Particle theory

Abstract:

We study the production of heavy, μ≳1 TeV, bosonic spin s=0, 1 dark matter (DM) via the simultaneous processes of Hawking evaporation and superradiance (SR) from an initial population of small, ≲106 kg, primordial black holes (PBHs). Even for small initial PBH spins, the SR process can produce extremely dense gravitationally bound DM Bose or Proca soliton “stars” of radius ≲pm and mass ∼10few kg that can survive to today, well after PBH decay. These solitons can constitute a significant fraction of the DM density, rising to ≳50% in the vector DM case.

Abstract:

The discovery of joint sources of high-energy neutrinos and gravitational waves has been a primary target for the LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, and IceCube observatories. The joint detection of high-energy neutrinos and gravitational waves would provide insight into cosmic processes, from the dynamics of compact object mergers and stellar collapses to the mechanisms driving relativistic outflows. The joint detection of multiple cosmic messengers can also elevate the significance of the common observation even when some or all of the constituent messengers are subthreshold, i.e., not significant enough to declare their detection individually. Using data from the LIGO, Virgo, and IceCube observatories, including subthreshold events, we searched for common sources of gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos during the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Our search did not identify significant joint sources. We derive constraints on the rate densities of joint sources. Our results constrain the isotropic neutrino emission from gravitational-wave sources for very high values of the total energy emitted in neutrinos (>1052–1054 erg).

Abstract:

We report the characterisation of a FBK NUV-HD-cryo silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) sensor operated in a 9.4 ± 0.2 mK environment inside a dilution refrigerator, towards the development of a cryogenic cosmic-ray muon veto system to be operated internal to a dilution refrigerator required for low background experiments such as the QUEST-DMC dark matter search experiment. We characterise the single photon response and the gain (the charge produced per detected photon), the dark count noise rate, and correlated noise contributions as a function of operating voltage. This paper also reports first proof-of-concept measurements of using a SiPM coupled to scintillator internal to a dilution refrigerator, towards detecting high-energy events consistent with candidate cosmic-ray muon signals.

Abstract:

Infrared divergences in Quantum Field Theory govern the low-energy dynamics of many physical theories, and their understanding is a crucial ingredient in predicting the outcomes of collider experiments. We present a novel approach to deriving the structure of these divergences by employing the Schwinger parametrization of Feynman integrals. After using tropical geometry to identify divergent limits, we study the all-orders asymptotic properties of Feynman diagrams via matrix manipulations of graph Laplacians, which allows us to analyse their IR behaviour systematically. We explicitly demonstrate the soft-hard factorization of the integrand for a broad class of diagrams, and reveal that when written in terms of worldline distances, topologically distinct diagrams asymptote to the same integrand at leading order in the soft limit. In particular, for the case of Quantum Electrodynamics (with massive fermions), we use this fact to show how ladder-type diagrams combine in Schwinger-parameter space to yield the correct exponentiated soft anomalous dimension. This framework provides a foundation for extending these methods to more complex theories like Quantum Chromodynamics and offers a pathway towards a systematic understanding of infrared divergences in perturbative amplitudes.