The many aspects of neutrino physics

In mid-November, over seventy physicists gathered at Fermilab for an informal workshop on the Many Aspects of Neutrino Physics, which dovetailed with and also helped lay the groundwork for the succeeding more narrowly focused conference on Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillations. The workshop indeed covered many of the interrelated aspects of neutrino physics: 17 keV neutrinos (experiments, theoretical models, and astrophysical constraints), neutrino properties (double beta decay experiments, neutrino magnetic moments), neutrinos from/as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in cosmology and astrophysics, atmospheric neutrinos, and solar neutrinos. In the following, I provide a brief and thoroughly biased account of only some of the many interesting developments discussed at the workshop

Domain Bubbles of Extra Dimensions

``Dimension bubbles'' of the type previously studied by Blau and Guendelman [S.K. Blau and E.I. Guendelman, Phys. Rev. D40, 1909 (1989)], which effectively enclose a region of 5d spacetime and are surrounded by a region of 4d spacetime, can arise in a 5d theory with a compact extra dimension that is dimensionally reduced to give an effective 4d theory. These bubbles with thin domain walls can be stabilized against total collapse in a rather natural way by a scalar field which, as in the case with ``ordinary'' nontopological solitons, traps light scalar particles inside the bubble.Comment: 13 pages, no figures; to appear in Phys.Rev.

Fermionic and Bosonic Stabilizing Effects for Type I and Type II Dimension Bubbles

We consider two types of "dimension bubbles", which are viewed as 4d nontopological solitons that emerge from a 5d theory with a compact extra dimension. The size of the extra dimension varies rapidly within the domain wall of the soliton. We consider the cases of type I (II) bubbles where the size of the extra dimension inside the bubble is much larger (smaller) than outside. Type I bubbles with thin domain walls can be stabilized by the entrapment of various particle modes whose masses become much smaller inside than outside the bubble. This is demonstrated here for the cases of scalar bosons, fermions, and massive vector bosons, including both Kaluza-Klein zero modes and Kaluza-Klein excitation modes. Type II bubbles expel massive particle modes but both types can be stabilized by photons. Plasma filled bubbles containing a variety of massless or nearly massless radiation modes may exist as long-lived metastable states. Furthermore, in contrast to the case with a "gravitational bag", the metric for a fluid-filled dimension bubble does not exhibit a naked singularity at the bubble's center.Comment: 17 pages, no figs; to appear in Phys.Rev.

Gauged Fermionic Q-balls

We present a new model for a non-topological soliton (NTS) that contains interacting fermions, scalar particles and a gauge field. Using a variational approach, we estimate the energy of the localized configuration, showing that it can be the lowest energy state of the system for a wide range of parameters.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; revised version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Stability of Neutral Fermi Balls with Multi-Flavor Fermions

A Fermi ball is a kind of non-topological soliton, which is thought to arise from the spontaneous breaking of an approximate $Z_2$ symmetry and to contribute to cold dark matter. We consider a simple model in which fermion fields with multi-flavors are coupled to a scalar field through Yukawa coupling, and examine how the number of the fermion flavors affects the stability of the Fermi ball against the fragmentation. (1)We find that the Fermi ball is stable against the fragmentation in most cases even in the lowest order thin-wall approximation. (2)We then find that in the other specific cases, the stability is marginal in the lowest order thin-wall approximation, and the next-to-leading order correction determines the stable region of the coupling constants; We examine the simplest case where the total fermion number $N_i$ and the Yukawa coupling constant $G_i$ of each flavor $i$ are common to the flavor, and find that the Fermi ball is stable in the limited region of the parameters and has the broader region for the larger number of the flavors.Comment: 10 pages, 3 eps figures, ReVTeX

Measuring dark energy spatial inhomogeneity with supernova data

The gravitational lensing distortion of distant sources by the large-scale distribution of matter in the Universe has been extensively studied. In contrast, very little is known about the effects due to the large-scale distribution of dark energy. We discuss the use of Type Ia supernovae as probes of the spatial inhomogeneity and anisotropy of dark energy. We show that a shallow, almost all-sky survey can limit rms dark energy fluctuations at the horizon scale down to a fractional energy density of ~10^-4Comment: 4 pages; PRL submitte

Non-topological solitons as nucleation sites for cosmological phase transitions

I consider quantum field theories that admit charged non-topological solitons of the Q-ball type, and use the fact that in a first-order cosmological phase transition, below the critical temperature, there is a value of the soliton charge above which the soliton becomes unstable and expands, converting space to the true vacuum, much like a critical bubble in the case of ordinary tunneling. Using a simple model for the production rate of Q-balls through charge accretion during a random walk out of equilibrium, I calculate the probability for the formation of critical charge solitons and estimate the amount of supercooling needed for the phase transition to be completed.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures, some comments and references adde

Gauged Dimension Bubbles

Some of the peculiar electrodynamical effects associated with gauged ``dimension bubbles'' are presented. Such bubbles, which effectively enclose a region of 5d spacetime, can arise from a 5d theory with a compact extra dimension. Bubbles with thin domain walls can be stabilized against total collapse by the entrapment of light charged scalar bosons inside the bubble, extending the idea of a neutral dimension bubble to accommodate the case of a gauged U(1) symmetry. Using a dielectric approach to the 4d dilaton-Maxwell theory, it is seen that the bubble wall is almost totally opaque to photons, leading to a new stabilization mechanism due to trapped photons. Photon dominated bubbles very slowly shrink, resulting in a temperature increase inside the bubble. At some critical temperature, however, these bubbles explode, with a release of radiation.Comment: 14 pages, no figures; to appear in Phys.Rev.

Long-lived oscillons from asymmetric bubbles

The possibility that extremely long-lived, time-dependent, and localized field configurations (``oscillons'') arise during the collapse of asymmetrical bubbles in 2+1 dimensional phi^4 models is investigated. It is found that oscillons can develop from a large spectrum of elliptically deformed bubbles. Moreover, we provide numerical evidence that such oscillons are: a) circularly symmetric; and b) linearly stable against small arbitrary radial and angular perturbations. The latter is based on a dynamical approach designed to investigate the stability of nonintegrable time-dependent configurations that is capable of probing slowly-growing instabilities not seen through the usual ``spectral'' method.Comment: RevTeX 4, 9 pages, 11 figures. Revised version with a new approach to stability. Accepted to Phys. Rev.

Brane oscillations and the cosmic coincidence problem

We show that, under general assumptions, in six-dimensional brane-world models with compactified large extra dimensions, the energy density of brane oscillations scales as that of cold dark matter and its present value is compatible with observations. Such value is obtained from the only dimensional scale in the theory, namely, the fundamental scale of gravity in six dimensions $M_6\sim 1$ TeV, without any fine-tuning or the introduction of additional mass scales apart from the large size of the extra dimensions. It has been suggested that the same kind of models could provide also the correct magnitude of the cosmological constant. This observation can be relevant for the resolution of the cosmic coincidence problem in the brane-world scenario.Comment: 5 pages, RevTeX. Comments on the renormalization of the branon mass included. Final version to appear in Phys.Rev.D (R