A translational flavor symmetry in the mass terms of Dirac and Majorana fermions

Requiring the effective mass term for a category of fundamental Dirac or Majorana fermions of the same electric charge to be invariant under the translational transformations $\psi^{}_{\alpha \rm L (R)} \to \psi^{}_{\alpha \rm L (R)} + n^{}_{\alpha} z^{}_{\psi \rm L(R)}$ in the flavor space, where $n^{}_\alpha$ and $z^{}_{\psi \rm L(R)}$ stand respectively for the flavor-dependent complex numbers and a constant spinor field anticommuting with the fermion fields, we show that $n^{}_\alpha$ can be identified as the elements $U^{}_{\alpha i}$ in the $i$-th column of the unitary matrix $U$ used to diagonalize the corresponding Hermitian or symmetric fermion mass matrix $M^{}_\psi$, and $m^{}_i = 0$ holds accordingly. We find that the reverse is also true. Now that the mass spectra of charged leptons, up- and down-type quarks are all strongly hierarchical and current experimental data allow the lightest neutrino to be massless, we argue that the zero mass limit for the first-family fermions and the translational flavor symmetry behind it should be a natural starting point for building viable fermion mass models.

Solving the electron and muon $$g-2$$ anomalies in $$Z'$$ models

We consider simultaneous explanations of the electron and muon $$g-2$$ g - 2 anomalies through a single $$Z'$$ Z ′ of a $$U(1)'$$ U ( 1 ) ′ extension to the Standard Model (SM). We first perform a model-independent analysis of the viable flavour-dependent $$Z'$$ Z ′ couplings to leptons, which are subject to various strict experimental constraints. We show that only a narrow region of parameter space with an MeV-scale $$Z'$$ Z ′ can account for the two anomalies. Following the conclusions of this analysis, we then explore the ability of different classes of $$Z'$$ Z ′ models to realise these couplings, including the SM$$+U(1)'$$ + U ( 1 ) ′ , the N-Higgs Doublet Model$$+U(1)'$$ + U ( 1 ) ′ , and a Froggatt–Nielsen style scenario. In each case, the necessary combination of couplings cannot be obtained, owing to additional relations between the $$Z'$$ Z ′ couplings to charged leptons and neutrinos induced by the gauge structure, and to the stringency of neutrino scattering bounds. Hence, we conclude that no $$U(1)'$$ U ( 1 ) ′ extension can resolve both anomalies unless other new fields are also introduced. While most of our study assumes the Caesium $$(g-2)_e$$ ( g - 2 ) e measurement, our findings in fact also hold in the case of the Rubidium measurement, despite the tension between the two.

Leptogenesis, fermion masses and mixings in a SUSY SU(5) GUT with D4 flavor symmetry

We propose a model of fermion masses and mixings based on SU(5) grand unified theory (GUT) and a D4 flavor symmetry. This is a highly predictive 4D SU(5) GUT with a flavor symmetry that does not contain a triplet irreducible representation. The Yukawa matrices of quarks and charged leptons are obtained after integrating out heavy messenger fields from renormalizable superpotentials while neutrino masses are originated from the type I seesaw mechanism. The group theoretical factors from 24- and 45-dimensional Higgs fields lead to ratios between the Yukawa couplings in agreement with data, while the dangerous proton decay operators are highly suppressed. By performing a numerical fit, we find that the model captures accurately the mixing angles, the Yukawa couplings and the CP phase of the quark sector at the GUT scale. The neutrino masses are generated at the leading order with the prediction of trimaximal mixing while an additional effective operator is required to account for the baryon asymmetry of the universe (BAU). The model is remarkably predictive because only the normal neutrino mass ordering and the lower octant of the atmospheric angle are allowed while the CP conserving values of the Dirac neutrino phase δCP are excluded. Moreover, the predicted values of the effective Majorana mass mββ can be tested at future neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. An analytical and a numerical study of the BAU via the leptogenesis mechanism is performed. We focused on the regions of parameter space where leptogenesis from the lightest right-handed neutrino is successfully realized. Strong correlations between the parameters of the neutrino sector and the observed BAU are obtained.

Search for dark matter produced in association with a single top quark in $$\sqrt{s}=13$$ TeV $$pp$$ collisions with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents a search for dark matter in the context of a two-Higgs-doublet model together with an additional pseudoscalar mediator, a, which decays into the dark-matter particles. Processes where the pseudoscalar mediator is produced in association with a single top quark in the 2HDM+a model are explored for the first time at the LHC. Several final states which include either one or two charged leptons (electrons or muons) and a significant amount of missing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis is based on proton–proton collision data collected with the ATLAS experiment at $$\sqrt{s} = 13$$ s = 13 TeV during LHC Run 2 (2015–2018), corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 $$\hbox {fb}^{-1}$$ fb - 1 . No significant excess above the Standard Model predictions is found. The results are expressed as 95% confidence-level limits on the parameters of the signal models considered.

Flavor invariants and renormalization-group equations in the leptonic sector with massive Majorana neutrinos

In the present paper, we carry out a systematic study of the flavor invariants and their renormalization-group equations (RGEs) in the leptonic sector with three generations of charged leptons and massive Majorana neutrinos. First, following the approach of the Hilbert series from the invariant theory, we show that there are 34 basic flavor invariants in the generating set, among which 19 invariants are CP-even and the others are CP-odd. Any flavor invariants can be expressed as the polynomials of those 34 basic invariants in the generating set. Second, we explicitly construct all the basic invariants and derive their RGEs, which form a closed system of differential equations as they should. The numerical solutions to the RGEs of the basic flavor invariants have also been found. Furthermore, we demonstrate how to extract physical observables from the basic invariants. Our study is helpful for understanding the algebraic structure of flavor invariants in the leptonic sector, and also provides a novel way to explore leptonic flavor structures.

Bulk viscosity in strong and electroweak matter

For temperatures [Formula: see text] ranging from a few MeV up to TeV and energy density [Formula: see text] up to [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]GeV/fm3, the bulk viscosity [Formula: see text] is calculated in nonperturbation (up, down, strange, charm and bottom) and perturbation theories with up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top quark flavors, at vanishing baryon-chemical potential. To these calculations, results deduced from the effective QCD-like model, the Polyakov linear-sigma model (PLSM), are also integrated in. The PLSM merely comes up with essential contributions for the vacuum and thermal condensations of the gluons and the quarks (up, down, strange and charm flavors). Furthermore, the thermal contributions of the photons, neutrinos, charged leptons, electroweak particles and scalar Higgs boson are found very significant along the entire range of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] and therefore could be well integrated in. We present the dimensionless quantity [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is a perturbative scale and [Formula: see text] is the entropy density and conclude that [Formula: see text] exponentially decreases with increasing [Formula: see text]. We also conclude that the resulting [Formula: see text] with the nonperturbative and perturbative QCD contributions nonmonotonically increases with increasing [Formula: see text]. But with nearly-entire standard model contributions considered in this study, [Formula: see text] almost-linearly increases with increasing of [Formula: see text]. Apparently, these results offer a great deal to explore in astrophysics, cosmology and nuclear collisions.

Leptonic anomalous magnetic moments in ν SMEFT

We investigate contributions to the anomalous magnetic moments of charged leptons in the neutrino-extended Standard Model Effective Field Theory (νSMEFT). We discuss how νSMEFT operators can contribute to a lepton’s magnetic moment at one- and two-loop order. We show that only one operator can account for existing electronic and muonic discrepancies, assuming new physics appears above 1 TeV. In particular, we find that a right-handed charged current in combination with minimal sterile-active mixing can explain the discrepancy for sterile neutrino masses of $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (100) GeV while avoiding direct and indirect constraints. We discuss how searches for sterile neutrino production at the (HL-)LHC, measurements of h→μ+μ− and searches for h→e+e−, neutrinoless double beta decay experiments, and improved unitarity tests of the CKM matrix can further probe the relevant parameter space.

Pulling the Higgs and top needles from the jet stack with feature extended supervised tagging

Jet tagging has become an essential tool for new physics searches at the high-energy frontier. For jets that contain energetic charged leptons we introduce Feature Extended Supervised Tagging (FEST) which, in addition to jet substructure, considers the features of the charged lepton within the jet. With this method we build dedicated taggers to discriminate among boosted $$H \rightarrow \ell \nu q {\bar{q}}$$ H → ℓ ν q q ¯ , $$t \rightarrow \ell \nu b$$ t → ℓ ν b , and QCD jets (with $$\ell $$ ℓ an electron or muon). The taggers have an impressive performance, allowing for overall light jet rejection factors of $$10^4-10^5$$ 10 4 - 10 5 , for top quark/Higgs boson efficiencies of 0.5. The taggers are also excellent in the discrimination of Higgs bosons from top quarks and vice versa, for example rejecting top quarks by factors of 100–300 for Higgs boson efficiencies of 0.5. We demonstrate the potential of these taggers to improve the sensitivity to new physics by using as example a search for a new $$Z'$$ Z ′ boson decaying into ZH, in the fully-hadronic final state.

Radiative neutrino masses, lepton flavor mixing and muon g − 2 in a leptoquark model

We propose a leptoquark model with two scalar leptoquarks $$ {S}_1\left(\overline{3},1,\frac{1}{3}\right) $$ S 1 3 ¯ 1 1 3 and $$ {\tilde{R}}_2\left(3,2,\frac{1}{6}\right) $$ R ˜ 2 3 2 1 6 to give a combined explanation of neutrino masses, lepton flavor mixing and the anomaly of muon g − 2, satisfying the constraints from the radiative decays of charged leptons. The neutrino masses are generated via one-loop corrections resulting from a mixing between S1 and $$ {\tilde{R}}_2 $$ R ˜ 2 . With a set of specific textures for the leptoquark Yukawa coupling matrices, the neutrino mass matrix possesses an approximate μ-τ reflection symmetry with (Mν)ee = 0 only in favor of the normal neutrino mass ordering. We show that this model can successfully explain the anomaly of muon g − 2 and current experimental neutrino oscillation data under the constraints from the radiative decays of charged leptons.