Monday, December 14, 2009

Reviewer's comments I

Today I got the first set of comments from reviewers of Physics Letters B. They have sent eight comments. Most of them are minor ones which can be fixed by rephrasing some sentences. Some sentences are communicating a different meaning than what we want. So fixing them is not a big deal. However there is a serious conceptual issue which needs some careful study. I need to go to PRL, Ahmedabad soon to work with my collaborator on this issue and resubmit the paper again. I am quite sick of working alone and communicating via emails. There always remain a communication gap in this process. The issue we need to study is regarding R-parity violation in our model and the stability of dark matter candidate. Although any R-parity violating supersymmetric model will rule out a stable dark matter candidate, in our model I still think we can have a stable dark matter candidate which is basically the LSP (Lightest supersymmetric particle). Since our model has $ U(1)_{B-L} $ gauge symmetry, all the R-parity $ R_p = (-1)^{3(B-L)+2s} $ violating dimension four terms are absent from the lagrangian. However the terms which is responsible for mixing the standard model neutrinos with the singlet sterile neutrinos violate R-parity which we are calling as accidental breaking. Since neutrinos are even and the sterile gauge singlet fermions are odd under R-parity, their mixing will of course violate R-parity. But although the sterile neutrino need not be stable unless we incorporate some other discrete symmetries, its superpartner can be stable if its the LSP. Because there is no term in the superpotential which makes this LSP decay into two standard model particles. Hence if the superpartner of the sterile singlet neutrino becomes the LSP, it can be a stable dark matter candidate. I hope we will be able to convince the reviewers through these arguments, without calculating the life time of the dark matter candidates. The following video tells how embarrasing reviewer's comments are sometimes :D

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