Ref HAL: hal-05301263_v1
Ref Arxiv: 2509.21924
Ref INSPIRE: 2973946
Ref. & Cit.: NASA ADS
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The magnetic monopole of a dark sector has been advocated as an appealing dark matter candidate. We revisit the computation of the monopole abundance $Ω_M$, generated by a thermal phase transition in the minimal 't Hooft-Polyakov model. We explore the three regimes where the phase transition is second order, weakly first order, or supercooled, identifying the parameter space regions where $Ω_M$ can match the observed dark matter abundance. However, the dark sector necessarily contains a stable electrically-charged particle, namely a massive vector boson, with a calculable abundance $Ω_{W'}$. We show that, under minimal assumptions, $Ω_{W'}$ is always far larger than $Ω_M$: dark monopoles cannot constitute a sizeable fraction of dark matter.

Ref HAL: hal-04891856_v1
Ref Arxiv: 2412.09473
Ref INSPIRE: 2858867
DOI: 10.22323/1.473.0042
Ref. & Cit.: NASA ADS
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A future multi-TeV muon collider would provide an important probe for Majorana neutrinos. A muon collider with a collision energy of $\sim$30 TeV would be sensitive to $\nu_e-\nu_\mu$ transition dipole moments of the order of $\sim 10^{-12}\mu_B$ and would be thus competitive with the latest astrophysical observation and laboratory experiments. Contrary to the latter, the muon collider would have the unique advantage of a direct and clean identification of lepton number and flavour violation. This would establish the Majorana nature of the neutrino and would provide crucial complementary information on the neutrino properties in the event of a (near) future observation at low-energy experiments. Additionally, a muon collider would improve by orders of magnitude the direct bounds on the Majorana neutrino mass matrix entries $m_{e\mu}$ and $m_{\mu\mu}$.

Ref HAL: hal-04847829_v1
Ref Arxiv: 2412.10101
Ref INSPIRE: 2859433
DOI: 10.21468/SciPostPhys.18.4.140
Ref. & Cit.: NASA ADS
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Massive sterile neutrinos, also known as heavy neutral leptons, can have a mixing with active neutrinos, $\theta$, as well as a dipole coupling to the photon, $d$. We study the interplay between these two portals, considering the production from meson decays of sterile neutrinos with mass $0.1$ GeV $\lesssim M_N \lesssim 10$ GeV, at beam-dump facilities such as NA62 and SHiP, and at the FASER2 experiment. These sterile neutrinos can be long-lived and decay into a photon in a distant detector, via the dipole operator. We find that all these experiments will be sensitive to values of $d$ which are presently unconstrained. The experimental reach varies strongly with the mass $M_N$ and the mixing $\theta$, and one observes specific correlations with the flavour of active neutrinos. The SHiP experiment will mark a jump in sensitivity, as it will probe dipole couplings as small as $d\sim 10^{-8}$ GeV$^{-1}$, thus testing new physics well above the electroweak scale.

Ref HAL: hal-04745819_v1
Ref Arxiv: 2410.09033
Ref INSPIRE: 2839391
DOI: 10.1103/bf6h-573f
Ref. & Cit.: NASA ADS
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The current Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data show no clear indication of new physics and only incremental improvements are anticipated at the energy frontier in the near future. However, while the focus of the LHC has been on constraining TeV scale physics, new particles could still be hiding below the electroweak scale. In order to obtain sensitivity to a new light boson with couplings to SM fermions, a potentially promising decay channel, for resonances with mass $\gtrsim {\cal O}(10)$ GeV, would be the decay to $b\bar b$ pairs. The measurement of such signatures is challenging due to the trigger requirements at the LHC. In this work, we explore the LHC sensitivity to a light pseudoscalar, or axion-like particle (ALP), in the $b\bar{b}$ final state with an associated photon, using jet substructure techniques, in the mass range between 10 GeV and 100 GeV. We obtain projected exclusions on the ALP-fermion coupling in a region of phase space which has not so far been probed by direct searches. We further discuss the impact that lower trigger thresholds may have on the LHC reach.

Commentaires: 26 pages, 10 figures, 5 tables

Ref HAL: hal-04701156_v1
Ref Arxiv: 2409.02721
Ref INSPIRE: 2824764
DOI: 10.1007/JHEP04(2025)008
Ref. & Cit.: NASA ADS
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Majorana neutrinos may have transitional dipole moments, which violate lepton number as well as lepton flavour. We estimate the sensitivity of future colliders to the electron-muon neutrino dipole moment, $\lambda_{e\mu}$, by considering same-sign dilepton final states. We find that hadron colliders, even the proposed FCC-hh upgrade, are sensitive only to $|\lambda_{e\mu}|\gtrsim 10^{-9}\mu_B$ (with $\mu_B$ the Bohr magneton), a value two-three orders of magnitude larger than current bounds from astrophysics and low-energy neutrino-scattering experiments. In the case of a future muon collider, we show that the sensitivity varies from $|\lambda_{e\mu}|\sim 5\cdot 10^{-9}\mu_B$ for energy $\sqrt{s}\simeq 3$ TeV, to $\sim 10^{-12}\mu_B$ for $\sqrt{s}\simeq 50$ TeV, matching the current laboratory bounds for $\sqrt{s}\simeq 30$ TeV. The singular advantage of the muon collider signal would be a direct, clean identification of lepton number and flavour violation. We also show that a muon collider would improve by orders of magnitude the direct bounds on $m_{e\mu}$ and $m_{\mu\mu}$, two of the entries of the Majorana neutrino mass matrix. These bounds could be as strong as $\sim 50$ keV, still far above the neutrino mass scale.

Ref HAL: hal-04609830_v1
Ref Arxiv: 2406.02531
Ref INSPIRE: 2794447
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.110.103506
Ref. & Cit.: NASA ADS
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We construct a hybrid-inflation model where the inflaton potential is generated radiatively, as gauge symmetries guarantee it to be accidentally flat at tree level. The model can be regarded as a small-field version of Natural Inflation, with inflation ending when the mass of a second scalar, the waterfall field, turns tachyonic. This provides a minimal, robust realisation of hybrid inflation, which predicts specific correlations among CMB observables. Tachyonic preheating leads to the production of gravitational waves which, for a low inflationary scale, might be detected by upcoming experiments. Simple variations of the model can give rise to topological defects, such as unstable domain walls. Their dynamics produces a stochastic gravitational-wave background, which can be compatible with the recent detection by pulsar timing arrays.

Ref HAL: hal-04171353_v1
Ref Arxiv: 2307.10092
Ref INSPIRE: 2678514
DOI: 10.1007/JHEP01(2024)075
Ref. & Cit.: NASA ADS
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In models with spontaneous symmetry breaking by scalar fields in large group representations, we observe that some of the scalar masses can be loop-suppressed with respect to the naive expectation from symmetry selection rules. We present minimal models -- the $\rm{SU(2)}$ five-plet and $\rm{SU(3)}$ ten-plet -- with such accidentally light scalars, featuring compact tree-level flat directions lifted by radiative corrections. We sketch some potential applications, from stable relics and slow roll in cosmology, to hierarchy and fine-tuning problems in particle physics.