We present a global fit to electroweak precision observables (EWPOs) in dark photon (DP) models containing both kinetic and mass mixing between the DP and the neutral gauge bosons of the Standard Model (SM). Such more general mixing can be the result of an extended scalar sector, which we specify in this paper. We calculate the tree-level contributions to EWPOs due to the mixing with the DP, as well as the leading loop corrections to the oblique parameters due to the extended Higgs sector. In the scalar sector, we find that ample regions of parameter space are still unconstrained by data. In the gauge sector, the excluded region depends strongly on the vacuum expectation values of the scalar fields: for moderate ratios, DP masses in the (40 GeV, 1 TeV) range are excluded; for larger ratios, the limits become indistinguishable from those for standard DPs.

Typical gravitational production of relics from amplification of inflationary perturbations assumes Bunch-Davies initial conditions, i.e. a vacuum with initially no particles. In this paper we investigate the impact of non Bunch-Davies initial conditions to the final abundance of relics, with particular attention to the parameter space where the total dark matter abundance is reproduced. We present a general framework for any initial condition, through which we show their non-trivial effect on both spectrum and late-time abundance. We argue that for particles whose source of conformal symmetry breaking comes only from a mass term (spin-1/2 fermions and conformally coupled scalars), the choice of initial conditions has little impact on the mass range relevant to dark matter. For other particles, e.g. the longitudinal mode of spin-1, we see a large deviation from the standard computation. We exemplify and quantify our results with an initial thermal state and a two-stage inflation scenario, highlighting that the total dark matter can be obtained for a wide range of masses.

The computational treatment of non-Gaussian entanglers could pose a significant challenge when extending the Multi-Scale Entanglement Renormalization Ansatz (MERA) to interacting quantum field theories. A natural strategy is therefore to consider polynomial entanglers for which the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff (BCH) expansion terminates at finite order. In this work, we identify an algebraic obstruction that limits the universality classes accessible to this family of entanglers. Working within the wavelet MERA (wMERA) framework applied to the interacting ϕ^4 theory in two dimensions, we show analytically that the effective potential generated by any finite-BCH polynomial entangler is necessarily of Landau form in the generic case, establishing mean-field universality for the full class; in non-generic, degenerate cases the resulting exponent departs from mean-field but still fails to reproduce the Ising value. As a numerical illustration, the critical exponent β remains consistent with its mean-field value β= 1/2 across all ansätze considered, with no drift toward the Ising value β= 1/8 as the nonlocality range or variational complexity increases. Reproducing non-mean-field criticality therefore might require non-polynomial or infinite-BCH constructions.

Massive sterile neutrinos, also known as heavy neutral leptons, can have a mixing with active neutrinos, \theta θ , as well as a dipole coupling to the photon, d d . We study the interplay between these two portals, considering the production from meson decays of sterile neutrinos with mass 0.1 0.1 GeV ≲ M_N ≲ 10 ≲MN≲10 GeV, at beam-dump facilities such as NA62 and SHiP, and at the FASER2 experiment. These sterile neutrinos can be long-lived and decay into a photon in a distant detector, via the dipole operator. We find that all these experiments will be sensitive to values of d d which are presently unconstrained. The experimental reach varies strongly with the mass M_N MN and the mixing \theta θ , and one observes specific correlations with the flavour of active neutrinos. The SHiP experiment will mark a jump in sensitivity: (i) it will probe a sterile dipole as small as d\sim 10^{-8}\ \text{GeV}^{-1} d∼10−8GeV−1 , thus testing new physics well above the electroweak scale; (ii) it may detect the active-sterile dipole to the level predicted by electroweak loops, if \theta θ is close to the present bound.

Abstract Dipole interactions between dark sector states or between a Standard Model particle and a dark state can efficiently be searched for via high-intensity fixed-target facilities. We propose to look for the associated mono-γ signature at the NA62 experiment running in beam dump mode. Focusing on models of dipole inelastic Dark Matter and active-sterile neutrino dipole interactions, we compute the corresponding expected sensitivities finding promising prospects for discovery already with ~ 1017 proton-on-target, corresponding to the present accumulated dataset.

We construct an effective field theory for complex Stueckelberg dark photon dark matter. Such an effective construction can be realized by writing down a complete set of operators up to dimension six built with the complex dark photon and Standard Model fields. Classifying the effective operators, we find that in order to properly take into account the non-renormalizable nature of an interacting massive vector, the size of the Wilson coefficients should be naturally smaller than naively expected. This can be consistently taken into account by a proper power counting, that we suggest. First we apply this to collider bounds on light dark matter, then to direct detection searches by extending the list of non-relativistic operators to include the case of complex vectors. In the former we correctly find scaling limits for small masses, while in the latter we mostly focus on electric dipole interactions, that are the signatures of this type of dark matter. Simple UV completions that effectively realize the above scenarios are also outlined.

We examine how the existence of a population of primordial black holes (PBHs) influences cosmological gravitational particle production (CGPP) for spin-0 and spin-1 particles. In addition to the known effects of particle production and entropy dilution resulting from PBH evaporation, we find that the generation of dark matter (DM) through CGPP is profoundly influenced by a possible era of PBH matter domination. This early matter dominated era results in an enhancement of the particle spectrum from CGPP. Specifically, it amplifies the peak comoving momentum $k_\star$ for spin-1 DM, while enhancing the plateau of the spectrum for minimally coupled spin-0 particles for low comoving momenta. At the same time, the large entropy dilution may partially or completely compensate for the increase of the spectrum and strongly mitigates the DM abundance produced by CGPP. Our results show that, in the computation of the final abundance, CGPP and PBH evaporation cannot be disentangled, but the parameters of both sectors must be considered together to obtain the final result. Furthermore, we explore the potential formation of PBHs from density fluctuations arising from CGPP and the associated challenges in such a scenario.

We study how the coupling between axion-like particles (ALPs) and matter can be obtained at the level of on-shell scattering amplitudes. We identify three conditions that allow us to compute amplitudes that correspond to shift-symmetric Lagrangians, at the level of operators with dimension 5 or higher, and we discuss how they relate and extend the Adler's zero condition. These conditions are necessary to reduce the number of coefficients consistent with the little-group scaling to the one expected from the Lagrangian approach. We also show how our formalism easily explains that the dimension-5 interaction involving one ALP and two massless spin-1 bosons receive corrections from higher order operators only when the ALP has a non-vanishing mass. As a direct application of our results, we perform a phenomenological study of the inelastic scattering $\ell^+\ell^- \to \phi h$ (with $\ell^\pm$ two charged leptons, $\phi$ the ALP and $h$ the Higgs boson) for which, as a result of the structure of the 3-point and 4-point amplitudes, dimension-7 operators can dominate over the dimension-5 ones well before the energy reaches the cutoff of the theory.

Axionlike particles are among the most studied extensions of the standard model. In this Letter we study the bounds that the ArgoNeuT experiment can put on the parameter space of two specific scenarios: leptophilic axionlike particles and Majorons. We find that such bounds are currently the most constraining ones in the (0.2 - 1.7) GeV mass range.

Abstract We consider the minimal see-saw extension of the Standard Model with two right-handed singlet fermions N 1,2 with mass at the GeV scale, augmented by an effective dipole operator between the sterile states. We firstly review current bounds on this effective interaction from fixed-target and collider experiments, as well as from astrophysical and cosmological observations. We then highlight the prospects for testing the decay N 2 → N 1 γ induced by the dipole at future facilities targeting long-lived particles such as ANUBIS, CODEX-b, FACET, FASER 2, MAPP and SHiP.

We consider a dark sector containing a pair of almost degenerate states coupled to the Standard Model through a dark photon mediator. This set-up constitutes a simple realization of the inelastic dark matter scenario. The heaviest dark state is long-lived, in the limit of a small kinetic mixing among the dark photon and the Standard Model hypercharge gauge boson, and/or of a small mass splitting among the dark states. We study the prospects for detection of this scenario at proposed LHC experiments dedicated to search for long-lived particles, namely FASER, MATHUSLA, CODEX-b, AL3X, MAPP, ANUBIS and FACET. We consider both the cases of fermionic and scalar inelastic dark matter. We show that these experimental facilities can probe unexplored regions of the parameter space of this model, and we highlight their complementary roles.

In the usual quantum field theoretical approach, neutrino oscillations are studied diagonalizing either the mass or matter Hamiltonians. In this paper we analyze the problem from an on-shell amplitude perspective, where Lagrangians or Hamiltonians are not available. We start by studying in detail how flavor enters in the amplitudes and how the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (PMNS) matrix emerges. We then analyze the elastic amplitude of two neutrinos and two charged leptons that induce matter effects and propose a strategy to obtain the known results of the standard oscillation theory without Hamiltonians. Finally, we extend the previously proposed procedure and use the most general elastic 4-point amplitude to study beyond the Standard Model effects on oscillations.

A bstract Future experiments dedicated to the detection of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering may be powerful tools in probing light new physics. In this paper we study the sensitivity on light Z ′ mediators of two proposed experiments: a directional low pressure Time Projection Chamber detector, ν BDX-DRIFT, that will utilize neutrinos produced at the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility, and several possible experiments to be installed at the European Spallation Source. We compare the results obtained with existing limits from fixed-target, accelerator, solar neutrino and reactor experiments. Furthermore, we show that these experiments have the potential to test unexplored regions that, in some case, could explain the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon or peculiar spectral features in the cosmic neutrino spectrum observed by IceCube.

A bstract We study an extension of the Standard Model with electroweak scale right-handed singlet fermions N that induces neutrino masses, plus a generic new physics sector at a higher scale Λ. The latter is parametrized in terms of effective operators in the language of the ν SMEFT. We study its phenomenology considering operators up to d = 6, where additional production and decay modes for N are present in addition to those arising from the mixing with the active neutrinos. We focus on the production with four-Fermi operators and we identify the most relevant additional decay modes to be N → νγ and N → 3 f . We assess the sensitivity of future Higgs factories on the ν SMEFT in regions of the parameter space where the new states decay promptly, displaced or are stable on detector lengths. We show that new physics scale up to 5–60 TeV can be explored, depending on the collider considered.

We consider a scenario in which the electroweak scale is stabilized via the relaxion mechanism during inflation, focussing on the case in which the back-reaction potential is generated by the confinement of new strongly interacting vector-like fermions. If the reheating temperature is sufficiently high to cause the deconfinement of the new strong interactions, the back-reaction barrier then disappears and the Universe undergoes a second relaxation phase. This phase stops when the temperature drops sufficiently for the back-reaction to form again. We identify the regions of parameter space in which the second relaxation phase does not spoil the successful stabilization of the electroweak scale. In addition, the generation of the back-reaction potential that ends the second relaxation phase can be associated to a strong first order phase transition. We then study when such transition can generate a gravitational wave signal in the range of detectability of future interferometer experiments.

We explore a dark sector containing a pair of light non-degenerate scalar particles, with masses in the MeV-GeV range, coupled to the visibile sector through heavier mediators. We analyze the prospects for detection with the proposed beam-dump facility SHiP, and the proposed LHC experiments FASER and MATHUSLA. We confront these sensitivities with constraints from the beam-dump experiment CHARM and colliders (LEP, LHC and BaBar).

Abstract We consider an extension of the Standard Model with two right-handed singlet fermions with mass at the electroweak scale that induce neutrino masses, plus a generic new physics sector at a higher scale Λ. We focus on the effective operators of lowest dimension d = 5, which induce new production and decay modes for the singlet fermions. We assess the sensitivity of future Higgs Factories, such as FCC-ee, CLIC-380, ILC and CEPC, to the coefficients of these operators for various center of mass energies. We show that future lepton colliders can test the cut-off of the theory up to Λ ≃ 500–1000 TeV, surpassing the reach of future indirect measurements of the Higgs and Z boson widths. We also comment on the possibility of determining the underlying model flavor structure should a New Physics signal be observed, and on the impact of higher dimensional d = 6 operators on the experimental signatures.

Abstract Dark photons are massive abelian gauge bosons that interact with ordinary photons via a kinetic mixing with the hypercharge field strength tensor. This theory is probed by a variety of different experiments and limits are set on a combination of the dark photon mass and kinetic mixing parameter. These limits can however be strongly modified by the presence of additional heavy degrees of freedom. Using the framework of dark effective field theory, we study how robust are the current experimental bounds when these new states are present. We focus in particular on the possible existence of a dark dipole interaction between the Standard Model leptons and the dark photon. We show that, under certain assumptions, the presence of a dark dipole modifies existing supernovæ bounds for cut-off scales up to $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (10–100 TeV). On the other hand, terrestrial experiments, such as LSND and E137, can probe cut-off scales up to $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (3 TeV). For the latter experiment we highlight that the bound may extend down to vanishing kinetic mixing.

We apply on-shell amplitude techniques to the study of neutrino oscillations in vacuum, focussing on processes involving W bosons. We start by determining the 3-point amplitude involving one neutrino, one charged lepton and one W boson, highlighting all the allowed kinematic structures. The result we obtain contains terms generated at all orders in an expansion in the cutoff scale of the theory, and we explicitly determine the lower dimensional operators behind the generation of the different structures. We then use this amplitude to construct the 4-point amplitude in which neutrinos are exchanged in the s-channel, giving rise to oscillations. We also study in detail how flavor enters in the amplitudes, and how the PMNS matrix emerges from the on-shell perspective.

We consider an extension of the Standard Model with two singlet leptons, with masses in the electroweak range, that induce neutrino masses via the see-saw mechanism, plus a generic new physics sector at a higher scale, Λ. We apply the minimal flavor violation (MFV) principle to the corresponding Effective Field Theory (νSMEFT) valid at energy scales E ≪ Λ. We identify the irreducible sources of lepton flavor and lepton number violation at the renormalizable level, and apply the MFV ansätz to derive the scaling of the Wilson coefficients of the νSMEFT operators up to dimension six. We highlight the most important phenomenological consequences of this hypothesis in the rates for exotic Higgs decays, the decay length of the heavy neutrinos, and their production modes at present and future colliders. We also comment on possible astrophysical implications.