It has been known for some time that the cosmological bound on the invisible axion scale can be avoided by an early phase of strong QCD. While most approaches rely on theories where the strong coupling constant is determined through the expectation value of some scalar field, we show that this mechanism can also be implemented into the benchmark Kim-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov and Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky models when the early phase of strong QCD emerges by the modification of the running coupling during inflation. For both models the physics that are responsible for making QCD strong do not displace the axions minimum by too much, so that the efficiency of the relaxation is controlled by parameters of the theory and the number of inflationary <math><mi>e</mi></math>-folds. In particular, we consider the case of very efficient relaxation where the axion abundance is dominated by inflationary quantum and postinflationary thermal fluctuations. Within this situation we identify the parameter space compatible with all cosmological constrains and derive conditions on the reheating temperature and the QCD scale during inflation that result in the axion making up all the dark matter. Because of duality below the Peccei-Quinn scale and a minor influence of the Kim-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov and Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky fields on the running, our findings also apply to a minimal two-form implementation of the axion.

Germany

Emmanouil Koutsangelas

Removing the cosmological bound on the axion scale in the Kim-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov and Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky models

We present a search strategy for both Dirac and Majorana sterile neutrinos from the purely leptonic decays of W± → e± e± μ∓ν and μ± μ± e∓ν at the 14 TeV LHC. The discovery and exclusion limits for sterile neutrinos are shown using both the Cut-and-Count (CC) and Multi-Variate Analysis (MVA) methods. We also discriminate between Dirac and Majorana sterile neutrinos by exploiting a set of kinematic observables which differ between the Dirac and Majorana cases. We find that the MVA method, compared to the more common CC method, can greatly enhance the discovery and discrimination limits. Two benchmark points with sterile neutrino mass mN = 20 GeV and 50 GeV are tested. For an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb−1, sterile neutrinos can be found with 5σ significance if heavy-to-light neutrino mixings |UNe|2 ∼ |UNμ|2∼ 10−6, while Majorana vs. Dirac discrimination can be reached if at least one of the mixings is of order 10−5.

Chile

Claudio O. Dib

South Korea

C.S. Kim

China

Kechen Wang

Search for heavy sterile neutrinos in trileptons at the LHCK. W. was Supported by the International Postdoctoral Exchange Fellowship Program (No.90 Document of OCPC, 2015); C. S. K. by the NRF grant funded by the Korean government of the MEST (No. 2016R1D1A1A02936965); and C. D. by Chile grants Fondecyt No.Â 1130617, Conicyt ACT 1406 and PIA/Basal FB0821

We present a fully general, model-independent study of a few rare semileptonic B decays that get dominant contributions from W -annihilation and W -exchange diagrams, in particular B0→D¯0ℓ+ℓ- , where ℓ=e,μ . We consider the most general Lagrangian for the decay, and define three angular asymmetries in the Gottfried–Jackson frame, which are sensitive to new physics. We show how these angular asymmetries can easily be extracted from the distribution of events in the Dalitz plot for B→Dℓ+ℓ- decays. Especially a non-zero forward–backward asymmetry within the frame would give the very first hint of possible new physics. These observations are also true for related decay modes, such as B+→D+ℓ+ℓ- and B0→D0ℓ+ℓ- . Moreover, these asymmetry signatures are not affected by either B0 – B¯0 or D0 – D¯0 mixings. Then this implies that both B0→D¯0ℓ+ℓ- and B0→D0ℓ+ℓ- as well as their CP conjugate modes can all be considered together in our search for signature of new physics. Hence, it would be of great importance to look for and study these decays in the laboratory, LHCb and Belle II in particular.

Dibyakrupa Sahoo

Probing new physics in B→Dℓ+ℓ- decays by using angular asymmetries

We evaluate the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux at high energies using three different frameworks for calculating the heavy quark production cross section in QCD: NLO perturbative QCD, k T factorization including low- x resummation, and the dipole model including parton saturation. We use QCD parameters, the value for the charm quark mass and the range for the factorization and renormalization scales that provide the best description of the total charm cross section measured at fixed target experiments, at RHIC and at LHC. Using these parameters we calculate differential cross sections for charm and bottom production and compare with the latest data on forward charm meson production from LHCb at 7 TeV and at 13 TeV, finding good agreement with the data. In addition, we investigate the role of nuclear shadowing by including nuclear parton distribution functions (PDF) for the target air nucleus using two different nuclear PDF schemes. Depending on the scheme used, we find the reduction of the flux due to nuclear effects varies from 10% to 50% at the highest energies. Finally, we compare our results with the IceCube limit on the prompt neutrino flux, which is already providing valuable information about some of the QCD models.

United States

Belgium

Atri Bhattacharya

Sweden

Rikard Enberg

Yu Jeong

Mary Reno

Ina Sarcevic

Anna Stasto

Prompt atmospheric neutrino fluxes: perturbative QCD models and nuclear effects

We propose a model where sterile neutrinos are introduced to make light neutrinos to be pseudo-Dirac particles. It is shown how tiny mass splitting necessary for realizing pseudo-Dirac neutrinos can be achieved. Within the model, we show how leptogenesis can be successfully generated. Motivated by the recent observation of very high energy neutrino events at IceCube, we study a possibility to observe the effects of the pseudo-Dirac property of neutrinos by performing astronomical-scale baseline experiments to uncover the oscillation effects of very tiny mass splitting. We also discuss future prospect to observe the effects of the pseudo-Dirac property of neutrinos at high energy neutrino experiments.

Y.H. Ahn

Sin Kang

A model for pseudo-Dirac neutrinos: leptogenesis and ultra-high energy neutrinos

We examine the renormalization group evolution (RGE) for different mixing scenarios in the presence of seesaw threshold effects from high energy scale (GUT) to the low electroweak (EW) scale in the Standard Model (SM) and Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We consider four mixing scenarios namely Tri–Bimaximal Mixing, Bimaximal Mixing, Hexagonal Mixing and Golden Ratio Mixing which come from different flavor symmetries at the GUT scale. We find that the Majorana phases play an important role in the RGE running of these mixing patterns along with the seesaw threshold corrections. We present a comparative study of the RGE of all these mixing scenarios both with and without Majorana CP phases when seesaw threshold corrections are taken into consideration. We find that in the absence of these Majorana phases both the RGE running and seesaw effects may lead to θ13&lt;5° at low energies both in the SM and MSSM. However, if the Majorana phases are incorporated into the mixing matrix the running can be enhanced both in the SM and MSSM. Even by incorporating non-zero Majorana CP phases in the SM, we do not get θ13 in its present 3 σ range. The current values of the two mass squared differences and mixing angles including θ13 can be produced in the MSSM case with tan⁡β=10 and non-zero Majorana CP phases at low energy. We also calculate the order of effective Majorana mass and Jarlskog Invariant for each scenario under consideration.

Shivani Gupta

Sin Kyu Kang

Renormalization group evolution of neutrino parameters in presence of seesaw threshold effects and Majorana phases

We systematically analyze the radiative corrections to the S3 symmetric neutrino mass matrix at high energy scale, say the GUT scale, in the charged lepton basis. There are significant corrections to the neutrino parameters both in the Standard Model (SM) and Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with large tan⁡β , when the renormalization group evolution (RGE) and seesaw threshold effects are taken into consideration. We find that in the SM all three mixing angles and atmospheric mass squared difference are simultaneously obtained in their current 3 σ ranges at the electroweak scale. However, the solar mass squared difference is found to be larger than its allowed 3 σ range at the low scale in this case. There are significant contributions to neutrino masses and mixing angles in the MSSM with large tan⁡β from the RGEs even in the absence of seesaw threshold corrections. However, we find that the mass squared differences and the mixing angles are simultaneously obtained in their current 3 σ ranges at low energy when the seesaw threshold effects are also taken into account in the MSSM with large tan⁡β .

Pankaj Sharma

Radiative and seesaw threshold corrections to the S3 symmetric neutrino mass matrix