arXiv subjects

Carlos A. Argüelles

Publications and source records attributed to Carlos A. Argüelles.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Testing New Physics Explanations of MiniBooNE Anomaly at Neutrino Scattering Experiments

Heavy neutrinos with additional interactions have recently been proposed as an explanation to the MiniBooNE excess. These scenarios often rely on marginally boosted particles to explain the excess angular spectrum, thus predicting large rates at higher-energy neutrino-electron scattering experiments. We place new constraints on this class of models based on neutrino-electron scattering sideband measurements performed at MINER$ν$A and CHARM-II. A simultaneous explanation of the angular and energy distributions of the MiniBooNE excess in terms of heavy neutrinos with light mediators is severely constrained by our analysis. In general, high-energy neutrino-electron scattering experiments provide strong constraints on explanations of the MiniBooNE observation involving light mediators.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Neutrino Non-Standard Interactions: A Status Report

This report summarizes the present status of neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI). After a brief overview, several aspects of NSIs are discussed, including connection to neutrino mass models, model-building and phenomenology of large NSI with both light and heavy mediators, NSI phenomenology in both short- and long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, neutrino cross-sections, complementarity of NSI with other low- and high-energy experiments, fits with neutrino oscillation and scattering data, DUNE sensitivity to NSI, effective field theory of NSI, as well as the relevance of NSI to dark matter and cosmology. We also discuss the open questions and interesting future directions that can be pursued by the community at large. This report is based on talks and discussions during the Neutrino Theory Network NSI workshop held at Washington University in St. Louis from May 29-31, 2019 (https://indico.cern.ch/event/812851/)

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Search for Dark Matter Annihilation to Neutrinos from the Sun

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) can be gravitationally captured by the Sun and trapped in its core. The annihilation of those WIMPs into Standard Model particles produces a spectrum of neutrinos whose energy distribution is related to the dark matter mass. In this work, we present the theoretical framework for relating an observed neutrino flux to the WIMP-nucleon cross section and summarize a previous solar WIMP search carried out by IceCube. We then outline an ongoing updated solar WIMP search, focusing on improvements over the previous search.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

Quest for new physics using astrophysical neutrino flavor in IceCube

We have detected astrophysical neutrinos in IceCube that can be used to probe astrophysical sources at ultra high scales. Here we report a search for anomalous space time effects using astrophysical neutrino flavor data in IceCube. New effective operators are introduced to drive non-standard neutrino flavor mixing which modify the flavor ratios compared to standard cases. Using the High Energy Starting Events sample (HESE) 7.5-year data for this analysis, we found no evidence of such flavor anomalies. However, we are expecting to set limits from this new approach which goes far beyond any known techniques. Importantly, we achieve the necessary precision to probe new physics using neutrino flavor expected by Planck scale theories.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

Searches for Connections Between Dark Matter and Neutrinos with the IceCube High-Energy Starting Event Sample

The nature of dark matter remains one of the most important open questions in physics. Although dark matter effects have only been observed gravitationally, the order-one ratio between conventional matter and dark matter hints to a non-gravitational link between them. In this contribution, we search for such a link using the IceCube high-energy starting event (HESE) sample, which contains some of the highest energy neutrinos ever observed. These are dominated by a yet unidentified high-energy diffuse astrophysical component. Using these events we look for evidence of an excess due to dark matter decay or annihilation, and also for a novel signature due to high-energy neutrinos scattering with dark matter. Finally, in this contribution, we will summarize and highlight the complementarity between the obtained limits for these two scenarios.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Tackling limited simulation and small signals

We present a new, analytic, Poisson likelihood derived, technique to account for the statistical uncertainties inherent in simulation samples of limited size. This method has better coverage properties than other techniques, is valid for small data samples, and maintains good computational performance.

physics.data-an↗

arXiv2019

Fundamental physics with high-energy cosmic neutrinos today and in the future

The astrophysical neutrinos discovered by IceCube have the highest detected neutrino energies --- from TeV to PeV --- and likely travel the longest distances --- up to a few Gpc, the size of the observable Universe. These features make them naturally attractive probes of fundamental particle-physics properties, possibly tiny in size, at energy scales unreachable by any other means. The decades before the IceCube discovery saw many proposals of particle-physics studies in this direction. Today, those proposals have become a reality, in spite of astrophysical unknowns. We will showcase examples of doing fundamental neutrino physics at these scales, including some of the most stringent tests of physics beyond the Standard Model. In the future, larger neutrino energies --- up to tens of EeV --- could be observed with larger detectors and further our reach.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

Search for Lorentz Violation Using High-Energy Atmospheric Neutrinos In IceCube

High-energy atmospheric neutrinos observed by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory are extremely sensitive probes of Lorentz violation (LV). Here we report the result of analyzing two years of IceCube data in the search for LV. This analysis places some of the strongest constraints on LV when considering high-dimensional operators.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2019

Test of Lorentz Violation with Astrophysical Neutrino Flavor in IceCube

Astrophysical high-energy neutrinos observed by IceCube are sensitive to small effects in a vacuum such as those motivated from quantum gravity theories. Here, we discuss the potential sensitivity of Lorentz violation from the diffuse astrophysical neutrino data in IceCube. The estimated sensitivity reaches the Planck scale physics motivated region, providing IceCube with real discovery potential of Lorentz violation.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

A binned likelihood for stochastic models

Metrics of model goodness-of-fit, model comparison, and model parameter estimation are the main categories of statistical problems in science. Bayesian and frequentist methods that address these questions often rely on a likelihood function, which is the key ingredient in order to assess the plausibility of model parameters given observed data. In some complex systems or experimental setups, predicting the outcome of a model cannot be done analytically, and Monte Carlo techniques are used. In this paper, we present a new analytic likelihood that takes into account Monte Carlo uncertainties, appropriate for use in the large and small sample size limits. Our formulation performs better than semi-analytic methods, prevents strong claims on biased statements, and provides improved coverage properties compared to available methods.

physics.data-an↗

arXiv2019

Production of keV Sterile Neutrinos in Supernovae: New Constraints and Gamma Ray Observables

We study the production of sterile neutrinos in supernovae, focusing in particular on the keV--MeV mass range, which is the most interesting range if sterile neutrinos are to account for the dark matter in the Universe. Focusing on the simplest scenario in which sterile neutrinos mixes only with muon or tau neutrino, we argue that the production of keV--MeV sterile neutrinos can be strongly enhanced by a Mikheyev--Smirnov--Wolfenstein (MSW) resonance, so that a substantial flux is expected to emerge from a supernova, even if vacuum mixing angles between active and sterile neutrinos are tiny. Using energetics arguments, this yields limits on the sterile neutrino parameter space that reach down to mixing angles of the order of $\sin^2 2θ\lesssim 10^{-14}$ and are up to an order of magnitude stronger than those from X-ray observations. While supernova limits suffer from larger systematic uncertainties than X-ray limits they apply also to scenarios in which sterile neutrinos are not abundantly produced in the early Universe. We also compute the flux of $\mathcal{O}(\text{MeV})$ photons expected from the decay of sterile neutrinos produced in supernovae, but find that it is beyond current observational reach even for a nearby supernova.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

High-energy neutrino attenuation in the Earth and its associated uncertainties

We describe nuFATE Neutrino Fast Attenuation Through Earth, a very rapid method of accurately computing the attenuation of high-energy neutrinos during their passage through Earth to detectors such as IceCube, ANTARES or KM3Net, including production of secondary neutrinos from $τ^\pm$ lepton decay. We then use this method to quantify the error on attenuation due to uncertainties in the isotropic neutrino spectrum, the composition of the Earth, and the parton distribution functions. We show that these can be as large as 20%, which can significantly impact reconstructed astrophysical neutrino parameters, as well as searches for new physics. An implementation of this algorithm is provided as a public code.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Unified atmospheric neutrino passing fractions for large-scale neutrino telescopes

The atmospheric neutrino passing fraction, or self-veto, is defined as the probability for an atmospheric neutrino not to be accompanied by a detectable muon from the same cosmic-ray air shower. Building upon previous work, we propose a redefinition of the passing fractions by unifying the treatment for muon and electron neutrinos. Several approximations have also been removed. This enables performing detailed estimations of the uncertainties in the passing fractions from several inputs: muon losses, cosmic-ray spectrum, hadronic-interaction models and atmosphere-density profiles. We also study the passing fractions under variations of the detector configuration: depth, surrounding medium and muon veto trigger probability. The calculation exhibits excellent agreement with passing fractions obtained from Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, we provide a general software framework to implement this veto technique for all large-scale neutrino observatories.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Exploring a Non-Minimal Sterile Neutrino Model Involving Decay at IceCube and Beyond

We study the phenomenology of neutrino decay together with neutrino oscillations in the context of eV-scale sterile neutrinos. We review the formalism of visible neutrino decay in which one of the decay products is a neutrino that potentially can be observed. We apply the formalism developed for decay to the recent sterile neutrino search performed by IceCube with TeV neutrinos. We show that for $ν_4$ lifetime $τ_4/m_4 \lesssim 10^{-16} {\rm eV^{-1}s}$, the interpretation of the high-energy IceCube analysis can be significantly changed.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Dark Gauge Bosons: LHC Signatures of Non-Abelian Kinetic Mixing

We consider non-abelian kinetic mixing between the Standard Model SU(2$)_L$ and a dark sector U(1$)^\prime$ gauge group associated with the presence of a scalar SU(2$)_L$ triplet. The magnitude of the resulting dark photon coupling $ε$ is determined by the ratio of the triplet vacuum expectation value, constrained to by $\lsim 4$ GeV by electroweak precision tests, to the scale $Λ$ of the effective theory. The corresponding effective operator Wilson coefficient can be $\mathcal{O}(1)$ while accommodating null results for dark photon searches, allowing for a distinctive LHC dark photon phenomenology. After outlining the possible LHC signatures, we illustrate by recasting current ATLAS dark photon results into the non-abelian mixing context.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2016

Test of Lorentz Violation with Astrophysical Neutrino Flavor

The high-energy astrophysical neutrinos recently discovered by IceCube opened a new way to test Lorentz and CPT violation through the astrophysical neutrino mixing properties. The flavor ratio of astrophysical neutrinos is a very powerful tool to investigate tiny effects caused by Lorentz and CPT violation. There are 3 main findings; (1) current limits on Lorentz and CPT violation in neutrino sector are not tight and they allow for any flavor ratios, (2) however, the observable flavor ratio on the Earth is tied with the flavor ratio at production, this means we can test both the presence of new physics and the astrophysical neutrino production mechanism simultaneously, and (3) the astrophysical neutrino flavor ratio is one of the most stringent tests of Lorentz and CPT violation.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2015

New Physics in Astrophysical Neutrino Flavor

Astrophysical neutrinos are powerful tools to investigate the fundamental properties of particle physics through their flavor content. In this paper, we perform the first general new physics study on ultra high energy neutrino flavor content by introducing effective operators. We find that at the current limits on these operators, new physics terms cause maximal effects on the flavor content, however, the flavor content at Earth is confined to a region related to the assumed initial flavor content. Furthermore, we conclude that a precise measure of the flavor content at Earth will provide orders of magnitude improvement on new physics bounds. Finally, we discuss the current best fits of flavor content of the IceCube data and their interplay with new physics scenarios.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2015

Searching for cavities of various densities in the Earth's crust with a low-energy electron-antineutrino beta-beam

We propose searching for deep underground cavities of different densities in the Earth's crust using a long-baseline electron-antineutrino disappearance experiment, realized through a low-energy beta-beam with highly-enhanced luminosity. We focus on four cases: cavities with densities close to that of water, iron-banded formations, heavier mineral deposits, and regions of abnormal charge accumulation that have been posited to appear prior to the occurrence of an intense earthquake. The sensitivity to identify cavities attains confidence levels higher than $3σ$ and $5σ$ for exposures times of 3 months and 1.5 years, respectively, and cavity densities below 1 g cm$^{-3}$ or above 5 g cm$^{-3}$, with widths greater than 200 km. We reconstruct the cavity density, width, and position, assuming one of them known while keeping the other two free. We obtain large allowed regions that improve as the cavity density differs more from the Earth's mean density. Furthermore, we demonstrate that knowledge of the cavity density is important to obtain O(10%) error on the width. Finally, we introduce an observable to quantify the presence of a cavity by changing the orientation of the electron-antineutrino beam, with which we are able to identify the presence of a cavity at the $2σ$ to $5σ$ C.L.

hep-ph↗