358 research outputs found
Nearly degenerate neutrinos, Supersymmetry and radiative corrections
If neutrinos are to play a relevant cosmological role, they must be
essentially degenerate with a mass matrix of the bimaximal mixing type. We
study this scenario in the MSSM framework, finding that if neutrino masses are
produced by a see-saw mechanism, the radiative corrections give rise to mass
splittings and mixing angles that can accommodate the atmospheric and the
(large angle MSW) solar neutrino oscillations. This provides a natural origin
for the hierarchy. On the other hand,
the vacuum oscillation solution to the solar neutrino problem is always
excluded. We discuss also in the SUSY scenario other possible effects of
radiative corrections involving the new neutrino Yukawa couplings, including
implications for triviality limits on the Majorana mass, the infrared fixed
point value of the top Yukawa coupling, and gauge coupling and bottom-tau
unification.Comment: 32 pages, 12 Postscript figures, uses psfig.st
Wormholes and Ringholes in a Dark-Energy Universe
The effects that the present accelerating expansion of the universe has on
the size and shape of Lorentzian wormholes and ringholes are considered. It is
shown that, quite similarly to how it occurs for inflating wormholes, relative
to the initial embedding-space coordinate system, whereas the shape of the
considered holes is always preserved with time, their size is driven by the
expansion to increase by a factor which is proportional to the scale factor of
the universe. In the case that dark energy is phantom energy, which is not
excluded by present constraints on the dark-energy equation of state, that size
increase with time becomes quite more remarkable, and a rather speculative
scenario is here presented where the big rip can be circumvented by future
advanced civilizations by utilizing sufficiently grown up wormholes and
ringholes as time machines that shortcut the big-rip singularity.Comment: 11 pages, RevTex, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Naturalness of nearly degenerate neutrinos
If neutrinos are to play a relevant cosmological role, they must be
essentially degenerate. We study whether radiative corrections can or cannot be
responsible for the small mass splittings, in agreement with all the available
experimental data. We perform an exhaustive exploration of the bimaximal mixing
scenario, finding that (i) the vacuum oscillations solution to the solar
neutrino problem is always excluded; (ii) if the mass matrix is produced by a
see-saw mechanism, there are large regions of the parameter space consistent
with the large angle MSW solution, providing a natural origin for the hierarchy; (iii) the bimaximal structure becomes
then stable under radiative corrections. We also provide analytical expressions
for the mass splittings and mixing angles and present a particularly simple
see-saw ansatz consistent with all observations.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX, 6 ps figures, psfig.sty. Typos, references and minor
details corrected. Additional condition for the MSW mechanism incorporated.
New viable textures adde
An accelerated closed universe
We study a model in which a closed universe with dust and quintessence matter
components may look like an accelerated flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW)
universe at low redshifts. Several quantities relevant to the model are
expressed in terms of observed density parameters, and
, and of the associated density parameter related
to the quintessence scalar field .Comment: 11 pages. For a festschrift honoring Alberto Garcia. To appear in
Gen. Rel. Gra
Limits on the gravity wave contribution to microwave anisotropies
We present limits on the fraction of large angle microwave anisotropies which
could come from tensor perturbations. We use the COBE results as well as
smaller scale CMB observations, measurements of galaxy correlations, abundances
of galaxy clusters, and Lyman alpha absorption cloud statistics. Our aim is to
provide conservative limits on the tensor-to-scalar ratio for standard
inflationary models. For power-law inflation, for example, we find T/S<0.52 at
95% confidence, with a similar constraint for phi^p potentials. However, for
models with tensor amplitude unrelated to the scalar spectral index it is still
currently possible to have T/S>1.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D.
Calculations extended to blue spectral index, Fig. 6 added, discussion of
results expande
SO(3) Gauge Symmetry and Neutrino-Lepton Flavor Physics
Based on the SO(3) gauge symmetry for three family leptons and general
see-saw mechanism, we present a simple scheme that allows three nearly
degenerate Majorana neutrino masses needed for hot dark matter. The vacuum
structure of the spontaneous SO(3) symmetry breaking can automatically lead to
a maximal CP-violating phase. Thus the current neutrino data on both the
atmospheric neutrino anomaly and solar neutrino deficit can be accounted for
via maximal mixings without conflict with the current data on the neutrinoless
double beta decay. The model also allows rich interesting phenomena on lepton
flavor violations.Comment: 10 pages, Revtex, no figures, minor changes and references added, the
version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Inhomogeneous cosmologies with Q-matter and varying
Starting from the inhomogeneous shear--free Nariai metric we show, by solving
the Einstein--Klein--Gordon field equations, how a self--interacting scalar
field plus a material fluid, a variable cosmological term and a heat flux can
drive the universe to its currently observed state of homogeneous accelerated
expansion. A quintessence scenario where power-law inflation takes place for a
string-motivated potential in the late--time dominated field regime is
proposed.Comment: 11 pages, Revtex. To be published in Physical Review
Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy with Cosine-Type Quintessence
We study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies produced by
cosine-type quintessence models. In our analysis, effects of the adiabatic and
isocurvature fluctuations are both taken into account. For purely adiabatic
fluctuations with scale invariant spectrum, we obtain a stringent constraint on
the model parameters using the CMB data from COBE, BOOMERanG and MAXIMA.
Furthermore, it is shown that isocurvature fluctuations have significant
effects on the CMB angular power spectrum at low multipoles in some parameter
space, which may be detectable in future satellite experiments. Such a signal
may be used to test the cosine-type quintessence models.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figure
Constraints on early dark energy from CMB lensing and weak lensing tomography
Dark energy can be studied by its influence on the expansion of the Universe
as well as on the growth history of the large-scale structure. In this paper,
we follow the growth of the cosmic density field in early dark energy
cosmologies by combining observations of the primary CMB temperature and
polarisation power spectra at high redshift, of the CMB lensing deflection
field at intermediate redshift and of weak cosmic shear at low redshifts for
constraining the allowed amount of early dark energy. We present these
forecasts using the Fisher-matrix formalism and consider the combination of
Planck-data with the weak lensing survey of Euclid. We find that combining
these data sets gives powerful constraints on early dark energy and is able to
break degeneracies in the parameter set inherent to the various observational
channels. The derived statistical 1-sigma-bound on the early dark energy
density parameter is sigma(Omega_d^e)=0.0022 which suggests that early dark
energy models can be well examined in our approach. In addition, we derive the
dark energy figure of merit for the considered dark energy parameterisation and
comment on the applicability of the growth index to early dark energy
cosmologies.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures, 3 tables; v2: very minor additions, updated to
match version to be published in JCA
Potential for Supernova Neutrino Detection in MiniBooNE
The MiniBooNE detector at Fermilab is designed to search for oscillation appearance at and to make a
decisive test of the LSND signal. The main detector (inside a veto shield) is a
spherical volume containing 0.680 ktons of mineral oil. This inner volume,
viewed by 1280 phototubes, is primarily a \v{C}erenkov medium, as the
scintillation yield is low. The entire detector is under a 3 m earth
overburden. Though the detector is not optimized for low-energy (tens of MeV)
events, and the cosmic-ray muon rate is high (10 kHz), we show that MiniBooNE
can function as a useful supernova neutrino detector. Simple trigger-level cuts
can greatly reduce the backgrounds due to cosmic-ray muons. For a canonical
Galactic supernova at 10 kpc, about 190 supernova
events would be detected. By adding MiniBooNE to the international network of
supernova detectors, the possibility of a supernova being missed would be
reduced. Additionally, the paths of the supernova neutrinos through Earth will
be different for MiniBooNE and other detectors, thus allowing tests of
matter-affected mixing effects on the neutrino signal.Comment: Added references, version to appear in PR
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