Juan Herrero-Garcia

Diboson anomaly: Heavy Higgs resonance and QCD vectorlike exotics

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 light of these r ...

A halo-independent lower bound on the dark matter capture rate in the Sun from a direct detection signal

We show that a positive signal in a dark matter (DM) direct detection experiment can be used to place a lower bound on the DM capture rate in the Sun, independent of the DM halo. For a given particle physics model and DM mass we obtain a lower bound on the capture rate independent of the local DM density, velocity distribution, galactic escape velocity, as well as the scattering cross section. We illustrate this lower bound on the capture rate by assuming that upcoming direct detection experiments will soon obtain a significant signal. When comparing the lower bound on the capture rate with limits on the high-energy neutrino flux from the Sun from neutrino telescopes, we can place upper limits on the branching fraction of DM annihilation channels leading to neutrinos. With current data from IceCube and Super-Kamiokande non-trivial limits can be obtained for spin-dependent interactions and direct annihilations into neutrinos. In some cases also annihilations into

Full parameter scan of the Zee model: exploring Higgs lepton flavor violation

\tau\tau

Self-interacting inelastic dark matter: a viable solution to the small scale structure problems

or

Halo-independent tests of dark matter annual modulation signals

b\bar b

Pinning down inelastic dark matter in the Sun and in direct detection

start getting constrained. For spin-independent interactions current constraints are weak, but they may become interesting for data from future neutrino telescopes.

On the direct detection of multi-component dark matter: sensitivity studies and parameter estimation

A bstractWe study the general Zee model, which includes an extra Higgs scalar doublet and a new singly-charged scalar singlet. Neutrino masses are generated at one-loop level, and in order to describe leptonic mixing, both the Standard Model and the extra Higgs scalar doublets need to couple to leptons (in a type-III two-Higgs doublet model), which necessarily generates large lepton flavor violating signals, also in Higgs decays. Imposing all relevant phenomenological constraints and performing a full numerical scan of the parameter space, we find that both normal and inverted neutrino mass orderings can be fitted, although the latter is disfavored with respect to the former. In fact, inverted ordering can only be accommodated if θ23 turns out to be in the first octant. A branching ratio for h → τμ of up to 10−2 is allowed, but it could be as low as 10−6. In addition, if future expected sensitivities of τ → μγ are achieved, normal ordering can be almost completely tested. Also, μe conversion is expected to probe large parts of the parameter space, excluding completely inverted ordering if no signal is observed. Furthermore, non-standard neutrino interactions are found to be smaller than 10−6, which is well below future experimental sensitivity. Finally, the results of our scan indicate that the masses of the additional scalars have to be below 2.5 TeV, and typically they are lower than that and therefore within the reach of the LHC and future colliders.

Phenomenology of SU(5) low-energy realizations: the diphoton excess and Higgs flavor violation

Self-interacting dark matter has been proposed as a solution to the small-scale structure problems, such as the observed flat cores in dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies. If scattering takes ...

Dark matter direct detection of a fermionic singlet at one loop

New halo-independent lower bounds on the product of the dark matter-nucleon scattering cross section and the local dark matter density that are valid for annual modulations of dark matter direct detection signals are derived. They are obtained by making use of halo-independent bounds based on an expansion of the rate on the Earths velocity that were derived in previous works. In combination with astrophysical measurements of the local energy density, an observed annual modulation implies a lower bound on the cross section that is independent of the velocity distribution and that must be fulfilled by any particle physics model. In order to illustrate the power of the bounds we apply them to DAMA/LIBRA data and obtain quite strong results when compared to the standard halo model predictions. We also extend the bounds to the case of multi-target detectors.

The distribution of inelastic dark matter in the Sun

We study the solar capture rate of inelastic dark matter with endothermic and/or exothermic interactions. By assuming that an inelastic dark matter signal will be observed in next generation direct detection experiments we can set a lower bound on the capture rate that is independent of the local dark matter density, the velocity distribution, the galactic escape velocity as well as the scattering cross section. In combination with upper limits from neutrino observatories we can place upper bounds on the annihilation channels leading to neutrinos. We find that, while endothermic scattering limits are weak in the isospin-conserving case, strong bounds may be set for exothermic interactions, in particular in the spin-dependent case. Furthermore, we study the implications of observing two direct detection signals, in which case one can halo-independently obtain the dark matter mass and the mass splitting, and disentangle the endothermic/exothermic nature of the scattering. Finally we discuss isospin violation.