The scientific progress of the project has been excellent. 590 (493 with DOI) scientific publications have resulted from the research carried out until March 31st 2020 in the area of neutrino physics and dark matter. These were, or will be, published in high impact journals in the field. 122(94 with DOI) publications are co-authored by the recruited ESRs.Some of the highlights include the intriguing 2σ hints for leptonic CP violation confirmed in detailed global analyses of neutrino oscillation data by our Nu-Fit group (http://www.nu-fit.org.). Our team has carefully analysed the latest data relevant for sterile neutrinos and we set new very stringent constraints on this scenario. Furthermore, members of our team who are experts in analyzing cosmology data have provided some of the best results in this field in the topic of the sum of neutrino masses.
The Majorana character of neutrinos would have profound implications in particle physics. Our team includes members of the three leading experiments in Europe: GERDA, CUORE and NEXT that are searching for neutrinoless double beta decay using three isotopes Germanium, Telurium and XENON.
The possibility that the neutrino masses might originate from new heavy states that are within reach in present of future experiments has been actively pursued. In particular, it has been shown that LHC and other future colliders, such as the ILC or FCC, could improve their sensitivity by searching for the powerful signal of displaced decays of the neutrino mass mediators. Neutrinos could also be portals to other type of new light physics states although elusive due their very weak interactions, and its impact on future neutrino experiments such as DUNE has been explored.
Our team has in addition considered various possibilities for the origin of PeV neutrinos of extraterrestrial origin detected by Icecube and has also evaluated the flavour and angular distribution of neutrinos emerging from supernovas.
Another important area of research has been the phenomenological and theoretical implications of axions or axion-like particles, that provide viable dark matter (DM) candidates, and could also solve the strong CP problem. This is particularly timely in light of the new experiments such as ADMX that will have sensitivity to QCD axions. An important new result from our team is the evaluation of the contribution of axion-like particles to lepton dipole moments. Connections between axion particles and flavour in the context of minimal flavour violation or discrete flavour symmetries have been explored. Also connections of axions to the Goldstone Higgs hypothesis (that can solve the hierarchy problem) have been analysed in detail and its LHC phenomenology worked out. Furthermore, new theoretical developments and novel signals of ALPs (axion-like-particles) for present and future colliders have been also identified by our team.
From the astrophysical point of view, axion DM might lead to interesting features, such as the formation of mini-clusters.
The most stringent bounds on the WIMP DM paradigm have been set by the XENON 1 Ton experiment, led by various members of our team. In light of these stringent bounds, variants of the WIMP DM models have been considered, particularly with the goal of establishing connections to other flavour anomalies, such as those observed in B meson semileptonic decays or in the muon anomalous magnetic moment, g-2. The anomalies in B meson decays have received very much attention. Our team has carefully analysed the systematic errors involved from the theory side and has proposed various new physics explanations such as the existence of leptoquarks.
