5,342 research outputs found
Neutrino masses or new interactions
Recent proposals to study the mass of the "electron" neutrino at a
sensitivity of 0.3 eV can be used to place limits on the right handed and
scalar charged currents at a level which improves on the present experimental
limits. Indeed the neglect of the possibility of such interactions can lead to
the inference of an incorrect value for the mass, as we illustrate.Comment: 12 pages and 3 figures. Contributed to the XX International Symposium
on Lepton and Photon Interactions at High Energies, Rome, July 2001, and to
the International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics, Budapest,
July 2001. Preprint numbers added, misprints correcte
Neutrino clustering and the Z-burst model
The possibility that the observed Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays are generated
by high energy neutrinos creating "Z-bursts" in resonant interactions with the
background neutrinos has been proposed, but there are difficulties in
generating enough events with reasonable incident neutrino fluxes.
We point out that this difficulty is overcome if the background neutrinos
have coalesced into "neutrino clouds" --- a possibility previously suggested by
some of us in another context. The limitations that this mechanism for the
generation of UHECRs places on the high energy neutrino flux, on the masses of
the background neutrinos and the characteristics of the neutrino clouds are
spelled out.Comment: 13 pages and 3 figures. Contributed to the XX International Symposium
on Lepton and Photon Interactions at High Energies, Rome, July 2001, and to
the International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics, Budapest,
July 2001. Preprint numbers added, misprints correcte
A Bayesian framework for verification and recalibration of ensemble forecasts: How uncertain is NAO predictability?
Predictability estimates of ensemble prediction systems are uncertain due to
limited numbers of past forecasts and observations. To account for such
uncertainty, this paper proposes a Bayesian inferential framework that provides
a simple 6-parameter representation of ensemble forecasting systems and the
corresponding observations. The framework is probabilistic, and thus allows for
quantifying uncertainty in predictability measures such as correlation skill
and signal-to-noise ratios. It also provides a natural way to produce
recalibrated probabilistic predictions from uncalibrated ensembles forecasts.
The framework is used to address important questions concerning the skill of
winter hindcasts of the North Atlantic Oscillation for 1992-2011 issued by the
Met Office GloSea5 climate prediction system. Although there is much
uncertainty in the correlation between ensemble mean and observations, there is
strong evidence of skill: the 95% credible interval of the correlation
coefficient of [0.19,0.68] does not overlap zero. There is also strong evidence
that the forecasts are not exchangeable with the observations: With over 99%
certainty, the signal-to-noise ratio of the forecasts is smaller than the
signal-to-noise ratio of the observations, which suggests that raw forecasts
should not be taken as representative scenarios of the observations. Forecast
recalibration is thus required, which can be coherently addressed within the
proposed framework.Comment: 36 pages, 10 figure
Gas of self-avoiding loops on the brickwork lattice
An exact calculation of the phase diagram for a loop gas model on the
brickwork lattice is presented. The model includes a bending energy. In the
dense limit, where all the lattice sites are occupied, a phase transition
occuring at an asymmetric Lifshitz tricritical point is observed as the
temperature associated with the bending energy is varied. Various critical
exponents are calculated. At lower densities, two lines of transitions (in the
Ising universality class) are observed, terminated by a tricritical point,
where there is a change in the modulation of the correlation function. To each
tricritical point an associated disorder line is found.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures. to appear in J. Phys. A : Math. & Ge
MSW-like Enhancements without Matter
We study the effects of a scalar field, coupled only to neutrinos, on
oscillations among weak interaction current eigenstates. The effect of a real
scalar field appears as effective masses for the neutrino mass eigenstates, the
same for \nbar as for \n. Under some conditions, this can lead to a
vanishing of , giving rise to MSW-like effects. We discuss some
examples and show that it is possible to resolve the apparent discrepancy in
spectra required by r-process nucleosynthesis in the mantles of supernovae and
by Solar neutrino solutions.Comment: 9 pages, latex, 1 figur
Epoch Dependent Dark Energy
We present a model in which the equation of state parameter w approaches -1
near a particular value of z, and has significant negative values in a
restricted range of z. For example, one can have w ~ -1 near z = 1, and w >
-0.2 from z = 0 to z = 0.3, and for z > 9. The ingredients of the model are
neutral fermions (which may be neutrinos, neutralinos, etc) which are very
weakly coupled to a light scalar field. This model emphasises the importance of
the proposed studies of the properties of dark energy into the region z > 1.Comment: 7pp., 2 figs. Invited talk at the 5th Int'l. Wkshp. on the Dark Side
of the Universe, 1-5 June 2009 Melbourne, DSU09; to appear in the proceeding
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