Lepton number conservation is an accidental symmetry of the Standard Model. However, lepton flavour is violated by the prominent example of neutrino oscillations. Therefore it is reasonable to investigate whether lepton number is truly conserved in nature. A popular test for this is neutrinoless double beta decay ($0 \nu \beta \beta$) which physicists have been investigating for a long time...
I will discuss our recent work on a simple scoto-seesaw model that accounts for dark matter and neutrino masses with spontaneous CP violation. This is achieved with a single horizontal $\mathcal{Z}_8$ discrete symmetry, broken to a residual $\mathcal{Z}_2$ subgroup responsible for stabilizing dark matter. CP is broken spontaneously via the complex vacuum expectation value of a scalar singlet,...
Type-II seesaw mechanism has been widely studied already as the link between neutrino mass generation beyond Standard Model (SM) and leptogenesis. In this study, the SM is minimally extended by two triplet Higgs scalars (with hypercharge $Y=2$), with one triplet having complex vacuum expectation value (vev). The triplet vevs are bounded by the $\rho$-parameter constraint as, $\omega_{1}$,...
A deep understanding of the dynamics of Binary Neutron Star (BNS) mergers requires a detailed treatment of the relativistic hydrodynamics of the merger, as well as of the microphysics governing the underlying electromagnetic, strong, and weak interactions. Accurate numerical simulations are pivotal to correctly interpret the data collected through the detection of gravitational waves and...
In this presentation I will go through the goals of my PhD project, what I am working on at the moment, and how this relates to neutrinos. I will present some analytical results (recently published) relating standard sterile neutrinos through $\Delta N_{\rm eff}$ to very short-lived decaying cold dark matter, and I will describe how the decay of massive dark neutrinos can help to relieve the...
In the next decade, ultra-high-energy neutrinos in the EeV energy range will be potentially detected by next-generation neutrino telescopes. Although their primary goals are to observe cosmogenic neutrinos and to gain insight into extreme astrophysical environments, they have the great potential of indirectly probing the nature of dark matter. In this talk, we study the projected sensitivity...
In the constrained sequential dominance (CSD), tri-bimaximal mixing (TBM)
pattern in the neutrino sector has been explained, by proposing a certain
Yukawa coupling structure for the right-handed neutrinos of the model.
However, from the current experimental data it is known that the values
of neutrino mixing angles are deviated from the TBM values. In order to
explain this neutrino...
Neutrino oscillation physics has now entered the precision era. In parallel with needing larger detectors to collect more data with, future experiments further require a significant reduction of systematic uncertainties with respect to what is currently available. In the neutrino oscillation measurements from the T2K experiment the systematic uncertainties related to neutrino interaction cross...
Measuring neutrino interactions with matter is arduous but rewarding. To date, experiments have measured the neutrino-nucleon cross section in the MeV-PeV range, using terrestrial and astrophysical neutrinos. We endeavor to push that measurement to the EeV scale, in order to test competing expectations of the deep structure of nucleons and possibly reveal new neutrino interactions. Cosmogenic...
Mass hierarchy and leptonic CP violation are the most sought questions in the ongoing and upcoming neutrino oscillation experiments. In this context, the latest results of T2K and NO$\nu$A is briefly discussed. The combined sensitivity of the extended run of T2K and NO$\nu$A, referred to as T2K-II and NO$\nu$A-II corresponding to the total exposures of $20\times10^{21}$ and $7.2\times10^{21}$...
An accurate atmospheric neutrino flux is crucial for a multitude of physics studies with modern neutrino telescopes; as a signal for neutrino oscillation measurements, and as a background for searches of astrophysical neutrino sources. We seek to advance in the low-energy neutrino flux calculations (up to a few GeV) using the MCEq (Matrix Cascade Equations) code that numerically solves the...
The Precision Reactor Oscillation and Spectrum Experiment (PROSPECT) is an above-ground antineutrino experiment at short baselines located at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The PROSPECT detector comprises 4-tons of Li-6 doped liquid scintillator (6LiLS) divided into an 11x14 array of optically separated segments. This experiment's physics goals...
The T2K experiment is a long-baseline accelerator neutrino experiment that measures $\nu_e$ appearance and $\nu_\mu$ disappearance from the $\nu_\mu$ beam by observing neutrino events at the near and far detectors. The near detector (ND280) stands 280 metres, and the far detector (Super Kamiokande) stands 295 km away from the beam production target. Super Kamiokande (SK) is a 50 kton...
The GERDA and LEGEND-200 experiments were designed to search for the neutrinoless double beta decay of 76-Ge (0νββ: 76Ge →76Se+2e−) in high-purity germanium detectors operated in ultra-pure liquid argon. Their ultimate goal is to shed light on the as-yet-unknown nature of neutrinos and possibly explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe that would be induced in case neutrinos are...
The detection of high energy astrophysical neutrinos at hundreds of TeV is an important step towards the understanding of cosmic-rays origin. However, the origin of such energetic neutrinos is still an open issue. Among the potential extragalactic neutrino sources, blazars are particularly interesting, as suggested by the detection of a high-energy neutrino in the direction of the flaring...
The process of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CEvNS) has now been measured by the COHERENT collaboration with two different technologies, including CsI and LAr as detection materials. In this work, we use the results from these experiments to constrain parameters of the Standard Model at low energies, such as the weak mixing angle and nuclear physics parameters, through the...
What if the dark matter content of the universe was made up of sterile neutrinos with a mass of the order of keV?
Currently, constraints from the measured relic abundance of dark matter and from observations in the X-ray band threaten the possibility of finding in terrestrial experiments a signal of such sterile neutrinos produced through oscillation and collisions in the early universe.
We...
