Search

We consider decays of B and K mesons into a pseudo-scalar or vector meson plus missing energy. Within the SM, these modes originate from flavor changing neutral current (FCNC) processes with two neutrinos in the final state. In this paper we consider the experimental upper bounds on these modes and interpret the difference between these bounds and the SM prediction as a window into new light invisible particles. In particular we consider the case where some new symmetry requires the new particles to be produced in pairs. We first construct the general low energy effective Lagrangian coupling an FCNC with two dark sector particles of spin zero, one-half and one. We then present numerical estimates for the constraints that can be placed on these interactions, finding that an effective new physics scale from O (10)- O (1011) GeV can be probed, with the exact value strongly depending on the interaction structure as well as the mass of the invisible particle. For we incorporate into our constraints the effect of using only the signal regions of NA62, and for the q2-dependent efficiency of Belle II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider decays of B and K mesons into a pseudo-scalar or vector meson plus missing energy. Within the SM, these modes originate from flavor changing neutral current (FCNC) processes with two neutrinos in the final state. In this paper we consider the experimental upper bounds on these modes and interpret the difference between these bounds and the SM prediction as a window into new light invisible particles. In particular we consider the case where some new symmetry requires the new particles to be produced in pairs. We first construct the general low energy effective Lagrangian coupling an FCNC with two dark sector particles of spin zero, one-half and one. We then present numerical estimates for the constraints that can be placed on these interactions, finding that an effective new physics scale from O (10)- O (1011) GeV can be probed, with the exact value strongly depending on the interaction structure as well as the mass of the invisible particle. For we incorporate into our constraints the effect of using only the signal regions of NA62, and for the q2-dependent efficiency of Belle II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scotogenic neutrino seesaw model is a minimal extension of the standard model with three ℤ2-odd right-handed singlet fermions N and one ℤ2-odd Higgs doublet η that can accommodate the tiny neutrino mass and provide a dark matter candidate in a unified picture. Due to lack of experimental signatures for electroweak scale new physics, it is appealing to assume these new particles are well above the electroweak scale and take the effective field theory approach to study their effects on low energy observables. In this work we apply the recently developed functional matching formalism to the one-loop matching of the model onto the standard model effective field theory up to dimension seven for the case when all new states N and η are heavy to be integrated out. This is a realistic example which has no tree-level matching due to the ℤ2 symmetry. Using the matching results, we analyze their phenomenological implications for several physical processes, including the lepton number violating effect, the CDF W mass excess, and the lepton flavor violating decays like μ → eγ and μ → 3e. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we systematically consider the baryon (B) and lepton (L) number violating dinucleon to dilepton decays (pp → ℓ+ℓ′+, pn → ℓ + ν ¯ ′ , nn → ν ¯ ν ¯ ′ ) with ∆B = ∆L = −2 in the framework of effective field theory. We start by constructing a basis of dimension-12 (dim-12) operators mediating such processes in the low energy effective field theory (LEFT) below the electroweak scale. Then we consider their standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) completions upwards and their chiral realizations in baryon chiral perturbation theory (BχPT) downwards. We work to the first nontrivial orders in each effective field theory, collect along the way the matching conditions, and express the decay rates in terms of the Wilson coefficients associated with the dim-12 operators in the SMEFT and the low energy constants pertinent to BχPT. We find the current experimental limits push the associated new physics scale larger than 1 − 3 TeV, which is still accessible to the future collider searches. Through weak isospin symmetry, we find the current experimental limits on the partial lifetime of transitions pp → ℓ+ℓ′+, pn → ℓ + ν ¯ ′ imply stronger limits on nn → ν ¯ ν ¯ ′ than their existing lower bounds, which are improved by 2−3 orders of magnitude. Furthermore, assuming charged mode transitions are also dominantly generated by the similar dim-12 SMEFT interactions, the experimental limits on pp → e+e+, e+μ+, μ+μ+ lead to stronger limits on pn → ℓ α + ν ¯ β with α, β = e, μ than their existing bounds. Conversely, the same assumptions help us to set a lower bound on the lifetime of the experimentally unsearched mode pp → e+τ+ from that of pn → e + ν ¯ τ , i.e., Γ pp → e + τ + − 1 ≳ 2 × 10 34 yr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate systematically dimension-9 operators in the standard model effective field theory which contains only standard model fields and respects its gauge symmetry. With the help of the Hilbert series approach to classifying operators according to their lepton and baryon numbers and their field contents, we construct the basis of operators explicitly. We remove redundant operators by employing various kinematic and algebraic relations including integration by parts, equations of motion, Schouten identities, Dirac matrix and Fierz identities, and Bianchi identities. We confirm counting of independent operators by analyzing their flavor symmetry relations. All operators violate lepton or baryon number or both, and are thus non-Hermitian. Including Hermitian conjugated operators there are 384 Δ B = 0 Δ L = ± 2 + 10 Δ B = ± 2 Δ L = 0 + 4 Δ B = ± 1 Δ L = ± 3 + 236 Δ B = ± 1 Δ L = ∓ 1 operators without referring to fermion generations, and 44874 Δ B = 0 Δ L = ± 2 + 2862 Δ B = ± 2 Δ L = 0 + 486 Δ B = ± 1 Δ L = ± 3 + 42234 Δ B = ∓ 1 Δ L = ± 1 operators when three generations of fermions are referred to, where ∆L, ∆B denote the net lepton and baryon numbers of the operators. Our result provides a starting point for consistent phenomenological studies associated with dimension-9 operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work we investigate the implication of low-energy precision measurements on the quark-lepton charged currents in general neutrino interactions with sterile neutrinos in effective field theories. The physics in low-energy measurements is described by the low-energy effective field theory extended with sterile neutrinos (LNEFT) defined below the electroweak scale. We also take into account renormalization group running and match the LNEFT onto the Standard Model (SM) effective field theory with sterile neutrinos (SMNEFT) to constrain new physics (NP) above the electroweak scale. The most sensitive low-energy probes are from leptonic decays of pseudoscalar mesons and hadronic tau lepton decays in terms of precise decay branching fractions, the lepton flavor universality and the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) unitarity. We also consider other constraints including nuclear beta decay. The constraints on charged current operators are generally stronger than the ones for quark-neutrino neutral current operators. We find that the most stringent bounds on the NP scale of lepton-number-conserving and lepton- number-violating operators in SMNEFT are 74 (110) TeV and 9.8 (13) TeV, respectively, for the operators with down (strange) quark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ratio ℬ K L → π 0 v v ¯ / ℬ K + → π + v v ¯ of the branching fractions of kaon decays K L → π 0 v v ¯ and K + → π + v v ¯ has a maximum of about 4.3 under the assumption that the underlying interactions change isospin by ∆I = 1/2. This is referred to as the Grossman-Nir (GN) bound, which is respected by the standard model (SM) and by many scenarios beyond it. Recent preliminary results of the KOTO and NA62 Collaborations searching for these kaon modes seem to imply a violation of this bound. The KOTO findings also suggest that ℬ K L → π 0 v v ¯ could be much larger, by nearly two orders of magnitude, than that predicted in the SM. In this work we study the possibility of violating the GN bound in an effective field theory approach with only SM fields. We show that the bound holds, in addition to the original GN scenarios, whether or not the kaon decays conserve lepton number. We demonstrate that the inclusion of ∆I = 3/2 operators can lead to a violation of the GN bound and illustrate with an example of how the KOTO numbers may be reached with a new physics scale of order tens of GeV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a sequel to our recent work [1] in which we calculated the lepton number violating (LNV) K± decays due to contact dimension-9 (dim-9) quark-lepton effective interactions that are induced at a high energy scale. In this work we investigate the long- distance contribution to the decays arising from the exchange of a neutrino. These decays can probe LNV interactions involving the second generation of fermions that are not reach- able in nuclear neutrinoless double-β decays. Our study is completely formulated in the framework of effective field theories (EFTs), from the standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) through the low energy effective field theory (LEFT) to chiral perturbation theory (χPT). We work to the first nontrivial orders in each effective field theory, collect along the way the matching conditions and renormalization group effects, and express the decay branching ratios in terms of the Wilson coefficients associated with the dim-5 and dim-7 operators in SMEFT. Our result is general in that it does not depend on dynamical details of physics at a high scale that induce the effective interactions in SMEFT and in that it does not appeal to any hadronic models. We find that the long-distance contribution overwhelmingly dominates over the contact or short-distance one. Assuming the new physics scale to be around a TeV, the branching ratios are predicted to be below the current experimental upper bounds by several orders of magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first paper of our systematic efforts on lepton number violating (LNV) hadronic decays in the effective field theory approach. These decays provide information complementary to popular nuclear neutrinoless double-β (0νββ) decay in that they can probe LNV interactions involving heavier quarks and charged leptons. We may call them hadronic 0νββ decays in short, though β refers to all charged leptons. In this work we investigate the decays K±→ π∓l±l± that arise from short-distance or contact interactions involving four quark fields and two charged lepton fields, which have canonical dimension nine (dim-9) at leading order in low energy effective field theory (LEFT). We make a complete analysis on the basis of all dim-9 operators that violate lepton number by two units, and compute their one-loop QCD renormalization effects. We match these effective interactions in LEFT to those in chiral perturbation theory (χPT) for pseudoscalar mesons, and determine the resulting hadronic low energy constants (LECs) by chiral symmetry and lattice results in the literature. The obtained decay rate is general in that all physics at and above the electroweak scale is completely parameterized by the relevant Wilson coefficients in LEFT and hadronic LECs in χPT. Assuming the standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) is the appropriate effective field theory between some new physics scale and the electroweak scale, we match our LEFT results to SMEFT whose leading effective interactions arise from LNV dim-7 operators. This connection to SMEFT simplifies significantly the interaction structures entering in the kaon decays, and we employ the current experimental bounds to set constraints on the relevant Wilson coefficients in SMEFT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce the effective field theory of two different light dark particles interacting with the standard model (SM) light states in a single vertex, termed dark sector effective field theory (DSEFT). We focus on the new light particles with spin up to 1 and being real in essence, namely, new real scalars ϕ and S, Majorana fermions χ and ψ, and real vectors Xμ and Vμ. In the framework of low energy effective field theory with QED and QCD symmetry, the DSEFT can be classified into six categories, including the scalar-scalar-SM (ϕS-SM), fermion-fermion-SM (χψ-SM), vector-vector-SM (XV-SM), scalar-fermion-SM (ϕχ-SM), scalar-vector-SM (ϕX-SM), and fermion-vector-SM (χX-SM) cases. For each case, we construct the effective operator basis up to canonical dimension 7, which will cover most interesting phenomenology at low energy. As a phenomenological example, we investigate the longstanding neutron lifetime anomaly through the neutron dark decay modes n → χϕ or χX from the effective interactions in the fermion-scalar-SM or fermion-vector-SM case. When treating the light fermion as a dark matter candidate, we also explore the constraints from DM-neutron annihilation signal at Super-Kamiokande. We find the neutron dark decay in each scenario can accommodate the anomaly, at the same time, without contradicting with the Super-Kamiokande limit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fermionic dark matter can be pairly produced and hence searched with missing energy at colliders. We extend such probe to the associated production of a neutrino and a dark sector fermion at the future e+e− colliders such as CEPC, FCC-ee, ILC, and CLIC. Two typical processes, the mono-photon and electron-positron pair productions associated with missing energy, can serve the purpose. While the mono-photon search prevails at CEPC, FCC-ee, and ILC, the channel has more significant contributions at CLIC with much higher collision energy s . The beam polarizations can help further suppressing the SM backgrounds to enhance the signal significance while differential cross sections can distinguish the Lorentz structure of various effective operators. The combined sensitivity can reach well above 1 TeV at CEPC/FCC-ee and ILC while it further touches 30 TeV at CLIC. Comparing with the updated results from the direct detection experiments (XENON1T, PandaX-II, PandaX-4T, LZ, and XENONnT), astrophysical X/γ-ray observations, and cosmological constraints for the sub-MeV absorption dark matter, the collider searches are actually more sensitive and hence can provide a complementary approach to addressing the dark fermions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We perform a systematic study of the fermionic DM absorption interactions on electron target in the context of effective field theory. The fermionic DM absorption is not just sensitive to sub-MeV DM with efficient energy release, but also gives a unique signature with clear peak in the electron recoil spectrum whose shape is largely determined by the atomic effects. Fitting with the Xenon1T and PandaX-II data prefers DM mass at mχ = 59 keV and 105 keV, respectively, while the cut-off scale is probed up to around 1 TeV. The DM overproduction in the early Universe, the invisible decay effect on the cosmological evolution, and the visible decay signal collected by the astrophysical X(gamma)-ray observations (Insight-HXMT, NuSTAR, HEAO-1, and INTEGRAL) are thoroughly explored to constrain the DM absorption interactions. With stringent bounds on the tensor and pseudo-scalar operators, the other fermionic DM operators are of particular interest at tonne-scale direct detection experiments such as PandaX-4T, XENONnT, and LZ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a complete and independent set of dimension-7 operators in the low energy effective field theory (LEFT) where the dynamical degrees of freedom are the standard model five quarks and all of the neutral and charged leptons. All operators are non-Hermitian and are classified according to their baryon (∆B) and lepton (∆L) numbers violated. Including Hermitian-conjugated operators, there are in total 3168, 750, 588, 712 operators with (∆B, ∆L) = (0, 0), (0, ±2), (±1, ∓1), (±1, ±1) respectively. We perform the tree-level matching with the standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) up to dimension-7 (dim-7) operators in both LEFT and SMEFT. As a phenomenological application we study the effective neutrino-photon interactions due to dim-7 lepton number violating operators that are induced and much enhanced at one loop from dim-6 operators that in turn are matched from dim-7 SMEFT operators. We compare various neutrino-photon scattering cross sections with their counterparts in the standard model and highlight the new features. Finally, we illustrate how these effective interactions could arise from ultraviolet completion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rare kaon decays with missing energy, K → π+Emiss, have received considerable attention because their rates can be calculated quite precisely within the standard model (SM), where the missing energy is carried away by an undetected neutrino- antineutrino pair. Beyond the SM, clean theoretical predictions can also be made regarding these processes. One such prediction is the so-called Grossman-Nir (GN) bound, which states that the branching fractions of the KL and K+ modes must satisfy the relation ℬ K L → π 0 + E miss < ∼ 4.3 ℬ K + → π + + E miss and applies within and beyond the SM, as long as the hadronic transitions change isospin by ∆I = 1/2. In this paper we extend the study of these modes to include new-physics scenarios where the missing energy is due to unobserved lepton-number-violating neutrino pairs, invisible light new scalars, or pairs of such scalars. The new interactions are assumed to arise above the electroweak scale and described by an effective field theory. We explore the possibility of violating the GN bound through ∆I = 3/2 contributions to the K → π transitions within these scenarios and find that large violations are only possible in the case where the missing energy is due to an invisible light new scalar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work we study the current bounds from the CEνNS process and meson invisible decays on generic neutrino interactions with sterile neutrinos in effective field theories. The interactions between quarks and left-handed SM neutrinos and/or right-handed neutrinos are first described by the low-energy effective field theory (LNEFT) between the electroweak scale and the chiral symmetry breaking scale. We complete the independent operator basis for the LNEFT up to dimension-6 by including both the lepton-number-conserving (LNC) and lepton-number-violating (LNV) operators involving right-handed neutrinos. We translate the bounds on the LNEFT Wilson coefficients from the COHERENT observation and calculate the branching fractions of light meson invisible decays. The bounds on LNEFT are then mapped onto the SM effective field theory with sterile neutrinos (SMNEFT) to constrain new physics above the electroweak scale. We find that the meson invisible decays can provide the only sensitive probe for τ neutrino flavor component and s quark component in the quark-neutrino interactions involving two (one) active neutrinos and for the effective operators without any active neutrino fields. The CEνNS process places the most stringent bound on all other Wilson coefficients. By assuming one dominant Wilson coefficient at a time in SMNEFT and negligible sterile neutrino mass, the most stringent limits on the new physics scale are 2.7–10 TeV from corresponding dipole operator in LNEFT and 0.5–1.5 TeV from neutrino-quark operator in LNEFT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]