In our previous work [Phys. Rev. D 101 (2020) 075046], we have proposed to install FAr Detectors at the Electron Positron Collider (FADEPC) to enhance the discovery potential of long-lived particles (LLPs). In this study, we consider eight designs of far detectors with different locations, volumes and geometries and investigate their potential for discovering long-lived axion-like particles (ALPs) via the process $e^-e^+ \rightarrow γ\,\, a,~ a \to γγ$ at future $e^{-}e^{+}$ colliders running at a center-of-mass energy of 91.2 GeV and integrated luminosities of 16, 150, and 750 ab$^{-1}$. We estimate their sensitivities on the model parameters in terms of the effective ALP-photon-photon coupling $C_{γγ} / Λ$, the effective ALP-photon-$Z$ coupling $C_{γZ} / Λ$, and ALP mass $m_a$ for three physics scenarios: $C_{γZ} = 0$; $C_{γZ} = C_{γγ}$ and both $C_{γZ}$ and $C_{γγ}$ can freely change. The results provide references for the optimization of far detectors at future electron-positron colliders.
We propose a search for long lived axion-like particles (ALPs) in exotic top decays. Flavour-violating ALPs appear as low energy effective theories for various new physics scenarios such as t-channel dark sectors or Froggatt-Nielsen models. In this case the top quark may decay to an ALP and an up- or charm-quark. For masses in the few GeV range, the ALP is long lived across most of the viable parameter space, suggesting a dedicated search. We propose to search for these long lived ALPs in $t\bar{t}$ events, using one top quark as a trigger. We focus on ALPs decaying in the hadronic calorimeter…
We show that heavy quark axion is not necessarily a hadronic axion, which manifests in the quark and lepton seesaw mechanism. We introduce a heavy $SU(2)$ singlet fermion for each known fermion in order to unify the axion scale and the seesaw scale. The light quarks and leptons gain their masses by the seesaw mechanism. Even though our axion model gives a kind of heavy quark axion, the axion has tree level lepton--axion coupling suppressed by $F_a$, contrary to a widely known belief that heavy quark axions are hadronic.
We investigate the cosmological constraints on axion models where the domain wall number is greater than one. In these models, multiple domain walls attached to strings are formed, and they survive for a long time. Their annihilation occurs due to the effects of explicit symmetry breaking term which might be raised by Planck-scale physics. We perform three-dimensional lattice simulations and compute the spectra of axions and gravitational waves produced by long-lived domain walls. Using the numerical results, we estimated relic density of axions and gravitational waves. We find that the existe…
We study the sensitivity of the existing MEG data to lepton flavor violating axion-like particles produced through $μ^+ \to e^+ a γ$ and estimate the discovery potential for the upcoming MEG II experiment in this channel. The MEG II signal efficiency can be improved significantly if a new trigger can be implemented in a dedicated run with a reduced beam intensity. This search would establish the world leading measurement in this channel with only 1 month of data taking.
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.
In an $SU(2)_R$ extension of the standard model, it is shown how the neutral fermion $N$ in the doublet $(N,e)_R$ may be assigned baryon number $B=1$, in contrast to its $SU(2)_L$ counterpart $ν$ in the doublet $(ν,e)_L$ which has lepton number $L=1$. This baryon-lepton duplicity allows a scalar $σ$ which couples to $N_L N_L$ to be long-lived dark matter.
The domain wall problem of the Peccei-Quinn mechanism can be solved if the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is explicitly broken by a small amount. Domain walls decay into axions, which may account for dark matter of the universe. This scheme is however strongly constrained by overproduction of axions unless the phase of the explicit breaking term is tuned. We investigate the case where the universe is matter-dominated around the temperature of the MeV scale and domain walls decay during this matter dominated epoch. We show how the viable parameter space is expanded.
It was explored a new $SU(3)_{L} \otimes U(1)_{X}$ electroweak extension of the Standard Model, where new particles arise with peculiar signatures as heavy fractionally charged leptons and electrical neutral quarks, among others. We examine the branching fraction and the lifetime of new heavy leptons in order to discriminate if they could be identified as long-lived particle candidates. In addition, it was compared the production cross-section for these exotic leptons through a Drell-Yan process for the LHC and future hadron facilities.
A major goal of axion searches is to reach inside the parameter space region of realistic axion models. Currently, the boundaries of this region depend on somewhat arbitrary criteria, and it would be desirable to specify them in terms of precise phenomenological requirements. We consider hadronic axion models and classify the representations $R_Q$ of the new heavy quarks $Q$. By requiring that $i)$ the $Q$ are sufficiently short lived to avoid issues with long lived strongly interacting relics, $ii)$ no Landau poles are induced below the Planck scale, fifteen cases are selected, which define a…
Axion-like particles (ALPs) with lepton-flavor violating couplings can be probed in exotic muon and tau decays. The sensitivity of different experiments depends strongly on the ALP mass and its couplings to leptons and photons. For ALPs that can be resonantly produced, the sensitivity of three-body decays such as $μ\to 3e$ and $τ\to 3μ$ exceeds by many orders of magnitude that of radiative decays like $μ\to eγ$ and $τ\toμγ$. Searches for these two types of processes are therefore highly complementary. We discuss experimental constraints on ALPs with a single dominant lepton-flavor violating co…
The well-known baryon and lepton numbers of the standard model of quarks and leptons are extended to include new fermions and bosons in a simple structure with several essential features. The usual heavy right-handed neutrino singlets (for neutrino mass and leptogenesis) are related to the axion which solves the strong CP problem. At the same time, baryon number is broken softly, allowing the proton to decay. Associated with this breaking, a long-lived dark-matter candidate (called the pseudo-sakharon) emerges. This new insight connects proton decay to a new component of dark matter.
We show that Peccei-Quinn and lepton number symmetries can be a natural outcome in a 3-3-1 model with right-handed neutrinos after imposing a Z_11 x Z_2 symmetry. This symmetry is suitably accommodated in this model when we augmented its spectrum by including merely one singlet scalar field. We work out the breaking of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry, yielding the axion, and study the phenomenological consequences. The main result of this work is that the solution to the strong CP problem can be implemented in a natural way, implying an invisible axion phenomenologically unconstrained, free of domai…
Lepton number violation (LNV) is usually searched for by the LHC collaborations using the same-sign di-lepton plus jet signature. In this paper we discuss multi-lepton signals of LNV that can arise with experimentally interesting rates in certain loop models of neutrino mass generation. Interestingly, in such models the observed smallness of the active neutrino masses, together with the high-multiplicity of the final states, leads in large parts of the viable parameter space of such models to the prediction of long-lived charged particles, that leave highly ionizing tracks in the detectors. We…
Because the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry has to be anomalous to solve the strong CP puzzle, some colored and chiral fermions have to transform non-trivially under this symmetry. But when the SM fermions are charged, as in the PQ or DFSZ models, this symmetry ends up entangled with the SM global symmetries, baryon (B) and lepton (L) numbers. This raises several questions addressed in this paper. First, the compatibility of axion models with some explicit B and/or L violating effects is analyzed, including those arising from seesaw mechanisms, electroweak instanton interactions, or explicit B and …
As the majority of LHC searches are focused on prompt signatures, specific long-lived particles have the potential to be overlooked by the otherwise systematic new physics programs at ATLAS and CMS. While in many cases long-lived superparticles are now stringently constrained by existing exotic searches, we point out that the highly motivated model of gauge mediation with staus as the next-to-lightest superparticle (NLSP) has received less attention. We recast LHC searches for heavy stable charged particles, disappearing tracks, and opposite-flavor leptons with large impact parameters to asses…
In the upcoming LHC Run 2, at $\sqrt{s} \sim13$ TeV, it is suggested to seek unusually charged ($Q= -4/3$ and $+5/3$) quarks with mass $M_Q \sim 3$ TeV which carry lepton number ($L = +2$ and $-2$ respectively) and decay superweakly to a bilepton $Y$ with mass $M_Y\sim2.5$ TeV and a usual quark. These long-lived decays will have displaced decay vertices and produce a striking final state in $pp$ which contains two separated jets together with two pairs of correlated like-sign charged leptons. Such a process was inaccessible energetically in LHC Run 1 with $\sqrt{s} \sim8$ TeV. The simplest the…
If a fourth generation of leptons exists, both the neutrino and its charged partner must be heavier than 45 GeV. We suppose that the neutrino is the heavier of the two, and that a global or discrete symmetry prohibits intergenerational mixing. In that case, non-renormalizable Planck scale interactions will induce a very small mixing; dimension five interactions will lead to a lifetime for the heavy charged lepton of $O(1-100)$ years. Production of such particles is discussed, and it is shown that a few thousands can be produced and collected at a linear collider. The possible uses of these hea…
The issue of gauge unification in the (non-supersymmetric) Standard Model is reinvestigated. It is found that with just an additional fourth generation of non-sequential and long-lived quarks and leptons, SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) gauge couplings converge to a common point of approximately 3.5x10^{15} GeV (corresponding to a proton lifetime of approximately 10^{34 plus/minus 1} years). This result is due to the non-negligible- but still perturbative- contributions of the top and fourth generation Yukawa couplings to the gauge two-loop beta functions, in contrast with the three generation case where suc…
We initiate the study of exotic Higgs decays to long-lived particles (LLPs) at proposed future lepton colliders, focusing on scenarios with displaced hadronic final states. Our analysis entails a realistic tracker-based search strategy involving the reconstruction of displaced secondary vertices and the imposition of selection cuts appropriate for eliminating the largest irreducible backgrounds. The projected sensitivity is broadly competitive with that of the LHC and potentially superior at lower LLP masses. In addition to forecasting branching ratio limits, which may be freely interpreted in…
We analyze the prospects of observing lepton flavour violation in future e-e- and e+e- linear colliders in scenarios where the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle, and the stau is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle. The signals consist of multilepton final states with two heavily ionizing charged tracks produced by the long-lived staus. The Standard Model backgrounds are very small and the supersymmetric backgrounds can be kept well under control by the use of suitable kinematical cuts. We discuss in particular the potential of the projected International Linear Collide…
In the framework of the low-energy effective field theory of the Standard Model extended with heavy neutral leptons (HNLs), we calculate the production rates of HNLs from meson decays triggered by dimension-six operators. We consider both lepton-number-conserving and lepton-number-violating four-fermion operators involving either a pair of HNLs or a single HNL. Assuming that HNLs are long-lived, we perform simulations and investigate the reach of the proposed far detectors at the high-luminosity LHC to (i) active-heavy neutrino mixing and (ii) the Wilson coefficients associated with the effect…
We discuss phenomenological criteria for defining "axion windows", namely regions in the parameter space of the axion-photon coupling where realistic models live. Currently, the boundaries of this region depend on somewhat arbitrary criteria, and it would be highly desirable to specify them in terms of precise phenomenological requirements. We first focus on hadronic axion models within post-inflationary scenarios, in which the initial abundance of the new vectorlike quarks $Q$ is thermal. We classify their representations $R_Q$ by requiring that $i)$ the $Q$ are sufficiently short lived to av…
When the mass difference between the lightest slepton and the lightest neutralino is smaller than the tau mass, the lifetime of the lightest slepton in the constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) increases in many orders of magnitude with respect to typical lifetimes of other supersymmetric particles. In a general MSSM, the lifetime of the lightest slepton is inversely proportional to the square of the intergenerational mixing in the slepton mass matrices. Such a long-lived slepton would produce a distinctive signature at LHC and a measurement of its lifetime would be relative…
We show how the scales responsible for Peccei-Quinn (PQ), seesaw, and Froggatt and Nielsen (FN) mechanisms can be fixed, by constructing a compact model for resolving rather recent, but fast-growing issues in astro-particle physics, including quark and leptonic mixings and CP violations, high-energy neutrinos, QCD axion, and axion cooling of stars. The model is motivated by the flavored PQ symmetry for unifying the flavor physics and string theory. The QCD axion decay constant congruent to the seesaw scale, through its connection to the astro-particle constraints of both the stellar evolution …
When the mass difference between the lightest slepton, the NLSP, and the lightest neutralino, the LSP, is smaller than the tau mass, the lifetime of the lightest slepton increases in many orders of magnitude with respect to typical lifetimes of other supersymmetric particles. These small mass differences are possible in the MSSM and, for instance, they correspond to the coannihilation region of the CMSSM for $M_{1/2} \gsim 700$ GeV. In a general gravity-mediated MSSM, where the lightest supersymmetric particle is the neutralino, the lifetime of the lightest slepton is inversely proportional to…
We present the results of a detailed study of how isocurvature axion fluctuations are converted into adiabatic metric perturbations through axion decay, and discuss the constraints on the parameters of pre-big bang cosmology needed for consistency with present CMB-anisotropy data. The large-scale normalization of temperature fluctuations has a non-trivial dependence both on the mass and on the initial value of the axion. In the simplest, minimal models of pre-big bang inflation, consistency with the COBE normalization requires a slightly tilted (blue) spectrum, while a strictly scale-invariant…
We explore the possibility of having superpartners of triplet Higgs bosons, named as 'triplinos'. They form a part of light neutralinos and charginos in a $Y=0$ extended supersymmetric Standard Model. For this model such electroweakinos do not have direct couplings to the Standard Model fermions. On top of that, due to very compressed spectrum for lighter neutralinos and charginos, their decay products coming from three body decays are very soft and thus can evade the current collider bounds. These decays are particularly interesting since they give rise to displaced leptonic signatures. We ca…
In this article, we study the implications of the coupling between Axion-Like-Particles (ALPs) and Leptons to cosmology, in particular, the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). We show that the BBN, through the constraint on the effective number of relativistic neutrino species, provides the most stringent bound on the ALP-electron interaction strength for the mass of axion between 20 keV and 1 MeV. For other values of the mass, the BBN bound complements the stellar-evolution and laboratory bounds.
The process of electron-positron pair production by axion propagating in an external magnetic field is investigated in a model with only induced axion coupling to leptons. Contributions of the lowest and higher Landau levels are analyzed. The results we have obtained demonstrate a strong catalyzing influence of the field.
Very little is known about the mass spectrum of fermions in the standard model. In this talk, I point out that in the simplest extension of the standard model, in which all right-handed fields are singlets, it is quite possible that a fourth-generation neutrino will be heavier that its charged counterpart. The latter will then be very long-lived. Three plausible values of the mixing angle give very different phenomenology; the charged lepton will either decay at the vertex (albeit into a massless neutrino), away from the vertex but within the detector, or will pass completely through the detec…
It is pointed out that there exist a few problems to be overcome toward an observable sub-eV QCD axion in superstring compactification. We give a general expression for the axion decay constant. For a large domain wall number $N_{DW}$, the axion decay constant can be substantially lowered from a generic value of a scalar singlet VEV. The Yukawa coupling structure in the recent $Z_{12-I}$ model is studied completely, including the needed nonrenormalizable terms toward realistic quark and lepton masses. In this model we find an approximate global symmetry and vacuum so that a QCD axion results b…
We present a model with $A_4 \times U(1)_{PQ}$ lepton flavor symmetry which explains the origin of the lepton flavor structure and also solves the strong $CP$ problem. Standard model gauge singlet fields, so-called "flavons", charged under the $A_4 \times U(1)_{PQ}$ symmetry are introduced and are coupled with the lepton and the Higgs sectors. The flavon vacuum expectation values (VEVs) trigger spontaneous breaking of the $A_4 \times U(1)_{PQ}$ symmetry. The breaking pattern of the $A_4$ accounts for the tri-bimaximal neutrino mixing and the deviation from it due to the non-zero $θ_{13}$ angle…
Motivated by the recent Xenon1T result, we study a leptophilic flavour-dependent anomaly-free axion-like particle (ALP) and its effects on charged-lepton flavour violation (CLFV). We present two representative models. The first one considers that the ALP origins from the flavon that generates the charged-lepton masses. The second model assumes a larger flavour symmetry such that more general mixings in the charged-lepton are possible, while maintaining flavour-dependent ALP couplings. We find that a keV ALP explaining the Xenon1T result is still viable for lepton flavour violation and stellar …
Chasing Long-Lived Doubly Charged Scalars at Future Lepton Colliders
SGTB Khalsa College, Delhi（德里 SGTB 卡尔萨学院）；University of Delhi, Delhi（德里大学）；Kavli IPMU (WPI), UTIAS, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba（东京大学 Kashiwa 校区 卡弗里宇宙起源与粒子物理联合研究所（WPI））
In the framework of gauged flavour symmetries, new fermions in parity symmetric representations of the standard model are generically needed for the compensation of mixed anomalies. The key point is that their masses are also protected by flavour symmetries and some of them are expected to lie way below the flavour symmetry breaking scale(s), which has to occur many orders of magnitude above the electroweak scale to be compatible with the available data from flavour changing neutral currents and CP violation experiments. We argue that, actually, some of these fermions would plausibly get masse…
