15898659
Semileptonic decays of light quarks beyond the Standard Model
We thank the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington and the 
Aspen Center for Physics for their hospitality during the completion of this work. We thank 
Antonio Pich and Jorge Portoles for useful comments. M.G.-A. thanks A. Filipuzzi for useful 
comments and discussions and the LANL T-2 Group for its hospitality and partial support. 
This work has been supported in part by the EU RTN network FLAVIAnet [Contract No. 
MRTN-CT-2006-035482], by MICINN, Spain [Grants FPU No. AP20050910, FPA2007- 
60323 and Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Programme CSD2007-00042 -CPAN-] (M. G.-A.). This 
work was performed under the auspices of the National Nuclear Security Administration 
of the U.S. Department of Energy at Los Alamos National Laboratory under Contract No. 
DE-AC52-06NA25396, and was supported in part by the LANL LDRD program.
119609735
Survey of lepton number violation via effective operators
We survey 129 lepton number violating effective operators, consistent with the minimal standard model gauge group and particle content, of mass dimension up to and including 11. Upon requiring that each one radiatively generates the observed neutrino masses, we extract an associated characteristic cutoff energy scale which we use to calculate other observable manifestations of these operators for a number of current and future experimental probes, concentrating on lepton number violating phenomena. These include searches for neutrinoless double-beta decay and rare meson, lepton, and gauge boson decays. We also consider searches at hadron/lepton collider facilities in anticipation of the CERN LHC and the future ILC. We find that some operators are already disfavored by current data, while more are ripe to be probed by next-generation experiments. We also find that our current understanding of lepton mixing disfavors a subset of higher dimensional operators. While neutrinoless double-beta decay is the most promising signature of lepton number violation for the majority of operators, a handful is best probed by other means. We argue that a combination of constraints from various independent experimental sources will help to pinpoint the ''correct'' model of neutrino mass, or at least aid in narrowing down the setmore » of possibilities.« less
119278741
Some radiative corrections to neutrino scattering: Neutral currents
With the advent of high precision neutrino scattering experiments comes the need for improved radiative corrections. We present a phenomenological analysis of some contributions to the production of photons in neutrino neutral current scattering that are relevant to experiments subsuming the 1 % level of accuracy.
118491521
Model independent explorations of Majorana neutrino mass origins
The scale of neutrino mass generation may be too large to explore directly, but useful information may still be extracted from independent experimental channels. Here I survey various model independent probes of Majorana neutrino mass origins. An introduction to the concepts relevant to the analysis is followed by a discussion of the physical ranges of neutrino parameters within the context of standard and non-standard interactions. Armed with this, I move on to systematically analyze the properties of radiatively generated neutrino masses induced by nonrenormalizable lepton number violating effective operators of mass dimensions five through eleven. By fitting these to the observed light mass scale, I extract predictions for neutrino mixing as well as neutrinoless double beta decay, rare meson/tau decays and collider phenomenology. I find that many such models are already constrained by current data and many more will be probed in the near future. I then move on demonstrate the utility of a low scale seesaw mechanism via a viable sterile neutrino model that satisfies all oscillation data as well as solves problems associated with supernova kicks and heavy element nucleosynthesis. From this I extract predictions for tritium and neutrinoless double beta decay searches.
119115901
Pseudo-Dirac Neutrinos in the New Standard Model
The addition of gauge-singlet fermions to the standard model Lagrangian renders the neutrinos massive and allows one to explain all that is experimentally known about neutrino masses and lepton mixing by varying the values of the Majorana mass parameters M for the gauge singlets and the neutrino Yukawa couplings {lambda}. Here we explore the region of parameter space where M values are much smaller than the neutrino Dirac masses {lambda}v. In this region, neutrinos are pseudo-Dirac fermions. We find that current solar data constrain M values to be less than at least 10{sup -9} eV, and discuss the sensitivity of future experiments to tiny gauge-singlet fermion masses. We also discuss a useful basis for analyzing pseudo-Dirac neutrino mixing effects. In particular, we identify a simple relationship between elements of M and the induced enlarged mixing matrix and new mass-squared differences. These allow one to directly relate bounds on the new mass-squared differences to bounds on the singlet fermion Majorana masses.
117798634
Non-oscillation probes of the neutrino mass hierarchy and vanishing |U(e3)|
One of the outstanding issues in neutrino physics is the experimental determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy: Is the order of the neutrino masses ``normal'' - m_1^2<m_2^2<m_3^2 - or is it inverted - m_3^2<m_1^2<m_2^2, with m_2^2-m_1^2 << m_2^2,m_1^2? While this issue can be resolved in next-generation long-baseline nu_{mu} to nu_e neutrino oscillation studies if |U_{e3}|^2 is large enough, a clear strategy on how to resolve it if |U_{e3}|^2 is sufficiently small is still lacking. We study the capability of non-oscillation probes of neutrino masses to determine the neutrino mass ordering. We concentrate on studies of m_{nu_e}, the kinematical neutrino mass to which precise studies of tritium beta-decay are sensitive, m_{ee}, the effective mass to which the rate for neutrinoless double-beta decay is sensitive if the neutrinos are Majorana fermions, and Sigma, the sum of the neutrino masses, to which cosmological probes of the energy budget of the Universe are sensitive. We find that combined measurements of m_{ee}, Sigma, and m_{nu_e} are capable of establishing the neutrino mass hierarchy if these measurements are precise enough and if one ``gets lucky.'' We quantify the previous sentence in detail by performing a numerical analysis of a large number of theoretical data sets, for different measured values of m_{nu_e}, m_{ee}, and Sigma, keeping in mind the ultimate sensitivity that can be reached by next (and next-to-next) generation experiments.
14030854
MAXWELL DUALITY, LORENTZ INVARIANCE, AND TOPOLOGICAL PHASE
We discuss the Maxwell electromagnetic duality relations between the Aharonov-Bohm, Aharonov-Casher, and He-McKellar-Wilkens topological phases, which allows a unified description of all three phenomena. We also elucidate Lorentz transformations that allow these effects to be understood in an intuitive fashion in the rest frame of the moving quantum particle. Finally, we propose two experimental schemes for measuring the He-McKellar-Wilkens phase.