711 research outputs found
Effects of new physics in neutrino oscillations in matter
A new flavor changing electron neutrino interaction with matter would always
dominate the nu_e oscillation probability at sufficiently high neutrino
energies. Being suppressed by theta_{13}, the energy scale at which the new
effect starts to be relevant may be within the reach of realistic experiments,
where the peculiar dependence of the signal with energy could give rise to a
clear signature in the nu_e --> nu_tau channel. The latter could be observed by
means of a coarse large magnetized detector by exploiting tau --> mu decays. We
discuss the possibility of identifying or constraining such effects with a high
energy neutrino factory. We also comment on the model independent limits on
them.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
Particle Physics Approach to Dark Matter
We review the main proposals of particle physics for the composition of the
cold dark matter in the universe. Strong axion contribution to cold dark matter
is not favored if the Peccei-Quinn field emerges with non-zero value at the end
of inflation and the inflationary scale is superheavy since, under these
circumstances, it leads to unacceptably large isocurvature perturbations. The
lightest neutralino is the most popular candidate constituent of cold dark
matter. Its relic abundance in the constrained minimal supersymmetric standard
model can be reduced to acceptable values by pole annihilation of neutralinos
or neutralino-stau coannihilation. Axinos can also contribute to cold dark
matter provided that the reheat temperature is adequately low. Gravitinos can
constitute the cold dark matter only in limited regions of the parameter space.
We present a supersymmetric grand unified model leading to violation of Yukawa
unification and, thus, allowing an acceptable b-quark mass within the
constrained minimal supersymmetric standard model with mu>0. The model
possesses a wide range of parameters consistent with the data on the cold dark
matter abundance as well as other phenomenological constraints. Also, it leads
to a new version of shifted hybrid inflation.Comment: 32 pages including 6 figures, uses svmult.cls, some clarifications
added, lectures given at the Third Aegean Summer School "The Invisible
Universe: Dark Matter and Dark Energy", 26 September-1 October 2005, Karfas,
Island of Chios, Greece (to appear in the proceedings
Large-scale magnetic fields from inflation due to a -even Chern-Simons-like term with Kalb-Ramond and scalar fields
We investigate the generation of large-scale magnetic fields due to the
breaking of the conformal invariance in the electromagnetic field through the
-even dimension-six Chern-Simons-like effective interaction with a fermion
current by taking account of the dynamical Kalb-Ramond and scalar fields in
inflationary cosmology. It is explicitly demonstrated that the magnetic fields
on 1Mpc scale with the field strength of G at the present time
can be induced.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, version accepted for publication in Eur. Phys.
J.
Data Analysis Challenges for the Einstein Telescope
The Einstein Telescope is a proposed third generation gravitational wave
detector that will operate in the region of 1 Hz to a few kHz. As well as the
inspiral of compact binaries composed of neutron stars or black holes, the
lower frequency cut-off of the detector will open the window to a number of new
sources. These will include the end stage of inspirals, plus merger and
ringdown of intermediate mass black holes, where the masses of the component
bodies are on the order of a few hundred solar masses. There is also the
possibility of observing intermediate mass ratio inspirals, where a stellar
mass compact object inspirals into a black hole which is a few hundred to a few
thousand times more massive. In this article, we investigate some of the data
analysis challenges for the Einstein Telescope such as the effects of increased
source number, the need for more accurate waveform models and the some of the
computational issues that a data analysis strategy might face.Comment: 18 pages, Invited review for Einstein Telescope special edition of
GR
Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillations and New Physics
We study the robustness of the determination of the neutrino masses and
mixing from the analysis of atmospheric and K2K data under the presence of
different forms of phenomenologically allowed new physics in the nu_mu--nu_tau
sector. We focus on vector and tensor-like new physics interactions which allow
us to treat, in a model independent way, effects due to the violation of the
equivalence principle, violations of the Lorentz invariance both CPT conserving
and CPT violating, non-universal couplings to a torsion field and non-standard
neutrino interactions with matter. We perform a global analysis of the full
atmospheric data from SKI together with long baseline K2K data in the presence
of nu_mu -> nu_tau transitions driven by neutrino masses and mixing together
with sub-dominant effects due to these forms of new physics. We show that
within the present degree of experimental precision, the extracted values of
masses and mixing are robust under those effects and we derive the upper bounds
on the possible strength of these new interactions in the nu_mu--nu_tau sector.Comment: 22 pages, LaTeX file using RevTEX4, 5 figures and 4 tables include
Black Hole Spin via Continuum Fitting and the Role of Spin in Powering Transient Jets
The spins of ten stellar black holes have been measured using the
continuum-fitting method. These black holes are located in two distinct classes
of X-ray binary systems, one that is persistently X-ray bright and another that
is transient. Both the persistent and transient black holes remain for long
periods in a state where their spectra are dominated by a thermal accretion
disk component. The spin of a black hole of known mass and distance can be
measured by fitting this thermal continuum spectrum to the thin-disk model of
Novikov and Thorne; the key fit parameter is the radius of the inner edge of
the black hole's accretion disk. Strong observational and theoretical evidence
links the inner-disk radius to the radius of the innermost stable circular
orbit, which is trivially related to the dimensionless spin parameter a_* of
the black hole (|a_*| < 1). The ten spins that have so far been measured by
this continuum-fitting method range widely from a_* \approx 0 to a_* > 0.95.
The robustness of the method is demonstrated by the dozens or hundreds of
independent and consistent measurements of spin that have been obtained for
several black holes, and through careful consideration of many sources of
systematic error. Among the results discussed is a dichotomy between the
transient and persistent black holes; the latter have higher spins and larger
masses. Also discussed is recently discovered evidence in the transient sources
for a correlation between the power of ballistic jets and black hole spin.Comment: 30 pages. Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews. Also to
appear in hard cover in the Space Sciences Series of ISSI "The Physics of
Accretion onto Black Holes" (Springer Publisher). Changes to Sections 5.2,
6.1 and 7.4. Section 7.4 responds to Russell et al. 2013 (MNRAS, 431, 405)
who find no evidence for a correlation between the power of ballistic jets
and black hole spi
Supermassive Black Hole Binaries: The Search Continues
Gravitationally bound supermassive black hole binaries (SBHBs) are thought to
be a natural product of galactic mergers and growth of the large scale
structure in the universe. They however remain observationally elusive, thus
raising a question about characteristic observational signatures associated
with these systems. In this conference proceeding I discuss current theoretical
understanding and latest advances and prospects in observational searches for
SBHBs.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures. To appear in the Proceedings of 2014 Sant Cugat
Forum on Astrophysics. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, ed.
C.Sopuerta (Berlin: Springer-Verlag
Shrinking a large dataset to identify variables associated with increased risk of Plasmodium falciparum infection in Western Kenya
Large datasets are often not amenable to analysis using traditional single-step approaches. Here, our general objective was to apply imputation techniques, principal component analysis (PCA), elastic net and generalized linear models to a large dataset in a systematic approach to extract the most meaningful predictors for a health outcome. We extracted predictors for Plasmodium falciparum infection, from a large covariate dataset while facing limited numbers of observations, using data from the People, Animals, and their Zoonoses (PAZ) project to demonstrate these techniques: data collected from 415 homesteads in western Kenya, contained over 1500 variables that describe the health, environment, and social factors of the humans, livestock, and the homesteads in which they reside. The wide, sparse dataset was simplified to 42 predictors of P. falciparum malaria infection and wealth rankings were produced for all homesteads. The 42 predictors make biological sense and are supported by previous studies. This systematic data-mining approach we used would make many large datasets more manageable and informative for decision-making processes and health policy prioritization
Global Search for New Physics with 2.0/fb at CDF
Data collected in Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron are searched for
indications of new electroweak-scale physics. Rather than focusing on
particular new physics scenarios, CDF data are analyzed for discrepancies with
the standard model prediction. A model-independent approach (Vista) considers
gross features of the data, and is sensitive to new large cross-section
physics. Further sensitivity to new physics is provided by two additional
algorithms: a Bump Hunter searches invariant mass distributions for "bumps"
that could indicate resonant production of new particles; and the Sleuth
procedure scans for data excesses at large summed transverse momentum. This
combined global search for new physics in 2.0/fb of ppbar collisions at
sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV reveals no indication of physics beyond the standard model.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Final version which appeared in Physical Review D
Rapid Communication
Observation of Orbitally Excited B_s Mesons
We report the first observation of two narrow resonances consistent with
states of orbitally excited (L=1) B_s mesons using 1 fb^{-1} of ppbar
collisions at sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV collected with the CDF II detector at the
Fermilab Tevatron. We use two-body decays into K^- and B^+ mesons reconstructed
as B^+ \to J/\psi K^+, J/\psi \to \mu^+ \mu^- or B^+ \to \bar{D}^0 \pi^+,
\bar{D}^0 \to K^+ \pi^-. We deduce the masses of the two states to be m(B_{s1})
= 5829.4 +- 0.7 MeV/c^2 and m(B_{s2}^*) = 5839.7 +- 0.7 MeV/c^2.Comment: Version accepted and published by Phys. Rev. Let
- …