The forward-backward asymmetry of top quark production at the Tevatron in warped extra dimensional models

The CDF and D0 experiments have reported on the measurement of the forward-backward asymmetry of top quark pair production at the Tevatron and the result is that it is more than 2 standard deviations above the predicted value in the Standard Model. This has to be added to the longstanding anomaly in the forward-backward asymmetry for bottom quark production at LEP which is 3 standard deviations different from the Standard Model value. The discrepancy in the bottom asymmetry can be accounted for by the contributions of Kaluza-Klein excitations of electroweak gauge bosons at LEP in warped extra dimensional models in which the fermions are localized differently along the extra dimension so that the gauge interactions of heavy third generation fermions are naturally different from that of light fermions. In this paper, we show that it is more difficult to elaborate a model generating a significant top asymmetry in a similar way -- through exchanges of Kaluza-Klein gluons at the Tevatron -- due to the indirect constraints originating from precision electroweak data.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, published versio

Thermodynamics of the BCS-BEC crossover

We present a self-consistent theory for the thermodynamics of the BCS-BEC crossover in the normal and superfluid phase which is both conserving and gapless. It is based on the variational many-body formalism developed by Luttinger and Ward and by DeDominicis and Martin. Truncating the exact functional for the entropy to that obtained within a ladder approximation, the resulting self-consistent integral equations for the normal and anomalous Green functions are solved numerically for arbitrary coupling. The critical temperature, the equation of state and the entropy are determined as a function of the dimensionless parameter $1/k_Fa$, which controls the crossover from the BCS-regime of extended pairs to the BEC-regime of tightly bound molecules. The tightly bound pairs turn out to be described by a Popov-type approximation for a dilute, repulsive Bose gas. Even though our approximation does not capture the critical behaviour near the continuous superfluid transition, our results provide a consistent picture for the complete crossover thermodynamics which compare well with recent numerical and field-theoretic approaches at the unitarity point.Comment: published versio

Online Career Guidance Systems for PK-12 School Students: Compliments to a Comprehensive School Counseling Program

The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) identifies three main domains that should be included in a developmental and comprehensive school counseling program. These domains include academic development, social/emotional development, and career development. This chapter will provide an overview of the career development needs of PK-12 students. It will also offer several online career guidance system suggestions that school counselors and educators may employ to meet both the needs of school-aged students and the demands of career guidance and planning during the formative years of elementary, middle, and high school. Research has shown that the area of career development is significantly lacking in school systems and less emphasis is placed on this domain in comparison to others. Therefore, online career guidance systems that may be accessed by students independently or with educator collaboration may help to bridge this gap

A detailed map of Higgs boson interactions by the ATLAS experiment ten years after the discovery

The standard model of particle physics1-4 describes the known fundamental particles and forces that make up our Universe, with the exception of gravity. One of the central features of the standard model is a field that permeates all of space and interacts with fundamental particles5-9. The quantum excitation of this field, known as the Higgs field, manifests itself as the Higgs boson, the only fundamental particle with no spin. In 2012, a particle with properties consistent with the Higgs boson of the standard model was observed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN10,11. Since then, more than 30 times as many Higgs bosons have been recorded by the ATLAS experiment, enabling much more precise measurements and new tests of the theory. Here, on the basis of this larger dataset, we combine an unprecedented number of production and decay processes of the Higgs boson to scrutinize its interactions with elementary particles. Interactions with gluons, photons, and W and Z bosons-the carriers of the strong, electromagnetic and weak forces-are studied in detail. Interactions with three third-generation matter particles (bottom (b) and top (t) quarks, and tau leptons (τ)) are well measured and indications of interactions with a second-generation particle (muons, μ) are emerging. These tests reveal that the Higgs boson discovered ten years ago is remarkably consistent with the predictions of the theory and provide stringent constraints on many models of new phenomena beyond the standard model

Scales of Fermion Mass Generation and Electroweak Symmetry Breaking

The scale of mass generation for fermions (including neutrinos) and the scale for electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) can be bounded from above by the unitarity of scattering involving longitudinal weak gauge bosons or their corresponding would-be Goldstone bosons. Including the exact n-body phase space we analyze the 2 --> n ($n \geq 2$) processes for the fermion-(anti)fermion scattering into multiple gauge boson final states. Contrary to naive energy power counting, we demonstrate that as $n$ becomes large, the competition between an increasing energy factor and a phase-space suppression leads to a {\it strong new upper bound} on the scale of fermion mass generation at a finite value $n=n_s$, which is {\it independent of the EWSB scale,} $v = (\sqrt{2}G_F)^{-1/2}$. For quarks, leptons and Majorana neutrinos, the strongest 2 --> n limits range from about 3TeV to 130-170TeV (with $2\lesssim n_s \lesssim 24$), depending on the measured fermion masses. Strikingly, given the tiny neutrino masses as constrained by the neutrino oscillations, neutrinoless double-beta decays and astrophysical observations, the unitarity violation of $\nu_L\nu_L\to nW_L^a$ scattering actually occurs at a scale no higher than ~170 TeV. Implications for various mechanisms of neutrino mass generation are analyzed. On the other hand, for the 2 --> n pure Goldstone-boson scattering, we find that the decreasing phase space factor always dominates over the growing overall energy factor when $n$ becomes large, so that the best unitarity bound on the scale of EWSB remains at n=2.Comment: 67pp, to match PRD (minor typos fixed

Automated Synthesis of Tableau Calculi

This paper presents a method for synthesising sound and complete tableau calculi. Given a specification of the formal semantics of a logic, the method generates a set of tableau inference rules that can then be used to reason within the logic. The method guarantees that the generated rules form a calculus which is sound and constructively complete. If the logic can be shown to admit finite filtration with respect to a well-defined first-order semantics then adding a general blocking mechanism provides a terminating tableau calculus. The process of generating tableau rules can be completely automated and produces, together with the blocking mechanism, an automated procedure for generating tableau decision procedures. For illustration we show the workability of the approach for a description logic with transitive roles and propositional intuitionistic logic.Comment: 32 page

Evidence for t\bar{t}\gamma Production and Measurement of \sigma_t\bar{t}\gamma / \sigma_t\bar{t}

Using data corresponding to 6.0/fb of ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV collected by the CDF II detector, we present a cross section measurement of top-quark pair production with an additional radiated photon. The events are selected by looking for a lepton, a photon, significant transverse momentum imbalance, large total transverse energy, and three or more jets, with at least one identified as containing a b quark. The ttbar+photon sample requires the photon to have 10 GeV or more of transverse energy, and to be in the central region. Using an event selection optimized for the ttbar+photon candidate sample we measure the production cross section of, and the ratio of cross sections of the two samples. Control samples in the dilepton+photon and lepton+photon+\met, channels are constructed to aid in decay product identification and background measurements. We observe 30 ttbar+photon candidate events compared to the standard model expectation of 26.9 +/- 3.4 events. We measure the ttbar+photon cross section to be 0.18+0.08 pb, and the ratio of the cross section of ttbar+photon to ttbar to be 0.024 +/- 0.009. Assuming no ttbar+photon production, we observe a probability of 0.0015 of the background events alone producing 30 events or more, corresponding to 3.0 standard deviations.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Precision Top-Quark Mass Measurements at CDF

We present a precision measurement of the top-quark mass using the full sample of Tevatron $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV proton-antiproton collisions collected by the CDF II detector, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 8.7 $fb^{-1}$. Using a sample of $t\bar{t}$ candidate events decaying into the lepton+jets channel, we obtain distributions of the top-quark masses and the invariant mass of two jets from the $W$ boson decays from data. We then compare these distributions to templates derived from signal and background samples to extract the top-quark mass and the energy scale of the calorimeter jets with {\it in situ} calibration. The likelihood fit of the templates from signal and background events to the data yields the single most-precise measurement of the top-quark mass, \mtop = 172.85 \pm$0.71 (stat)$\pm$0.85 (syst) GeV/c^{2}.$Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Evidence for the exclusive decay Bc+- to J/psi pi+- and measurement of the mass of the Bc meson

We report first evidence for a fully reconstructed decay mode of the B_c^{\pm} meson in the channel B_c^{\pm} \to J/psi \pi^{\pm}, with J/psi \to mu^+mu^-. The analysis is based on an integrated luminosity of 360 pb$^{-1} in p\bar{p} collisions at 1.96 TeV center of mass energy collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. We observe 14.6 \pm 4.6 signal events with a background of 7.1 \pm 0.9 events, and a fit to the J/psi pi^{\pm} mass spectrum yields a B_c^{\pm} mass of 6285.7 \pm 5.3(stat) \pm 1.2(syst) MeV/c^2. The probability of a peak of this magnitude occurring by random fluctuation in the search region is estimated as 0.012%.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Version 3, accepted by PR