Early Decay of Peccei-Quinn Fermion and the IceCube Neutrino Events

IceCube observed high-energy neutrino flux in the energy region from TeV to PeV. The decay of a massive long-lived particle in the early universe can be the origin of the IceCube neutrino events, which we call an "early decay scenario." In this paper, we construct a particle physics model that contains such a massive long-lived particle based on the Peccei-Quinn model. We calculate the present neutrino flux, taking account of realistic initial energy distributions of particles produced by the decay of the massive long-lived particle. We show that the early decay scenario naturally fits into the Peccei-Quinn model, and that the neutrino flux observed by IceCube can be explained in such a framework. We also see that, based on that model, a consistent cosmological history that explains the abundance of the massive long-lived particle is realized.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures; v2: references added; v3: version accepted for publication in PL

Explosive Axion Production from Saxion

The dynamics of saxion in a supersymmetric axion model and its effect on the axion production is studied in detail. We find that the axion production is very efficient when the saxion oscillation amplitude is much larger than the Peccei-Quinn scale, due to a spike-like behavior of the effective axion mass. We also consider the axino production and several cosmological consequences. The possibility of detection of gravitational waves from the non-linear dynamics of the saxion and axion is discussed.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure

Unitarity constraint on the K\"ahler curvature

In supersymmetric theories, the signs of quartic terms in the K\"ahler potential control the stability of non-supersymmetric field configurations. In particular, in supersymmetric inflation models, the signs are important for the stability of an inflationary trajectory as well as for the prediction of the spectral index. In this paper, we clarify what properties of a UV theory determine the sign from unitarity arguments of scattering amplitudes. As non-trivial examples, we discuss the sign of a four-meson term in large $N$ supersymmetric gauge theories and also those of the quartic terms obtained in the intersecting D-brane models in superstring theory. The UV origins of inflationary models and supersymmetry breaking models are constrained by this discussion.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures; published version, minor changes, references adde

Electroweak Vacuum Stabilized by Moduli during/after Inflation

It is known that the present electroweak vacuum is likely to be metastable and it may lead to a serious instability during/after inflation. We propose a simple solution to the problem of vacuum instability during/after inflation. If there is a moduli field which has Planck-suppressed interactions with the standard model fields, the Higgs quartic coupling in the early universe naturally takes a different value from the present one. A slight change of the quartic coupling in the early universe makes the Higgs potential absolutely stable and hence we are free from the vacuum instability during/after inflation.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures; v2: references adde

Indirect Studies of Electroweakly Interacting Particles at 100 TeV Hadron Colliders

There are many extensions of the standard model that predict the existence of electroweakly interacting massive particles (EWIMPs), in particular in the context of the dark matter. In this paper, we provide a way for indirectly studying EWIMPs through the precise study of the pair production processes of charged leptons or that of a charged lepton and a neutrino at future 100 TeV collider experiments. It is revealed that this search method is suitable in particular for Higgsino, providing us the $5\sigma$ discovery reach of Higgsino in supersymmetric model with mass up to 850 GeV. We also discuss how accurately one can extract the mass, gauge charge, and spin of EWIMPs in our method.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, 5 table

Violent Preheating in Inflation with Nonminimal Coupling

We study particle production at the preheating era in inflation models with nonminimal coupling $\xi \phi^2R$ and quartic potential $\lambda \phi^4/4$ for several cases: real scalar inflaton, complex scalar inflaton and Abelian Higgs inflaton. We point out that the preheating proceeds much more violently than previously thought. If the inflaton is a complex scalar, the phase degree of freedom is violently produced at the first stage of preheating. If the inflaton is a Higgs field, the longitudinal gauge boson production is similarly violent. This is caused by a spike-like feature in the time dependence of the inflaton field, which may be understood as a consequence of the short time scale during which the effective potential or kinetic term changes suddenly. The produced particles typically have very high momenta $k \lesssim \sqrt{\lambda}M_\text{P}$. The production might be so strong that almost all the energy of the inflaton is carried away within one oscillation for $\xi^2\lambda \gtrsim {\mathcal O}(100)$. This may partly change the conventional understandings of the (p)reheating after inflation with the nonminimal coupling to gravity such as Higgs inflation. We also discuss the possibility of unitarity violation at the preheating stage.Comment: 43 pages, 15 figure