Exploring New Physics from nu_tau events in OPERA

We analyze in details the impact of the $10$ $\nu_\tau$ events seen in the OPERA experiment in constraining the Non Standard Interaction parameter $\varepsilon_{\mu\tau}$ affecting neutrino propagation in matter and the allowed parameter space of models with one sterile neutrino of the $3+1$ type.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, paper accepted for publication in Physics Letters

GUT and flavor models for neutrino masses and mixing

In the recent years neutrino experiments have studied in detail the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations and most of the oscillation parameters have been measured with a good accuracy. However, in spite of many interesting ideas, the problem of flavor in the lepton sector remains an open issue. In this review, we discuss the state of the art of models for neutrino masses and mixings formulated in the context of flavor symmetries, with particular emphasis on the role played by grand unified gauge groups.Comment: Added new reference

Neutrino flux ratios at neutrino telescopes: The role of uncertainties of neutrino mixing parameters and applications to neutrino decay

In this paper, we derive simple and general perturbative formulas for the flavor flux ratios $R_{\alpha\beta}=\phi_{\nu_\alpha}/\phi_{\nu_\beta}$ that could be measured at neutrino telescopes. We discuss in detail the role of the uncertainties of the neutrino mixing parameters showing that they have to be seriously taken into account in any realistic discussion about flavor measurements at neutrino telescopes. In addition, we analyze the impact of such uncertainties in telling the standard neutrino oscillation framework from scenarios involving, e.g., neutrino decay and we find that the ratio $R_{e\mu}$ is the most sensitive one to "new physics" effects beyond the Standard Model. We also compute the more realistic muon-to-shower ratio for a particular configuration of the IceCube experiment, observing that using this experimental quantity a clear separation between standard and non-standard neutrino physics cannot be obtained.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, LaTeX. Final version published in Phys. Rev.

Radiative corrections of heavy scalar decays to gauge bosons in the singlet extension of the Standard Model

Assuming the existence of a new real scalar singlet $s^0$ coupled to the Standard Model via a scalar quartic portal interaction, we compute the radiative corrections to the decay rates of the heavy scalar mass eigenstate to a couple of gauge bosons $ZZ$ and $W^+W^-(\gamma)$, showing that they can give a contribution as large as ${\cal{O}}$(5\%) and ${\cal{O}}$(7\%), respectively. We also explicitly analyze in detail their dependence on the heavy mass $m_S$ and on the scalar mixing angle $\alpha$, finding that, especially in the large-mass region, these depend on the sign of $\sin\alpha$.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure

Leptonic CP violation at neutrino telescopes

With the advent of the recent measurements in neutrino physics, we investigate the role of high-energy neutrino flux ratios at neutrino telescopes for the possibility of determining the leptonic CP-violating phase \delta and the underlying pattern of the leptonic mixing matrix. We find that the flux ratios show a dependence of O(10 %) on the CP-violating phase, and for optimistic uncertainties on the flux ratios less than 10 %, they can be used to distinguish between CP-conserving and CP-violating values of the phase at 2\sigma in a non-vanishing interval around the maximal value |\delta|=\pi/2.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. Final version published in Phys. Rev.

Estimates of the uncertainties associated with models of the nucleon structure functions in the Δ\Delta production region

Theoretical studies of the inclusive electron-nucleus cross section at beam energies up to few GeV show that, while the region of the quasi-elastic peak is understood at quantitative level, the data in the $\Delta$ production region are sizably underestimated. We analize the uncertainty associated with the description of the nucleon structure functions $W_1$ and $W_2$ and its impact on the nuclear cross section. The results of our study suggest that the failure to reproduce the data is to be mostly ascribed to the poor knowledge of the neutron structure functions at low $Q^2$.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

A non Supersymmetric SO(10) Grand Unified Model for All the Physics below MGUTM_{GUT}

We present a renormalizable non supersymmetric Grand Unified SO(10) model which, at the price of a large fine tuning, is compatible with all compelling phenomenological requirements below the unification scale and thus realizes a minimal extension of the SM, unified in SO(10) and describing all known physics below $M_{GUT}$. These requirements include coupling unification at a large enough scale to be compatible with the bounds on proton decay; a Yukawa sector in agreement with all the data on quark and lepton masses and mixings and with leptogenesis as the origin of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe; an axion arising from the Higgs sector of the model, suitable to solve the strong CP problem and to account for the observed amount of Dark Matter. The above constraints imposed by the data are very stringent and single out a particular breaking chain with the Pati-Salam group at an intermediate scale $M_I\sim10^{11}$ GeV.Comment: references added, minor changes in the text, version to appear in JHE

Probability Densities of the effective neutrino masses mβm_{\beta } and mββm_{\beta \beta}

We compute the probability densities of the effective neutrino masses $m_{\beta }$ and $m_{\beta \beta}$ using the Kernel Density Estimate (KDE) approach applied to a distribution of points in the $(m_{\min}, m_{\beta\beta })$ and $(m_{\beta }, m_{\beta\beta })$ planes, obtained using the available Probability Distribution Functions (PDFs) of the neutrino mixing and mass differences, with the additional constraints coming from cosmological data on the sum of the neutrino masses. We show that the reconstructed probability densities strongly depend on the assumed set of cosmological data: for $\sum_j m_j \leq 0.68\ @\ 95\% \ \mathrm{CL}$ a sensitive portion of the allowed values are already excluded by null results of experiments searching for $m_{\beta \beta}$ and $m_{\beta }$, whereas in the case $\sum_j m_j \leq 0.23\ @\ 95\% \ \mathrm{CL}$ the bulk of the probability densities are below the current bounds.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables. Improved discussion and references added, typos corrected, matches published version in NP

Heavy neutrino decays at MiniBooNE

It has been proposed that a sterile neutrino \nu_h with m_h \approx 50 MeV and a dominant decay mode (\nu_h -> \nu\gamma) may be the origin of the experimental anomaly observed at LSND. We define a particular model that could also explain the MiniBooNE excess consistently with the data at other neutrino experiments (radiative muon capture at TRIUMF, T2K, or single photon at NOMAD). The key ingredients are (i) its long lifetime (\tau_h\approx 3-7x10^{-9} s), which introduces a 1/E dependence with the event energy, and (ii) its Dirac nature, which implies a photon preferably emitted opposite to the beam direction and further reduces the event energy at MiniBooNE. We show that these neutrinos are mostly produced through electromagnetic interactions with nuclei, and that T2K observations force BR(\nu_h -> \nu_\tau\gamma) \le 0.01 \approx BR(\nu_h -> \nu_\mu\gamma). The scenario implies then the presence of a second sterile neutrino \nu_{h'} which is lighter, longer lived and less mixed with the standard flavors than \nu_h. Since such particle would be copiously produced in air showers through (\nu_h -> \nu_{h'}\gamma) decays, we comment on the possible contamination that its photon-mediated elastic interactions with matter could introduce in dark matter experiments.Comment: 18 pages, typo in Eq.(6) correcte