Lepton And Baryon Number Violation In Particle Physics Astrophysics And Cosmology

Bringing together leading researchers from particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, Lepton and Baryon Number Violation in Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology presents reviews of current theoretical ideas, experimental results, and future perspectives in this topical field. The book covers areas related to baryon number (B) and lepton number (L) violation in particle physics, nuclear physics, rare decays, and cosmology. The main topics include B and L violation and grand unified theories; B and L violation in the early universe, cosmology, and astrophysics; Lepton family number violation; and B and L violation and collider physics.

"Neutrinos in Particle Physics, Astronomy and Cosmology" provides a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to neutrino physics, neutrino astronomy and neutrino cosmology. The intrinsic properties and fundamental interactions of neutrinos are described, as is the phenomenology of lepton flavor mixing, seesaw mechanisms and neutrino oscillations. The cosmic neutrino background, stellar neutrinos, supernova neutrinos and ultrahigh-energy cosmic neutrinos, together with the cosmological matter-antimatter asymmetry and other roles of massive neutrinos in cosmology, are discussed in detail. This book is intended for researchers and graduate students in the fields of particle physics, particle astrophysics and cosmology. Dr. Zhizhong Xing is a professor at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China; Dr. Shun Zhou is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Physics, Germany.

Undeniably, today Neutrino Physics has become an important and emerging new field of intense research in Physics around the globe. The accolades received by the Neutrino Physicists speak volume about it. Besides, numerous other prizes, there have been four Nobel Prizes to its credit. The latest being the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics to Professor TakaakiKajita and Professor Arthur B. Mcdonald for discovery of neutrino oscillations. This important breakthrough discovery which was first declared by Super-KamioKande at the Takayama Conference-NEUTRINO’98, can be termed as the watershed moment in the history of neutrino physics. With this discovery the study of neutrino physics has established a firm foundation. And matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe is one of the open problems in cosmology. Thus, connecting a low-energy to a high-energy physics is an issue of both particle physicists and cosmologists. Good number of books on neutrino physics have been written, but not on baryogenesis. And importantly, complete detailed books connecting these two beautiful subjects are yet to be written. The present book though not a complete detailed book is a modest attempt in that direction. The book attempts to find out the above unknown properties of neutrinos and study its implications to cosmology.

Several of the very foundations of the cosmological standard model — the baryon asymmetry of the universe, dark matter, and the origin of the hot big bang itself — still call for an explanation from the perspective of fundamental physics. This work advocates one intriguing possibility for a consistent cosmology that fills in the theoretical gaps while being fully in accordance with the observational data. At very high energies, the universe might have been in a false vacuum state that preserved B-L, the difference between the baryon number B and the lepton number L as a local symmetry. In this state, the universe experienced a stage of hybrid inflation that only ended when the false vacuum became unstable and decayed, in the course of a waterfall transition, into a phase with spontaneously broken B-L symmetry. This B-L Phase Transition was accompanied by tachyonic preheating that transferred almost the entire energy of the false vacuum into a gas of B-L Higgs bosons, which in turn decayed into heavy Majorana neutrinos. Eventually, these neutrinos decayed into massless radiation, thereby producing the entropy of the hot big bang, generating the baryon asymmetry of the universe via the leptogenesis mechanism and setting the stage for the production of dark matter. Next to a variety of conceptual novelties and phenomenological predictions, the main achievement of the thesis is hence the fascinating notion that the leading role in the first act of our universe might have actually been played by neutrinos.

The successes of the standard models of particle physics and cosmology are many, but have proven incapable of explaining all the phenomena that we observe. This book investigates the potentially important role of quantum physics, particularly quantum anomalies, in various aspects of modern cosmology, such as inflation, the dynamical generation of the visible and dark matter in the universe, and gravitational waves. By doing so, the authors demonstrate that exploring the links between cosmology and particle physics is key to helping solve the mysteries of our Universe.

This volume presents the newest results and developments in the fast-moving field of astroparticle physics. The following topics are covered: dark matter, baryogenesis, neutrino physics and astrophysics, inflation, topological defects, cosmic ray physics and cosmological implications of grand unification, supersymmetry, superstrings and extra dimensions.

Nuclear double beta decay is one of the most promising tools for probing beyond-the-standard-model physics on beyond-accelerator energy scales. It is already now probing the TeV scale, on which new physics should manifest itself according to theoretical expectations. Only in the early 1980s was it known that double beta decay yields information on the Majorana mass of the exchanged neutrino. At present, the sharpest bound for the electron neutrino mass arises from this process. It is only in the last 10 years that the much more far-reaching potential of double beta decay has been discovered. Today, the potential of double beta decay includes a broad range of topics that are equally relevant to particle physics and astrophysics, such as masses of heavy neutrinos, of sneutrinos, as SUSY models, compositeness, leptoquarks, left-right symmetric models, and tests of Lorentz symmetry and equivalence principle in the neutrino sector. Double beta decay has become indispensable nowadays for solving the problem of the neutrino mass spectrum and the structure of the neutrino mass matrix OCo together with present and future solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillation experiments. Some future double beta experiments (like GENIUS) will be capable to be simultaneously neutrino observatories for double beta decay and low-energy solar neutrinos, and observatories for cold dark matter of ultimate sensitivity. This invaluable book outlines the development of double beta research from its beginnings until its most recent achievements, and also presents the outlook for its highly exciting future. Contents: Double Beta Decay OCo Historical Retrospective and Perspectives; Original Articles: From the Early Days until the Gauge Theory Era; The Nuclear Physics Side OCo Nuclear Matrix Elements; The Nuclear Physics Side OCo Nuclear Matrix Elements; Effective Neutrino Masses from Double Beta Decay, Neutrino Mass Models and Cosmological Parameters OCo Present Status and Prospects; Other Beyond Standard Model Physics: From SUSY and Leptoquarks to Compositeness and Quantum Foam; The Experimental Race: From the Late Eighties to the Future; The Future of Double Beta Decay; Appendices: Ten Years of HeidelbergOCoMoscow Experiment; The Potential Future OCo GENIUS. Readership: Particle physicists, nuclear physicists and astrophysicists."