Internal seminar by Sofie Erner and Dorian Amaral

Friday 6 May 2022, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/London

Sofie Erner

Title:
Anomalous Triple Neutral Boson Couplings in e+ e- Processes

Abstract:

Despite the great success of the Standard Model in predicting the fundamental interactions of particles, it is not complete. A great amount of effort has been put into extending the Standard Model by introducing new interactions to fix the disparities between theory and experiments.  I focus on the anomalous triple neutral boson interactions, Z Z \gamma and Z \gamma \gamma, in e+ e- processes. Two signatures are analysed, Z -> muons and Z -> neutrinos, for various cuts to isolate the wanted interactions. From the matrix square elements of the processes, a new observable is constructed and used to perform statistical tests. Using Sherpa, the effects of the additional interactions are studied, and various statistical tests are performed on Standard Model results determining the 95% confidence intervals on the anomalous interactions. 

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Dorial Amaral

 

Title: Probing Neutrino Non-Standard Interactions at Dark Matter Direct Detection Experiments

 

Abstract:

New neutrino physics is unequivocally among us. Neutrinos are massive---a fact that we cannot explain within the bounds of the Standard Model. This beckons us to study what other potential new neutrino physics might be out there, which we typically parametrise through the effective framework of neutrino non-standard interactions (NSIs). Both oscillation experiments and experiments probing coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering are excellent means with which to constrain the potential NSI parameter space, and future dark matter direct detection (DD) experiments have also been shown to be promising in this endeavour.

 

However, two problems are yet to be addressed in this vein. Firstly, the present NSI formalism does not account for non-standard interactions with both protons and electrons. Secondly, as the power of DD experiments to probe neutrino physics is still being explored, an easy way to incorporate these experiments into global analyses does not yet exist. In this talk, I will introduce an extension to the present NSI framework that accounts for NSIs between both the proton and the electron. I will show how allowing for electron NSIs can significantly impact the present bounds placed on NSIs with the proton. I will also briefly introduce NuDD: an in-development package centred around this new framework that predicts the rate of neutrino-nucleus and neutrino-electron scattering at DD experiments, accounting for the effect of NSIs on neutrino oscillations. I will end by showing some preliminary results on the sensitivity of DD experiments to NSIs.

 

Our results reinforce the importance of future DD experiments in constraining potential new physics in the neutrino sector. Together with NuDD, we will be able to incorporate these experiments into global analyses, helping us to further learn about the nature of neutrino physics beyond the Standard Model.

 

Zoom link:  IPPP Seminars (Friday at 2 pm UK time)

https://durhamuniversity.zoom.us/j/94871833595?pwd=Kys2SkNVR3hkV256bWZFZW9oVXBodz09

Meeting ID: 948 7183 3595
Passcode: 570281