The Majorana nature of neutrinos can be experimentally verified only via lepton-number violating processes involving charged leptons. We study 36 lepton-number violating (LV ) processes from the decays of tau leptons and pseudoscalar mesons. These decays are absent in the Standard Model but, in presence of Majorana neutrinos in the mass range ∼ 100 MeV to 5 GeV, the rates for these processes would be enhanced due to their resonant contribution. We calculate the transition rates and branching fractions and compare them to the current bounds from direct experimental searches for ∆L = 2 tau and rare meson decays. The experimental non-observation of such LV processes places stringent bounds on the Majorana neutrino mass and mixing and we summarize the existing limits. We also extend the search to hadron collider experiments. We find that, at the Tevatron with 8 fb −1 integrated luminosity, there could be 2σ (5σ) sensitivity for resonant production of a Majorana neutrino in the µ ± µ ± modes in the mass range of ∼ 10 − 180 GeV (10 − 120 GeV). This reach can be extended to ∼ 10 − 375 GeV (10 − 250 GeV) at the LHC of 14 TeV with 100 fb −1 . The production cross section at the LHC of 10 TeV is also presented for comparison. We study the µ ± e ± modes as well and find that the signal could be large enough even taking into account the current bound from neutrinoless double-beta decay. The signal from the gauge boson fusion channel W + W + → ℓ + 1 ℓ + 2 at the LHC is found to be very weak given the rather small mixing parameters. We comment on the search strategy when a τ lepton is involved in the final state.

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Abstract. 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 neutrino Dark Matter arising from astrophysical observations, laboratory experiments, and theoretical considerations. In this context, we provide a balanced discourse on the possibly positive signal from X-ray observations. Another focus of the paper concerns the construction of particle physics models, aiming to explain how sterile neutrinos of keV-scale masses could arise in concrete settings beyond the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. The paper ends with an extensive review of current and future astrophysical and laboratory searches, highlighting new ideas and their experimental challenges, as well as future perspectives for the discovery of sterile neutrinos.

It was commonly thought that the observation of low energy leptonic CP-violating phases would not automatically imply the existence of a baryon asymmetry in the leptogenesis scenario. This conclusion does not generically hold when the issue of flavor is relevant and properly taken into account in leptogenesis. We illustrate this point with various examples studying the correlation between the baryon asymmetry and the CP-violating asymmetry in neutrino oscillations and the effective Majorana mass in neutrinoless double beta decay. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.75.083511 PACS numbers: 98.80.Cq, 11.30.Er, 11.30.Fs, 14.60.Pq Leptogenesis [1] is a simple mechanism to explain the baryon number asymmetry (per entropy density) of the Universe Y B 0:87 0:02 10 ÿ10 [2]. A lepton asymmetry is dynamically generated and then converted into a baryon asymmetry due to (B L)-violating sphaleron interactions [3,4] which exist in the standard model (SM). A simple model in which this mechanism can be implemented is the ''seesaw''(type I) [5], consisting of the SM plus three right-handed (RH) Majorana neutrinos. In thermal leptogenesis [6] the heavy RH neutrinos are produced by thermal scatterings after inflation and subsequently decay out-of-equilibrium in a lepton number and CP-violating way, thus satisfying Sakharov's constraints [4]. At the same time the smallness of neutrino masses suggested by oscillation experiments [7] can be ascribed to the seesaw mechanism where integrating out heavy RH Majorana neutrinos generates mass terms for the lefthanded flavor neutrinos which are inversely proportional to the mass of the RH ones.Establishing a connection between the CP-violation in low energy neutrino physics and the CP-violation at high energy necessary for leptogenesis has received much attention in recent years [8] and is the subject of the present paper. In the case of three neutrino mixing, CP-violation at low energy is parameterized by the phases in the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nagakawa-Sakata (PMNS) [9] lepton mixing matrix U. It contains the Dirac phase and, if neutrinos are Majorana particles, two Majorana phases 21 and 31 [10]. The Dirac phase enters in the probability of neutrino oscillations. The corresponding CP-asymmetry is given by the difference between the oscillation probability for neutrino and antineutrinos, P P ! e ÿ and m 2 are the mass square differences which drive the solar and the atmospheric neutrino oscillations, respectively, and m i i 1; 2; 3 are the light neutrino masses. One Majorana phase can, in principle, be observed although this represents a challenge. For a detailed discussion see Refs. [13,14].It was commonly accepted that the future observation of leptonic low energy CP-violation would not automatically imply a nonvanishing baryon asymmetry through leptogenesis. This conclusion, however, was shown in [15][16][17] not to hold universally. The reason is based on a new ingredient recently accounted for in the leptogenesis scenario, lepton flavor [15][16][17][18]. The dynamics of leptogenesis is usually addr...

Particles beyond the Standard Model (SM) can generically have lifetimes that are long compared to SM particles at the weak scale. When produced at experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, these long-lived particles (LLPs) can decay far from the interaction vertex of the primary proton–proton collision. Such LLP signatures are distinct from those of promptly decaying particles that are targeted by the majority of searches for new physics at the LHC, often requiring customized techniques to identify, for example, significantly displaced decay vertices, tracks with atypical properties, and short track segments. Given their non-standard nature, a comprehensive overview of LLP signatures at the LHC is beneficial to ensure that possible avenues of the discovery of new physics are not overlooked. Here we report on the joint work of a community of theorists and experimentalists with the ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb experiments—as well as those working on dedicated experiments such as MoEDAL, milliQan, MATHUSLA, CODEX-b, and FASER—to survey the current state of LLP searches at the LHC, and to chart a path for the development of LLP searches into the future, both in the upcoming Run 3 and at the high-luminosity LHC. The work is organized around the current and future potential capabilities of LHC experiments to generally discover new LLPs, and takes a signature-based approach to surveying classes of models that give rise to LLPs rather than emphasizing any particular theory motivation. We develop a set of simplified models; assess the coverage of current searches; document known, often unexpected backgrounds; explore the capabilities of proposed detector upgrades; provide recommendations for the presentation of search results; and look towards the newest frontiers, namely high-multiplicity ‘dark showers’, highlighting opportunities for expanding the LHC reach for these signals.

We model the linear and nonlinear growth of large scale structure in the Cubic Galileon gravity model, by running a suite of N-body cosmological simulations using the ECOSMOG code. Our simulations include the Vainshtein screening effect, which reconciles the Cubic Galileon model with local tests of gravity. In the linear regime, the amplitude of the matter power spectrum increases by ∼ 20% with respect to the standard ΛCDM model today. The modified expansion rate accounts for ∼ 15% of this enhancement, while the fifth force is responsible for only ∼ 5%. This is because the effective unscreened gravitational strength deviates from standard gravity only at late times, even though it can be twice as large today. In the nonlinear regime (k 0.1hMpc −1 ), the fifth force leads to only a modest increase ( 8%) in the clustering power on all scales due to the very efficient operation of the Vainshtein mechanism. Such a strong effect is typically not seen in other models with the same screening mechanism. The screening also results in the fifth force increasing the number density of halos by less than 10%, on all mass scales. Our results show that the screening does not ruin the validity of linear theory on large scales which anticipates very strong constraints from galaxy clustering data. We also show that, whilst the model gives an excellent match to CMB data on small angular scales (l 50), the predicted integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect is in tension with Planck/WMAP results.

During 2004, four divisions of the American Physical Society commissioned a study of neutrino physics to take stock of where the field is at the moment and where it is going in the near and far future. Several working groups looked at various aspects of this vast field. The summary was published as a main report entitled "The Neutrino Matrix" accompanied by short 50 page versions of the report of each working group. Theoretical research in this field has been quite extensive and touches many areas and the short 50 page report [1] provided only a brief summary and overview of few of the important points. The theory discussion group felt that it may be of value to the community to publish the entire study as a white paper and the result is the current article. After a brief overview of the present knowledge of neutrino masses and mixing and some popular ways to probe the new physics implied by recent data, the white paper summarizes what can be learned about physics beyond the Standard Model from the various proposed neutrino experiments. It also comments on the impact of the experiments on our understanding of the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe and the basic nature of neutrino interactions as well as the existence of possible additional neutrinos. Extensive references to original literature are provided.2

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