6,827 research outputs found
LHC Coverage of RPV MSSM with Light Stops
We examine the sensitivity of recent LHC searches to signatures of
supersymmetry with R-parity violation (RPV). Motivated by naturalness of the
Higgs potential, which would favor light third-generation squarks, and the
stringent LHC bounds on spectra in which the gluino or first and second
generation squarks are light, we focus on scenarios dominated by the pair
production of light stops. We consider the various possible direct and cascade
decays of the stop that involve the trilinear RPV operators. We find that in
many cases, the existing searches exclude stops in the natural mass range and
beyond. However, typically there is little or no sensitivity to cases dominated
by UDD operators or LQD operators involving taus. We propose several ideas for
searches which could address the existing gaps in experimental coverage of
these signals.Comment: 41 pages, 12 figures; v2: included new searches (see footnote 10),
minor corrections and improvement
Multiple Parton Interactions, top--antitop and W+4j production at the LHC
The expected rate for Multiple Parton Interactions (MPI) at the LHC is large.
This requires an estimate of their impact on all measurement foreseen at the
LHC while opening unprecendented opportunities for a detailed study of these
phenomena. In this paper we examine the MPI background to top-antitop
production, in the semileptonic channel, in the early phase of data taking when
the full power of --tagging will not be available. The MPI background turns
out to be small but non negligible, of the order of 20% of the background
provided by W+4j production through a Single Parton Interaction. We then
analyze the possibility of studying Multiple Parton Interactions in the W+4j
channel, a far more complicated setting than the reactions examined at lower
energies. The MPI contribution turns out to be dominated by final states with
two energetic jets which balance in transverse momentum, and it appears
possible, thanks to the good angular resolution of ATLAS and CMS, to separate
the Multiple Parton Interactions contribution from Single Parton Interaction
processes. The large cross section for two jet production suggests that also
Triple Parton Interactions (TPI) could provide a non negligible contribution.
Our preliminary analysis suggests that it might be indeed possible to
investigate TPI at the LHC.Comment: Typos fixed. Published in JHE
ATLAS silicon module assembly and qualification tests at IFIC Valencia
ATLAS experiment, designed to probe the interactions of particles emerging
out of proton proton collisions at energies of up to 14 TeV, will assume
operation at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in 2007. This paper
discusses the assembly and the quality control tests of forward detector
modules for the ATLAS silicon microstrip detector assembled at the Instituto de
Fisica Corpuscular (IFIC) in Valencia. The construction and testing procedures
are outlined and the laboratory equipment is briefly described. Emphasis is
given on the module quality achieved in terms of mechanical and electrical
stability.Comment: 23 pages, 38 EPS figures, uses JINST LaTeX clas
Oil biodegradation and bioremediation: A tale of the two worst spills in U.S. history
The devastating environmental impacts of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 and its media notoriety made it a frequent comparison to the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the popular press in 2010, even though the nature of the two spills and the environments impacted were vastly different. Fortunately, unlike higher organisms that are adversely impacted by oil spills, microorganisms are able to consume petroleum hydrocarbons. These oil degrading indigenous microorganisms played a significant role in reducing the overall environmental impact of both the Exxon Valdez and BP Deepwater Horizon oil spills
Energy dependence on fractional charge for strongly interacting subsystems
The energies of a pair of strongly-interacting subsystems with arbitrary
noninteger charges are examined from closed and open system perspectives. An
ensemble representation of the charge dependence is derived, valid at all
interaction strengths. Transforming from resonance-state ionicity to ensemble
charge dependence imposes physical constraints on the occupation numbers in the
strong-interaction limit. For open systems, the chemical potential is evaluated
using microscopic and thermodynamic models, leading to a novel correlation
between ground-state charge and an electronic temperature.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figs.; as accepted (Phys. Rev. Lett.
Towards testing a two-Higgs-doublet model with maximal CP symmetry at the LHC: construction of a Monte Carlo event generator
A Monte Carlo event generator is constructed for a two-Higgs-doublet model
with maximal CP symmetry, the MCPM. The model contains five physical Higgs
bosons; the , behaving similarly to the standard-model Higgs boson, two
extra neutral bosons and , and a charged pair . The special
feature of the MCPM is that, concerning the Yukawa couplings, the bosons ,
and couple directly only to the second generation fermions but
with strengths given by the third-generation-fermion masses. Our event
generator allows the simulation of the Drell-Yan-type production processes of
, and in proton-proton collisions at LHC energies. Also the
subsequent leptonic decays of these bosons into the , and channels are studied as well as the dominant
background processes. We estimate the integrated luminosities needed in
collisions at center-of-mass energies of 8 TeV and 14 TeV for significant
observations of the Higgs bosons , and in these muonic
channels
Macroscopic Strings and "Quirks" at Colliders
We consider extensions of the standard model containing additional heavy
particles ("quirks") charged under a new unbroken non-abelian gauge group as
well as the standard model. We assume that the quirk mass m is in the
phenomenologically interesting range 100 GeV--TeV, and that the new gauge group
gets strong at a scale Lambda < m. In this case breaking of strings is
exponentially suppressed, and quirk production results in strings that are long
compared to 1/Lambda. The existence of these long stable strings leads to
highly exotic events at colliders. For 100 eV < Lambda < keV the strings are
macroscopic, giving rise to events with two separated quirk tracks with
measurable curvature toward each other due to the string interaction. For keV <
Lambda < MeV the typical strings are mesoscopic: too small to resolve in the
detector, but large compared to atomic scales. In this case, the bound state
appears as a single particle, but its mass is the invariant mass of a quirk
pair, which has an event-by-event distribution. For MeV < Lambda < m the
strings are microscopic, and the quirks annihilate promptly within the
detector. For colored quirks, this can lead to hadronic fireball events with
10^3 hadrons with energy of order GeV emitted in conjunction with hard decay
products from the final annihilation.Comment: Added discussion of photon-jet decay, fixed minor typo
Signals from R-parity violating top quark decays at LHC
We evaluate the potential of the CERN LHC collider to observe rare decays of
the top quark in channels involving R-parity violating (RPV) interactions. We
stress the importance of calculating top quark production and decay
simultaneously as a true 2->4 process.
The process of tt-bar pair production followed by RPV decay of one of the top
quarks is analyzed with fast detector simulation. We show that intermediate
supersymmetric particles can be observed as resonances even if they are heavier
than the top quark due to the significant off-shell top-quark mass effects. The
approach where the top quark is produced on-mass-shell and then decays into 2-
or 3-body final state would in general lead to incorrect kinematical
distributions and rates. The rates of the 2 -> 4 process with top quark
production and RPV 3-body decay depend on the total width of the heavy
intermediate sfermion which could,therefore, be measured indirectly.
We find that the LHC collider offers a unique potential to study rare top
quark decays in the framework of supersymmetry with broken R-parity for
branching fractions of RPV top decays as low as 10^{-6}Comment: 23 pages, 22 figure
An Empirical Charge Transfer Potential with Correct Dissociation Limits
The empirical valence bond (EVB) method [J. Chem. Phys. 52, 1262 (1970)] has
always embodied charge transfer processes. The mechanism of that behavior is
examined here and recast for use as a new empirical potential energy surface
for large-scale simulations. A two-state model is explored. The main features
of the model are: (1) Explicit decomposition of the total system electron
density is invoked; (2) The charge is defined through the density decomposition
into constituent contributions; (3) The charge transfer behavior is controlled
through the resonance energy matrix elements which cannot be ignored; and (4) A
reference-state approach, similar in spirit to the EVB method, is used to
define the resonance state energy contributions in terms of "knowable"
quantities. With equal validity, the new potential energy can be expressed as a
nonthermal ensemble average with a nonlinear but analytical charge dependence
in the occupation number. Dissociation to neutral species for a gas-phase
process is preserved. A variant of constrained search density functional theory
is advocated as the preferred way to define an energy for a given charge.Comment: Submitted to J. Chem. Phys. 11/12/03. 14 pages, 8 figure
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