40 research outputs found
New Predictions for Neutrino Telescope Event Rates
Recent measurements of the small- deep-inelastic regime at HERA translate
to new expectations for the neutrino-nucleon cross section at ultrahigh
energies. We present event rates for large underground neutrino telescopes
based on the new cross section for a variety of models of neutrino production
in Active Galactic Nuclei, and we compare these rates with earlier cross
section calculations.Comment: Talk presented by I. Sarcevic at the VIth International Workshop on
Theoretical Aspects of Underground Physics, Toledo, Spain, September 17-21,
1995, 3 p
Muon and Muon Neutrino Fluxes from Atmospheric Charm
The charm contribution to the atmospheric fluxes of muons and muon neutrinos
may be enhanced by as much as a factor of 10 when one includes the
contributions of D->pi,K->leptons and folds in uncertainties in the charm cross
section and energy distribution. In the energy range considered here, from 100
GeV to 10 TeV, the charm contribution is small compared to the conventional
flux of muons and muon neutrinos.Comment: 3 pages, submitted to the Proceedings of the Fifth International
Workshop on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics, Sept. 199
Propagation of supersymmetric charged sleptons at high energies
The potential for neutrino telescopes to discover charged stau production in
neutrino-nucleon interactions in Earth depends in part on the stau lifetime and
range. In some supersymmetric scenarios, the next lightest supersymmetric
particle is a stau with a decay length on the scale of 10 km. We evaluate the
electromagnetic energy loss as a function of energy and stau mass. The energy
loss parameter scales as the inverse stau mass for the dominating
electromagnetic processes, photonuclear and pair production. The range
can be parameterized as a function of stau mass, initial energy and minimum
final energy. In comparison to earlier estimates of the stau range, our results
are as much as a factor of two larger, improving the potential for stau
discovery in neutrino telescopes.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, version accepted for publication in Astroparticle
Physic
Particle Production and Gravitino Abundance after Inflation
Thermal history after inflation is studied in a chaotic inflation model with
supersymmetric couplings of the inflaton to matter fields. Time evolution
equation is solved in a formalism that incorporates both the back reaction of
particle production and the cosmological expansion. The effect of the
parametric resonance gives rise to a rapid initial phase of the inflaton decay
followed by a slow stage of the Born term decay. Thermalization takes place
immediately after the first explosive stage for a medium strength of the
coupling among created particles. As an application we calculate time evolution
of the gravitino abundance that is produced by ordinary particles directly
created from the inflaton decay, which typically results in much more enhanced
yield than what a naive estimate based on the Born term would suggest.Comment: 23 pages + 13 figure
Primordial nucleosynthesis and hadronic decay of a massive particle with a relatively short lifetime
In this paper we consider the effects on big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) of
the hadronic decay of a long-lived massive particle. If high-energy hadrons are
emitted near the BBN epoch ( -- ), they
extraordinarily inter-convert the background nucleons each other even after the
freeze-out time of the neutron to proton ratio. Then, produced light element
abundances are changed, and that may result in a significant discrepancy
between standard BBN and observations. Especially on the theoretical side, now
we can obtain a lot of experimental data of hadrons and simulate the hadronic
decay process executing the numerical code of the hadron fragmentation even in
the high energy region where we have no experimental data. Using the light
element abundances computed in the hadron-injection scenario, we derive a
constraint on properties of such a particle by comparing our theoretical
results with observations.Comment: 33 pages, 14 postscript figures, reference added, typo corrected, to
appear in Phys. Rev.
NLO corrections to ultra-high energy neutrino-nucleon scattering, shadowing and small x
We reconsider the Standard Model interactions of ultra-high energy neutrinos
with matter. The next to leading order QCD corrections are presented for
charged-current and neutral-current processes. Contrary to popular
expectations, these corrections are found to be quite substantial, especially
for very large (anti-) neutrino energies. Hence, they need to be taken into
account in any search for new physics effects in high-energy neutrino
interactions. In our extrapolation of the parton densities to kinematical
regions as yet unexplored directly in terrestrial accelerators, we are guided
by double asymptotic scaling in the large Q^2 and small Bjorken x region and to
models of saturation in the low Q^2 and low x regime. The sizes of the
consequent uncertainties are commented upon. We also briefly discuss some
variables which are insensitive to higher order QCD corrections and are hence
suitable in any search for new physics.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX2e, uses JHEP3.cls (included), 8 ps files for figures
published versio
SuperWIMP Dark Matter Signals from the Early Universe
Cold dark matter may be made of superweakly-interacting massive particles,
superWIMPs, that naturally inherit the desired relic density from late decays
of metastable WIMPs. Well-motivated examples are weak-scale gravitinos in
supergravity and Kaluza-Klein gravitons from extra dimensions. These particles
are impossible to detect in all dark matter experiments. We find, however, that
superWIMP dark matter may be discovered through cosmological signatures from
the early universe. In particular, superWIMP dark matter has observable
consequences for Big Bang nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background
(CMB), and may explain the observed underabundance of 7Li without upsetting the
concordance between deuterium and CMB baryometers. We discuss implications for
future probes of CMB black body distortions and collider searches for new
particles. In the course of this study, we also present a model-independent
analysis of entropy production from late-decaying particles in light of WMAP
data.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, typos correcte
Constraining the primordial spectrum of metric perturbations from gravitino and moduli production
We consider the production of gravitinos and moduli fields from quantum
vacuum fluctuations induced by the presence of scalar metric perturbations at
the end of inflation. We obtain the corresponding occupation numbers, up to
first order in perturbation theory, in terms of the power spectrum of the
metric perturbations. We compute the limits imposed by nucleosynthesis on the
spectral index for different models with constant . The results show
that, in certain cases, such limits can be as strong as , which is
more stringent than those coming from primordial black hole production.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX, 5 figures. Corrected figures, new references
included. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Secondary Decays in Atmospheric Charm Contributions to the Flux of Muons and Muon Neutrinos
We present a calculation of the fluxes of muons and muon neutrinos from the
decays of pions and kaons that are themselves the decay products of charmed
particles produced in the atmosphere by cosmic ray-air collisions. Using the
perturbative cross section for charm production, these lepton fluxes are two to
three orders of magnitude smaller than the fluxes from the decays of pions and
kaons directly produced in cosmic ray-air collisions. Intrinsic charm models do
not significantly alter our conclusions, nor do models with a charm cross
section enhanced in the region above an incident cosmic ray energy of 1 TeV.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, Latex, psfi
Production and dilution of gravitinos by modulus decay
We study the cosmological consequences of generic scalar fields like moduli
which decay only through gravitationally suppressed interactions. We consider a
new production mechanism of gravitinos from moduli decay, which might be more
effective than previously known mechanisms, and calculate the final
gravitino-to-entropy ratio to compare with the constraints imposed by
successful big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) etc., taking possible hadronic decays
of gravitinos into account. We find the modulus mass smaller than
TeV is excluded. On the other hand, inflation models with high reheating
temperatures GeV can be compatible with BBN thanks
to the late-time entropy production from the moduli decay if model parameters
are appropriately chosen.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.