Language of Lullabies: The Russification and De-Russification of the Baltic States

This article argues that the laws for promotion of the national languages are a legitimate means for the Baltic states to establish their cultural independence from Russia and the former Soviet Union

Footprints of the Beyond in flavor physics: Possible role of the Top Two Higgs Doublet Model

The B-factories results provide an impressive confirmation of the Standard Model (SM) description of flavor and CP violation. Nevertheless, as more data were accumulated, deviations in the 2.5-3.5 sigma range have emerged pointing to the exciting possibility of new CP-odd phase(s) and flavor violating parameters in B-decays. Primarily this seems to be the case in the time dependent CP asymmetries in penguin dominated modes (e.g. B -> phi (eta') Ks). We discuss these and other deviations from the SM and, as an illustration of possible new physics scenarios, we examine the role of the Top Two Higgs Doublet Model. This is a simple extension of the SM obtained by adding second Higgs doublet in which the Yukawa interactions of the two Higgs doublets are assigned in order to naturally account for the large top-quark mass. Of course, many other extensions of the Standard Model could also account for these experimental deviations. Clearly if one takes these deviations seriously then some new particles in the 300 GeV to few TeV with associated new CP-odd phase(s) are needed.Comment: 40 pages, 17 figures (png format), uses pdflate

Towards the european strategy for particle physics: The briefing book

This document was prepared as part of the briefing material for the Workshop of the CERN Council Strategy Group, held in DESY Zeuthen from 2nd to 6th May 2006. It gives an overview of the physics issues and of the technological challenges that will shape the future of the field, and incorporates material presented and discussed during the Symposium on the European Strategy for Particle Physics, held in Orsay from 30th January to 2nd February 2006, reflecting the various opinions of the European community as recorded in written submissions to the Strategy Group and in the discussions at the Symposium