UV Completion Research Articles

Pauli–Villars and the ultraviolet completion of Einstein gravity

Through use of the Pauli–Villars regulator procedure, we construct a second- plus fourth-order derivative theory of gravity that serves as an ultraviolet completion of standard second-order derivative quantum Einstein gravity that is ghost-free, unitary and power-counting renormalizable.

Lepton-flavor-violating ALP signals with TeV-scale muon beams

We explore the feasibility of using TeV-energy muons to probe lepton-flavor-violating (LFV) processes mediated by an axionlike particle (ALP) a with mass O(10 GeV). We focus on μτ LFV interactions and assume that the ALP is coupled to a dark state χ, which can be either less or more massive than a. Such a setup is demonstrated to be consistent with χ being a candidate for dark matter, in the experimentally relevant regime of parameters. We consider the currently operating NA64-μ experiment and proposed FASERν2 detector as both the target and the detector for the process μA→τAa, where A is the target nucleus. We also show that a possible future active muon fixed-target experiment operating at a 3 TeV muon collider or in its preparatory phase can provide an impressive reach for the LFV process considered, with future FASERν2 data providing a pilot study towards that goal. The implications of the muon anomalous magnetic moment (g−2)μ measurements for the underlying model, in case of a positive signal, are also examined, and a sample UV completion is outlined. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Sommerfeld enhancement at NLO and the dark matter unitarity bound

We reexamine the consequences of perturbative unitarity on dark matter freeze-out when both Sommerfeld enhancement and bound state formation affect dark matter annihilations. At leading order the annihilation cross section is infrared dominated and the connection between the unitarity bound and the upper bound on the dark matter mass depends only on how the different partial waves are populated. We compute how this picture is modified at next-to-leading order with the goal of assigning a reliable theory uncertainty to the freeze-out predictions. We explicitly compute next-to-leading order corrections in a simple model with Abelian gauge interactions and provide an estimate of the theoretical uncertainty for the thermal masses of heavy electroweak n-plets. Along the way, we clarify the regularization and matching procedure necessary to deal with singular potentials in quantum mechanics with a calculable, relativistic UV completion. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Emergent potentials and non-perturbative open topological strings

We show that integrating out M2 branes ending on M5 branes inside Calabi-Yau manifolds captures non-perturbative open topological string physics. The integrating out is performed using a contour integral in complexified Schwinger proper time. For the resolved conifold, this contour can be extended to include the zero pole, which we argue captures the ultraviolet completion of the integrating out and yields the tree-level polynomial terms in the free energy. This is a manifestation of the Emergence Proposal, and provides further evidence for it. Unlike the case of closed strings, where the emergent terms are kinetic terms in the action, for these open strings it is tree-level potential terms which are emergent. This provides a first quantitative example of the proposal that classical tree-level potentials in string theory emerge from integrating out co-dimension one states.

Neutrino dipole portal at a high energy μ−collider

We study the phenomenology of d = 6 dipole portal operators connecting active and sterile neutrinos at a futuristic muon collider. These operators can be the dominant portal between the Standard Model and the New Physics sector in scenarios in which the active-sterile mixing is suppressed. We identify two production modes for sterile neutrinos: one proceeding through the exchange of an s-channel electroweak boson and one arising from the fusion of an electroweak boson with a Standard Model lepton. We study the expected reach on the operators suppression scale for these different production mechanisms, showing that the latter offers the best sensitivity and allowing to test a New Physics scale in the ∼ 10 TeV range for strongly coupled UV completions of the dipole operators.

Complex dark photon dark matter EFT

We construct an effective field theory for complex Stueckelberg dark photon dark matter. Such an effective construction can be realized by writing down a complete set of operators up to dimension six built with the complex dark photon and Standard Model fields. Classifying the effective operators, we find that in order to properly take into account the non-renormalizable nature of an interacting massive vector, the size of the Wilson coefficients should be naturally smaller than naively expected. This can be consistently taken into account by a proper power counting, that we suggest. First we apply this to collider bounds on light dark matter, then to direct detection searches by extending the list of non-relativistic operators to include the case of complex vectors. In the former we correctly find scaling limits for small masses, while in the latter we mostly focus on electric dipole interactions, that are the signatures of this type of dark matter. Simple UV completions that effectively realize the above scenarios are also outlined.

A note on the Cotton flow and the Ricci flow for three-manifolds, and the Hořava–Lifshitz gravity

We consider the more general geometrical flow in the space of metrics for three-manifolds that consists of a combination of two flows, the Cotton flow and the Ricci flow; by playing a fundamental role in the detailed balance principle of the four dimensional Hořava–Lifshitz gravity, this generalized flow reveals another difficulty with this theory that attempts to be a candidate for an UV completion of Einstein general relativity, namely, the supposed emergency of the speed of light, the Newton constant, and the cosmological constant, from a deeply nonrelativistic theory of gravity. Respecting that principle, the generalized flow shows the proliferation of different limits of the theory with an unwanted behavior at both the IR and UV regimes.

Neutrino Masses from Generalized Symmetry Breaking

We explore generalized global symmetries in theories of physics beyond the standard model. Theories of Z′ bosons generically contain “noninvertible” chiral symmetries, whose presence indicates a natural paradigm to break this symmetry by an exponentially small amount in an ultraviolet completion. For example, in models of gauged lepton family difference such as the phenomenologically well motivated U(1)Lμ−Lτ, there is a noninvertible lepton number symmetry which protects neutrino masses. We embed these theories in gauged non-Abelian horizontal lepton symmetries, e.g., U(1)Lμ−Lτ⊂SU(3)H, where the generalized symmetries are broken nonperturbatively by the existence of lepton family magnetic monopoles. In such theories, either Majorana or Dirac neutrino masses may be generated through quantum gauge theory effects from the charged lepton Yukawas, e.g., yν∼yτexp(−Sinst). These theories require no bevy of new fields nor additional global symmetries but are instead simple, natural, and predictive: The discovery of a lepton family Z′ at low energies will reveal the scale at which Lμ−Lτ emerges from a larger gauge symmetry. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

One-loop analysis of β decays in SMEFT

We perform a loop-level analysis of charged-current (CC) processes involving light leptons and quarks within the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). This work is motivated by the high precision reached in experiment and Standard Model calculations for CC decays of mesons, neutron, and nuclei, and by a lingering tension in the Cabibbo universality test. We identify the SMEFT operators that induce the largest loop-level contributions to CC processes. These include four-quark and four-fermion semileptonic operators involving two third-generation quarks. We discuss the available constraints on the relevant effective couplings and along the way we derive new loop-level bounds from K → πνν¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\pi \ u \\overline{\ u} $$\\end{document} on four-quark operators involving two top quarks. We find that low-energy CC processes are quite competitive with other probes, set constraints that do not depend on flavor-symmetry assumptions, and probe operators involving third-generation quarks up to effective scales of Λ ≃ 8 TeV. Finally, we briefly discuss single-field ultraviolet completions that could induce the relevant operators.

Neutrino masses from new seesaw models: low-scale variants and phenomenological implications

With just the Standard Model Higgs doublet, there are only three types of seesaw models that generate light Majorana neutrino masses at tree level after electroweak spontaneous symmetry breaking. However, if there exist additional TeV scalars acquiring vacuum expectation values, coupled with heavier fermionic multiplets, several new seesaw models become possible. These new seesaws are the primary focus of this study and correspond to the tree-level ultraviolet completions of the effective operators studied in a companion publication. We are interested in the genuine cases, in which the standard seesaw contributions are absent. In addition to the tree-level generation of neutrino masses, we also consider the one-loop contributions. Furthermore, we construct low-energy versions that exhibit a very rich phenomenology. Specifically, we scrutinise the generation of dimension-6 operators and explore their implications, including non-unitarity of the leptonic mixing matrix, non-universal Z-\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$Z-$$\\end{document}boson interactions, and lepton flavor violation. Finally, we provide (Generalised) Scotogenic-like variants that incorporate viable dark matter candidates.

Runaway Gravitational Production of Dark Photons.

We demonstrate that gravitational particle production of a massive, Abelian, vector (Proca) field during inflation in the presence of nonminimal coupling to gravity may suffer from an instability which leads to runaway production of high-momentum modes. This is untenable unless there is some mechanism to regulate the runaway. We discuss the parameter space of the particle mass and nonminimal couplings where such a runaway occurs and possible ways to tame the runaway. We find that there is no obvious way to resolve the runaway in a UV completion or with kinetic mixing to the standard model.

Cosmic birefringence from CP-violating axion interactions

We explore the cosmic birefringence signal produced by an ultralight axion field with a small CP-violating coupling to bulk SM matter in addition to the usual CP-preserving photon coupling. The change in the vacuum expectation value of the field between recombination and today results in a frequency-independent rotation of the plane of CMB linear polarization across the entire sky. While many previous approaches rely on the axion rolling from a large initial expectation value, the couplings considered in this work robustly generate the birefringence signal regardless of initial conditions, by sourcing the field from the cosmological nucleon density. We place bounds on such monopole-dipole interactions using measurements of the birefringence angle from Planck and WMAP data, which improve upon existing constraints by up to three orders of magnitude. We also discuss UV completions of this model, and possible strategies to avoid fine-tuning the axion mass.

Phenomenology of Horndeski gravity under positivity bounds

A set of conditions that any effective field theory needs to satisfy in order to allow for the existence of a viable UV completion, has recently gained attention in the cosmological context under the name of positivity bounds. In this paper we revisit the derivation of such bounds for Horndeski gravity, highlighting the limitations that come from applying the traditional methodology to a theory of gravity on a cosmological background. We then translate these bounds into a complete set of viability conditions in the language of effective field theory of dark energy. We implement the latter into EFTCAMB and explore the large scale structure phenomenology of Horndeski gravity under positivity bounds. We build a statistically significant sample of viable Horndeski models, and derive the corresponding predictions for the background evolution, in terms of w DE, and the dynamics of linear perturbations, in terms of the phenomenological functions μ and Σ, associated to clustering and weak lensing, respectively. We find that the addition of positivity bounds to the traditional no-ghost and no-gradient conditions considerably tightens the theoretical constraints on all these functions. The most significant feature is a strengthening of the correlation μ ≃ Σ, and a related tight constraint on the luminal speed of gravitational waves c 2 T ≃ 1. In this work we demonstrate the strong potential of positivity bounds in shaping the viable parameter space of scalar-tensor theories. This is certainly promising, but it also highlights the importance of overcoming all issues that still plague a rigorous formulation of the positivity bounds in the cosmological context.

Shedding black hole light on the emergent string conjecture

Asymptotically massless towers of species are ubiquitous in the string landscape when infinite-distance limits are approached. Due to the remarkable properties of string dualities, they always comprise Kaluza-Klein states or higher-spin excitations of weakly coupled, asymptotically tensionless critical strings. The connection between towers of light species and small black holes warrants seeking a bottom-up rationale for this dichotomoy, dubbed emergent string conjecture. In this paper we move a first step in this direction, exploring bottom-up constraints on towers of light species motivated purely from the consistency of the corresponding thermodynamic picture for small black holes. These constraints shed light on the allowed towers in quantum gravity, and, upon combining them with unitarity and causality constraints from perturbative graviton scattering, they provide evidence for the emergent string scenario with no reference to a specific ultraviolet completion.

Understanding the SM gauge group from SMEFT

We discuss heavy particles that can be used to pin down the faithful Standard Model (SM) gauge group and their patterns in the SM effective field theory (SMEFT). These heavy particles are not invariant under a specific ℤ6 subgroup of SU(3)c × SU(2)L × U(1)Y, which however acts trivially on all the SM particles, hence the faithful SM gauge group remains undetermined. Different realizations of the faithful SM gauge group correspond to different spectra of heavy particles, and they also correspond to distinct sets of line operators with one-form global symmetry acting on them. We show that the heavy particles not invariant under the ℤ6 group cannot appear in tree-level ultraviolet completions of SMEFT, this enforces us to consider one-loop UV completions of SMEFT to identify the ℤ6 non-invariant heavy particles. We demonstrate with examples that correlations between Wilson coefficients provide an efficient way to examine models with ℤ6 non-invariant heavy particles. Finally, we prove that all the scalars that can trigger electroweak symmetry breaking must be invariant under the ℤ6 group, hence they cannot be used to probe the faithful SM gauge group.

Deconstructing flavor anomalously

Flavor deconstruction refers to ultraviolet completions of the Standard Model where the gauge group is split into multiple factors under which fermions transform non-universally. We propose a mechanism for charging same-family fermions into different factors of a deconstructed gauge theory in a way that gauge anomalies are avoided. The mechanism relies in the inclusion of a strongly-coupled sector, responsible of both anomaly cancellation and the breaking of the non-universal gauge symmetry. As an application, we propose different flavor deconstructions of the Standard Model that, instead of complete families, uniquely identify specific third-family fermions. All these deconstructions allow for a new physics scale that can be as low as few TeV and provide an excellent starting point for the explanation of the Standard Model flavor hierarchies.

Global lepton flavour violating constraints on new physics

We perform a global analysis of the bounds from charged lepton flavour violating observables to new physics. We parametrize generic new physics through the effective field theory formalism and perform global fits beyond the common one-operator-at-a-time analyses to investigate how much present data is able to constrain the full parameter space. We particularly focus on leptonic and semileptonic operators with light quarks, identifying unbounded flat directions, detailing how many are present and which operators are involved. The analysis is performed in the general LEFT formalism, which contains all possible low-energy effective operators relevant for lepton flavour violation, as well as in more restricted scenarios, when operators come from a SMEFT completion. We find that flat directions play no role in the fully leptonic four-fermion operators. Conversely, they significantly hinder the ability to derive global bounds on semileptonic operators, with several flat or at least very poorly constrained directions preventing to fully constrain the parameter space. These results are particularly affected by the proper inclusion of uncertainties in the parameters describing μ-e\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\mu -e$$\\end{document} conversion, which decrease the number of well-constrained directions in operator space when treated as nuisance parameters in the fit. While present data is able to provide global constraints on all operators only in the more restricted scenarios we investigated, very strong correlations among the parameters must exist to avoid conflict with the different observables. We provide correlation matrices approximating our full results as a useful tool to compare present data with particular UV completions.

Spinning Proca-Higgs balls, stars and hairy black holes

Recently, spherical and static flat space solitons (balls) and self-gravitating, everywhere regular, asymptotically flat solitons (stars) were constructed in an Einstein-Proca-Higgs model [1], where a complex vector field gains mass by coupling to a real scalar field with a Higgs-type potential. The Proca-Higgs model serves as a UV completion of a complex Proca model with self-interactions. Here, we construct and examine the mathematical and physical properties of rotating configurations. In particular, rotation allows horizon-bearing solutions, including stationary clouds surrounding Kerr black holes and their non-linear continuation into black holes with Proca-Higgs hair.

Simulating a numerical UV completion of quartic Galileons

The Galileon theory is a prototypical effective field theory that incorporates the Vainshtein screening mechanism—a feature that arises in some extensions of general relativity, such as massive gravity. The Vainshtein effect requires that the theory contain higher order derivative interactions, which results in Galileons, and theories like them, failing to be technically well posed. While this is not a fundamental issue when the theory is correctly treated as an effective field theory, it nevertheless poses significant practical problems when numerically simulating this model. These problems can be tamed using a number of different approaches: introducing an active low-pass filter and/or constructing a UV completion at the level of the equations of motion, which controls the high momentum modes. These methods have been tested on cubic Galileon interactions, and have been shown to reproduce the correct low-energy behavior. Here we show how the numerical UV-completion method can be applied to quartic Galileon interactions, and present the first simulations of the quartic Galileon model using this technique. We demonstrate that our approach can probe physics in the regime of the effective field theory in which the quartic term dominates, while successfully reproducing the known results for cubic interactions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Leptogenesis in parity solutions to the strong CP problem and Standard Model parameters

We study the simplest theories with exact spacetime parity that solve the strong CP problem and successfully generate the cosmological baryon asymmetry via decays of right-handed neutrinos. Lower bounds are derived for the masses of the right-handed neutrinos and for the scale of spontaneous parity breaking, vR. For generic thermal leptogenesis, vR ≳ 1012 GeV, unless the small observed neutrino masses arise from fine-tuning. We compute vR in terms of the top quark mass, the QCD coupling, and the Higgs boson mass and find this bound is consistent with current data at 1σ. Future precision measurements of these parameters may provide support for the theory or, if vR is determined to be below 1012 GeV, force modifications. However, modified cosmologies do not easily allow reductions in vR — no reduction is possible if leptogenesis occurs in the collisions of domain walls formed at parity breaking, and at most a factor 10 reduction is possible with non-thermal leptogenesis. Standard Model parameters that yield low values for vR can only be accommodated by having a high degree of degeneracy among the right-handed neutrinos involved in leptogenesis. If future precision measurements determine vR to be above 1012 GeV, it is likely that higher-dimensional operators of the theory will yield a neutron electric dipole moment accessible to ongoing experiments. This is especially true in a simple UV completion of the neutrino sector, involving gauge singlet fermions, where the bound from successful leptogenesis is strengthened to vR ≳ 1013 GeV.