Higgs Physics

AbstractWith the discovery of the Higgs boson a new era started with direct experimental information on the physics behind the breaking of the electroweak symmetry. This breaking plays a fundamental role in our understanding of particle physics and sits at the high-energy frontier beyond which we expect new physics that supersedes the Standard Model. The Higgs (inclusive and differential) production and decay rates offer a new way to probe this frontier. The Higgs boson used to be the target of the experimental searches, it is now becoming a tool for further exploration

The challenges and benefits of lunar exploration

Three decades into the Space Age, the United States is experiencing a fundamental shift in space policy with the adoption of a broad national goal to expand human presence and activity beyond Earth orbit and out into the Solar System. These plans mark a turning point in American space exploration, for they entail a shift away from singular forays to a long-term, evolutionary program of exploration and utilization of space. No longer limited to the technical and operational specifics of any one vehicle or any one mission plan, this new approach will involve a fleet of spacecraft and a stable of off-planet research laboratories, industrial facilities, and exploration programs. The challenges inherent in this program are immense, but so too are the benefits. Central to this new space architecture is the concept of using a lunar base for in-situ resource utilization, and for the development of planetary surface exploration systems, applicable to the Moon, Mars, and other planetary bodies in the Solar System. This paper discusses the technical, economic, and political challenges involved in this new approach, and details the latest thinking on the benefits that could come from bold new endeavors on the final frontier

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea: Questions of Equity for American Business

Three decades ago, the search for petroleum and natural gas moved to the ocean floor. Offshore exploration, modestly begun in shallow water, opened up a new frontier in petroleum exploration and exploitationwhich now extends to water depths beyond 1600 feet. Today, the seabeds off the shores of coastal countries supply approximately seven percent ot the world\u27s oil and gas requirements. Yet only a small portion of the world\u27s continental shelves have actually been tested for their natural resource potential, and exploration of the potential petroleum and natural gas supply of the deep seabed is still in its infancy

Boosting Stop Searches with a 100 TeV Proton Collider

A proton-proton collider with center of mass energy around 100 TeV is the energy frontier machine that is likely to succeed the LHC. One of the primary physics goals will be the continued exploration of weak scale naturalness. Here we focus on the pair-production of stops that decay to a top and a neutralino. Most of the heavy stop parameter space results in highly boosted tops, populating kinematic regimes inaccessible at the LHC. New strategies for boosted top-tagging are needed and a simple, detector-independent tagger can be constructed by requiring a muon inside a jet. Assuming 20% systematic uncertainties, this future collider can discover (exclude) stops with masses up to 6.5 (8) TeV with 3000 fb^-1 of integrated luminosity. Studying how the exclusion limits scale with luminosity motivates going beyond this benchmark in order to saturate the discovery potential of the machine.Comment: v2: 16 pages, 17 figures, results updated using NLL+NLO cross sections, journal versio

Space Station Freedom Gateway to the Future

The first inhabited outpost on the frontier of space will be a place to live, work, and discover. Experiments conducted on Freedom will advance scientific knowledge about our world, our environment, and ourselves. We will learn how to adapt to the space environment and to build and operate new spacecraft with destinations far beyond Earth, continuing the tradition of exploration that began with a journey to the Moon. What we learn from living and working on Freedom will strengthen our expertise in science and engineering, promote national research and development initiatives and inspire another generation of Americans to push forward and onward. On the eve of the 21st century, Space Station Freedom will be our gateway to the future. This material covers gateways to space, research, discovery, utilization, benefits, and NASA

Constraining electroweak and strongly charged long-lived particles with CheckMATE

Long-lived particles have become a new frontier in the exploration of physics beyond the Standard Model. In this paper, we present the implementation of four types of long-lived particle searches, viz. displaced leptons, disappearing track, displaced vertex (together with muons or with missing energy), and heavy charged tracks. These four categories cover the signatures of a large range of physics models. We illustrate their potential for exclusion and discuss their mutual overlaps in mass-lifetime space for two simple phenomenological models involving either a U(1)-charged or a coloured scalar.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figures; minor typesetting changes and references adde