Field-theoretic Methods in Strongly-Coupled Models of General Gauge Mediation

An often-exploited feature of the operator product expansion (OPE) is that it incorporates a splitting of ultraviolet and infrared physics. In this paper we use this feature of the OPE to perform simple, approximate computations of soft masses in gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking. The approximation amounts to truncating the OPEs for hidden-sector current-current operator products. Our method yields visible-sector superpartner spectra in terms of vacuum expectation values of a few hidden-sector IR elementary fields. We manage to obtain reasonable approximations to soft masses, even when the hidden sector is strongly coupled. We demonstrate our techniques in several examples, including a new framework where supersymmetry-breaking arises both from a hidden sector and dynamically.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figures. Expanded discussion, fixed typos, added reference

Photon-Dark Photon Conversions in Background Electromagnetic Fields

The mixing of photons with light pseudoscalars in the presence of external electromagnetic fields has been used extensively to search for axion-like-particles. A similar effect for dark photon propagating states is usually not considered due to the Landau-Yang theorem. We point out that mixing between photon and dark photon propagating states in background electromagnetic fields can indeed occur, in non-linear QED, through a four-photon vertex by integrating out the electron box diagram. Starting from the Schwinger Lagrangian, we derive the equations of motion for dark photons interacting with the Standard Model photon through gauge kinetic terms. We provide expressions for the perpendicular and parallel refractive indices in series expansions in the critical field strength, valid both in the strong and weak background field limits. We then consider mixing between the photon-dark photon propagating system in the presence of pure electric and magnetic background fields, and work out the probability of conversion when the background fields are homogeneous. We indicate outlines of the calculation in the inhomogeneous case, and finally express our results in the active-sterile basis, where we find that the mixing induced by background fields can lead to corrections to the tree-level mixing in the zero field limit that is usually considered to probe such systems. Our results may find applications for probing photon-dark photon conversions in the vicinity of neutron stars and in table-top petawatt laser experiments.Comment: 1+16 pages, added references, probability of conversion given in physical basis, conclusions unchange

Constraining Axion-Like-Particles with Hard X-ray Emission from Magnetars

Axion-like particles (ALPs) produced in the core of a magnetar will convert to photons in the magnetosphere, leading to possible signatures in the hard X-ray band. We perform a detailed calculation of the ALP-to-photon conversion probability in the magnetosphere, recasting the coupled differential equations that describe ALP-photon propagation into a form that is efficient for large scale numerical scans. We show the dependence of the conversion probability on the ALP energy, mass, ALP-photon coupling, magnetar radius, surface magnetic field, and the angle between the magnetic field and direction of propagation. Along the way, we develop an analytic formalism to perform similar calculations in more general $n$-state oscillation systems. Assuming ALP emission rates from the core that are just subdominant to neutrino emission, we calculate the resulting constraints on the ALP mass versus ALP-photon coupling space, taking SGR 1806-20 as an example. In particular, we take benchmark values for the magnetar radius and core temperature, and constrain the ALP parameter space by the requirement that the luminosity from ALP-to-photon conversion should not exceed the total observed luminosity from the magnetar. The resulting constraints are competitive with constraints from helioscope experiments in the relevant part of ALP parameter space.Comment: 1+20 pages, 5 figures, typos fixe

Anarchy and Neutrino Physics

The neutrino sector of a seesaw-extended Standard Model is investigated under the anarchy hypothesis. The previously derived probability density functions for neutrino masses and mixings, which characterize the type I-III seesaw ensemble of $N\times N$ complex random matrices, are used to extract information on the relevant physical parameters. For $N=2$ and $N=3$, the distributions of the light neutrino masses, as well as the mixing angles and phases, are obtained using numerical integration methods. A systematic comparison with the much simpler type II seesaw ensemble is also performed to point out the fundamental differences between the two ensembles. It is found that the type I-III seesaw ensemble is better suited to accommodate experimental data. Moreover, the results indicate a strong preference for the mass splitting associated to normal hierarchy. However, since all permutations of the singular values are found to be equally probable for a particular mass splitting, predictions regarding the hierarchy of the mass spectrum remains out of reach in the framework of anarchy.Comment: 1+22 pages, 8 figures, typos fixed, added referenc

Fixing the Pole in the Pyramid

We revisit the problem of the hidden sector Landau pole in the Pyramid Scheme. There is a fixed line in the plane of hidden sector gauge coupling and a Yukawa coupling between the trianon fields. We postulate that the couplings flow to this line, at a point where the hidden sector gauge coupling is close to the strong coupling edge of its perturbative regime. Below the masses of the heavier trianons, the model quickly flows to a confining N_F=N_C=3 supersymmetric gauge theory, as required by phenomenological considerations. We study possible discrete R-symmetries, which guarantee, among other things, that the basin of attraction of the fixed line has full co-dimension in the space of R-allowed couplings. The Yukawa couplings required to get the fixed line violate the pyrma-baryon symmetries we invoked in previous work to find a dark matter candidate. Omitting one of them, we have a dark matter candidate, and an acceptable RG flow down from the unification scale, if the confinement scale of the hidden sector group is lowered from 5 to 2 TeV.Comment: 14 pages, 3 table