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Chauhan, Garv

Publications and source records attributed to Chauhan, Garv.

Impact of the cosmic neutrino background on long-range force searches

Light bosons can mediate long-range forces. We show that light bosonic mediators interacting with a background medium, in particular, with the cosmic neutrino background (CνB), may induce medium-dependent masses which could effectively screen long-range forces from detection. This leads to profound implications for long-range force searches in e.g. the Eöt-Wash, MICROSCOPE, and lunar laser-ranging (LLR) experiments. For instance, we find that when the coupling of the mediator to neutrinos is above 3 × 10 −10 or 5 × 10 −13 , bounds from LLR and experiments employing the Sun as an attractor, respectively, would be entirely eliminated. Larger values of the coupling can also substantially alleviate bounds from searches conducted at shorter distances.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Gravity-improved metastability bounds for the Type-I seesaw mechanism

Right-handed neutrinos (RHN) destabilize the electroweak vacuum by increasing its decay rate. In the SM, the latter is dominated by physics at the RG scale at which λ reaches its minimum, ${\mu}_{\ast}^{\textrm{SM}}$ ~10 17 GeV. For large neutrino Yukawa coupling Y ν , RHNs can push μ* beyond the Planck scale, implying that gravitational effects need to be taken into account. In this work, we perform the first comprehensive study of electroweak vacuum metastability in the type-I seesaw mechanism including these effects. Our analysis covers both low- and high-scale seesaw models, with two as well as three RHNs and for multiple values of the Higgs’ non-minimal coupling to gravity. We find that gravitational effects can significantly stabilize the vacuum, leading to weaker metastability bounds. We show that metastability sets the strongest bounds for low-scale seesaws with M N > 1 TeV. For high-scale seesaws, we find upper bounds on the allowed masses for the RHNs, which are relevant for high-scale leptogenesis. We also point out that Tr(${Y}_{\nu}^{\dagger}$Y ν ), which is commonly used to express these metastability bounds, cannot be used for all of parameter space. Instead, we argue that bounds can always be expressed reliably through Tr(${Y}_{\nu}^{\dagger}$Y ν ${Y}_{\nu}^{\dagger}$Y ν ). Lastly, we use this insight to develop a new technique for an easier RG analysis applicable to scenarios with degenerate RHN masses.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

The Forward Physics Facility at the High-Luminosity LHC

High energy collisions at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce a large number of particles along the beam collision axis, outside of the acceptance of existing LHC experiments. The proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF), to be located several hundred meters from the ATLAS interaction point and shielded by concrete and rock, will host a suite of experiments to probe standard model (SM) processes and search for physics beyond the standard model (BSM). In this report, we review the status of the civil engineering plans and the experiments to explore the diverse physics signals that can be uniquely probed in the forward region. FPF experiments will be sensitive to a broad range of BSM physics through searches for new particle scattering or decay signatures and deviations from SM expectations in high statistics analyses with TeV neutrinos in this low-background environment. High statistics neutrino detection will also provide valuable data for fundamental topics in perturbative and non-perturbative QCD and in weak interactions. Experiments at the FPF will enable synergies between forward particle production at the LHC and astroparticle physics to be exploited. We report here on these physics topics, on infrastructure, detector, and simulation studies, and on future directions to realize the FPF’s physics potential.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

How dark is the $ν_R$-philic dark photon?

We consider a generic dark photon that arises from a hidden U(1) gauge symmetry imposed on right-handed neutrinos ($ν_R$). Such a $ν_R$-philic dark photon is naturally dark due to the absence of tree-level couplings to normal matter. However, loop-induced couplings to charged leptons and quarks are inevitable, provided that $ν_R$ mix with left-handed neutrinos via Dirac mass terms. We investigate the loop-induced couplings and find that the $ν_R$-philic dark photon is not inaccessibly dark, which could be of potential importance to future dark photon searches at SHiP, FASER, Belle-II, LHC 14 TeV, etc.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗