| 1. |
- Ade, P. A. R., et al.
(author)
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A Constraint on Primordial B-modes from the First Flight of the Spider Balloon-borne Telescope
- 2022
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In: Astrophysical Journal. - : American Astronomical Society. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 927:2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We present the first linear polarization measurements from the 2015 long-duration balloon flight of SPIDER, which is an experiment that is designed to map the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on degree angular scales. The results from these measurements include maps and angular power spectra from observations of 4.8% of the sky at 95 and 150 GHz, along with the results of internal consistency tests on these data. While the polarized CMB anisotropy from primordial density perturbations is the dominant signal in this region of sky, Galactic dust emission is also detected with high significance. Galactic synchrotron emission is found to be negligible in the SPIDER bands. We employ two independent foreground-removal techniques to explore the sensitivity of the cosmological result to the assumptions made by each. The primary method uses a dust template derived from Planck data to subtract the Galactic dust signal. A second approach, which constitutes a joint analysis of SPIDER and Planck data in the harmonic domain, assumes a modified-blackbody model for the spectral energy distribution of the dust with no constraint on its spatial morphology. Using a likelihood that jointly samples the template amplitude and r parameter space, we derive 95% upper limits on the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio from Feldman-Cousins and Bayesian constructions, finding r < 0.11 and r < 0.19, respectively. Roughly half the uncertainty in r derives from noise associated with the template subtraction. New data at 280 GHz from SPIDER´s second flight will complement the Planck polarization maps, providing powerful measurements of the polarized Galactic dust emission.
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| 2. |
- Ade, Peter, et al.
(author)
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The Simons Observatory : science goals and forecasts
- 2019
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In: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. - : IOP Publishing. - 1475-7516. ; :2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on Cerro Toco in Chile, due to begin observations in the early 2020s. We describe the scientific goals of the experiment, motivate the design, and forecast its performance. SO will measure the temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background in six frequency bands centered at: 27, 39, 93, 145, 225 and 280 GHz. The initial con figuration of SO will have three small-aperture 0.5-m telescopes and one large-aperture 6-m telescope, with a total of 60,000 cryogenic bolometers. Our key science goals are to characterize the primordial perturbations, measure the number of relativistic species and the mass of neutrinos, test for deviations from a cosmological constant, improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, and constrain the duration of reionization. The small aperture telescopes will target the largest angular scales observable from Chile, mapping approximate to 10% of the sky to a white noise level of 2 mu K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, to measure the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, at a target level of sigma(r) = 0.003. The large aperture telescope will map approximate to 40% of the sky at arcminute angular resolution to an expected white noise level of 6 mu K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, overlapping with the majority of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope sky region and partially with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. With up to an order of magnitude lower polarization noise than maps from the Planck satellite, the high-resolution sky maps will constrain cosmological parameters derived from the damping tail, gravitational lensing of the microwave background, the primordial bispectrum, and the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects, and will aid in delensing the large-angle polarization signal to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio. The survey will also provide a legacy catalog of 16,000 galaxy clusters and more than 20,000 extragalactic sources.
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| 3. |
- Bambi, Cosimo, et al.
(author)
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Testing the rotational nature of the supermassive object M87*from the circularity and size of its first image
- 2019
-
In: Physical Review D. - : AMER PHYSICAL SOC. - 2470-0010 .- 2470-0029. ; 100:4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration has recently released the first image of a black hole (BH), opening a new window onto tests of general relativity in the strong field regime. In this paper, we derive constraints on the nature of M87* (the supermassive object at the center of the galaxy M87), exploiting the fact that its shadow appears to be highly circular, and using measurements of its angular size. We first consider the simple case where M87* is assumed to be a Kerr BH. We find that the inferred circularity of M87* excludes Kerr BHs with observation angle theta(obs) greater than or similar to 45 degrees for dimensionless rotational parameter 0.95 less than or similar to a(*) <= 1 whereas the observation angle is unbounded for a(*) less than or similar to 0.9. We then consider the possibility that M87* might be a superspinar, i.e., an object described by the Kerr solution and spinning so fast that it violates the Kerr bound by having vertical bar a(*)vertical bar > 1. We find that, within certain regions of parameter space, the inferred circularity and size of the shadow of M87* do not exclude the possibility that this object might be a superspinar.
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| 4. |
- Baum, Sebastian, 1990-
(author)
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Dark Matter, Ancient Rocks, a Band of Higgs Bosons, and a Big Collider : or, Models of New Physics and Some Ways to Probe Them
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The past ~ 50 years have seen a remarkable success of particle physics. In the 1970s, the Standard Model was formulated and in 2012 its final ingredient, the Higgs boson, was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The Standard Model describes virtually all particle physics observable in the laboratory. However, despite this success, the Standard Model has a number of shortcomings. Some problems stem from its mathematical structure, most famously the hierarchy problem. Further, the Standard Model fails to describe the composition of our Universe, for example, it cannot explain the observed Dark Matter. Thus, the need for physics beyond the Standard Model is clear. A long series of experiments has been conducted to search for this new physics. Alas, these experiments came up empty handed.This thesis discusses two lines of work: 1) Arguably, the Higgs sector of the Standard Model is its least constrained part and simultaneously intimately related to many of the Standard Model's shortcomings. We discuss models extending the Higgs sector, both in a general and in a supersymmetric setting, and how they can be probed at the LHC. 2) A century after the first evidence for Dark Matter emerged, we still don't know what it is made up of. We discuss some models for Dark Matter, including axions and a particular model for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) Dark Matter. Then, we present some methods to search for WIMP Dark Matter, focusing on paleo-detectors, a proposed method where one would search for the traces of WIMP-nucleus interactions left in ancient minerals.
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| 5. |
- Baum, Sebastian, et al.
(author)
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Dark matter capture, subdominant WIMPs, and neutrino observatories
- 2017
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In: Physical Review D. - : AMER PHYSICAL SOC. - 2470-0010 .- 2470-0029. ; 95:4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which are among the best motivated dark matter (DM) candidates, could make up all or only a fraction of the total DM budget. We consider a scenario in which WIMPs are a subdominant DM component; such a scenario would affect both current direct and indirect bounds on the WIMP-nucleon scattering cross section. In this paper we focus on indirect searches for the neutrino flux produced by annihilation of subdominant WIMPs captured by the Sun or the Earth via either spin-dependent or spin-independent scattering. We derive the annihilation rate and the expected neutrino flux at neutrino observatories. In our computation, we include an updated chemical composition of the Earth with respect to the previous literature, leading to an increase of the Earth's capture rate for spin-dependent scattering by a factor of 3. Results are compared with current bounds from Super-Kamiokande and IceCube. We discuss the scaling of bounds from both direct and indirect detection methods with the WIMP abundance.
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| 6. |
- Baum, Sebastian, et al.
(author)
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Dark Matter implications of DAMA/LIBRA-phase2 results
- 2019
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In: Physics Letters B. - : Elsevier BV. - 0370-2693 .- 1873-2445. ; 789, s. 262-269
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Recently, the DAMA/LIBRA collaboration released updated results from their search for the annual modulation signal from Dark Matter (DM) scattering in the detector. Besides approximately doubling the exposure of the DAMA/LIBRA data set, the updated photomultiplier tubes of the experiment allow a lower recoil energy threshold of I keV electron equivalent compared to the previous threshold of 2 keV electron equivalent. We study the compatibility of the observed modulation signal with DM scattering. Due to a conspiracy of multiple effects, the new data at low recoil energies is very powerful for testing the DM hypothesis. We find that canonical (isospin conserving) spin-independent DM-nucleon interactions are no longer a good fit to the observed modulation signal in the standard halo model. The canonical spin independent case is disfavored by the new data, with best fit points of a DM mass of similar to 8 GeV, disfavored by 5.2 sigma, or a mass of similar to 54GeV, disfavored by 2.5 sigma. Allowing for isospin violating spin independent interactions, we find a region with a good fit to the data with suppressed effective couplings to iodine for DM masses of similar to 10 GeV. We also consider spin-dependent DM-nucleon interactions, which yield good fits for similar DM masses of similar to 10 GeV or similar to 45 GeV.
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| 7. |
- Baum, Sebastian, et al.
(author)
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Determining dark matter properties with a XENONnT/LZ signal and LHC Run 3 monojet searches
- 2018
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In: Physical Review D. - 2470-0010 .- 2470-0029. ; 97:8
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We develop a method to forecast the outcome of the LHC Run 3 based on the hypothetical detection of O(100) signal events at XENONnT. Our method relies on a systematic classification of renormalizable single-mediator models for dark matter-quark interactions and is valid for dark matter candidates of spin less than or equal to one. Applying our method to simulated data, we find that at the end of the LHC Run 3 only two mutually exclusive scenarios would be compatible with the detection of O(100) signal events at XENONnT. In the first scenario, the energy distrib ution of the signal events is featureless, as for canonical spin-independent interactions. In this case, if a monojet signal is detected at the LHC, dark matter must have spin 1/2 and interact with nucleons through a unique velocity-dependent operator. If a monojet signal is not detected, dark matter interacts with nucleons through canonical spin-independent interactions. In a second scenario, the spectral distribution of the signal events exhibits a bump at nonzero recoil energies. In this second case, a monojet signal can be detected at the LHC Run 3; dark matter must have spin 1/2 and interact with nucleons through a unique momentum-dependent operator. We therefore conclude that the observation of O(100) signal events at XENONnT combined with the detection, or the lack of detection, of a monojet signal at the LHC Run 3 would significantly narrow the range of possible dark matter-nucleon interactions. As we argued above, it can also provide key information on the dark matter particle spin.
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| 8. |
- Baum, Sebastian
(author)
-
Exploring particle physics beyond the Standard Model
- 2017
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The standard model of particle physics (SM) is arguably the best tested theory of physics, providing an accurate description of virtually all high energy particle physics phenomena observable in the laboratory. However, the SM also has a number of shortcomings: some of more theoretical nature such as the fine-tuning problem of the Higgs or the strong-CP problem, and some of more phenomenological nature such as not allowing for a satisfying implementation of neutrino masses and the lack of a suitable candidate for the observed dark matter of the Universe.The SM’s shortcomings have motivated the development of a large number of beyond the SM (BSM) particle physics models. However, no (conclusive) evidence for any BSM model has been found to date. The papers included in this thesis study different approaches to search for BSM physics:In [I], we studied bounds on weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) DM models arising from the absence of neutrino signals from DM capture and subsequent DM pair-annihilation in dense astrophysical objects such as the Sun or the Earth. We interpreted these bounds in a model independent fashion, focusing in particular on the scaling of the bounds for the case where WIMPs comprise only a sub-dominant component of the DM. We also used a chemical composition of the Earth updated with respect to the previous literature, strengthening the bound on spin-dependent interactions from capture and annihilation in the Earth by approximately a factor 3.In [II], we studied the collider phenomenology of one particular BSM model, the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM). In particular, we focused on 1) the impact of the presence of the 125 GeV SM-like Higgs boson on the NMSSM parameter space, 2) the identification of NMSSM specific search channels at the LHC which allow to effectively probe the NMSSM parameter space allowed by more conventional searches, and 3) an in-depth study of one of these search channels, the mono-Higgs signature. As shown in [II], this channel allows to probe the low tan β , large m_A regime which is difficult to probe with conventional searches, and in contrast to many conventional Higgs searches, the reach of the mono-Higgs channel improves significantly with the increased luminosity expected to be collected at the LHC in current and future runs.
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| 9. |
- Baum, Sebastian, et al.
(author)
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NMSSM Higgs boson search strategies at the LHC and the mono-Higgs signature in particular
- 2017
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In: Physical Review D. - : American Physical Society. - 2470-0010 .- 2470-0029. ; 95:11
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We study the collider phenomenology of the extended Higgs sector of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). The region of NMSSM parameter space favored by a 125 GeV SM-like Higgs and naturalness generically features a light Higgs and neutralino spectrum as well as a large O(1) coupling between the Higgs doublets and the NMSSM singlet fields. In such regimes, the heavier Higgs bosons can decay dominantly into lighter Higgs bosons and neutralinos. We study the prospects of observing such decays at the 13 TeV LHC, focusing on mono-Higgs signatures as probes of such regions of parameter space. We present results for the mono-Higgs reach in a framework easily applicable to other models featuring similar decay topologies. In the NMSSM, we find that the mono-Higgs channel can probe TeV scale Higgs bosons and has sensitivity even in the low tan beta, large m(A) regime that is difficult to probe in the MSSM. Unlike for many conventional Higgs searches, the reach of the mono-Higgs channel will improve significantly with the increased luminosity expected to be collected at the LHC in the ongoing and upcoming runs.
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| 10. |
- Baum, Sebastian, et al.
(author)
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Paleodetectors for Galactic supernova neutrinos
- 2020
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In: Physical Review D. - : American Physical Society (APS). - 2470-0010 .- 2470-0029. ; 101:10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Paleodetectors are a proposed experimental technique in which one would search for traces of recoiling nuclei in ancient minerals. Natural minerals on Earth are as old as O(1) Gyr and, in many minerals, the damage tracks left by recoiling nuclei are also preserved for timescales long compared to 1 Gyr once created. Thus, even reading out relatively small target samples of order 100 g, paleodetectors would allow one to search for very rare events thanks to the large exposure, epsilon similar to 100 g Gyr = 10(5) t yr. Here, we explore the potential of paleodetectors to measure nuclear recoils induced by neutrinos from Galactic core collapse supernovae. We find that they would not only allow for a direct measurement of the average core collapse supernova rate in the Milky Way, but would also contain information about the time dependence of the local supernova rate over the past similar to 1 Gyr. Since the supernova rate is thought to be directly proportional to the star formation rate, such a measurement would provide a determination of the local star formation history. We investigate the sensitivity of paleodetectors to both a smooth time evolution and an enhancement of the core collapse supernova rate on relatively short timescales, as would be expected for a starburst period in the local group.
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