Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Dark matter searches and energy accumulation and release in materials

  Sergey Pereverzev

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 009 (2023) · published 3 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Efforts to identify dark matter by detecting nuclear recoils produced by dark matter particles reveal low-energy backgrounds of unknown origin in different types of detectors. In many cases, energy accumulation and delayed burst-like releases of stored energy could provide an explanation. These dynamics follow Prigogine's ideas on systems with energy flow and the general Self-Organized Criticality scenario. We compare these models with properties of excess backgrounds in cryogenic solid-state detectors, relaxation processes in glasses and crystals, our observations of delayed luminescence in NaI(Tl), and make predictions for more phenomena present in these systems and in superconducting photon detectors and qubits. Experiments to create accurate phenomenological models are needed.

• Annual modulation of dark matter signals: Experimental results and new ideas

  Felix Kahlhoefer

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 004 (2023) · published 3 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Direct detection experiments searching for the scattering of dark matter particles off nuclei expect an annual modulation in their event rate. In this presentation, I will review the theoretical predictions and the experimental status of the search for annual modulations, with a focus on ongoing and planned experiments using NaI detectors. In particular, I will discuss the interpretation of the DAMA signal and related model-building efforts.

• Probing hadronic interactions with measurements from the Pierre Auger Observatory

  B. Andrada

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 10, 005 (2022) · published 10 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest facility in the world to study ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. It has a hybrid detection technique that combines the observation of the longitudinal development of extensive air showers and the measurement of their particles at the ground. This capability has opened the possibility to probe hadronic interactions taking place at energies well beyond those accessible by human-made accelerators. In this report, we present a selection of the latest results on hadronic interactions with measurements from the Pierre Auger Observatory. These data span over three decades in energy, showing the tension between data from the muon component of air showers and predictions based on the most updated hadronic interaction models.

• Measurement of splittings along a jet shower in $\sqrt{s} = 200$ GeV pp collisions at STAR

  Raghav Kunnawalkam Elayavalli

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 059 (2022) · published 12 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Jets are algorithmic proxies of hard scattered partons, i.e. quarks and gluons, in high energy particle collisions. The STAR collaboration presents the first measurements of substructure observables at the first, second and third splits in the jet clustering tree via the iterative SoftDrop procedure. For each of these splits, we measure the fully corrected groomed shared momentum fraction (\zg) and groomed jet radius (\rg). We discuss the evolution of jet substructure in both the angular and momentum scales which allows for a self-similarity test of the DGLAP splitting function. We compare the fully corrected data to Monte Carlo models, providing stringent constraints on model parameters related to the parton shower and non-perturbative effects such as hadronization.

• Indirect searches for dark matter with the nEDM spectrometer

  S. Roccia, G. Zsigmond on behalf of the nEDM collaboration at PSI

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 5, 028 (2021) · published 6 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The nEDM apparatus at PSI has been used to search for different dark matter signatures utilizing its high sensitivity to shifts in the neutron precession frequency and its well-controlled low magnetic field at the microT level. Such a shift could be interpreted as a consequence of a short-range spin-dependent interaction that could possibly be mediated by axions or axion-like particles, or as an axion-induced oscillating electric dipole moment of the neutron. Another search, based on so-called UCN disappearance measurements, targeted previously reported signals of neutron to mirror-neutron oscillations. These dark matter searches confirmed and improved previous results, as detailed in this review.

• GRAND: A Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection

  Charles Timmermans for the GRAND collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 1, 042 (2019) · published 21 February 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  GRAND will be a distributed set of about 20 arrays of radio antennas, totalling 200,000 km2. We aim to study the ultra high energy universe through the detection of neutrinos, photons and cosmic rays at energies at the EeV scale. In addition GRAND will be used to study astronomical objects like FRBs and GRBs. We will describe the physics motivation, the detection strategy, the first stages of GRAND and the path to creating the complete setup.

• Linear stability of Einstein and de Sitter universes in the quadratic theory of modified gravity

  Mudhahir Al-Ajmi

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 4, 012 (2021) · published 13 August 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider the Einstein static and the de Sitter universe solutions and examine their instabilities in a subclass of quadratic modified theories for gravity. This modification proposed by Nash is an attempt to generalize general relativity. Interestingly, we discover that the Einstein static universe is unstable in the context of the modified gravity. In contrast to Einstein static universe, the de Sitter universe remains stable under metric perturbation up to the second order.

• Two faces of Hawking radiation and thin-shell emission: pair-creation vs. tunneling

  Dong-han Yeom

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 4, 004 (2021) · published 13 August 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We first revisit Hartle and Hawking's path integral derivation of Hawking radiation. In the first point of view, we interpret that a particle-antiparticle pair is created and the negative energy antiparticle falls into the black hole. On the other point of view, a particle inside the horizon, or beyond the Einstein-Rosen bridge, tunnels to outside the horizon, where this computation requires the analytic continuation of the time. These two faces of the Hawking radiation process can be extended to not only particles but also fields. As a concrete example, we study the thin-shell tunneling process; by introducing the antishell as a negative tension shell, we can give the consistent interpretation for two pictures, where one is a tunneling from inside to outside the horizon using instantons, while the other is a shell-antishell pair-creation. This shows that the Euclidean path integral indeed carries vast physical implications not only for perturbative, but also for non-perturbative processes.

• Cosmology of the companion-axion model: Dark matter, gravitational waves, and primordial black holes

  Zhe Chen, Archil Kobakhidze, Ciaran O'Hare, Zachary S. C. Picker, Giovanni Pierobon

  SciPost Phys. 18, 175 (2025) · published 4 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The companion-axion model introduces a second QCD axion to rescue the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong-CP problem from the effects of colored gravitational instantons. As in single-axion models, the two axions predicted by the companion-axion model are attractive candidates for dark matter. The model is defined by two free parameters, the scales of the two axions' symmetry breaking, so we can classify production scenarios in terms of the relative sizes of these two scales with respect to the scale of inflation. We study the cosmological production of companion-axion dark matter in order to predict windows of preferred axion masses, and calculate the relative abundances of the two particles. Additionally, we show that the presence of a second axion solves the cosmological domain wall problem automatically in the scenarios in which one or both of the axions are post-inflationary. We also suggest unique cosmological signatures of the companion-axion model, such as the production of a $\sim$10 nHz gravitational wave background, and $\sim 100\,M_\odot$ primordial black holes.

• Muons in showers with energy $\boldsymbol{E_{0} \geq}$ 5 EeV and QGSjetII-04 and EPOS LHC models of hadronic interactions. Is there a muon deficit in the models?

  Stanislav Knurenko, Igor Petrov

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 032 (2023) · published 29 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The paper presents data on the muon component with a threshold $\varepsilon_{thr} ≥$ 1 GeV. Air showers were registered at the Yakutsk array during almost 50 years of continuous air shower observations. The characteristics of muons are compared with calculations of QGSjetII-04 and EPOS LHC models for a proton and an iron nucleus. There is a muon deficit in the models, at energies greater than 5 EeV. To make an agreement between experimental data and simulations on muons, further tuning of the models is required.