Pair production of charged Higgs scalars from electroweak gauge boson fusion

We compute the contribution to charged Higgs boson pair production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) due to the scattering of two electroweak (EW) gauge bosons, these being in turn generated via bremsstrahlung off incoming quarks: q q --> q q V^*V^* --> q q H^+H^- (V=gamma,Z,W^{+/-}). We verify that the production cross section of this mode is tan beta independent and show that it is smaller than that of H^+H^- production via q q-initiated processes but generally larger than that of the loop-induced channel gg --> H^+H^-. Pair production of charged Higgs bosons is crucial in order to test EW symmetry breaking scenarios beyond the Standard Model (SM). We show that the detection of these kind of processes at the standard LHC is however problematic, because of their poor production rates and the large backgrounds.Comment: 22 pages, latex, 8 figures (largely revised version to appear in JPG

Jet Physics in Heavy Ion Collisions with Compact Muon Solenoid detector at the LHC

The status of CMS jet simulations and physics analysis in heavy ion collisions is presented. Jet reconstruction and high transverse momentum particle tracking in the high multiplicity environment of heavy ion collisions at the LHC using the CMS calorimetry and tracking system are described. The Monte Carlo tools used to simulate jet quenching are discussed.Comment: Talk given at 5th International Conference on Physics and Astrophysics of Quark Gluon Plasma, Salt Lake City, Kolkata, India, February 8-12, 2005; 4 pages including 4 figures as EPS-files; prepared using LaTeX package for Journal of Physics

Separation of a single photon and products of the π0,η,Ks0\pi^0,\eta, K^0_s meson neutral decay channels in the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter using neural network

The artificial neural network approach is used for separation of signals from a single photon $\gamma$ and products of the $\pi^0,\eta, K^0_s$ meson neutral decay channels on the basis of the data from the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter alone. Rejection values for the three types of mesons as a function of single photon selection efficiencies are obtained for two Barrel and one Endcap pseudorapidity regions and initial \Et of 20, 40, 60 and 100 GeV.Comment: 16 pages, uses cernrep.cls style fil

Prospects for heavy supersymmetric charged Higgs boson searches at hadron colliders

We investigate the production of a heavy charged Higgs boson at hadron colliders within the context of the MSSM. A detailed study is performed for all important production modes and basic background processes for the t\bar{t}b\bar{b} signature. In our analysis we include effects of initial and final state showering, hadronization, and principal detector effects. For the signal production rate we include the leading SUSY quantum effects at high \tan\beta>~ mt/mb. Based on the obtained efficiencies for the signal and background we estimate the discovery and exclusion mass limits of the charged Higgs boson at high values of \tan\beta. At the upgraded Tevatron the discovery of a heavy charged Higgs boson (MH^+ >~ 200 GeV) is impossible for the tree-level cross-section values. However, if QCD and SUSY effects happen to reinforce mutually, there are indeed regions of the MSSM parameter space which could provide 3\sigma evidence and, at best, 5\sigma charged Higgs boson discovery at the Tevatron for masses M_H^+<~ 300 GeV and M_H^+<~ 250 GeV, respectively, even assuming squark and gluino masses in the (500-1000) GeV range. On the other hand, at the LHC one can discover a H^+ as heavy as 1 TeV at the canonical confidence level of 5\sigma; or else exclude its existence at 95% C.L. up to masses ~ 1.5 TeV. Again the presence of SUSY quantum effects can be very important here as they may shift the LHC limits by a few hundred GeV.Comment: Latex2e, 44 pages, 15 figures, 6 tables, uses JHEP3.sty, axodraw.sty. Comments added. Discussion on QCD factors clarified. Added discussion on uncertainties. Change of presentation of Tables 4 and 5 and Fig.6. Results and conclusions unchanged. Version accepted in JHE

The Macrame 1024 node switching network

We report on the construction of a large network testbed using IEEE 1355 DS-link technology. One thousand nodes are interconnected by a switching fabric based on the STC104 packet switch. The system has been designed and constructed in a modular way in order to allow a variety of different network topologies to be investigated. Network throughput and latency have been studied for different network topologies under various traffic conditions

Top anti-top pair production via b quark initiated processes at the Large Hadron Collider

We study $bt\bar t$ production via subprocesses initiated by $b$-quarks at the Large Hadron Collider. Both QCD and electroweak interactions are included in the elementary scattering amplitudes for $bg\to b t\bar t$. Since the additional jet in the final state (arising from the bottom quark) is in most cases at very low transverse momentum and very high pseudorapidity, it tends to escape detection. Therefore, such a process can act as a background to double-top as well as to single-top channels exploited in top quark phenomenology at present and future hadron colliders. Furthermore, if the additional $b$-jet can be tagged then $bt\bar t$ samples can be exploited in constraining possible effects of New Physics. The relevance of this reaction in such contexts is discussed and various total and differential rates of phenomenological interest are givenComment: 29 pages, latex, epsfig, 6 postscript figures, complete paper available at ftp://axpa.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/moretti/cavendish_9703 and at http://www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/theory/papers