skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Finite Bubble Statistics Constrain Late Cosmological Phase Transitions
We consider first order cosmological phase transitions (PTs) happening at late times below standard model temperatures T PT GeV . The inherently stochastic nature of bubble nucleation and the finite number of bubbles associated with a late-time PT lead to superhorizon fluctuations in the PT completion time. We compute how such fluctuations eventually source curvature fluctuations with universal properties, independent of the microphysics of the PT dynamics. Using cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large scale structure measurements, we constrain the energy released in a dark-sector PT. For 0.1 eV T PT keV this constraint is stronger than both the current bound from additional neutrino species Δ N eff , and in some cases, even CMB-S4 projections. Future measurements of CMB spectral distortions and pulsar timing arrays will also provide competitive sensitivity for keV T PT GeV . Published by the American Physical Society2024  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2412701 2210562
PAR ID:
10591136
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Physical Review Letters
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Physical Review Letters
Volume:
133
Issue:
21
ISSN:
0031-9007
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. A combination of fifteen top quark mass measurements performed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC is presented. The datasets used correspond to an integrated luminosity of up to 5 and 20 fb 1 of proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, respectively. The combination includes measurements in top quark pair events that exploit both the semileptonic and hadronic decays of the top quark, and a measurement using events enriched in single top quark production via the electroweak t channel. The combination accounts for the correlations between measurements and achieves an improvement in the total uncertainty of 31% relative to the most precise input measurement. The result is m t = 172.52 ± 0.14 ( stat ) ± 0.30 ( syst ) GeV , with a total uncertainty of 0.33 GeV. © 2024 CERN, for the CMS and ATLASs Collaboration2024CERN 
    more » « less
  2. The first measurement of the cross section for incoherent photonuclear production of J / ψ vector mesons as a function of the Mandelstam | t | variable is presented. The measurement was carried out with the ALICE detector at midrapidity, | y | < 0.8 , using ultraperipheral collisions of Pb nuclei at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of s NN = 5.02 TeV . This rapidity interval corresponds to a Bjorken- x range ( 0.3 1.4 ) × 10 3 . Cross sections are given in five | t | intervals in the range 0.04 < | t | < 1 GeV 2 and compared to the predictions by different models. Models that ignore quantum fluctuations of the gluon density in the colliding hadron predict a | t | dependence of the cross section much steeper than in data. The inclusion of such fluctuations in the same models provides a better description of the data. © 2024 CERN, for the ALICE Collaboration2024CERN 
    more » « less
  3. The ALICE Collaboration reports the measurement of semi-inclusive distributions of charged-particle jets recoiling from a high transverse momentum (high p T ) hadron trigger in proton-proton and central Pb-Pb collisions at s NN = 5.02 TeV . A data-driven statistical method is used to mitigate the large uncorrelated background in central Pb-Pb collisions. Recoil jet distributions are reported for jet resolution parameter R = 0.2 , 0.4, and 0.5 in the range 7 < p T , jet < 140 GeV / c and trigger-recoil jet azimuthal separation π / 2 < Δ φ < π . The measurements exhibit a marked medium-induced jet yield enhancement at low p T and at large azimuthal deviation from Δ φ π . The enhancement is characterized by its dependence on Δ φ , which has a slope that differs from zero by 4.7 σ . Comparisons to model calculations incorporating different formulations of jet quenching are reported. These comparisons indicate that the observed yield enhancement arises from the response of the QGP medium to jet propagation. © 2024 CERN, for the ALICE Collaboration2024CERN 
    more » « less
  4. In this work, we expand on the XENON1T nuclear recoil searches to study the individual signals of dark matter interactions from operators up to dimension eight in a chiral effective field theory (ChEFT) and a model of inelastic dark matter (iDM). We analyze data from two science runs of the XENON1T detector totaling 1 t × yr exposure. For these analyses, we extended the region of interest from [ 4.9 , 40.9 ] keV NR to [ 4.9 , 54.4 ] keV NR to enhance our sensitivity for signals that peak at nonzero energies. We show that the data are consistent with the background-only hypothesis, with a small background overfluctuation observed peaking between 20 and 50 keV NR , resulting in a maximum local discovery significance of 1.7 σ for the Vector Vector strange ChEFT channel for a dark matter particle of 70 GeV / c 2 and 1.8 σ for an iDM particle of 50 GeV / c 2 with a mass splitting of 100 keV / c 2 . For each model, we report 90% confidence level upper limits. We also report upper limits on three benchmark models of dark matter interaction using ChEFT where we investigate the effect of isospin-breaking interactions. We observe rate-driven cancellations in regions of the isospin-breaking couplings, leading to up to 6 orders of magnitude weaker upper limits with respect to the isospin-conserving case. Published by the American Physical Society2024 
    more » « less
  5. Dark matter particles could be superheavy, provided their lifetime is much longer than the age of the Universe. Using the sensitivity of the Pierre Auger Observatory to ultrahigh energy neutrinos and photons, we constrain a specific extension of the Standard Model of particle physics that meets the lifetime requirement for a superheavy particle by coupling it to a sector of ultralight sterile neutrinos. Our results show that, for a typical dark coupling constant of 0.1, the mixing angle θ m between active and sterile neutrinos must satisfy, roughly, θ m 1.5 × 10 6 ( M X / 10 9 GeV ) 2 for a mass M X of the dark-matter particle between 10 8 GeV and 10 11 GeV . Published by the American Physical Society2024 
    more » « less