172 research outputs found
Supermassive gravitinos, dark matter, leptogenesis and flat direction baryogenesis
In general the gravitino mass and/or the soft supersymmetry breaking masses
in the observable sector can be much larger than the TeV scale. Depending on
the relation between the masses, new important channels for gravitino
production in the early Universe can arise. Gravitinos with a mass above 50 TeV
decay before big bang nucleosynthesis, which leads to relaxation of the well
known bound on the reheating temperature GeV. However,
if the heavy gravitinos are produced abundantly in the early Universe, their
decay can alter the abundance of the lightest supersymmetric particle.
Moreover, they may dominate the energy density of the Universe. Their decay
will in this case increase entropy and dilute already created baryon asymmetry
and dark matter. Such considerations put new constraints on gravitino and
sfermion masses, and the reheating temperature. In this paper we examine
various cosmological consequences of supermassive gravitinos. We discuss
advnatges and disadvantages of a large reheating temperature in connection with
thermal leptogenesis, and find that large parts of the parameter space are
opened up for the lightest right-handed (s)neutrino mass. We also discuss the
viability of Affleck-Dine baryogenesis under the constraints from gravitino
decay, and gravitino production from the decay of Q-balls.Comment: 47 pages, 6 figures, JHEP styl
Understanding the performance of the low energy neutrino factory: the dependence on baseline distance and stored-muon energy
Motivated by recent hints of large {\theta}13 from the T2K, MINOS and Double
Chooz experiments, we study the physics reach of a Low Energy Neutrino Factory
(LENF) and its dependence on the chosen baseline distance, L, and stored-muon
energy, E_{\mu}, in order to ascertain the configuration of the optimal LENF.
In particular, we study the performance of the LENF over a range of baseline
distances from 1000 km to 4000 km and stored-muon energies from 4 GeV to 25
GeV, connecting the early studies of the LENF (1300 km, 4.5 GeV) to those of
the conventional, high-energy neutrino factory design (4000 km and 7000 km, 25
GeV). Three different magnetized detector options are considered: a
Totally-Active Scintillator Detector (TASD) and two models of a liquid-argon
detector distinguished by optimistic and conservative performance estimates. In
order to compare the sensitivity of each set-up, we compute the full
{\delta}-dependent discovery contours for the determination of non-zero
{\theta}13, CP-violating values of {\delta} and the mass hierarchy. In the case
of large {\theta}13 with sin^2(2*{\theta}13) = (few)*10^{-3}, the LENF provides
a strong discovery potential over the majority of the L-E_{\mu} parameter space
and is a promising candidate for the future generation of long baseline
experiments aimed at discovering CP-violation and the mass hierarchy, and at
making a precise determination of the oscillation parameters.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
Determining the Neutrino Mass Hierarchy and CP Violation in NOvA with a Second Off-Axis Detector
We consider a Super-NOvA-like experimental configuration based on the use of
two detectors in a long-baseline experiment as NOvA. We take the far detector
as in the present NOvA proposal and add a second detector at a shorter
baseline. The location of the second off-axis detector is chosen such that the
ratio L/E is the same for both detectors, being L the baseline and E the
neutrino energy. We consider liquid argon and water-Cherenkov techniques for
the second off-axis detector and study, for different experimental setups, the
detector mass required for the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy,
for different values of theta13. We also study the capabilities of such an
experimental setup for determining CP violation in the neutrino sector. Our
results show that by adding a second off-axis detector a remarkable enhancement
on the capabilities of the current NOvA experiment could be achieved.Comment: 20 p
Low-Scale Leptogenesis with Low-Energy Dirac CP-Violation
We study the freeze-in scenario of leptogenesis via oscillations within the
type-I seesaw model with two quasi-degenerate heavy Majorana neutrinos
having masses ,
, focusing on the role of the CP-violation provided by the
Dirac phase of the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata lepton mixing
matrix. We find that viable leptogenesis can be due solely to CP-violating
values of and that the total mixing squared
needed is within the reach of future
experiments, parameterising the coupling to the charged lepton
. Furthermore, the required parameter space differs from
that associated with additional Casas-Ibarra sources of CP-violation. Future
determination of , and/or the ratios
would provide a critical test of the
considered scenario.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
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