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Sabancilar, Eray

Publications and source records attributed to Sabancilar, Eray.

Asymmetric dark matter and baryogenesis from pseudoscalar inflation

We show that both the baryon asymmetry of the Universe and the dark matter abundance can be explained within a single framework that makes use of maximally helical hypermagnetic fields produced during pseudoscalar inflation and the chiral anomaly in the Standard Model. We consider a minimal asymmetric dark matter model free from anomalies and constraints. We find that the observed baryon and the dark matter abundances are achieved for a wide range of inflationary parameters, and the dark matter mass ranges between 7–15 GeV . The novelty of our mechanism stems from the fact that the same source of CP violation occurring during inflation explains both baryonic and dark matter in the Universe with two inflationary parameters, hence addressing all the initial condition problems in an economical way.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Chiral charge erasure via thermal fluctuations of magnetic helicity

We consider a relativistic plasma of fermions coupled to an Abelian gauge field and carrying a chiral charge asymmetry, which might arise in the early Universe through baryogenesis. It is known that on large length scales, λ≳1/(αμ{sub 5}), the chiral anomaly opens an instability toward the erasure of chiral charge and growth of magnetic helicity. Here the chemical potential μ{sub 5} parametrizes the chiral asymmetry and α is the fine-structure constant. We study the process of chiral charge erasure through the thermal fluctuations of magnetic helicity and contrast with the well-studied phenomenon of Chern-Simons number diffusion. Through the fluctuation-dissipation theorem we estimate the amplitude and time scale of helicity fluctuations on the length scale λ, finding δ H∼λT and τ∼αλ{sup 3}T{sup 2} for a relativistic plasma at temperature T. We argue that the presence of a chiral asymmetry allows the helicity to grow diffusively for a time t∼T{sup 3}/(α{sup 5}μ{sub 5}{sup 4}) until it reaches an equilibrium value H∼μ{sub 5}T{sup 2}/α, and the chiral asymmetry is partially erased. If the chiral asymmetry is small, μ{sub 5}<T/α, this avenue for chiral charge erasure is found to be slower than the chiral magnetic effect for which t∼T/(α{sup 3}μ{sub 5}{sup 2}). This mechanism for chiral charge erasure can be important for the hypercharge sector of the Standard Model as well as extensions including U(1) gauge interactions, such as asymmetric dark matter models.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Detecting non-relativistic cosmic neutrinos by capture on tritium: phenomenology and physics potential

We study the physics potential of the detection of the Cosmic Neutrino Background via neutrino capture on tritium, taking the proposed PTOLEMY experiment as a case study. With the projected energy resolution of Δ ∼ 0.15 eV, the experiment will be sensitive to neutrino masses with degenerate spectrum, m{sub 1} ≅ m{sub 2} ≅ m{sub 3} = m{sub ν} ∼> 0.1 eV. These neutrinos are non-relativistic today; detecting them would be a unique opportunity to probe this unexplored kinematical regime. The signature of neutrino capture is a peak in the electron spectrum that is displaced by 2 m{sub ν} above the beta decay endpoint. The signal would exceed the background from beta decay if the energy resolution is Δ ∼< 0.7 m{sub ν} . Interestingly, the total capture rate depends on the origin of the neutrino mass, being Γ{sup D} ≅ 4 and Γ{sup M} ≅ 8 events per year (for a 100 g tritium target) for unclustered Dirac and Majorana neutrinos, respectively. An enhancement of the rate of up to O(1) is expected due to gravitational clustering, with the unique potential to probe the local overdensity of neutrinos. Turning to more exotic neutrino physics, PTOLEMY could be sensitive to a lepton asymmetry, and reveal the eV-scale sterile neutrino that is favored by short baseline oscillation searches. The experiment would also be sensitive to a neutrino lifetime on the order of the age of the universe and break the degeneracy between neutrino mass and lifetime which affects existing bounds.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Leptogenesis and primordial magnetic fields

The anomalous conversion of leptons into baryons during leptogenesis is shown to produce a right-handed helical magnetic field; in contrast, the magnetic field produced during electroweak baryogenesis is known to be left-handed. If the cosmological medium is turbulent, the magnetic field evolves to have a present day coherence scale ∼ 10 pc and field strength ∼ 10{sup −18} Gauss. This result is insensitive to the energy scale at which leptogenesis took place. Observations of the amplitude, coherence scale, and helicity of the intergalactic magnetic field promise to provide a powerful probe of physics beyond the Standard Model and the very early universe.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Ultra high energy neutrinos: absorption, thermal effects and signatures

We study absorption of ultra high energy neutrinos by the cosmic neutrino background, with full inclusion of the effect of the thermal distribution of the background on the resonant annihilation channel. For a hierarchical neutrino mass spectrum (with at least one neutrino with mass below ∼ 10{sup −2} eV), thermal effects are important for ultra high energy neutrino sources at z∼>16. The neutrino transmission probability shows no more than two separate suppression dips since the two lightest mass eigenstates contribute as a single species when thermal effects are included. Results are applied to a number of models of ultra high energy neutrino emission. Suppression effects are strong for sources that extend beyond z ∼ 10, which can be realized for certain top down scenarios, such as superheavy dark matter decays, cosmic strings and cosmic necklaces. For these, a broad suppression valley should affect the neutrino spectrum at least in the energy interval 10{sup 12}−10{sup 13} GeV — which therefore is disfavored for ultra high energy neutrino searches — with only a mild dependence on the neutrino mass spectrum and hierarchy. The observation of absorption effects would indicate a population of sources beyond z ∼ 10, and favor top-down mechanisms; it would also be an interesting probe of the physics of the relic neutrino background in the unexplored redshift interval z ∼ 10–100.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

CMB distortions from damping of acoustic waves produced by cosmic strings

We study diffusion damping of acoustic waves in the photon-baryon fluid due to cosmic strings, and calculate the induced μ- and y-type spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background. For cosmic strings with tension within current bounds, their contribution to the spectral distortions is subdominant compared to the distortions from primordial density perturbations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗