83 research outputs found
Non-resonant leptogenesis in seesaw models with an almost conserved B-L
We review the motivations and some results on leptogenesis in seesaw models
with an almost conserved lepton number. The paper is based on a talk given at
the 5th International Symposium on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics, SSP2012.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure. Published in the proceedings of the 5th
International Symposium on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics, SSP201
Infraorbital cutaneous angiosarcoma: a diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma
Background
A cutaneous angiosarcoma is a rare malignant tumour of vascular endothelial cells with aggressive clinical behaviour and poor prognosis. Diagnosis is often delayed due to its variable and often benign clinical appearance.
Case presentation
This case presents a 64-year-old man with a six-month-history of a recurrent diffuse and erythematous painless swelling below the left eye. Several resections with intraoperatively negative resection margins followed, but positive margins were repeatedly detected later on permanent sections. Histopathologic examination of the specimen diagnosed a cutaneous angiosarcoma. Neither, finally achieved negative margins on permanent sections, nor a following chemotherapy could prevent the recurrence of the disease after five months and the patient's dead 21 months after the first diagnosis.
Conclusion
The case elucidates the current diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma of this entity, which shows an unfavourable clinical course in spite of multimodal therapy
Non-standard interactions versus non-unitary lepton flavor mixing at a neutrino factory
The impact of heavy mediators on neutrino oscillations is typically described
by non-standard four-fermion interactions (NSIs) or non-unitarity (NU). We
focus on leptonic dimension-six effective operators which do not produce
charged lepton flavor violation. These operators lead to particular
correlations among neutrino production, propagation, and detection non-standard
effects. We point out that these NSIs and NU phenomenologically lead, in fact,
to very similar effects for a neutrino factory, for completely different
fundamental reasons. We discuss how the parameters and probabilities are
related in this case, and compare the sensitivities. We demonstrate that the
NSIs and NU can, in principle, be distinguished for large enough effects at the
example of non-standard effects in the --sector, which basically
corresponds to differentiating between scalars and fermions as heavy mediators
as leading order effect. However, we find that a near detector at superbeams
could provide very synergistic information, since the correlation between
source and matter NSIs is broken for hadronic neutrino production, while NU is
a fundamental effect present at any experiment.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figures. Final version published in JHEP. v3: Typo in Eq.
(27) correcte
Composite GUTs: models and expectations at the LHC
We investigate grand unified theories (GUTs) in scenarios where electroweak
(EW) symmetry breaking is triggered by a light composite Higgs, arising as a
Nambu-Goldstone boson from a strongly interacting sector. The evolution of the
standard model (SM) gauge couplings can be predicted at leading order, if the
global symmetry of the composite sector is a simple group G that contains the
SM gauge group. It was noticed that, if the right-handed top quark is also
composite, precision gauge unification can be achieved. We build minimal
consistent models for a composite sector with these properties, thus
demonstrating how composite GUTs may represent an alternative to supersymmetric
GUTs. Taking into account the new contributions to the EW precision parameters,
we compute the Higgs effective potential and prove that it realizes
consistently EW symmetry breaking with little fine-tuning. The G group
structure and the requirement of proton stability determine the nature of the
light composite states accompanying the Higgs and the top quark: a coloured
triplet scalar and several vector-like fermions with exotic quantum numbers. We
analyse the signatures of these composite partners at hadron colliders:
distinctive final states contain multiple top and bottom quarks, either alone
or accompanied by a heavy stable charged particle, or by missing transverse
energy.Comment: 55 pages, 13 figures, final version to be published in JHE
Two-Higgs Leptonic Minimal Flavour Violation
We construct extensions of the Standard Model with two Higgs doublets, where
there are flavour changing neutral currents both in the quark and leptonic
sectors, with their strength fixed by the fermion mixing matrices and
. These models are an extension to the leptonic sector of the class
of models previously considered by Branco, Grimus and Lavoura, for the quark
sector. We consider both the cases of Dirac and Majorana neutrinos and identify
the minimal discrete symmetry required in order to implement the models in a
natural way.Comment: 25 pages. No figure
Neutrino Masses at LHC: Minimal Lepton Flavour Violation in Type-III See-saw
We study the signatures of minimal lepton flavour violation in a simple
Type-III see - saw model in which the flavour scale is given by the new fermion
triplet mass and it can be naturally light enough to be produced at the LHC. In
this model the flavour structure of the lepton number conserving couplings of
the triplet fermions to the Standard Model leptons can be reconstructed from
the neutrino mass matrix and the smallness of the neutrino mass is associated
with a tiny violation of total lepton number. Characteristic signatures of this
model include suppressed lepton number violation decays of the triplet
fermions, absence of displaced vertices in their decays and predictable lepton
flavour composition of the states produced in their decays. We study the
observability of these signals in the processes pp\rightarrow 3\ell + 2j
+\Sla{E_T} and with or taking into
account the present low energy data on neutrino physics and the corresponding
Standard Model backgrounds. Our results indicate that the new fermionic states
can be observed for masses up to 500 GeV depending on the CP violating Majorana
phase for an integrated luminosity of 30 fb. Moreover, the flavour of
the final state leptons in the above processes can shed light on the neutrino
mass ordering.Comment: 31 pages, 11 Figures, matches published versio
New Constraints (and Motivations) for Abelian Gauge Bosons in the MeV-TeV Mass Range
We survey the phenomenological constraints on abelian gauge bosons having
masses in the MeV to multi-GeV mass range (using precision electroweak
measurements, neutrino-electron and neutrino-nucleon scattering, electron and
muon anomalous magnetic moments, upsilon decay, beam dump experiments, atomic
parity violation, low-energy neutron scattering and primordial
nucleosynthesis). We compute their implications for the three parameters that
in general describe the low-energy properties of such bosons: their mass and
their two possible types of dimensionless couplings (direct couplings to
ordinary fermions and kinetic mixing with Standard Model hypercharge). We argue
that gauge bosons with very small couplings to ordinary fermions in this mass
range are natural in string compactifications and are likely to be generic in
theories for which the gravity scale is systematically smaller than the Planck
mass - such as in extra-dimensional models - because of the necessity to
suppress proton decay. Furthermore, because its couplings are weak, in the
low-energy theory relevant to experiments at and below TeV scales the charge
gauged by the new boson can appear to be broken, both by classical effects and
by anomalies. In particular, if the new gauge charge appears to be anomalous,
anomaly cancellation does not also require the introduction of new light
fermions in the low-energy theory. Furthermore, the charge can appear to be
conserved in the low-energy theory, despite the corresponding gauge boson
having a mass. Our results reduce to those of other authors in the special
cases where there is no kinetic mixing or there is no direct coupling to
ordinary fermions, such as for recently proposed dark-matter scenarios.Comment: 49 pages + appendix, 21 figures. This is the final version which
appears in JHE
Radiative Corrections to Light Neutrino Masses in Low Scale Type I Seesaw Scenarios and Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay
We perform a detailed analysis of the one-loop corrections to the light neutrino mass matrix within low scale type I seesaw extensions of the Standard Model and their implications in experimental searches for neutrinoless double beta decay. We show that a sizable contribution to the effective Majorana neutrino mass from the exchange of heavy Majorana neutrinos is always possible, provided one requires a fine-tuned cancellation between the tree-level and one-loop contribution to the light neutrino masses. We quantify the level of fine-tuning as a function of the seesaw parameters and introduce a generalisation of the Casas-Ibarra parametrization of the neutrino Yukawa matrix, which easily allows to include the one-loop corrections to the light neutrino masses. \ua9 2015, The Author(s)
- …