Search results for "COSMIC"
showing 10 items of 656 documents
Is it mixed dark matter or neutrino masses?
2018
In this paper, we explore a scenario where the dark matter is a mixture of interacting and non interacting species. Assuming dark matter-photon interactions for the interacting species, we find that the suppression of the matter power spectrum in this scenario can mimic that expected in the case of massive neutrinos. Our numerical studies include present limits from Planck Cosmic Microwave Background data, which render the strength of the dark matter photon interaction unconstrained when the fraction of interacting dark matter is small. Despite the large entangling between mixed dark matter and neutrino masses, we show that future measurements from the Dark Energy Instrument (DESI) could he…
X-ray photons from late-decaying majoron dark matter
2008
An attractive way to generate neutrino masses as required to account for current neutrino oscillation data involves the spontaneous breaking of lepton number. The resulting majoron may pick up a mass due to gravity. If its mass lies in the kilovolt scale, the majoron can play the role of late-decaying Dark Matter (LDDM), decaying mainly to neutrinos. In general the majoron has also a sub-dominant decay to two photons leading to a mono-energetic emission line which can be used as a test of the LDDM scenario. We compare expected photon emission rates with observations in order to obtain model independent restrictions on the relevant parameters. We also illustrate the resulting sensitivities w…
Muon-pair production by atmospheric muons in cosmoALEPH
2006
Data from a dedicated cosmic ray run of the ALEPH detector were used in a study of muon trident production, i.e., muon pairs produced by muons. Here the overburden and the calorimeters are the target materials while the ALEPH time projection chamber provides the momentum measurements. A theoretical estimate of the muon trident cross section is obtained by developing a Monte Carlo simulation for muon propagation in the overburden and the detector. Two muon trident candidates were found to match the expected theoretical pattern. The observed production rate implies that the nuclear form factor cannot be neglected for muon tridents.
New Methods of Scalar Dark Matter Detection
2017
In this chapter, I consider new mechanisms for the induction of a cosmological evolution of the fundamental constants (such as the electromagnetic fine-structure constant \(\alpha \) and the particle masses) by dark matter. By investigating the effects of “slow drifts” and oscillating variations of the fundamental constants due to dark matter in astrophysical phenomena, including Big Bang nucleosynthesis and cosmic microwave background radiation measurements, and laboratory clock-comparison experiments, I derive new limits on certain interactions of dark matter with ordinary matter that improve on previous limits by up to 15 orders of magnitude, as well as the first ever limits on several o…
A CMB search for the neutrino mass mechanism and its relation to the Hubble tension
2020
AbstractThe majoron, a pseudo-Goldstone boson arising from the spontaneous breaking of global lepton number, is a generic feature of many models intended to explain the origin of the small neutrino masses. In this work, we investigate potential imprints in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) arising from massive majorons, should they thermalize with neutrinos after Big Bang Nucleosynthesis via inverse neutrino decays. We show that measurements of the CMB are currently sensitive to neutrino-majoron couplings as small as $$\lambda \sim 10^{-13}$$λ∼10-13, which if interpreted in the context of the type-I seesaw mechanism correspond to a lepton number symmetry breaking scale $$v_L \sim {\math…
Screening of long-range leptonic forces by cosmic background neutrinos.
1995
The absence of dispersion effects of the SN~1987A neutrino pulse has been used to constrain novel long-range forces between neutrinos and galactic baryonic or non-baryonic matter. If these forces are mediated by vector bosons, screening effects by the cosmic neutrino background invalidate the SN~1987A limits and other related arguments.
Effect of atmospheric flux uncertainties on the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy
2016
The next generation of large-volume neutrino telescopes will include low-energy subarrays which will be able to measure neutrinos with energies of a few GeV. In this energy range the primary signal below the horizon is neutrinos created by cosmic ray interactions in the atmosphere. The measured event rate will depend on the neutrino mass hierarchy, allowing determination of this quantity to a significance level of about 3.5 sigma within a 5-year period, mostly limited by systematic uncertainties. We present here the impact of the uncertainties on the atmospheric neutrino flux normalization on the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy. We suggest constraining the systematic uncertaint…
Constraints on inflation with an extended neutrino sector
2019
Constraints on inflationary models typically assume only the standard models of cosmology and particle physics. By extending the neutrino sector to include a new interaction with a light scalar mediator (mφ∼MeV), it is possible to relax these constraints, in particular via opening up regions of the parameter space of the spectral index ns. These new interactions can be probed at IceCube via interactions of astrophysical neutrinos with the cosmic neutrino background for nearly all of the relevant parameter space.
Dark Radiation and Inflationary Freedom after Planck 2015
2016
The simplest inflationary models predict a primordial power spectrum (PPS) of the curvature fluctuations that can be described by a power-law function that is nearly scale-invariant. It has been shown, however, that the low-multipole spectrum of the CMB anisotropies may hint the presence of some features in the shape of the scalar PPS, which could deviate from its canonical power-law form. We study the possible degeneracies of this non-standard PPS with the neutrino anisotropies, the neutrino masses, the effective number of relativistic species and a sterile neutrino or a thermal axion mass. The limits on these additional parameters are less constraining in a model with a non-standard PPS w…
Partition function based analysis of cosmic microwave background maps
1999
We present an alternative method to analyse cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps. We base our analysis on the study of the partition function. This function is used to examine the CMB maps, making use of the different information embedded at different scales and moments. Using the partition function in a likelihood analysis in two dimensions (Qrms-PS, n), we find the best-fitting model to the best data available at present (the COBE–DMR 4 years data set). By means of this analysis we find a maximum in the likelihood function for n=1.8-0.65+0.35 and Qrms-PS = 10-2.5+3μ K (95 per cent confidence level) in agreement with the results of other similar analyses [Smoot et al. (1 yr), Bennet et a…