Tests of the Higgs properties at the next colliders

We discuss the tests of the fundamental properties of the Standard Model Higgs boson that can be performed in the next round of experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. Talk presented at PLC2005 Warsaw and Kazimierz Lectures, 5/09-08/09 200

Implications of the Higgs discovery for the MSSM

The implications of the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC with a mass of approximately 125 GeV are summarised in the context of the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, the MSSM. Discussed are the implications from the measured mass and production/decay rates of the observed particle and from the constraints in the search for the heavier Higgs states at the LHC.Comment: 21 pages, 27 figures. Review to appear in a special issue of EPJC and extended version of talks given at various recent conference

Supersymmetry Effects on High-Precision Electroweak Observables

I summarise the virtual effects of the new particles predicted by supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model on the high-precision electroweak observables measured at LEP/SLC, the Tevatron and CLEO. I will then discuss in some details the two-loop SUSY-QCD corrections to the $\rho$ parameter.Comment: Latex, 18 pages, 6 figures, sprocl.sty included. Lecture given at X Escola de Particulas e Campos, Feb. 1999, Sao Paulo, Brazi

SUSY-QCD Corrections to Higgs Boson Production at Hadron Colliders

We analyze the next-to-leading order SUSY-QCD corrections to the production of Higgs particles at hadron colliders in supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model. Besides the standard QCD corrections due to gluon exchange and emission, genuine supersymmetric corrections due to the virtual exchange of squarks and gluinos are present. At both the Tevatron and the LHC, these corrections are found to be small in the Higgs-strahlung, Drell-Yan-like Higgs pair production and vector boson fusion processes.Comment: 11 pages, latex, 3 figures, numerical analysis extended, one figure and one reference adde

On the Minimization of Convex Functionals of Probability Distributions Under Band Constraints

The problem of minimizing convex functionals of probability distributions is solved under the assumption that the density of every distribution is bounded from above and below. A system of sufficient and necessary first-order optimality conditions as well as a bound on the optimality gap of feasible candidate solutions are derived. Based on these results, two numerical algorithms are proposed that iteratively solve the system of optimality conditions on a grid of discrete points. Both algorithms use a block coordinate descent strategy and terminate once the optimality gap falls below the desired tolerance. While the first algorithm is conceptually simpler and more efficient, it is not guaranteed to converge for objective functions that are not strictly convex. This shortcoming is overcome in the second algorithm, which uses an additional outer proximal iteration, and, which is proven to converge under mild assumptions. Two examples are given to demonstrate the theoretical usefulness of the optimality conditions as well as the high efficiency and accuracy of the proposed numerical algorithms.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, published in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. In previous versions, the example in Section VI.B contained some mistakes and inaccuracies, which have been fixed in this versio