News & Events

Lena Funcke (Perimeter Institute)

Rethinking the origin of neutrino masses: the role of gravity

The most popular directions of model building beyond the Standard Model focus on new phenomena at the high energy scales of the early Universe. As an alternative direction, we have developed a novel class of low-energy solutions to the neutrino mass and strong CP problems at a new infrared gravitational scale, which is numerically coincident with the scale of dark energy. In my talk, I will focus on the neutrino mass model and present some of its phenomenological implications. In particular, I will discuss the weakening of the cosmological neutrino mass bounds, the possibility of dark energy decay, and the distinction between Majorana and Dirac neutrinos through astrophysical neutrino decays.

McDonald Insititute seminars bring together experimental and theoretical astroparticle physicists and astronomers. They are held approximately fortnightly, September to November and January to March, and on an ad hoc basis outside of term. They currently take place on Tuesdays at 2:30 PM on Zoom. Contact Aaron Vincent if you would like to attend.

https://www.physics.queensu.ca/facultysites/vincent/seminars/