Related papers: Metastable GeV-scale particles as a solution to th…
Prediction of the primordial abundances of elements in the big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) is one of the three strong evidences for the big bang model. Precise knowledge of the baryon-to-photon ratio of the Universe from observations of the…
Gravitational production of massive particles due to cosmic expansion can be significant during the inflationary and reheating period of the Universe. If the particle also has non-gravitational interactions that do not significantly affect…
Scalars and pseudoscalars with masses in the MeV to GeV range are of interest in different extensions of the Standard Model. Such particles are often associated with dark matter, the strong CP problem and the $\left(g-2\right)_{\mu}$…
Thermal relics lighter than an MeV contribute to the energy density of the universe at the time of nucleosynthesis and recombination. Constraints on extra radiation degrees of freedom typically exclude even the simplest of such dark…
Recently it was pointed out that in the TeV-scale brane world there is a logical possibility where the electroweak Higgs can be identified with a fourth generation slepton. In this paper we address various issues in this four-generation…
We consider light new particles $\chi$ and $\phi$ that carry baryon and lepton numbers. If these particles are lighter than nucleons they lead to exotic decays such as $p\to \pi^+ \chi$ and $p\to e^+\phi$, not yet fully constrained by…
Explaining the well established observation that the expansion rate of the universe is apparently accelerating is one of the defining scientific problems of our age. Within the standard model of cosmology, the repulsive 'dark energy'…
A variety of new-physics models predict metastable particles whose decay length is $\lesssim 1$ mm. Conventional displaced-vertex searches are less sensitive to this sub-millimeter decay range, and thus such metastable particles have been…
It has been argued that the observations of cosmic particles with energies in excess of $10^8$ TeV represent a puzzle. Its solution requires new astrophysics or new particle physics. We show that the latter is unlikely given that the scale…
The thermal inflation is the most plausible mechanism that solves the cosmological moduli problem naturally. We discuss relic abundance of superheavy particle $X$ in the presence of the thermal inflation assuming that its lifetime is longer…
The expected proton and neutrino fluxes from decays of massive metastable relic particles is calculated using the HERWIG QCD event generator. The predicted proton spectrum can account for the observed flux of extremely high energy cosmic…
We point out that in generic TeV scale seesaw models for neutrino masses with local $B-L$ symmetry breaking, there is a phenomenologically allowed range of parameters where the Higgs field responsible for $B-L$ symmetry breaking leaves a…
We consider the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) bounds on light dark matter whose cross section off nucleons is sufficiently large to enable acceleration by scattering off of cosmic rays in the local galaxy. Such accelerated DM could then…
Existence of metastable quarks of new generation can be embedded into phenomenology of heterotic string together with new long range interaction, which only this new generation possesses. We discuss primordial quark production in the early…
Cosmic topological defects in a wide class of supersymmetric theories can simultaneously be sources of higgs particles of mass comparable to the supersymmetry breaking scale $\sim$ TeV, as well as superheavy gauge bosons of mass $\sim\eta$,…
Dark photons, hypothetical feebly interacting massive vector bosons, appear in many extensions of the Standard Model. This study investigates their production and subsequent decay during supernova explosions. We demonstrate that the decay…
We derive constraints on the relic abundance of a generic particle of mass $\sim~1-10^{14}$ TeV which decays into neutrinos at cosmological epochs, using data from the Fr\'ejus and IMB nucleon decay detectors and the Fly's Eye air shower…
Heavy neutral leptons $N$ are introduced to explain the tiny neutrino masses via the seesaw mechanism. For proper small mixing parameter $V_{\ell N}$, the heavy neutral leptons $N$ become long-lived, which leads to the displaced vertex…
We survey operators that can lead to a keV photon line from dark matter decay or annihilation. We are motivated in part by recent claims of an unexplained 3.5 keV line in galaxy clusters and in Andromeda, but our results could apply to any…
Discovering neutrino decay would be strong evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model. Presently, there are only lax lower limits on the lifetime $\tau$ of neutrinos, of $\tau/m \sim 10^{-3}$ s eV$^{-1}$ or worse, where $m$ is the…