Portal Effective Theories. A framework for the model independent description of light hidden sector interactions

We present a framework for the construction of portal effective theory (PETs) that couple effective field theories of the Standard Model (SM) to light hidden messenger fields. Using this framework we construct electroweak and strong scale PETs that couple the SM to messengers carrying spin zero, one half, or one. The electroweak scale PETs encompass all portal operators up to dimension five, while the strong scale PETs additionally contain all portal operators of dimension six and seven that contribute at leading order to quark-flavour violating transitions. Using the strong scale PETs, we define a set of portal currents that couple hidden sectors to QCD, and construct portal chiral perturbation theory (χPTs) that relate these currents to the light pseudoscalar mesons. We estimate the coefficients of the portal χPT Lagrangian that are not fixed by SM observations using non-perturbative matching techniques and give a complete list of the resulting one- and two-meson portal interactions. From those, we compute transition amplitudes for three golden channels that are used in hidden sector searches at fixed target experiments: i) charged kaon decay into a charged pion and a spin zero messenger, ii) charged kaon decay into a charged lepton and a spin one half messenger, and iii) neutral pion decay into a photon and a spin one messenger. Finally, we compare these amplitudes to specific expressions for models featuring light scalar particles, axion-like particles, heavy neutral leptons, and dark photons.

Dissecting the $$\Delta I=1/2$$ rule at large $$N_c$$

We study the scaling of kaon decay amplitudes with the number of colours, $$N_c$$Nc, in a theory with four degenerate flavours, $$N_f=4$$Nf=4. In this scenario, two current-current operators, $$Q^\pm $$Q±, mediate $$\Delta S=1$$ΔS=1 transitions, such as the two isospin amplitudes of non-leptonic kaon decays for $$K\rightarrow (\pi \pi )_{I=0,2}$$K→(ππ)I=0,2, $$A_0$$A0 and $$A_2$$A2. In particular, we concentrate on the simpler $$K\rightarrow \pi $$K→π amplitudes, $$A^\pm $$A±, mediated by these two operators. A diagrammatic analysis of the large-$$N_c$$Nc scaling of these observables is presented, which demonstrates the anticorrelation of the leading $${{\mathcal {O}}}(1/N_c)$$O(1/Nc) and $${{\mathcal {O}}}(N_f/N_c^2)$$O(Nf/Nc2) corrections in both amplitudes. Using our new $$N_f=4$$Nf=4 and previous quenched data, we confirm this expectation and show that these corrections are naturally large and may be at the origin of the $$\Delta I=1/2$$ΔI=1/2 rule. The evidence for the latter is indirect, based on the matching of the amplitudes to their prediction in Chiral Perturbation Theory, from which the LO low-energy couplings of the chiral weak Hamiltonian, $$g^\pm $$g±, can be determined. A NLO estimate of the $$K \rightarrow (\pi \pi )_{I=0,2}$$K→(ππ)I=0,2 isospin amplitudes can then be derived, which is in good agreement with the experimental value.