Search results for "Particle physics"
showing 10 items of 6826 documents
Disentangling neutrino-nucleon cross section and high energy neutrino flux with akm3neutrino telescope
2007
The energy--zenith angular event distribution in a neutrino telescope provides a unique tool to determine at the same time the neutrino-nucleon cross section at extreme kinematical regions, and the high energy neutrino flux. By using a simple parametrization for fluxes and cross sections, we present a sensitivity analysis for the case of a km^3 neutrino telescope. In particular, we consider the specific case of an under-water Mediterranean telescope placed at the NEMO site, although most of our results also apply to an under-ice detector such as IceCube. We determine the sensitivity to departures from standard values of the cross sections above 1 PeV which can be probed independently from a…
Astrophysical bound on the majoron-Higgs-boson coupling
1989
Abstract We show that the coupling of the “standard” Higgs boson to majorons, that could lead to a very fast decay of the neutral Higgs scalar to invisible modes, can be bounded using astrophysical arguments. We discuss the relevance of this bound for low-energy phenomenology related to majoron production. The bound so obtained may also jeopardize the stability of the VEV hierarchy in the doublet and triplet majoron models if the mass of the top quark is less than the W mass. A similar analysis may be applied to other models which exhibit Goldstone-or pseudo-Goldstone-bosons in the spectrum.
Neutrino masses and their ordering: global data, priors and models
2018
We present a Bayesian analysis of the combination of current neutrino oscillation, neutrinoless double beta decay and CMB observations. Our major goal is to carefully investigate the possibility to single out one neutrino mass ordering, Normal Ordering or Inverted Ordering, with current data. Two possible parametrizations (three neutrino masses versus the lightest neutrino mass plus the two oscillation mass splittings) and priors (linear versus logarithmic) are examined. We find that the preference for NO is only driven by neutrino oscillation data. Moreover, the values of the Bayes factor indicate that the evidence for NO is strong only when the scan is performed over the three neutrino ma…
Calculation of the local density of relic neutrinos
2017
Nonzero neutrino masses are required by the existence of flavour oscillations, with values of the order of at least 50 meV. We consider the gravitational clustering of relic neutrinos within the Milky Way, and used the $N$-one-body simulation technique to compute their density enhancement factor in the neighbourhood of the Earth with respect to the average cosmic density. Compared to previous similar studies, we pushed the simulation down to smaller neutrino masses, and included an improved treatment of the baryonic and dark matter distributions in the Milky Way. Our results are important for future experiments aiming at detecting the cosmic neutrino background, such as the Princeton Tritiu…
MINOS and CPT violating neutrinos
2009
We review the status of CPT violation in the neutrino sector. Apart from LSND, current data favors three flavors of light stable neutrinos and antineutrinos, with both halves of the spectrum having one smaller mass splitting and one larger mass splitting. Oscillation data for the smaller splitting are consistent with CPT. For the larger splitting, current data favor an antineutrino mass-squared splitting that is an order of magnitude larger than the corresponding neutrino splitting, with the corresponding mixing angle less than maximal. This CPT-violating spectrum is driven by recent results from MINOS, but is consistent with other experiments if we ignore LSND. We describe an analysis tech…
SEARCH FOR A CORRELATION BETWEEN ANTARES NEUTRINOS AND PIERRE AUGER OBSERVATORY UHECRs ARRIVAL DIRECTIONS
2013
A multimessenger analysis optimized for a correlation of arrival directions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) and neutrinos is presented and applied to 2190 neutrino candidate events detected in 2007-2008 by the ANTARES telescope and 69 UHECRs observed by the Pierre Auger Observatory between 2004 January 1 and 2009 December 31. No significant correlation is observed. Assuming an equal neutrino flux (E-2 energy spectrum) from all UHECR directions, a 90% CL upper limit on the neutrino flux of 5.0 x 10(-8) GeV cm(-2) s(-1) per source is derived.
Sterile Neutrinos in Light of Recent Cosmological and Oscillation Data: a Multi-Flavor Scheme Approach
2008
Light sterile neutrinos might mix with the active ones and be copiously produced in the early Universe. In the present paper, a detailed multi-flavor analysis of sterile neutrino production is performed. Making some justified approximations allows us to consider not only neutrino interactions with the primeval medium and neutrino coherence breaking effects, but also oscillation effects arising from the presence of three light (mostly-active) neutrino states mixed with two heavier (mostly-sterile) states. First, we emphasize the underlying physics via an analytical description of sterile neutrino abundances that is valid for cases with small mixing between active and sterile neutrinos. Then,…
A White Paper on keV sterile neutrino Dark Matter
2017
We present a comprehensive review of keV-scale sterile neutrino Dark Matter, collecting views and insights from all disciplines involved - cosmology, astrophysics, nuclear, and particle physics - in each case viewed from both theoretical and experimental/observational perspectives. After reviewing the role of active neutrinos in particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, we focus on sterile neutrinos in the context of the Dark Matter puzzle. Here, we first review the physics motivation for sterile neutrino Dark Matter, based on challenges and tensions in purely cold Dark Matter scenarios. We then round out the discussion by critically summarizing all known constraints on sterile neutrin…
A search for point sources of EeV photons
2014
Measurements of air showersmade using the hybrid technique developed with the fluorescence and surface detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory allow a sensitive search for point sources of EeV photons anywhere in the exposed sky. A multivariate analysis reduces the background of hadronic cosmic rays. The search is sensitive to a declination band from −85º to +20º, in an energy range from 1017.3 eV to 1018.5 eV. No photon point source has been detected. An upper limit on the photon flux has been derived for every direction. The mean value of the energy flux limit that results from this, assuming a photon spectral index of −2, is 0.06 eV cm−2 s−1, and no celestial direction exceeds 0.25 eV …
ANTARES constrains a blazar origin of two IceCube PeV neutrino events
2015
Abstract Context. The source(s) of the neutrino excess reported by the IceCube Collaboration is unknown. The TANAMI Collaboration recently reported on the multiwavelength emission of six bright, variable blazars which are positionally coincident with two of the most energetic IceCube events. Objects like these are prime candidates to be the source of the highest-energy cosmic rays, and thus of associated neutrino emission. Aims. We present an analysis of neutrino emission from the six blazars using observations with the ANTARES neutrino telescope. Methods. The standard methods of the ANTARES candidate list search are applied to six years of data to search for an excess of muons and hence th…