306 research outputs found
Soft Leptogenesis
We study ``soft leptogenesis'', a new mechanism of leptogenesis which does
not require flavour mixing among the right-handed neutrinos. Supersymmetry
soft-breaking terms give a small mass splitting between the CP-even and CP-odd
right-handed sneutrino states of a single generation and provide a CP-violating
phase sufficient to generate a lepton asymmetry. The mechanism is successful if
the lepton-violating soft bilinear coupling is unconventionally (but not
unnaturally) small. The values of the right-handed neutrino masses predicted by
soft leptogenesis can be low enough to evade the cosmological gravitino
problem.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, uses axodraw.st
Observational constraints on the spectral index of the cosmological curvature perturbation
We evaluate the observational constraints on the spectral index , in the
context of the CDM hypothesis which represents the simplest viable
cosmology. We first take to be practically scale-independent. Ignoring
reionization, we find at a nominal 2- level . If
we make the more realisitic assumption that reionization occurs when a fraction
to 1 of the matter has collapsed, the 2- lower bound is
unchanged while the 1- bound rises slightly. These constraints are
compared with the prediction of various inflation models. Then we investigate
the two-parameter scale-dependent spectral index, predicted by running-mass
inflation models, and find that present data allow significant scale-dependence
of , which occurs in a physically reasonable regime of parameter space.Comment: ReVTeX, 15 pages, 5 figures and 3 tables, uses epsf.sty Improved
treatment of reionization and small bug fixed in the constant n case; more
convenient parameterization and better treatment of the n dependence in the
CMB anisotropy for the running mass case; conclusions basically unchanged;
references adde
Determining Reheating Temperature at Colliders with Axino or Gravitino Dark Matter
After a period of inflationary expansion, the
Universe reheated and reached full thermal equilibrium at the reheating
temperature T_R. In this work we point out that, in the context of effective
low-energy supersymmetric models, LHC measurements may allow one to determine
T_R as a function of the mass of the dark matter particle assumed to be either
an axino or a gravitino. An upper bound on their mass may also be derived.Comment: 19 pages, some improvements, JHEP versio
New Q-ball Solutions in Gauge-Mediation, Affleck-Dine Baryogenesis and Gravitino Dark Matter
Affleck-Dine (AD) baryogenesis along a d=6 flat direction in gauge-mediated
supersymmetry-breaking (GMSB) models can produce unstable Q-balls which
naturally have field strength similar to the messenger scale. In this case a
new kind of Q-ball is formed, intermediate between gravity-mediated and
gauge-mediated type. We study in detail these new Q-ball solutions, showing how
their properties interpolate between standard gravity-mediated and
gauge-mediated Q-balls as the AD field becomes larger than the messenger scale.
It is shown that E/Q for the Q-balls can be greater than the nucleon mass but
less than the MSSM-LSP mass, leading to Q-ball decay directly to Standard Model
fermions with no MSSM-LSP production. More significantly, if E/Q is greater
than the MSSM-LSP mass, decaying Q-balls can provide a natural source of
non-thermal MSSM-LSPs, which can subsequently decay to gravitino dark matter
without violating nucleosynthesis constraints. The model therefore provides a
minimal scenario for baryogenesis and gravitino dark matter in the
gauge-mediated MSSM, requiring no new fields.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. Some corrections and additional discussion.
Version published in JCA
GEOMETRIC CALIBRATION AND RADIOMETRIC CORRECTION OF THE MAIA MULTISPECTRAL CAMERA
Multispectral imaging is a widely used remote sensing technique, whose applications range from agriculture to environmental monitoring, from food quality check to cultural heritage diagnostic. A variety of multispectral imaging sensors are available on the market, many of them designed to be mounted on different platform, especially small drones. This work focuses on the geometric and radiometric characterization of a brand-new, lightweight, low-cost multispectral camera, called MAIA. The MAIA camera is equipped with nine sensors, allowing for the acquisition of images in the visible and near infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Two versions are available, characterised by different set of band-pass filters, inspired by the sensors mounted on the WorlView-2 and Sentinel2 satellites, respectively. The camera details and the developed procedures for the geometric calibrations and radiometric correction are presented in the paper
Geometric calibration and radiometric correction of the maia multispectral camera
Multispectral imaging is a widely used remote sensing technique, whose applications range from agriculture to environmental monitoring, from food quality check to cultural heritage diagnostic. A variety of multispectral imaging sensors are available on the market, many of them designed to be mounted on different platform, especially small drones. This work focuses on the geometric and radiometric characterization of a brand-new, lightweight, low-cost multispectral camera, called MAIA. The MAIA camera is equipped with nine sensors, allowing for the acquisition of images in the visible and near infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Two versions are available, characterised by different set of band-pass filters, inspired by the sensors mounted on the WorlView-2 and Sentinel2 satellites, respectively. The camera details and the developed procedures for the geometric calibrations and radiometric correction are presented in the paper
Challenges in modeling the energy balance and melt in the percolation zone of the Greenland ice sheet.
Increased surface melt in the percolation zone of the Greenland ice sheet causes significant changes in the firn structure, directly affecting the amount and timing of meltwater runoff. Here we force an energy-balance model with automatic weather stations data at two sites in the percolation zone of southwest Greenland ( and 2360 m a.s.l.) between spring and fall . Extensive model validation and sensitivity analysis reveal that the skin layer formulation used to compute the surface temperature by closing the energy balance leads to a consistent overestimation of melt by more than a factor of two or three depending on the site. In contrast, model results match the observations well when the model is forced by observed surface temperatures; however, unexplained residuals in the energy balance occur. The sensible and ground heat flux differ markedly in the two simulations accounting largely for the difference in modeled melt amounts. This indicates that the energy available for melt is highly sensitive to small changes in surface temperature. Thus, regional climate models that also use the skin layer formulation may have a bias in surface temperature and melt energy in the percolation zone of the ice sheet
Phenomenology of quintessino dark matter -- Production of NLSP particles
In the model of quintessino as dark matter particle, the dark matter and dark
energy are unified in one superfield, where the dynamics of the Quintessence
drives the Universe acceleration and its superpartner, quintessino, makes up
the dark matter of the Universe. This scenario predicts the existence of long
lived as the next lightest supersymmetric particle. In this
paper we study the possibility of detecting produced by the high
energy cosmic neutrinos interacting with the earth matter. By a detailed
calculation we find that the event rate is one to several hundred per year at a
detector with effective area of . The study in this paper can be also
applied for models of gravitino or axino dark matter particles.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, a new section about NLSP stau is added,
references adde
Tracking Quintessence and Cold Dark Matter Candidates
We study the generation of a kination-dominated phase in the context of a
quintessential model with an inverse-power-law potential and a Hubble-induced
mass term for the quintessence field. The presence of kination is associated
with an oscillating evolution of the quintessence field and the barotropic
index. We find that, in sizeable regions of the parameter space, a tracker
scaling solution can be reached sufficiently early to alleviate the coincidence
problem. Other observational constraints originating from nucleosynthesis, the
inflationary scale, the present acceleration of the universe and the
dark-energy-density parameter can be also met. The impact of this modified
kination-dominated phase on the thermal abundance of cold dark matter
candidates is investigated too. We find that: (i) the enhancement of the relic
abundance of the WIMPs with respect to the standard paradigm, crucially depends
on the hierarchy between the freeze-out temperature and the temperature at
which the extrema in the evolution of the quintessence field are encountered,
and (ii) the relic abundance of e-WIMPs takes its present value close to the
temperature at which the earliest extremum of the evolution of the quintessence
field occurs and, as a consequence, both gravitinos and axinos arise as natural
cold dark matter candidates. In the case of unstable gravitinos, the gravitino
constraint can be satisfied for values of the initial temperature well above
those required in the standard cosmology.Comment: Final versio
Gravitino Dark Matter and Cosmological Constraints
The gravitino is a promising candidate for cold dark matter. We study
cosmological constraints on scenarios in which the gravitino is the lightest
supersymmetric particle and a charged slepton the next-to-lightest
supersymmetric particle (NLSP). We obtain new results for the hadronic
nucleosynthesis bounds by computing the 4-body decay of the NLSP slepton into
the gravitino, the associated lepton, and a quark-antiquark pair. The bounds
from the observed dark matter density are refined by taking into account
gravitinos from both late NLSP decays and thermal scattering in the early
Universe. We examine the present free-streaming velocity of gravitino dark
matter and the limits from observations and simulations of cosmic structures.
Assuming that the NLSP sleptons freeze out with a thermal abundance before
their decay, we derive new bounds on the slepton and gravitino masses. The
implications of the constraints for cosmology and collider phenomenology are
discussed and the potential insights from future experiments are outlined. We
propose a set of benchmark scenarios with gravitino dark matter and long-lived
charged NLSP sleptons and describe prospects for the Large Hadron Collider and
the International Linear Collider.Comment: 51 pages, 20 figures, revised version matches published version
(results unchanged, JHEP style used, figures replaced with new high-quality
figures, typos corrected, references added
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