Search

The violation of Baryon Number, $\mathcal{B}$, is an essential ingredient for the preferential creation of matter over antimatter needed to account for the observed baryon asymmetry in the universe. However, such a process has yet to be experimentally observed. The HIBEAM/NNBAR %experiment program is a proposed two-stage experiment at the European Spallation Source (ESS) to search for baryon number violation. The program will include high-sensitivity searches for processes that violate baryon number by one or two units: free neutron-antineutron oscillation ($n\rightarrow \bar{n}$) via mixing, neutron-antineutron oscillation via regeneration from a sterile neutron state ($n\rightarrow [n',\bar{n}'] \rightarrow \bar{n}$), and neutron disappearance ($n\rightarrow n'$); the effective $\Delta \mathcal{B}=0$ process of neutron regeneration ($n\rightarrow [n',\bar{n}'] \rightarrow n$) is also possible. The program can be used to discover and characterise mixing in the neutron, antineutron, and sterile neutron sectors. The experiment addresses topical open questions such as the origins of baryogenesis, the nature of dark matter, and is sensitive to scales of new physics substantially in excess of those available at colliders. A goal of the program is to open a discovery window to neutron conversion probabilities (sensitivities) by up to three orders of magnitude compared with previous searches. The opportunity to make such a leap in sensitivity tests should not be squandered. The experiment pulls together a diverse international team of physicists from the particle (collider and low energy) and nuclear physics communities, while also including specialists in neutronics and magnetics.

The ATLAS collaboration (and also CMS) has recently reported an excess over Standard Model expectations for gauge boson pair production in the invariant mass region $1.8-2.2$ TeV. In the light of these results, we argue that such signal might be the first manifestation of the production and further decay of a heavy CP-even Higgs resulting from a type-I Two Higgs Doublet Model. We demonstrate that in the presence of colored vector-like fermions, its gluon fusion production cross-section is strongly enhanced, with the enhancement depending on the color representation of the new fermion states. Our findings show that barring the color triplet case, any QCD "exotic" representation can fit the ATLAS result in fairly large portions of the parameter space. We have found that if the diboson excess is confirmed and this mechanism is indeed responsible for it, then the LHC Run-2 should find: (i) a CP-odd scalar with mass below $\sim 2.3$ TeV, (ii) new colored states with masses below $\sim 2$ TeV, (iii) no statistically significant diboson events in the $W^\pm Z$ channel, (iv) events in the triboson channels $W^\pm W^\mp\,Z$ and $ZZZ$ with invariant mass amounting to the mass of the CP-odd scalar., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. One reference added, figures updated, results unchanged

We explore the possible implications that new families, that are being searched for at the LHC, would have on neutrino masses. In particular, we have explored the possibility that the smallness of the observed neutrino masses is naturally understood in a modified version of the Standard Model (SM) with complete extra generations of fermions, i.e., that have right-handed neutrinos, in which neutrino masses are generated at two loops. With one extra family it is not possible to fit the observed spectrum of masses and mixings. However, the radiative mass generated provides an important constraint in these kind of models, so the neutrino masses do not exceed their cosmological bound. Within the context of two extra families, we analyse the allowed parameter space and the possible phenomenological signals. Contribution to NUFACT 11, XIIIth International Workshop on Neutrino Factories, Super beams and Beta beams, 1-6 August 2011, CERN and University of Geneva (Submitted to IOP conference series).

In this talk we explore the possibility that the smallness of the observed neutrino masses is naturally understood in a modified version of the standard model with N extra generations of fermions and N right-handed neutrinos, in which light neutrino masses are generated at two loops. We find that with N = 1 it is not possible to fit the observed spectrum of masses and mixings while with N = 2 it is. Within this extension, we analyse the parameters which are allowed and the possible phenomenological signals of the model in future experiments. Contribution to the proceedings of Les Rencontres de Moriond EW 2011, Young Scientist Forum.