Structural studies of T4S systems by electron microscopy

Abstract: Type IV secretion (T4S) systems are large dynamic nanomachines that transport DNA and/or proteins through the membranes of bacteria. Analysis of T4S system architecture is an extremely challenging task taking into account their multi protein organisation and lack of overall global symmetry. Nonetheless the last decade demonstrated an amazing progress achieved by X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy. In this review we present a structural analysis of this dynamic complex based on recent advances in biochemical, biophysical and structural studies

Probing the Higgs Field Using Massive Particles as Sources and Detectors

In the Standard Model, all massive elementary particles acquire their masses by coupling to a background Higgs field with a non-zero vacuum expectation value. What is often overlooked is that each massive particle is also a source of the Higgs field. A given particle can in principle shift the mass of a neighboring particle. The mass shift effect goes beyond the usual perturbative Feynman diagram calculations which implicitly assume that the mass of each particle is rigidly fixed. Local mass shifts offer a unique handle on Higgs physics since they do not require the production of on-shell Higgs bosons. We provide theoretical estimates showing that the mass shift effect can be large and measurable, especially near pair threshold, at both the Tevatron and the LHC.Comment: 6 pages, no figures; Version 2 corrects some typographical errors of factors of 2 in equations 14, 17, 18 and 19 (all of the same origin) and mentions a linear collider as an interesting place to test the results of this pape

Search for the standard model higgs boson produced in association with top quarks and decaying into bb in pp collisions at root s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for the Standard Model Higgs boson produced in association with a top-quark pair, t ¯tH, is presented. The analysis uses 20.3 fb−1 √ of pp collision data at s = 8 TeV, collected with theATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider during 2012. The search is designed for the H → b¯b decay mode and uses events containing one or two electrons or muons. In order to improve the sensitivity of the search, events are categorised according to their jet and b-tagged jet multiplicities. A neural network is used to discriminate between signal and background events, the latter being dominated by t ¯t+jets production. In the single-lepton channel, variables calculated using a matrix element method are included as inputs to the neural network to improve discrimination of the irreducible t ¯t+b¯b background. No significant excess of events above the background expectation is found and an observed (expected) limit of 3.4 (2.2) times the StandardModel cross section is obtained at 95% confidence level. The ratio of the measured t ¯tH signal cross section to the StandardModel expectation is found to be μ = 1.5±1.1 assuming a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV .G. Aad ... P. Jackson ... L. Lee ... A. Petridis ... N. Soni ... M.J. White ... et al. (ATLAS Collaboration

Search for invisible decays of the Higgs boson produced in association with a hadronically decaying vector boson pp collisions at root s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for Higgs boson decays to invisible particles is performed using 20.3 fb−1 of pp collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The process considered is Higgs boson production in association with a vector boson (V = W or Z) that decays hadronically, resulting in events with two or more jets and large missing transverse momentum. No excess of candidates is observed in the data over the background expectation. The results are used to constrain V H production followed by H decaying to invisible particles for the Higgs boson mass range 115 < mH < 300 GeV. The 95%confidence-level observed upper limit on σV H × BR(H → inv.) varies from 1.6 pb at 115 GeV to 0.13 pb at 300 GeV. Assuming Standard Model production and including the gg → H contribution as signal, the results also lead to an observed upper limit of 78%at 95%confidence level on the branching ratio of Higgs bosons decays to invisible particles at a mass of 125 GeV.G. Aad ... P. Jackson ... L. Lee ... A. Petridis ... N. Soni ... M.J. White ... et al. (ATLAS Collaboration

Search for new phenomena in dijet angular distributions in proton-proton collisions at root s =8 TeV measured with the ATLAS detector

A search for new phenomena in LHC proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of sqrt[s]=8 TeV was performed with the ATLAS detector using an integrated luminosity of 17.3 fb^{-1}. The angular distributions are studied in events with at least two jets; the highest dijet mass observed is 5.5 TeV. All angular distributions are consistent with the predictions of the standard model. In a benchmark model of quark contact interactions, a compositeness scale below 8.1 TeV in a destructive interference scenario and 12.0 TeV in a constructive interference scenario is excluded at 95% C.L.; median expected limits are 8.9 TeV for the destructive interference scenario and 14.1 TeV for the constructive interference scenario.G. Aad … P. Jackson … L. Lee … A. Petridis … N. Soni ... M. White ... et al. (The ATLAS Collaboration

Measurement of the charge asymmetry in top-quark pair production in the lepton-plus-jets final state in pp collision data at root s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Published online: 19 February 2016This paper reports inclusive and differential measurements of the tt¯ charge asymmetry AC in 20.3 fb−1 of s√=8 TeVpp collisions recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Three differential measurements are performed as a function of the invariant mass, transverse momentum and longitudinal boost of the tt¯ system. The tt¯ pairs are selected in the single-lepton channels (e or μ) with at least four jets, and a likelihood fit is used to reconstruct the tt¯ event kinematics. A Bayesian unfolding procedure is performed to infer the asymmetry at parton level from the observed data distribution. The inclusive tt¯ charge asymmetry is measured to be AC=0.009±0.005 (stat. + syst.). The inclusive and differential measurements are compatible with the values predicted by the Standard Model.G. Aad … P. Jackson … L. Lee ... A. Petridis... N. Soni … M. J. White … et al. (ATLAS collaboration