Bounds on extra quark-lepton generations from precision measurements

The existence of extra chiral generations is strongly disfavored by the precision electroweak data if all the extra fermions are heavier than m_Z. However fits as good as the SM can be obtained if one allows the new neutral leptons to have masses close to 50 GeV. In the framework of SUSY models precision measurements cannot exclude one additional generation of heavy fermions if chargino and neutralino have masses around 60 GeV with delta_m around 1 GeV.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures included. Talk given at PASCOS99 conference, Lake Tahoe, California, December 10-16, 199

Sterile neutrinos after the first MiniBooNE results

In view of the recent results from the MiniBooNE experiment we revisit the global neutrino oscillation fit to short-baseline neutrino data by adding one, two or three sterile neutrinos with eV-scale masses to the three Standard Model neutrinos. We find that four-neutrino oscillations of the (3+1) type, which have been only marginally allowed before the recent MiniBooNE results, become even more disfavored with the new data. In the framework of so-called (3+2) five-neutrino mass schemes the MiniBooNE results can be nicely reconciled with the LSND appearance evidence thanks to the possibility of CP violation available in such oscillation schemes; however, the tension between appearance and disappearance experiments represents a serious problem in (3+2) schemes, so that these models are ultimately not viable. This tension remains also when a third sterile neutrino is added, and we do not find a significant improvement of the global fit in a (3+3) scheme.Comment: 5 pages, LaTeX file using jpconf style, 3 figures included. Proceedings of "The 2007 Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics", Manchester, England, July 19-25, 2007. Typos correcte

Impact of two mass-scale oscillations on the analysis of atmospheric and reactor neutrino data

We study the stability of the results of 3-nu oscillation analysis of atmospheric and reactor neutrino data under departures of the one--dominant mass scale approximation. In order to do so we perform the analysis of atmospheric and reactor neutrino data in terms of three--neutrino oscillations where the effect of both mass differences is explicitly considered. We study the allowed parameter space resulting from this analysis as a function of the mass splitting hierarchy parameter alpha = Delta m^2/Delta M^2 which parametrizes the departure from the one--dominant mass scale approximation. We consider schemes with both direct and inverted mass ordering. Our results show that in the analysis of atmospheric data the derived range of the largest mass splitting, Delta M^2$, is stable while the allowed ranges of mixing angles sin^2 theta_{23} and sin^2 theta_{13} are wider than those obtained in the one--dominant mass scale approximation. Inclusion of the CHOOZ reactor data in the analysis results into the reduction of the parameter space in particular for the mixing angles. As a consequence the final allowed ranges of parameters from the combined analysis are only slightly broader than when obtained in the one--dominant mass scale approximation.Comment: Updated data, references added and typos corrected. Version to appear in Eur.Phys.J.

Top-quark mass effects in double and triple Higgs production in gluon-gluon fusion at NLO

The observation of double and triple scalar boson production at hadron colliders could provide key information on the Higgs self couplings and the potential. As for single Higgs production the largest rates for multiple Higgs production come from gluon-gluon fusion processes mediated by a top-quark loop. However, at variance with single Higgs production, top-quark mass and width effects from the loops cannot be neglected. Computations including the exact top-quark mass dependence are only available at the leading order, and currently predictions at higher orders are obtained by means of approximations based on the Higgs-gluon effective field theory (HEFT). In this work we present a reweighting technique that, starting from events obtained via the MC@NLO method in the HEFT, allows to exactly include the top-quark mass and width effects coming from one- and two-loop amplitudes. We describe our approach and apply it to double Higgs production at NLO in QCD, computing the needed one-loop amplitudes and using approximations for the unknown two-loop ones. The results are compared to other approaches used in the literature, arguing that they provide more accurate predictions for distributions and for total rates as well. As a novel application of our procedure we present predictions at NLO in QCD for triple Higgs production at hadron colliders.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figure

Status of Global Analysis of Neutrino Oscillation Data

In this talk we discuss some details of the analysis of neutrino data and our present understanding of neutrino masses and mixing. This talk is based on hep-ph/0306001, hep-ph/0306226 and hep-ph/0404085.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX file using ws-procs9x6, 6 figures included. Talk given by MCGG at the 5th Workshop on "Neutrino Oscillations and their Origin" (NOON2004), Tokyo, Japan, February 11-15, 200

Diminishing "charginos nearly degenerate with the lightest neutralino" slit using precision data

Though LEP II direct searches still cannot exclude a chargino nearly degenerate with the lightest neutralino if their mass is only slightly above half of the Z boson mass, it can be excluded indirectly analyzing precision data. In this particular limit simple analytical formulas for oblique electroweak radiative corrections are presented.Comment: 6 pages, latex, 2 figures included; published on PLB. Bounds on chargino mass are improved; two references are adde