A. G. Dias

The Quest for an Intermediate-Scale Accidental Axion and Further ALPs

A bstractThe recent detection of the cosmic microwave background polarimeter experiment BICEP2 of tensor fluctuations in the B-mode power spectrum basically excludes all plausible axion models where its decay constant is above 1013 GeV. Moreover, there are strong theoretical, astrophysical, and cosmological motivations for models involving, in addition to the axion, also axion-like particles (ALPs), with decay constants in the intermediate scale range, between 109 GeV and 1013 GeV. Here, we present a general analysis of models with an axion and further ALPs and derive bounds on the relative size of the axion and ALP photon (and electron) coupling. We discuss what we can learn from measurements of the axion and ALP photon couplings about the fundamental parameters of the underlying ultraviolet completion of the theory. For the latter we consider extensions of the Standard Model in which the axion and the ALP(s) appear as pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons from the breaking of global chiral U(1) (Peccei-Quinn (PQ)) symmetries, occurring accidentally as low energy remnants from exact discrete symmetries. In such models, the axion and the further ALP are protected from disastrous explicit symmetry breaking effects due to Planck-scale suppressed operators. The scenarios considered exploit heavy right handed neutrinos getting their mass via PQ symmetry breaking and thus explain the small mass of the active neutrinos via a seesaw relation between the electroweak and an intermediate PQ symmetry breaking scale. For a number of explicit models, we determine the parameters of the low-energy effective field theory describing the axion, the ALPs, and their interactions with photons and electrons, in terms of the input parameters, in particular the PQ symmetry breaking scales. We show that these models can accommodate simultaneously an axion dark matter candidate, an ALP explaining the anomalous transparency of the universe for γ-rays, and an ALP explaining the recently reported 3.55 keV gamma line from galaxies and clusters of galaxies, if the respective decay constants are of intermediate scale. Moreover, they do not suffer severely from the domain wall problem.

Probing 3-3-1 Models in Diphoton Higgs Boson Decay

We investigate the Higgs boson production through gluon fusion and its decay into two photons at the LHC in the context of the minimal 3-3-1 model and its alternative version with exotic leptons. The diphoton Higgs decay channel presents an enhanced signal in this model compared to the Standard Model due to the presence of an extra singly charged vector boson and a doubly charged one. Prospects for the Higgs boson detection at 7 TeV center-of-mass energy with up to 10 fb −1 are presented. Our results suggest that a Higgs boson from these 3-3-1 models can potentially explain the small excess for mH ≤ 145 GeV observed at the LHC. Otherwise, if this excess reveals to be only a statistical fluctuation of the Standard Model backgrounds severe constraints can be put on these models.

A Simple Realization of the Inverse Seesaw Mechanism

Differently from the canonical seesaw mechanism, which is grounded in grand unified theories, the inverse seesaw mechanism lacks a special framework that realizes it naturally. In this work we advocate that the 3-3-1 model with right-handed neutrinos has such an appropriate framework to accommodate the inverse seesaw mechanism. We also provide an explanation for the smallness of the µ parameter and estimate the branching ratio for the rare lepton flavor violation process µ → e.

Left-right SU ( 3 ) L × SU ( 3 ) R × U ( 1 ) X model with light, keV, and heavy neutrinos

We construct a full left-right model for the electroweak interactions based on the SU(3){sub L} x SU(3){sub R} x U(1){sub X} gauge symmetry. The fermion content of the model is such that anomaly cancellation restricts the number of families to be a multiple of three. One of the most important features of the model is the joint presence of three light active neutrinos, three additional neutrinos at keV mass scale, and six heavy ones with masses around 10{sup 11} GeV. They form a well-motivated part of the spectrum in the sense that they address challenging problems related to neutrino oscillation, warm dark matter, and baryogenesis through leptogenesis.

An

We propose a simple extension of the electroweak standard model based on the discrete

S_3

S_3

Model for Lepton Mass Matrices with Nearly Minimal Texture

symmetry that is capable of realizing a nearly minimal Fritzsch-type texture for the Dirac mass matrices of both charged leptons and neutrinos. This is achieved with the aid of additional

How the Inverse See-Saw Mechanism Can Reveal Itself Natural, Canonical and Independent of the Right-Handed Neutrino Mass

Z_5

Collider and Dark Matter Searches in the Inert Doublet Model from Peccei-Quinn Symmetry

and

A model with chiral quarks of electric charges −4/3 and 5/3

Z_3