Published August 1, 2011 | Version v1
Journal article

Cosmic ray electron and positron excesses from a fourth generation heavy Majorana neutrino

  • 1. Dip. di Fisica dell'Università di Ferrara, Via Saragat 1, I-44100 Ferrara (Italy)
  • 2. Centre for Particle Physics Phenomenology, CP3 — Origins, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M (Denmark)

Description

Unexpected features in the energy spectra of cosmic rays electrons and positrons have been recently observed by PAMELA and Fermi-LAT satellite experiments, opening to the exciting possibility of an indirect manifestation of new physics. A TeV-scale fourth lepton family is a natural extension of the Standard Model leptonic sector (also linked to the hierarchy problem in Minimal Walking Technicolor models). The heavy Majorana neutrino of this setup mixes with Standard Model charged leptons through a weak charged current interaction. Here, we first study analytically the energy spectrum of the electrons and positrons originated in the heavy Majorana neutrino decay modes, also including polarization effects. We then compare the prediction of this model with the experimental data, exploiting both the standard direct method and our recently proposed Sum Rules method. We find that the decay modes involving the tau and/or the muon charged leptons as primary decay products fit well the PAMELA and Fermi-LAT lepton excesses while there is tension with respect to the antiproton to proton fraction constrained by PAMELA

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2011/08/018

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Journal Volume
2011
Journal Issue
08
Journal Page Range
p. 018
ISSN
1475-7516