### Blast from the past II: Constraints on heavy neutral leptons from the BEBC WA66 beam dump experiment

SciPost Physics Stichting SciPost 13:5 (2022) 118

#### Authors:

Ryan Barouki, Giacomo Marocco, Subir Sarkar

#### Abstract:

We revisit the search for heavy neutral leptons with the Big European Bubble Chamber in the 1982 proton beam dump experiment at CERN, focussing on those heavier than the kaon and mixing only with the tau neutrino, as these are far less constrained than their counterparts with smaller mass or other mixings. Recasting the previous search in terms of this model and including additional production and decay channels yields the strongest bounds to date, up to the tau mass. This applies also to our updated bounds on the mixing of heavy neutral leptons with the electron neutrino.

### Catch-me-if-you-can: the overshoot problem and the weak/inflation hierarchy

Journal of High Energy Physics Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2022:11 (2022) 155

#### Authors:

Joseph P Conlon, Filippo Revello

#### Abstract:

<jats:title>A<jats:sc>bstract</jats:sc> </jats:title><jats:p>We study the overshoot problem in the context of post-inflationary string cosmology (in particular LVS). LVS cosmology features a long kination epoch as the volume modulus rolls down the exponential slope towards the final minimum, with an energy density that scales as <jats:inline-formula><jats:alternatives><jats:tex-math>$${m}_s^4$$</jats:tex-math><mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>m</mml:mi> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> <mml:mn>4</mml:mn> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math></jats:alternatives></jats:inline-formula>. It is a known fact that such a roll admits attractor tracker solutions, and if these are located the overshoot problem is solved. We show that, provided a sufficiently large hierarchy exists between the inflationary scale and the weak scale, this will always occur in LVS as initial seed radiation grows into the tracker solution. The consistency requirement of ending in a stable vacuum containing the weak hierarchy therefore gives a preference for high inflationary scales — an anthropic argument, if one likes, for a large inflation/weak hierarchy. We discuss various origins, both universal and model-dependent, of the initial seed radiation (or matter). One particularly interesting case is that of a fundamental string network arising from brane inflation — this may lead to an early epoch in which the universe energy density principally consists of gravitational waves, while an LVS fundamental string network survives into the present universe.</jats:p>

### Ruling out light axions: the writing is on the wall

ArXiv 2211.14635 (2022)

#### Authors:

Konstantin A Beyer, Subir Sarkar

### Searches for Neutrinos from LHAASO ultra-high-energy γ-ray sources using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

ArXiv 2211.14184 (2022)