Majid Ekhterachian

Scopus Publications

The bearable inhomogeneity of the baryon asymmetry
Hengameh Bagherian, Majid Ekhterachian, Stefan Stelzl
Journal of High Energy Physics, 2026
A bstract We study the implications of precision measurements of light-element abundances, in combination with the Cosmic Microwave Background, for scenarios of physics beyond the Standard Model that generate large inhomogeneities in the baryon-to-photon ratio. We show that precision Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) places strong constraints on any mechanism that produces large-scale inhomogeneities at temperatures around or below the TeV scale. In particular, we find that fluctuations of order 25% on comoving length scales larger than the horizon at T ≃ 3 TeV are incompatible with the observed light-element abundances. This sensitivity to early-universe physics arises because baryon-number inhomogeneities homogenize primarily through diffusion, a slow process. As a result, BBN serves as a novel probe of baryogenesis below the TeV scale, readily ruling out some proposed scenarios in the literature. We discuss the implications for electroweak baryogenesis, and further show that precision BBN provides a new probe of first-order phase transitions that generate gravitational waves in the pHz–mHz frequency range. This yields constraints on the electroweak phase transition, as well as first-order phase transitions that have been suggested as an explanation of the pulsar timing array signal. Finally, we comment on the future prospects for improving this probe.
Conformal leptogenesis in composite Higgs models
Kaustubh Agashe, Peizhi Du, Majid Ekhterachian, Chee Sheng Fong, Sungwoo Hong, Luca Vecchi
Journal of High Energy Physics, 2025
We study the generation of the baryon asymmetry in Composite Higgs models with partial compositeness of the Standard Model (SM) fermions and heavy right-handed neutrinos, developing for the first time a complete picture of leptogenesis in that setup. The asymmetry is induced by the out of equilibrium decays of the heavy right-handed neutrinos into a plasma of the nearly conformal field theory (CFT), i.e. the deconfined phase of the Composite Higgs dynamics. This exotic mechanism, which we call Conformal Leptogenesis, admits a reliable description in terms of a set of “Boltzmann equations” whose coefficients can be expressed in terms of correlation functions of the CFT. The asymmetry thus generated is subsequently affected by the supercooling resulting from the confining phase transition of the strong Higgs sector as well as by the washout induced by the resonances formed after the transition. Nevertheless, a qualitative description of the latter effects suggests that conformal leptogenesis can successfully reproduce the observed baryon asymmetry in a wide region of parameter space. A distinctive signature of our scenarios is a sizable compositeness for all the generations of SM neutrinos, which is currently consistent with all constraints but may be within reach of future colliders.
Tetraquarks at large M and large N
Héloïse Allaman, Majid Ekhterachian, Filippo Nardi, Riccardo Rattazzi, Stefan Stelzl
Journal of High Energy Physics, 2024
We study tetraquarks in large N QCD with heavy quarks, in the domain where non-relativistic quantum mechanics offers an adequate approximation. Within the regime of validity of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, we systematically study and explicitly construct tetraquark states. At leading order in the 1/N expansion, the bound spectrum consists of free mesons, while the 1/N corrections give rise to a Born-Oppenheimer potential that can bind the mesons into tetraquarks. We find two different types of tetraquarks, each endowed with distinct color-spatial wavefunctions. These states arise in the presence of an $$ \\mathcal{O} $$ O (N) mass hierarchy between the quarks and the antiquarks. We provide a quantitative argument indicating that only for such a hierarchy is the ground state of the system a tetraquark. We discuss what the extrapolation of our results to realistic values of the parameters may imply for the QCD tetraquark states.
Sleptonic SUSY: from UV framework to IR phenomenology
Kaustubh Agashe, Majid Ekhterachian, Zhen Liu, Raman Sundrum
Journal of High Energy Physics, 2022
We study an attractive scenario, “Sleptonic SUSY”, which reconciles the 125 GeV Higgs scalar and the non-observation of superpartners thus far with potentially pivotal roles for slepton phenomenology: providing viable ongoing targets for LHC discovery, incorporating a co-annihilation partner for detectable thermal relic dark matter, and capable of mediating the potential muon g − 2 anomaly. This is accomplished by a modestly hierarchical spectrum, with sub-TeV sleptons and electroweakinos and with multi-TeV masses for the other new states. We study new elements in the UV MSSM realization of Sleptonic SUSY based on higher-dimensional sequestering and the synergy between the resulting gaugino-mediation, hypercharge D-term mediation and Higgs-mediation of SUSY-breaking, so as to more fully capture the range of possibilities. This framework stands out by harmoniously solving the flavor, CP and μ − Bμ problems of the supersymmetric paradigm. We discuss its extension to orbifold GUTs, including gauge-coupling and b-tau unification. We also develop a non-minimal model with extra Higgs fields, in which the electroweak vacuum is more readily cosmologically stable against decay to a charge-breaking vacuum, allowing a broader range of sleptonic spectra than in the MSSM alone. We survey the rich set of signals possible at the LHC and future colliders, covering both R-parity conservation and violation, as well as for dark matter detection. While the multi-TeV squarks imply a Little Hierarchy Problem, intriguingly, small changes in parameter space to improve naturalness result in dramatic phase transitions to either electroweak-preservation or charge-breaking. In a Multiverse setting, the modest unnaturalness may then be explained by the “principle of living dangerously”.
The muon Smasher's guide
Hind Al Ali, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Ian Banta, Sean Benevedes, Dario Buttazzo, Tianji Cai, Junyi Cheng, Timothy Cohen, Nathaniel Craig, Majid Ekhterachian, JiJi Fan, Matthew Forslund, Isabel Garcia Garcia, Samuel Homiller, Seth Koren, Giacomo Koszegi, Zhen Liu, Qianshu Lu, Kun-Feng Lyu, Alberto Mariotti, Amara McCune, Patrick Meade, Isobel Ojalvo, Umut Oktem, Diego Redigolo, Matthew Reece, Filippo Sala, Raman Sundrum, Dave Sutherland, Andrea Tesi, Timothy Trott, Chris Tully, Lian-Tao Wang, Menghang Wang
Reports on Progress in Physics, 2022
We lay out a comprehensive physics case for a future high-energy muon collider, exploring a range of collision energies (from 1 to 100 TeV) and luminosities. We highlight the advantages of such a collider over proposed alternatives. We show how one can leverage both the point-like nature of the muons themselves as well as the cloud of electroweak radiation that surrounds the beam to blur the dichotomy between energy and precision in the search for new physics. The physics case is buttressed by a range of studies with applications to electroweak symmetry breaking, dark matter, and the naturalness of the weak scale. Furthermore, we make sharp connections with complementary experiments that are probing new physics effects using electric dipole moments, flavor violation, and gravitational waves. An extensive appendix provides cross section predictions as a function of the center-of-mass energy for many canonical simplified models.
Bounds on gauge bosons coupled to nonconserved currents
Majid Ekhterachian, Anson Hook, Soubhik Kumar, Yuhsin Tsai
Physical Review D, 2021
Majid Ekhterachian, ∗ Anson Hook, † Soubhik Kumar, 3, ‡ and Yuhsin Tsai § Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA Theoretical Physics Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA
Phase transitions from the fifth dimension
Kaustubh Agashe, Peizhi Du, Majid Ekhterachian, Soubhik Kumar, Raman Sundrum
Journal of High Energy Physics, 2021
We study the cosmological transition of 5D warped compactifications, from the high-temperature black-brane phase to the low-temperature Randall-Sundrum I phase. The transition proceeds via percolation of bubbles of IR-brane nucleating from the black-brane horizon. The violent bubble dynamics can be a powerful source of observable stochastic gravitational waves. While bubble nucleation is non-perturbative in 5D gravity, it is amenable to semiclassical treatment in terms of a “bounce” configuration interpolating between the two phases. We demonstrate how such a bounce configuration can be smooth enough to maintain 5D effective field theory control, and how a simple ansatz for it places a rigorous lower-bound on the transition rate in the thin-wall regime, and gives plausible estimates more generally. When applied to the Hierarchy Problem, the minimal Goldberger-Wise stabilization of the warped throat leads to a slow transition with significant supercooling. We demonstrate that a simple generalization of the Goldberger-Wise potential modifies the IR-brane dynamics so that the transition completes more promptly. Supercooling determines the dilution of any (dark) matter abundances generated before the transition, potentially at odds with data, while the prompter transition resolves such tensions. We discuss the impact of the different possibilities on the strength of the gravitational wave signals. Via AdS/CFT duality the warped transition gives a theoretically tractable holographic description of the 4D Composite Higgs (de)confinement transition. Our generalization of the Goldberger-Wise mechanism is dual to, and concretely models, our earlier proposal in which the composite dynamics is governed by separate UV and IR RG fixed points. The smooth 5D bounce configuration we introduce complements the 4D dilaton/radion dominance derivation presented in our earlier work.
LHC signals for KK graviton from an extended warped extra dimension
Kaustubh Agashe, Majid Ekhterachian, Doojin Kim, Deepak Sathyan
Journal of High Energy Physics, 2020
We analyze signals at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) from production and decay of Kaluza-Klein (KK) gravitons in the context of “extended” warped extra-dimensional models, where the standard model (SM) Higgs and fermion fields are restricted to be in-between the usual ultraviolet/Planck brane and a ∼ O(10) TeV (new, “intermediate”) brane, whereas the SM gauge fields (and gravity) propagate further down to the ∼ O(TeV) infrared brane. Such a framework suppresses flavor violation stemming from KK particle effects, while keeping the KK gauge bosons and gravitons accessible to the LHC. We find that the signals from KK graviton are significantly different than in the standard warped model. This is because the usually dominant decay modes of KK gravitons into top quark, Higgs and longitudinal W/Z particles are suppressed by the above spatial separation between these two sets of particles, thus other decay channels are allowed to shine themselves. In particular, we focus on two novel decay channels of the KK graviton. The first one is the decay into a pair of radions, each of which decays (dominantly) into a pair of SM gluons, resulting in a resonant 4-jet final state consisting of two pairs of dijet resonance. On the other hand, if the radion is heavier and/or KK gluon is lighter, then the KK graviton mostly decays into a KK gluon and a SM gluon. The resulting KK gluon has a significant decay branching fraction into radion and SM gluon, thereby generating (again) a 4-jet signature, but with a different underlying event topology, i.e., featuring now three different resonances. We demonstrate that the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) has sensitivity to KK graviton of (up to) ∼ 4 TeV in both channels, in the specific model with only gluon field (and gravity) propagating in the extended bulk, whereas it is unlikely to have sensitivity in the standard dijet resonance search channel from KK graviton decay into two gluons.
Cosmological phase transition of spontaneous confinement
Kaustubh Agashe, Peizhi Du, Majid Ekhterachian, Soubhik Kumar, Raman Sundrum
Journal of High Energy Physics, 2020
A bstract The dynamics of a cosmological (de)confinement phase transition is studied in nearly conformally invariant field theories, where confinement is predominantly spontaneously generated and associated with a light “dilaton” field. We show how the leading contribution to the transition rate can be computed within the dilaton effective theory. In the context of Composite Higgs theories, we demonstrate that a simple scenario involving two renormalization-group fixed points can make the transition proceed much more rapidly than in the minimal scenario, thereby avoiding excessive dilution of matter abundances generated before the transition. The implications for gravitational wave phenomenology are discussed. In general, we find that more (less) rapid phase transitions are associated with weaker (stronger) gravitational wave signals. The various possible features of the strongly coupled composite Higgs phase transition discussed here can be concretely modeled at weak coupling within the AdS/CFT dual Randall-Sundrum extra-dimensional description, which offers important insights into the nature of the transition and its theoretical control. These aspects will be presented in a companion paper.
Natural seesaw and leptogenesis from hybrid of high-scale type I and TeV-scale inverse
Kaustubh Agashe, Peizhi Du, Majid Ekhterachian, Chee Sheng Fong, Sungwoo Hong, Luca Vecchi
Journal of High Energy Physics, 2019
We develop an extension of the basic inverse seesaw model which addresses simultaneously two of its drawbacks, namely, the lack of explanation of the tiny Majorana mass term μ for the TeV-scale singlet fermions and the difficulty in achieving successful leptogenesis. Firstly, we investigate systematically leptogenesis within the inverse (and the related linear) seesaw models and show that a successful scenario requires either small Yukawa couplings, implying loss of experimental signals, and/or quasi-degeneracy among singlets mass of different generations, suggesting extra structure must be invoked. Then we move to the analysis of our new framework, which we refer to as hybrid seesaw. This combines the TeV degrees of freedom of the inverse seesaw with those of a high-scale (M N ≫ TeV) seesaw module in such a way as to retain the main features of both pictures: naturally small neutrino masses, successful leptogenesis, and accessible experimental signatures. We show how the required structure can arise from a more fundamental theory with a gauge symmetry or from warped extra dimensions/composite Higgs. We provide a detailed derivation of all the analytical formulae necessary to analyze leptogenesis in this new framework, and discuss the entire gamut of possibilities our scenario encompasses — including scenarios with singlet masses in the enlarged range M N ∼ 106 − 1016 GeV. This idea of hybrid seesaw was proposed by us in arXiv:1804.06847; here, we substantially elaborate upon and extend earlier results.
Hybrid seesaw leptogenesis and TeV singlets
Kaustubh Agashe, Peizhi Du, Majid Ekhterachian, Chee Sheng Fong, Sungwoo Hong, Luca Vecchi
Physics Letters Section B Nuclear Elementary Particle and High Energy Physics, 2018

Majid Ekhterachian

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