11210523
TeV scale 5D SU(3)W unification and the fixed point anomaly cancellation with chiral split multiplets
A possibility of 5D gauge unification of SU(2)L × U(1)Y in SU(3)W is examined. The orbifold compactification allows fixed points where SU(2)L × U(1)Y representations can be assigned. We present a few possibilities which give long proton lifetime, top-bottom mass hierarchy from geometry, and reasonable neutrino masses. In general, these chiral models can lead to fixed point anomalies. We can show easily, due to the simplicity of the model, that these anomalies are cancelled by the relevant Chern-Simons terms for all the models we consider. It is also shown that the fixed point U(1)-graviton-graviton anomaly cancels without the help from the Chern-Simons term. Hence, we conjecture that the fixed point anomalies can be cancelled if the effective 4D theory is made anomaly free by locating chiral fermions at the fixed points.
118417909
Dark matter that can form dark stars
The first stars to form in the Universe may be powered by the annihilation of weakly interacting dark matter particles. These so-called dark stars, if observed, may give us a clue about the nature of dark matter. Here we examine which models for particle dark matter satisfy the conditions for the formation of dark stars. We find that in general models with thermal dark matter lead to the formation of dark stars, with few notable exceptions: heavy neutralinos in the presence of coannihilations, annihilations that are resonant at dark matter freeze-out but not in dark stars, some models of neutrinophilic dark matter annihilating into neutrinos only and lighter than about 50 GeV. In particular, we find that a thermal DM candidate in standard Cosmology always forms a dark star as long as its mass is heavier than 50 GeV and the thermal average of its annihilation cross section is the same at the decoupling temperature and during the dark star formation, as for instance in the case of an annihilation cross section with a non-vanishing s-wave contribution.
7942617
Running of Gauge Couplings in AdS5 via Deconstruction
Running of gauge couplings on a slice of AdS5 is examined using the deconstruction setup. Logarithmic running instead of (linear) power law is justified when the cutoff is lower than the curvature scale. Most of interesting features including the localization of Kaluza-Klein modes and the widening of higher Kaluza-Klein spectrum spacing are well captured within the framework of deconstruction.
118629765
The $\mu$-problem and axion in gauge mediation
We revisit the idea of generating the Higgs {mu} parameter through a spontaneously broken Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry in a gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking scenario. For the messenger scale of gauge mediation higher than the PQ scale, the setup naturally generates {mu}{approx}m{sub soft} and the Higgs soft parameter B < or approx. O(m{sub soft}) with the CP phase of B aligned to the phase of gaugino masses, while giving the PQ scale v{sub PQ{approx}{radical}}(m{sub soft{Lambda}}), where m{sub soft} denotes the gauge-mediated gaugino or sfermion masses and {Lambda} is the cutoff scale which can be identified as the Planck scale or the grand unified theory scale. The PQ sector of the model results in distinctive cosmology including a late thermal inflation. We discuss the issue of dark matter and baryogenesis in the resulting thermal inflation scenario, and find that a right amount of gravitino dark matter can be produced together with a successful Affleck-Dine leptogenesis, when the gravitino mass m{sub 3/2}=O(100) keV.
16982790
Softness of Scherk-Schwarz supersymmetry breaking
We investigate how the mass correction appears in 5-D with Scherk-Schwarz compactification and clarify whether the KK regularization is reliable method or not. In the extremely sharp cutoff limit of the 5-D regulator which preserves 5-D Lorentz invariance, we prove that the one loop correction to the mass does not depend on the ultraviolet physics for the Scherk-Schwarz breaking of supersymmetry. This is a unique property of Scherk-Schwarz breaking which is given by the boundary condition.
8975869
Small instanton contribution to the axion potential in supersymmetric models
Small size QCD instantons may spoil the axion solution to the strong $\mathrm{CP}$ problem if QCD is not asymptotically free at high-energy scales. We examine this issue in supersymmetric models using a manifestly supersymmetric scheme to compute the axion potential induced by small size instantons. Applying this scheme for a class of illustrative models, it is found that the resulting high-energy axion potential is highly model dependent, but suppressed by more powers of the soft supersymmetry breaking parameters and/or of the other small mass scales than what is expected based on a naive instanton graph analysis. Our analysis suggests that the axion solution is stable against the small QCD instanton effects in a wide class of supersymmetric models even when QCD is not asymtotically free at high-energy scales.
118653361
M5-branes from gauge theories on the 5-sphere
A bstractWe use the 5-sphere partition functions of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories to explore the (2, 0) superconformal theory on S5 × S1. The 5d theories can be regarded as Scherk-Schwarz reductions of the 6d theory along the circle. In a special limit, the perturbative partition function takes the form of the Chern-Simons partition function on S3. With a simple non-perturbative completion, it becomes a 6d index which captures the degeneracy of a sector of BPS states as well as the index version of the vacuum Casimir energy. The Casimir energy exhibits the N3 scaling at large N. The large N index for U(N) gauge group also completely agrees with the supergravity index on AdS7 × S4.
118860846
Semi-classical monopole operators in Chern-Simons-matter theories
We construct classical solutions for magnetic monopole operators in N =6 superconformal Chern- Simons-matter theories. In particular, we explicitly find solutions with unequal magnetic flux contents in the two U(N) gauge groups, whose existence has been known only indirectly. We also study the ground state degeneracies of the U(2)×U(2) monopoles by quantizing the moduli of the solution.
119212917
Natural inflation with multiple sub-Planckian axions
We extend the Kim-Nilles-Peloso (KNP) alignment mechanism for natural inflation to models with $N>2$ axions, which obtains a super-Planckian effective axion decay constant $f_{\textrm{eff}}\gg M_{Pl}$ through an alignment of the anomaly coefficients of multiple axions having sub-Planckian fundamental decay constants $f_0\ll M_{Pl}$. The original version of the KNP mechanism realized with two axions requires that some of the anomaly coefficients should be of the order of $f_{\textrm{eff}}/f_0$, which would be uncomfortably large if $f_{\rm eff}/f_0 \gtrsim {\cal O}(100)$ as suggested by the recent BICEP2 results. We note that the KNP mechanism can be realized with the anomaly coefficients of $\mathcal{O}(1)$ if the number of axions $N$ is large as $N\ln N\gtrsim 2\ln (f_{\textrm{eff}}/f_0)$, in which case the effective decay constant can be enhanced as $f_{\rm eff}/f_0 \sim \sqrt{N !}\,n^{N-1}$ for $n$ denoting the typical size of the integer-valued anomaly coefficients. Comparing to the other multiple axion scenario, the N-flation scenario which requires $N \sim f_{\textrm{eff}}^2/f_0^2$, the KNP mechanism has a virtue of not invoking to a too large number of axions, although it requires a specific alignment of the anomaly coefficients, which can be achieved with a probability of ${\cal O}(f_0/f_{\rm eff})$ under a random choice of the anomaly coefficients. We also present a simple model realizing a multiple axion monodromy along the inflaton direction.
122815252
Production and optical properties of Gd-loaded liquid scintillator for the RENO neutrino detector
Abstract Reactor experiment for neutrino oscillation (RENO) began data-taking from August 2011. It successfully observed reactor antineutrino disappearance in April 2012 to measure the smallest mixing angle of θ 13 . Two identical detectors, one at near location and the other at far location, are constructed at the Yonggwang nuclear power plant in South Korea, to compare the observed reactor neutrino fluxes. Each RENO detector is filled with 16 mass tons of Gadolinium loaded liquid scintillator (GdLS) in the neutrino target region, and with 28 mass tons of unloaded liquid scintillator (LS) in the γ - catcher region surrounding the target. LS was developed to satisfy chemical, physical, optical properties, and safety requirements. Linear alkyl benzene (LAB) was chosen as a solvent because of its high flash-point, sufficient light yield, and being environmentally friendly. GdLS is carefully developed to keep a long attenuation length and high light yield for a long time period. In this paper, we report the characteristics and mass production of the RENO LS and GdLS.
33056442
Observation of reactor electron antineutrinos disappearance in the RENO experiment.
The RENO experiment has observed the disappearance of reactor electron antineutrinos, consistent with neutrino oscillations, with a significance of 4.9 standard deviations. Antineutrinos from six 2.8  GW(th) reactors at the Yonggwang Nuclear Power Plant in Korea, are detected by two identical detectors located at 294 and 1383 m, respectively, from the reactor array center. In the 229 d data-taking period between 11 August 2011 and 26 March 2012, the far (near) detector observed 17102 (154088) electron antineutrino candidate events with a background fraction of 5.5% (2.7%). The ratio of observed to expected numbers of antineutrinos in the far detector is 0.920±0.009(stat)±0.014(syst). From this deficit, we determine sin(2)2θ(13)=0.113±0.013(stat)±0.019(syst) based on a rate-only analysis.