An unexpected explanation for neutrino mass, Dark Matter (DM) and Dark Energy (DE) from genuine Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) of the Standard Model (SM) is proposed here, while the strong CP problem is resolved without any need to account for fundamental axions. We suggest that the neutrino sector can be in a double phase in the Universe: i) relativistic neutrinos, belonging to the SM; ii) non-relativistic condensate of Majorana neutrinos. The condensate of neutrinos can provide an attractive alternative candidate for the DM, being in a cold coherent state. We will explain how neutrinos, combining into Cooper pairs, can form collective low-energy degrees of freedom, hence providing a strongly motivated candidate for the QCD (composite) axion.
Two-ordinary-meson scattering in large-$N_c$ QCD implies consistency criteria for intermediate-tetraquark contributions. Their fulfilment at $N_c$-leading order constrains the nature of the spectrum of genuinely exotic tetraquark states.
In this talk the answer to the question: what neutrinos have to do with QCD, the present theory of strong interactions? is presented. The answer is positive as some strong arguments on this assertion that are presented bring out.
We consider a chiral gauge theory from which light composite Dirac neutrinos dynamically emerge, augmented by a QCD axion to solve the strong CP problem. We show that an interplay between the composite sector and the axion can also simultaneously lead to successful baryogenesis and generate a correct dark matter abundance via "co-genesis" without contradicting present constraints. We predict $ΔN_{\rm eff} \geq 0.14$ and $m_a$ in the range $O(1)\>{\rm μeV}$--$O(10)\>{\rm meV}$, which can be firmly tested by upcoming CMB experiments and axion searches.
Prompt neutrino fluxes are basic backgrounds in the search of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin, performed by means of full-size neutrino telescopes located at Earth, under ice or under water. Predictions for these fluxes are provided on the basis of up-to-date theoretical results for charm hadroproduction in perturbative QCD, together with a comprehensive discussion of the various sources of theoretical uncertainty affecting their computation, and a quantitative estimate of each uncertainty contribution.
The number of events observed in neutrino telescopes depends on the neutrino fluxes in the Earth, their absorption while crossing the Earth and their interaction in the detector. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the QCD dynamics at high energies on the energy dependence of the average inelasticity and angular dependence of the absorption probability during the neutrino propagation through the Earth, as well in the determination of the properties of the incident astrophysical neutrino flux. Moreover, the number of events at the IceCube and IceCube - Gen2 are estimated considering dif…
X(3872) presents many surprises after its discovery more than ten years ago. Understanding its properties is crucial to understand the spectrum of possible exotic mesons. In this work, X(3872) meson and its heavy quark spin symmetry (HQSS) partners (including the mesons in the bottom sector) are studied within the QCD Sum Rules approach using a current motivated by the molecular picture of X(3872). We predict four heavy partners to X(3872) and bottomonium with the masses and J^PC quantum numbers. Obtained results are in good agreement with the previous studies and available experimental data w…
We evaluate the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux using the different QCD models for heavy quark production including the $b$ quark contribution. We include the nuclear correction and find it reduces the fluxes by $10 \% - 50\%$ according to the models. Our heavy quark results are compared with experimental data from RHIC, LHC and LHCb.
The well-known leptonic U(1) symmetry of the standard model of quarks and leptons is extended to include a number of new fermions and scalars. The resulting theory has an invisible QCD axion (thereby solving the strong CP problem), a candidate for weak-scale dark matter, as well as radiative neutrino masses. A possible key connection is a color-triplet scalar, which may be produced and detected at the Large Hadron Collider.
We present a lattice QCD study of the neutrinoless double beta decay involving light sterile neutrinos. The calculation is performed at physical pion mass using five gauge ensembles generated with the $2+1$-flavor domain wall fermions. We obtain the low-energy constants $g_{\text{LR}}^{ππ}(m_ν)$ with the neutrino mass $m_ν$ from $0$ GeV to $3$ GeV. The lattice results are reasonably consistent with the previous interpolation method with a $\sim20\%$ deviation at small $m_ν$. We provide an explanation on the discrepancy at vanishing neutrino mass. At large $m_ν$, a good consistence between our …
This document is one of a series of whitepapers from the USQCD collaboration. Here, we discuss opportunities for lattice QCD in neutrino-oscillation physics, which inevitably entails nucleon and nuclear structure. In addition to discussing pertinent lattice-QCD calculations of nucleon and nuclear matrix elements, the interplay with models of nuclei is discussed. This program of lattice- QCD calculations is relevant to current and upcoming neutrino experiments, becoming increasingly important on the timescale of LBNF/DUNE and HyperK.
While the discovery of non-zero neutrino masses is one of the most important accomplishments by physicists in the past century, it is still unknown how and in what form these masses arise. Lepton number-violating neutrinoless double beta decay is a natural consequence of Majorana neutrinos and many BSM theories, and many experimental efforts are involved in the search for these processes. Understanding how neutrinoless double beta decay would manifest in nuclear environments is key for understanding any observed signals. In these proceedings we present an overview of a set of one- and two-body…
The number of ultrahigh energy events at IceCube is estimated, for the first time, taking into account non-linear QCD effects in the neutrino - hadron cross section. We assume that the extragalactic neutrino flux is given by $Φ_ν(E_ν)=Φ_{0}E^{-2}_ν$ and estimate the neutrino - hadron cross section using the dipole approach and a phenomenological model for the dipole - hadron cross section based on non-linear QCD dynamics. We demonstrate that the non-linear prediction is able to describe the current IceCube data and that the magnitude of the non-linear effects is larger than 20 % for visible en…
We discuss unpolarized neutrino- and anti-neutrino-nucleon deep inelastic scattering (DIS) using a chiral doublet of baryonic sources with explicit symmetry breaking, in a slice of AdS$_5$ with both a hard and soft wall. We explicitly derive the direct and transition form factors for the vector and axial-vector currents for the holographic dual of a proton and neutron. We use them to derive the s-channel structure functions for neutrino and anti-neutrino scattering on a proton and neutron in bulk. The t-channel contributions stemming from the Pomeron and Reggeon exchanges are also evaluated ex…
We study the production of sterile neutrinos in the early universe from $π\rightarrow l ν_s$ shortly after the QCD phase transition in the absence of a lepton asymmetry while including finite temperature corrections to the $π$ mass and decay constant $f_π$. Sterile neutrinos with masses $\lesssim 1 MeV$ produced via this mechanism freeze-out at $T_f \simeq 10 MeV$ with a distribution function that is highly non-thermal and features a sharp enhancement at low momentum thereby making this species \emph{cold} even for very light masses. Dark matter abundance constraints from the CMB and phase spa…
Light-cone QCD sum rules for the semileptonic decay Lambda_b --> p lepton anti-neutrino
在全QCD和HQET中，用光锥求和规则研究了唯一的半轻子重子衰变Λ_bPDMATHABMM p l \bar ν.计算描述衰减的形状因子，并用于预测衰减宽度和微分分布。由全QCD得到的总衰变宽度与以前的理论预测一致，而HQET结果通常要小一个数量级。这两个结果都与实验上限相一致，并可以与未来改进的实验数据进行比较。
While neutrino oscillation experiments have demonstrated that neutrinos have small, nonzero masses, much remains unknown about their properties and decay modes. One potential decay mode --- neutrinoless double beta decay ($0 νββ$) --- is a particularly interesting target of experimental searches, since its observation would imply that the neutrino is a Majorana particle, demonstrate that lepton number conservation is violated in nature, and give further constraints on the neutrino masses and mixing angles. Relating experimental constraints on $0 νββ$ decay rates to the neutrino masses, however…
The resonant production of keV sterile-neutrino dark matter mainly takes place during the QCD epoch of the early universe. It has been argued that it could be strongly affected by the opacities (or damping rates) of active neutrinos, which receive non-perturbative QCD-contributions. We find that for lepton asymmetries $ n_{ L_α} /s $ below $ 10 ^ { -6 } $ the opacities significantly affect the sterile-neutrino yield, but that for larger asymmetries, which are necessary for producing a significant fraction of the dark matter, the yield is insensitive to changes of the opacities. Thus non-pertur…
Next generation high-precision neutrino scattering experiments have the goal of measuring the as-of-yet unknown parameters governing neutrino oscillation. This effort is hampered by the use of large nuclear targets: secondary interactions within a nucleus can confuse the interpretation of experimental data, leading to ambiguities about the initial neutrino interaction in scattering events. The distribution of energies for neutrino events must instead be inferred from the responses of a sum of dissimilar event topologies. For this reason, precise neutrino cross sections on nucleon targets are o…
The opacity of the Earth to incident ultra high energy neutrinos is directly connected with the behaviour of the neutrino - nucleon ($σ^{νN}$) cross sections in a kinematic range utterly unexplored. In this work we investigate how the uncertainties in $σ^{νN}$ due the different QCD dynamic models modify the neutrino absorption while they travel across the Earth. In particular, we compare the predictions of two extreme scenarios for the high energy behaviour of the cross section, which are consistent with the current experimental data. The first scenario considered is based on the solution of t…
We present state-of-the-art predictions for the ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrino-nucleus cross-sections in charged- and neutral-current scattering. The calculation is performed in the framework of collinear factorisation at NNLO, extended to include the resummation of small-$x$ BFKL effects. Further improvements are made by accounting for the free-nucleon PDF constraints provided by $D$-meson data from LHCb and assessing the impact of nuclear corrections and heavy-quark mass effects. The calculations presented here should play an important role in the interpretation of future data from neutrin…
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…
A nonsinglet QCD analysis of neutrino-nucleon structure function is performed based on all the data for charged current neutrino-nucleon deep inelastic scattering (DIS) corresponds to NLO and NNLO approximations, with taking into account the nuclear and higher twist corrections. In this analysis, we extract $xu_v(x,Q^2)$ and $xd_v(x,Q^2)$ valence parton distribution functions (PDFs) in a wide range of $x$ and $Q^2$, and determine their parametrization with the correlated errors using the xFitter framework. Our results regarding valence-quark densities with their uncertainties are compared to t…
We present a fully differential next-to-next-to-leading order calculation of charm quark production in charged-current deep-inelastic scattering, with full charm-quark mass dependence. The next-to-next-to-leading order corrections in perturbative quantum chromodynamics are found to be comparable in size to the next-to-leading order corrections in certain kinematic regions. We compare our predictions with data on dimuon production in (anti-)neutrino scattering from a heavy nucleus. Our results can be used to improve the extraction of the parton distribution function of a strange quark in the nu…
Majorana and pseudo-Dirac heavy neutrinos are introduced into the type-I and inverse seesaw models, respectively, in explaining the naturally small neutrino mass. TeV scale heavy neutrinos can also be accommodated to have a sizable mixing with the Standard Model light neutrinos, through which they can be produced and detected at the high energy colliders. In this paper we consider the Next-to-Leading Order QCD corrections to the heavy neutrino production, and study the scale variation in cross-sections as well as the kinematic distributions with different final states at $14$ TeV LHC and also …
We consider perturbative one loop QCD corrections to the light neutrino contribution to neutrinoless double beta decay and find large enhancement to the rate. QCD corrections also generate structures which mimic new physics contributions usually considered. Within some approximations, the net effect seem to almost saturate the experimental limits, and therefore seems to implt that this is all there is to neutrinoless double beta decay.
There is a common belief that the main uncertainties in the theoretical analysis of neutrinoless double beta ($0νββ$) decay originate from the nuclear matrix elements. Here, we uncover another previously overlooked source of potentially large uncertainties stemming from non-perturbative QCD effects. Recently perturbative QCD corrections have been calculated for all dimension 6 and 9 effective operators describing $0νββ$-decay and their importance for a reliable treatment of $0νββ$-decay has been demonstrated. However, these perturbative results are valid at energy scales above $\sim 1$ GeV, wh…
Neutrinoless double-$β$ ($0νββ$) decay of certain atomic isotopes, if observed, will have significant implications for physics of neutrinos and models of physics beyond the Standard Model. In the simplest scenario, if the mass of the light neutrino of the Standard Model has a Majorana component, it can mediate the decay. Systematic theoretical studies of the decay rate in this scenario, through effective field theories matched to \emph{ab initio} nuclear many-body calculations, are needed to draw conclusions about the hierarchy of neutrino masses, and to plan the design of future experiments. …
We present predictions for the prompt-neutrino flux arising from the decay of charmed mesons and baryons produced by the interactions of high-energy cosmic rays in the Earth's atmosphere, making use of a QCD approach on the basis of the general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme for the description of charm hadroproduction at next-to-leading order, complemented by a consistent set of fragmentation functions. This same scheme is used for the description of charm hadroproduction at both the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider. We compare the theoretical predictions to those already obtained b…
Calculations of neutrino-nucleus cross sections begin with the neutrino-nucleon interaction, making the latter critically important to flagship neutrino oscillation experiments, despite limited measurements with poor statistics. Alternatively, lattice QCD (LQCD) can be used to determine these interactions from the Standard Model with quantifiable theoretical uncertainties. Recent LQCD results of $g_{\mathrm{A}}$ are in excellent agreement with data, and results for the (quasi-)elastic nucleon form factors with full uncertainty budgets are expected within a few years. We review the status of th…
