The Kinematic and Spatial Deployment of Compact, Isolated High-Velocity Clouds

We have identified a class of high-velocity clouds which are compact and apparently isolated. The clouds are compact in that they have angular sizes less than 2 degrees FWHM. They are isolated in that they are separated from neighboring emission by expanses where no emission is seen to the detection limit of the available data. Candidates for inclusion in this class were extracted from the Leiden/Dwingeloo HI survey of Hartmann & Burton and from the Wakker & van Woerden catalogue of high-velocity clouds. The candidates were subject to independent confirmation using either the 25-meter telescope in Dwingeloo or the 140-foot telescope in Green Bank. We argue that the resulting list, even if incomplete, is sufficiently representative of the ensemble of compact, isolated HVCs - CHVCs - that the characteristics of their disposition on the sky, and of their kinematics, are revealing of some physical aspects of the class. The CHVCs are in fact distributed quite uniformly across the sky. A global search for the reference frame which minimizes the velocity dispersion of the ensemble returns the Local Group Standard of Rest with high confidence. The CHVCs are not stationary with respect to this reference frame but have a mean infall velocity of 100 km/s. These properties are strongly suggestive of a population which has as yet had little interaction with the more massive Local Group members. At a typical distance of about 1 Mpc these objects would have sizes of about 15 kpc and gas masses, M_HI, of a few times 10^7 M_Sun, corresponding to those of (sub-)dwarf galaxies. (abridged)Comment: 13 page LaTeX, requires aa.cls and rotate.sty, 5 GIF figures. Accepted for publication in A&

The B-L/Electroweak Hierarchy in Smooth Heterotic Compactifications

E8 X E8 heterotic string and M-theory, when appropriately compactified, can give rise to realistic, N=1 supersymmetric particle physics. In particular, the exact matter spectrum of the MSSM, including three right-handed neutrino supermultiplets, one per family, and one pair of Higgs-Higgs conjugate superfields is obtained by compactifying on Calabi-Yau manifolds admitting specific SU(4) vector bundles. These "heterotic standard models" have the SU(3)_{C} X SU(2)_{L} X U(1)_{Y} gauge group of the standard model augmented by an additional gauged U(1)_{B-L}. Their minimal content requires that the B-L gauge symmetry be spontaneously broken by a vacuum expectation value of at least one right-handed sneutrino. In a previous paper, we presented the results of a renormalization group analysis showing that B-L gauge symmetry is indeed radiatively broken with a B-L/electroweak hierarchy of O(10) to O(10^{2}). In this paper, we present the details of that analysis, extending the results to include higher order terms in tan[beta]^{-1} and the explicit spectrum of all squarks and sleptons.Comment: 60 pages, 6 figure

Stability of the Minimal Heterotic Standard Model Bundle

The observable sector of the "minimal heterotic standard model" has precisely the matter spectrum of the MSSM: three families of quarks and leptons, each with a right-handed neutrino, and one Higgs-Higgs conjugate pair. In this paper, it is explicitly proven that the SU(4) holomorphic vector bundle leading to the MSSM spectrum in the observable sector is slope-stable.Comment: LaTeX, 19 page

Yukawa Couplings in Heterotic Standard Models

In this paper, we present a formalism for computing the Yukawa couplings in heterotic standard models. This is accomplished by calculating the relevant triple products of cohomology groups, leading to terms proportional to Q*H*u, Q*Hbar*d, L*H*nu and L*Hbar*e in the low energy superpotential. These interactions are subject to two very restrictive selection rules arising from the geometry of the Calabi-Yau manifold. We apply our formalism to the "minimal" heterotic standard model whose observable sector matter spectrum is exactly that of the MSSM. The non-vanishing Yukawa interactions are explicitly computed in this context. These interactions exhibit a texture rendering one out of the three quark/lepton families naturally light.Comment: 21 pages, LaTe

String Method for the Study of Rare Events

We present a new and efficient method for computing the transition pathways, free energy barriers, and transition rates in complex systems with relatively smooth energy landscapes. The method proceeds by evolving strings, i.e. smooth curves with intrinsic parametrization whose dynamics takes them to the most probable transition path between two metastable regions in the configuration space. Free energy barriers and transition rates can then be determined by standard umbrella sampling technique around the string. Applications to Lennard-Jones cluster rearrangement and thermally induced switching of a magnetic film are presented.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Are Compact High-Velocity Clouds Extragalactic Objects?

Compact high-velocity clouds (CHVCs) are the most distant of the HVCs in the Local Group model and would have HI volume densities of order 0.0003/cm^3. Clouds with these volume densities and the observed neutral hydrogen column densities will be largely ionized, even if exposed only to the extragalactic ionizing radiation field. Here we examine the implications of this process for models of CHVCs. We have modeled the ionization structure of spherical clouds (with and without dark matter halos) for a large range of densities and sizes, appropriate to CHVCs over the range of suggested distances, exposed to the extragalactic ionizing photon flux. Constant-density cloud models in which the CHVCs are at Local Group distances have total (ionized plus neutral) gas masses roughly 20-30 times larger than the neutral gas masses, implying that the gas mass alone of the observed population of CHVCs is about 40 billion solar masses. With a realistic (10:1) dark matter to gas mass ratio, the total mass in such CHVCs is a significant fraction of the dynamical mass of the Local Group, and their line widths would exceed the observed FWHM. Models with dark matter halos fare even more poorly; they must lie within approximately 200 kpc of the Galaxy. We show that exponential neutral hydrogen column density profiles are a natural consequence of an external source of ionizing photons, and argue that these profiles cannot be used to derive model-independent distances to the CHVCs. These results argue strongly that the CHVCs are not cosmological objects, and are instead associated with the Galactic halo.Comment: 30 pages, 14 figures; to appear in The Astrophysical Journa

Heterotic Standard Model Moduli

In previous papers, we introduced a heterotic standard model and discussed its basic properties. The Calabi-Yau threefold has, generically, three Kahler and three complex structure moduli. The observable sector of this vacuum has the spectrum of the MSSM with one additional pair of Higgs-Higgs conjugate fields. The hidden sector has no charged matter in the strongly coupled string and only minimal matter for weak coupling. Additionally, the spectrum of both sectors will contain vector bundle moduli. The exact number of such moduli was conjectured to be small, but was not explicitly computed. In this paper, we rectify this and present a formalism for computing the number of vector bundle moduli. Using this formalism, the number of moduli in both the observable and strongly coupled hidden sectors is explicitly calculated.Comment: 28 pages, LaTeX; v2: typos corrected, references added; v3: clarifications, references adde

Moduli Dependent mu-Terms in a Heterotic Standard Model

In this paper, we present a formalism for computing the non-vanishing Higgs mu-terms in a heterotic standard model. This is accomplished by calculating the cubic product of the cohomology groups associated with the vector bundle moduli (phi), Higgs (H) and Higgs conjugate (Hbar) superfields. This leads to terms proportional to phi H Hbar in the low energy superpotential which, for non-zero moduli expectation values, generate moduli dependent mu-terms of the form H Hbar. It is found that these interactions are subject to two very restrictive selection rules, each arising from a Leray spectral sequence, which greatly reduce the number of moduli that can couple to Higgs-Higgs conjugate fields. We apply our formalism to a specific heterotic standard model vacuum. The non-vanishing cubic interactions phi H Hbar are explicitly computed in this context and shown to contain only four of the nineteen vector bundle moduli.Comment: 23 pages, LaTe