Advanced ablation strategies for management of post-surgical atrial arrhythmias.

Post-surgical arrhythmias include a wide range of arrhythmias occurring late after cardiac surgery and represent a complex substrate for catheter ablation either because of extended scar and remodeling or because of limited access to the area of interest. Novel image integration and ablation tools have made the catheter ablation in this population both feasible and successful. We review a structured approach to catheter ablation of post-surgical atrial arrhythmias in various patient cohorts including the most common congenital heart defects

Flavor Gauge Models Below the Fermi Scale

The mass and weak interaction eigenstates for the quarks of the third generation are very well aligned, an empirical fact for which the Standard Model offers no explanation. We explore the possibility that this alignment is due to an additional gauge symmetry in the third generation. Specifically, we construct and analyze an explicit, renormalizable model with a gauge boson, $X$, corresponding to the $B-L$ symmetry of the third family. Having a relatively light (in the MeV to multi-GeV range), flavor-nonuniversal gauge boson results in a variety of constraints from different sources. By systematically analyzing 20 different constraints, we identify the most sensitive probes: kaon, $B^+$, $D^+$ and Upsilon decays, $D-\bar{D}^0$ mixing, atomic parity violation, and neutrino scattering and oscillations. For the new gauge coupling $g_X$ in the range $(10^{-2} - 10^{-4})$ the model is shown to be consistent with the data. Possible ways of testing the model in $b$ physics, top and $Z$ decays, direct collider production and neutrino oscillation experiments, where one can observe nonstandard matter effects, are outlined. The choice of leptons to carry the new force is ambiguous, resulting in additional phenomenological implications, such as non-universality in semileptonic bottom decays. The proposed framework provides interesting connections between neutrino oscillations, flavor and collider physics.Comment: 44 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables; B physics constraints and references added, conclusions unchange

Charged Lepton Flavour and CP Violations: Theoretical Impact of Present and Future Experiments

We shortly review and emphasize how l_j -> l_i gamma experiments and the searches for lepton e.d.m. are constraining New Physics model building. They are pure signals of new phenomena around the TeV scale since the SM contributions are definitely negligible. It is quite remarkable that they also give effective tests of the LFV & CPV in seesaw couplings and in grand-unified theories. In particular, the limits on d_e nicely complement the proton decay bounds in selecting O(10) models.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of Neutrino 04 (College de France, Paris

Explaining Why the u and d Quark Masses are Similar

An approach is suggested for modeling quark and lepton masses and mixing in the context of grand unified theories that explains the curious fact that m_u ~ m_d even though m_t >> m_b. The structure of the quark mass matrices is such as to allow a non-Peccei-Quinn solution of the Strong CP Problem.Comment: 11 pages, ReVTeX

SN1987A - a Testing Ground for the KARMEN Anomaly

We show, that SN1987A can serve as an astrophysical laboratory for testing the viability of the assertion that a new massive neutral fermion is implied by the KARMEN data. We show that a wide range of the parameters characterizing the proposed particle is ruled out by the above constraints making this interpretation very unlikely.Comment: 12 pages, 1 eps figure embedded, to appear in Phys. Lett.

Constraining Proton Lifetime in SO(10) with Stabilized Doublet-Triplet Splitting

We present a class of realistic unified models based on supersymmetric SO(10) wherein issues related to natural doublet-triplet (DT) splitting are fully resolved. Using a minimal set of low dimensional Higgs fields which includes a single adjoint, we show that the Dimopoulos--Wilzcek mechanism for DT splitting can be made stable in the presence of all higher order operators without having pseudo-Goldstone bosons and flat directions. The \mu term of order TeV is found to be naturally induced. A Z_2-assisted anomalous U(1)_A gauge symmetry plays a crucial role in achieving these results. The threshold corrections to alpha_3(M_Z), somewhat surprisingly, are found to be controlled by only a few effective parameters. This leads to a very predictive scenario for proton decay. As a novel feature, we find an interesting correlation between the d=6 (p\to e^+\pi^0) and d=5 (p\to \nu-bar K+) decay amplitudes which allows us to derive a constrained upper limit on the inverse rate of the e^+\pi^0 mode. Our results show that both modes should be observed with an improvement in the current sensitivity by about a factor of five to ten.Comment: 21 pages LaTeX, 2 figures, Few explanatory sentences and three new references added, minor typos corrected

Getting the Supersymmetric Unification Scale from Quantum Confinement with Chiral Symmetry Breaking

Two models which generate the supersymmetric Grand Unification Scale from the strong dynamics of an additional gauge group are presented. The particle content is chosen such that this group confines with chiral symmetry breaking. Fields that are usually introduced to break the Grand Unified group appear instead as composite degrees of freedom and can acquire vacuum expectation values due to the confining dynamics. The models implement known solutions to the doublet-triplet splitting problem. The SO(10) model only requires one higher dimensional representation, an adjoint. The dangerous coloured Higgsino-mediated proton decay operator is naturally suppressed in this model to a phenomenologically interesting level. Neither model requires the presence of gauge singlets. Both models are only technically natural.Comment: LaTex, 23 page