosmological focus: to probe the expansion rate of the universe, and to understand stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds and their implications for early universe and particle physics, from the MeV to the Planck scale. However, the range of potential cosmological applications of gravitational wave observations extends well beyond these two objectives. This publication presents a summary of the state of the art in LISA cosmology, theory and methods, and identifies new opportunities to use gravitational wave observations by LISA to probe the universe