Cosmic ray air showers from sphalerons

Brooijmans, Gustaaf; Schichtel, Peter; Spannowsky, Michael

Abstract

The discovery of the Higgs boson marks a key ingredient to establish the electroweak structure of the Standard Model. Its non-abelian gauge structure gives rise to, yet unobserved, non-perturbative baryon and lepton number violating processes. We propose to use cosmic ray air showers, as measured, for example, at the Pierre Auger Observatory, to set a limit on the hadronic production cross section of sphalerons. We identify several observables to discriminate between sphaleron and QCD induced air showers.

Citation

Brooijmans, G., Schichtel, P., & Spannowsky, M. (2016). Cosmic ray air showers from sphalerons. Physics Letters B, 761, 213-218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2016.08.030

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 15, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Aug 18, 2016
• Publication Date: Oct 10, 2016
• Deposit Date: Nov 10, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 26, 2017
• Journal: Physics Letters B
• Print ISSN: 0370-2693
• Electronic ISSN: 1873-2445
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 761
• Pages: 213-218
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2016.08.030
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1372107