Bounds on Very Weakly Interacting Sub-eV Particles (WISPs) from Cosmology and Astrophysics
Javier Redondo
备注：
6 pages, 4 figures. To appear in the proceedings of 4th Patras Workshop on Axions, WIMPs and WISPs - Training Workshop, Hamburg, Germany, 18-21 Jun 2008
Many weakly interacting sub-electronVolt particles (WISPs) are easily accommodated in extensions of the standard model. Generally the strongest bounds on their existence come from stellar evolution and cosmology, where to the best of our knowledge observations seem to agree with the standard budget of particles. In this talk I review the most demanding constraints for axions and axion-like-particles, hidden photons and mini-charged particles.
We present some bottom-up motivations of axions and other weakly interacting sub-eV particles (WISPs) coupling to photons. Typically, these light particles are strongly constrained by their production or interaction in astrophysical and cosmological environments. Dedicated laboratory searches can provide complementary probes that are mostly less sensitive but also less model-dependent. We briefly comment on future experiments with the potential to discover photon oscillation effects in kinetic mixing scenarios with massive hidden photons.
Shining light through walls? At first glance this sounds crazy. However, very feeble gravitational and electroweak effects allow for this exotic possibility. Unfortunately, with present and near future technologies the opportunity to observe light shining through walls via these effects is completely out of question. Nevertheless there are quite a number of experimental collaborations around the globe involved in this quest. Why are they doing it? Are there additional ways of sending photons through opaque matter? Indeed, various extensions of the standard model of particle physics predict the…
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Cosmology yields the most restrictive limits on neutrino masses and conversely, massive neutrinos would contribute to the cosmic dark-matter density and would play an important role for the formation of structure in the universe. Neutrino oscillations may well solve the solar neutrino problem and can have a significant impact on supernova physics. The neutrino signal from a future galactic supernova could provide evidence for cosmologically interesting neutrino masses or set interesting limits.
These notes are intended as an introductory course for experimental particle physicists interested in the recent developments in astrophysics and cosmology. I will describe the standard Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe, with its successes and shortcomings, which will lead to inflationary cosmology as the paradigm for the origin of the global structure of the universe as well as the origin of the spectrum of density perturbations responsible for structure in our local patch. I will present a review of the very rich phenomenology that we have in cosmology today, as well as eviden…
Astrophysical and cosmological arguments and observations give us the most restrictive constraints on neutrino masses, electromagnetic couplings, and other properties. Conversely, massive neutrinos would contribute to the cosmic dark-matter density and would play an important role for the formation of structure in the universe. Neutrino oscillations may well solve the solar neutrino problem, and can have a significant impact on supernova physics.
With a view to studying diquark formation in QCD phase transition and its consequences in high energy density physics, the energy per quark for the extended scalar diquarks (ESD) as a function of density is calculated, within the framework of an effective phi four theory, for several values of the effective interaction parameter (lamda). Various equations of state for the ESD systems corresponding to the different values of lamda are obtained. The importance of the equations of state for such matter under extreme conditions of density and/or temperature is discussed and the role of the astroph…
I review recent developments in cosmology and astrophysics relevant to particle physics, focussing on the following questions: What's new in 1992? What have we learned since the last ICHEP meeting in 1990? and What are the prospects for the future? AMong the topics explicitly discussed are: COBE, Large Scale Structure, and Dark Matter; Bib Bang Nucleosynthesis; the Solar Neutrino Problem; and High Energy Gamma Ray PHysics.
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If axions exist they are efficiently produced in the hot and dense interior of stars, providing a novel energy-loss mechanism. In order to avoid a conflict with the observed properties of stars, one can derive a lower limit on the Peccei-Quinn scale (an upper limit on the axion mass). In the early universe, axions are produced by the ``misalignment mechanism'' and the emission from global strings as well as the relaxation of the string-domain wall system formed at the QCD phase transition. In order to avoid an ``overclosed universe'' the Peccei-Quinn scale must obey an upper limit (a lower lim…
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In this talk I discuss several topics at the interface of particle physics and astrophysics/cosmology. These include the problem of dark matter and two popular dark matter candidates: axions and neutralinos. I also discuss briefly some recent developments in electroweak baryogenesis, as well as a variety of somewhat more exotic topics: the fate of domain walls, axinos, non-vanishing cosmological constant, and cosmological constraints on models with dynamical supersymmetry breaking. Most of the material is review, however a few of the remarks, especially regarding axion cosmology in the framewo…
It has recently been suggested that a scale invariant "unparticle" sector with a non-trivial infrared fixed point may couple to the Standard Model (SM) via higher dimensional operators. The weakness of such interactions hides the the unparticle phenomena at low energies. We demonstrate how cosmology and astrophysics can place significant bounds on the strength of unparticle-SM interactions. We also discuss the possibility of a having a non-negligible unparticle relic density today.
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The past few years have seen dramatic breakthroughs and spectacular and puzzling discoveries in astrophysics and cosmology. In many cases, the new observations can only be explained with the introduction of new fundamental physics. Here we summarize some of these recent advances. We then describe several problem in astrophysics and cosmology, ripe for major advances, whose resolution will likely require new physics.
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We briefly review the recent developments in neutrino physics and astrophysics which have import for frontline research in nuclear physics. These developments, we argue, tie nuclear physics to exciting developments in observational cosmology and astrophysics in new ways. Moreover, the behavior of neutrinos in dense matter is itself a fundamental problem in many-body quantum mechanics, in some ways akin to well-known issues in nuclear matter and nuclei, and in some ways radically different, especially because of nonlinearity and quantum de-coherence. The self-interacting neutrino gas is the onl…
Most embeddings of the Standard Model into a more unified theory, in particular the ones based on supergravity or superstrings, predict the existence of a hidden sector of particles which have only very weak interactions with the visible sector Standard Model particles. Some of these exotic particle candidates (such as e.g. "axions", "axion-like particles" and "hidden U(1) gauge bosons") may be very light, with masses in the sub-eV range, and have very weak interactions with photons. Correspondingly, these very weakly interacting sub-eV particles (WISPs) may lead to observable effects in exper…
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We perform a thorough analysis of oscillation signals generated by one extra sterile neutrino, extending previous analyses done in simple limiting cases and including the effects of established oscillations among active neutrinos. We consider the following probes: solar, atmospheric, reactor and beam neutrinos, Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (helium-4, deuterium), Cosmic Microwave Background, Large Scale Structure, supernovae, neutrinos from other astrophysical sources. We find no evidence for a sterile neutrino in present data, identify the still allowed regions, and study which future experiments …
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The phrase "more is different" is often used to refer to the new, unexpected collective phenomena that can arise when the number of states in a given system is large. In this contribution to the Snowmass 2021 Study, we describe 13 unexpected collective phenomena that can arise when the dark sector contains a large number of states, contrary to the usual assumptions. These 13 take-away lessons stretch across all of the domains of relevance for dark-matter physics, including collider signatures, direct-detection signatures, indirect-detection signatures, new perspectives on dark-matter complemen…
The microscopic quantum nature of elementary particles, chirality, leads to macroscopic phenomena like the chiral anomaly, chiral magnetic effect, and chiral plasma instability. We review recent progress of the studies of these chiral effects in high-energy astrophysics, such as pulsar kicks, magnetars, and core-collapse supernovae, and early Universe cosmology, such as the primordial magnetic field, baryogenesis, and chiral gravitational waves. We also provide a pedagogical introduction to the chiral effects and low-energy effective theories to describe them in and out of equilibrium -- the c…
We summarize progress made in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology over the past decade and areas of interest for the coming decade. This Report is prepared as the TF09 "Astrophysics and Cosmology" topical group summary for the Theory Frontier as part of the Snowmass 2021 process.
Cosmology and particle physics are closer today than ever before, with several searches underway at the interface between cosmology, particle physics, and field theory. The mystery of dark matter (DM) is one of the greatest common unsolved problems between these fields. It is established now based on many astrophysical and cosmological observations that only a small fraction of the total matter content of the universe is made of baryonic matter, while the vast majority is constituted by dark matter. However, the nature of such a component is still unknown. One theoretically well-motivated appr…
Observations of high-redshift galaxies have provided us with a rich tool to study the physics at play during the epoch of reionisation. The luminosity function (LF) of these objects is an indirect tracer of the complex processes that govern galaxy formation, including those of the first dark-matter structures. In this work, we present an extensive analysis of the UV galaxy LF at high redshifts to extract cosmological and astrophysical parameters. We provide a number of phenomenological approaches in modelling the UV LF and take into account various sources of uncertainties and systematics in o…
Cosmology & Astrophysics of the Dark Dimension with Bulk Majorana Neutrinos
Lehman College, City University of New York（纽约市立大学莱曼学院）；Graduate Center, City University of New York（纽约市立大学研究生院）；American Museum of Natural History（美国自然历史博物馆）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）
The state of our understanding of cosmology is reviewed from an astrophysical cosmologist point of view with a particular emphasis given to recent observations and their impact. Discussion is then presented on the implications for particle physics.
For a long time very little experimental information was available about neutrino properties, even though a minute neutrino mass has intriguing cosmological and astrophysical implications. This situation has changed in recent decades: intense experimental activity to measure many neutrino properties took place. Some of these developments and their implications for astrophysics and cosmology are briefly reviewed with a particular emphasis on neutrino magnetic moments and collective neutrino oscillations
Within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), LHC bounds suggest that scalar superpartner masses are far above the electroweak scale. Given a high superpartner mass, nonthermal dark matter is a viable alternative to WIMP dark matter generated via freezeout. In the presence of moduli fields nonthermal dark matter production is associated with a long matter dominated phase, modifying the spectral index and primordial tensor amplitude relative to those in a thermalized primordial universe. Nonthermal dark matter can have a higher self-interaction cross-section than its thermal counterp…
We present a class of simple scalar-tensor models of gravity with one scalar field (dilaton $Φ$) and only one unknown function (cosmological potential $U(Φ)$). These models might be considered as a stringy inspired ones with broken SUSY. They have the following basic properties: 1) Positive dilaton mass, $m_Φ$, and positive cosmological constant $Λ$, define two extremely different scales. The models under consideration are consistent with the known experimental facts if $m_Φ> 10^{-3} eV$ and $Λ=Λ^{obs}\sim 10^{-56} cm^{-2}$. 2) Einstein week equivalence principle is strictly satisfied and exte…
Axions at the meV Crossroads: Theory, Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Experiments
Università di Bologna（博洛尼亚大学）；INFN, Sezione di Bologna（意大利国家核物理研究所博洛尼部分所）；Università degli Studi di Padova（帕多瓦大学）；Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Padova（意大利国家核物理研究所帕多瓦分所）；Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Napoli（意大利国家核物理研究所那不勒斯分所）；Universidad de Zaragoza（萨拉戈萨大学）；Centro de Astropartículas y Física de Altas Energías, Universidad de Zaragoza（萨拉戈萨大学高能粒子与天体物理中心）；Department of Chemistry and Physics, Barry University（巴里大学化学与物理系）；Centro de Astrobiología, INTA-CSIC（西班牙国家航空航天技术研究所-西班牙国家科学研究委员会天体生物学中心）；LAPTh, Université Savoie Mont-Blanc et CNRS（萨瓦蒙布朗大学CNRS拉普斯理论物理实验室）；Barry University（巴里大学）
