47,441 research outputs found
General Issues in the Evolution of Fermion Masses and Mixings
General issues in the renormalization group evolution of fermion masses and
mixings is discussed. An effective fixed point in the top quark Yukawa coupling
can strongly constrain its value at the electroweak scale. Predictions
following from Yukawa coupling unification are affected by threshold
corrections at the grand unified scale. The Landau pole translates into an
upper limit on the strong gauge coupling . Given the hierarchy
in the fermion sector, the evolution of the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix
can be expressed in terms of a single scaling parameter . Using this scaling
factor and analogous scaling factors for the quark and lepton masses, we
outline a systematic strategy that readily yields electroweak predictions for
any GUT scale texture.}Comment: (Talk given at the SUSY93 Conference MSB), 9 pages + 3 PS figures not
included (available on request), MAD/PH/75
A New Constraint on the Escape Fraction in Distant Galaxies Using Gamma-ray Burst Afterglow Spectroscopy
We describe a new method to measure the escape fraction fesc of ionizing
radiation from distant star-forming galaxies using the afterglow spectra of
long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Optical spectra of GRB afterglows allow
us to evaluate the optical depth of the host ISM, according to the neutral
hydrogen column density N(HI) observed along the sightlines toward the
star-forming regions where the GRBs are found. Different from previous effort
in searching for faint, transmitted Lyman continuum photons, our method is not
subject to background subtraction uncertainties and does not require prior
knowledge of either the spectral shape of the host galaxy population or the IGM
Lya forest absorption along these GRB sightlines. Because most GRBs occur in
sub-L_* galaxies, our study also offers the first constraint on fesc for
distant low-mass galaxies that dominate the cosmic luminosity density. We have
compiled a sample of 27 GRBs at redshift z>2 for which the underlying N(HI) in
the host ISM are known. These GRBs together offer a statistical sampling of the
integrated optical depth to ionizing photons along random sightlines from
star-forming regions in the host galaxies, and allow us to estimate the mean
escape fraction averaged over different viewing angles. We find
=0.02\pm 0.02 and place a 95% c.l. upper limit <= 0.075 for these
hosts. We discuss possible biases of our approach and implications of the
result. Finally, we propose to extend this technique for measuring at
z~0.2 using spectra of core-collapse supernovae.Comment: Five journal pages, including one figure; ApJL in pres
Analytic Calculation of Prompt Photon plus Associated Heavy Flavor at Next-to-Leading Order in QCD
Contributions through second order, , in perturbative quantum
chromodynamics are calculated analytically for inclusive associated production
of a prompt photon and a charm quark at large values of transverse momentum in
high energy hadron-hadron collisions. Seven partonic subprocesses contribute at
order . We find important corrections to the lowest order,
, subprocess . We demonstrate to what
extent data from may serve to measure
the charm quark density in the nucleon.Comment: 34 pages RevTex plus 9 figures submitted as uuencoded ps files;
figures replaced and text revised to include one additional referenc
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