33 research outputs found
Small-x QCD studies with CMS at the LHC
The capabilities of the CMS experiment to study the low-x parton structure
and QCD evolution in the proton and the nucleus at LHC energies are presented
through four different measurements, to be carried out in Pb-Pb at sqrt(s_NN) =
5.5 TeV: (i) the charged hadron rapidity density and (ii) the
ultraperipheral (photo)production of Upsilon; and in p-p at sqrt(s) = 14 TeV:
(iii) inclusive forward jets and (iv) Mueller-Navelet dijets (separated by
8).Comment: Quark Matter'06 Proceedings. To appear in J.Phys.
Supersymmetry discovery potential of the LHC at 10 and 14 TeV without and with missing
We examine the supersymmetry (SUSY) reach of the CERN LHC operating at
and 14 TeV within the framework of the minimal supergravity
model. We improve upon previous reach projections by incorporating updated
background calculations including a variety of Standard Model (SM)
processes. We show that SUSY discovery is possible even before the detectors
are understood well enough to utilize either or electrons in
the signal. We evaluate the early SUSY reach of the LHC at TeV by
examining multi-muon plus jets and also dijet events with {\it no}
missing cuts and show that the greatest reach in terms of
occurs in the dijet channel. The reach in multi-muons is slightly smaller in
, but extends to higher values of . We find that an observable
multi-muon signal will first appear in the opposite-sign dimuon channel, but as
the integrated luminosity increases the relatively background-free but
rate-limited same-sign dimuon, and ultimately the trimuon channel yield the
highest reach. We show characteristic distributions in these channels that
serve to distinguish the signal from the SM background, and also help to
corroborate its SUSY origin. We then evaluate the LHC reach in various
no-lepton and multi-lepton plus jets channels {\it including} missing
cuts for and 14 TeV, and plot the reach for integrated
luminosities ranging up to 3000 fb at the SLHC. For TeV,
the LHC reach extends to and 2.9 TeV for
and integrated luminosities of 10, 100, 1000 and
3000 fb, respectively. For TeV, the LHC reach for the same
integrated luminosities is to m_{gluino}=2.4,\3.1, 3.7 and 4.0 TeV.Comment: 34 pages, 25 figures. Revised projections for the SUSY reach for
ab^-1 integrated luminosities, with minor corrections of references and text.
2 figures added. To appear in JHE
A limiting velocity for quarkonium propagation in a strongly coupled plasma via AdS/CFT
We study the dispersion relations of mesons in a particular hot strongly
coupled supersymmetric gauge theory plasma. We find that at large momentum k
the dispersion relations become omega = v_0 k + a + b/k + ..., where the
limiting velocity v_0 is the same for mesons with any quantum numbers and
depends only on the ratio of the temperature to the quark mass T/m_q. We
compute a and b in terms of the meson quantum numbers and T/m_q. The limiting
meson velocity v_0 becomes much smaller than the speed of light at temperatures
below but close to T_diss, the temperature above which no meson bound states at
rest in the plasma are found. From our result for v_0, we find that the
temperature above which no meson bound states with velocity v exist is
T_diss(v) \simeq (1-v^2)^(1/4) T_diss, up to few percent corrections.We thus
confirm by direct calculation of meson dispersion relations a result inferred
indirectly in previous work via analysis of the screening length between a
static quark and antiquark in a moving plasma. Although we do not do our
calculations in QCD, we argue that the qualitative features of the dispersion
relation we compute, including in particular the relation between dissociation
temperature and meson velocity, may apply to bottomonium and charmonium mesons
propagating in the strongly coupled plasma of QCD. We discuss how our results
can contribute to understanding quarkonium physics in heavy ion collisions.Comment: 57 pages, 12 figures; references adde
Physics at the LHC: a short overview
The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started operation a few months ago. The
machine will deliver proton-proton and nucleus-nucleus collisions at energies
as high as sqrt(s)=14 TeV and luminosities up to L~10^{34} cm^{-2}s^{-1}, never
reached before. The main open scientific questions that the seven LHC
experiments -- ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, LHCb, TOTEM, LHCf and MOEDAL -- aim to solve
in the coming years are succinctly reviewed.Comment: 9 pages, 16 plots. Invited review talk Hot-Quarks 2010, La
Londe-Les-Maures, July 2010. J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 270, 012001 (2011). Minor
typos correcte
Mixed Wino Dark Matter: Consequences for Direct, Indirect and Collider Detection
In supersymmetric models with gravity-mediated SUSY breaking and gaugino mass
unification, the predicted relic abundance of neutralinos usually exceeds the
strict limits imposed by the WMAP collaboration. One way to obtain the correct
relic abundance is to abandon gaugino mass universality and allow a mixed
wino-bino lightest SUSY particle (LSP). The enhanced annihilation and
scattering cross sections of mixed wino dark matter (MWDM) compared to bino
dark matter lead to enhanced rates for direct dark matter detection, as well as
for indirect detection at neutrino telescopes and for detection of dark matter
annihilation products in the galactic halo. For collider experiments, MWDM
leads to a reduced but significant mass gap between the lightest neutralinos so
that chi_2^0 two-body decay modes are usually closed. This means that dilepton
mass edges-- the starting point for cascade decay reconstruction at the CERN
LHC-- should be accessible over almost all of parameter space. Measurement of
the m_{\tz_2}-m_{\tz_1} mass gap at LHC plus various sparticle masses and cross
sections as a function of beam polarization at the International Linear
Collider (ILC) would pinpoint MWDM as the dominant component of dark matter in
the universe.Comment: 29 pages including 19 eps figure
Direct, Indirect and Collider Detection of Neutralino Dark Matter In SUSY Models with Non-universal Higgs Masses
In supersymmetric models with gravity-mediated SUSY breaking, universality of
soft SUSY breaking sfermion masses m_0 is motivated by the need to suppress
unwanted flavor changing processes. The same motivation, however, does not
apply to soft breaking Higgs masses, which may in general have independent
masses from matter scalars at the GUT scale. We explore phenomenological
implications of both the one-parameter and two-parameter non-universal Higgs
mass models (NUHM1 and NUHM2), and examine the parameter ranges compatible with
Omega_CDM h^2, BF(b --> s,gamma) and (g-2)_mu constraints. In contrast to the
mSUGRA model, in both NUHM1 and NUHM2 models, the dark matter A-annihilation
funnel can be reached at low values of tan(beta), while the higgsino dark
matter annihilation regions can be reached for low values of m_0. We show that
there may be observable rates for indirect and direct detection of neutralino
cold dark matter in phenomenologically aceptable ranges of parameter space. We
also examine implications of the NUHM models for the Fermilab Tevatron, the
CERN LHC and a Sqrt(s)=0.5-1 TeV e+e- linear collider. Novel possibilities
include: very light s-top_R, s-charm_R squark and slepton_L masses as well as
light charginos and neutralinos and H, A and H^+/- Higgs bosons.Comment: LaTeX, 48pages, 26 Figures. The version with high resolution Figures
is available at http://hep.pa.msu.edu/belyaev/public/projects/nuhm/nuhm.p
Accurate QCD predictions for heavy-quark jets at the Tevatron and LHC
Heavy-quark jets are important in many of today's collider studies and
searches, yet predictions for them are subject to much larger uncertainties
than for light jets. This is because of strong enhancements in higher orders
from large logarithms, ln(p_t/m_Q). We propose a new definition of heavy-quark
jets, which is free of final-state logarithms to all orders and such that all
initial-state collinear logarithms can be resummed into the heavy-quark parton
distributions. Heavy-jet spectra can then be calculated in the massless
approximation, which is simpler than a massive calculation and reduces the
theoretical uncertainties by a factor of three. This provides the first ever
accurate predictions for inclusive b- and c-jets, and the latter have
significant discriminatory power for the intrinsic charm content of the proton.
The techniques introduced here could be used to obtain heavy-flavour jet
results from existing massless next-to-leading order calculations for a wide
range of processes. We also discuss the experimental applicability of our
flavoured jet definition.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure
Dark matter allowed scenarios for Yukawa-unified SO(10) SUSY GUTs
Simple supersymmetric grand unified models based on the gauge group SO(10)
require --in addition to gauge and matter unification-- the unification of
t-b-\tau Yukawa couplings. Yukawa unification, however, only occurs for very
special values of the soft SUSY breaking parameters. We perform a search using
a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique to investigate model parameters and
sparticle mass spectra which occur in Yukawa-unified SUSY models, where we also
require the relic density of neutralino dark matter to saturate the
WMAP-measured abundance. We find the spectrum is characterizd by three mass
scales: first/second generation scalars in the multi-TeV range, third
generation scalars in the TeV range, and gauginos in the \sim 100 GeV range.
Most solutions give far too high a relic abundance of neutralino dark matter.
The dark matter discrepancy can be rectified by 1. allowing for neutralino
decay to axino plus photon, 2. imposing gaugino mass non-universality or 3.
imposing generational non-universality. In addition, the MCMC approach finds 4.
a compromise solution where scalar masses are not too heavy, and where
neutralino annihilation occurs via the light Higgs h resonance. By imposing
weak scale Higgs soft term boundary conditions, we are also able to generate 5.
low \mu, m_A solutions with neutralino annihilation via a light A resonance,
though these solutions seem to be excluded by CDF/D0 measurements of the B_s\to
\mu^+\mu^- branching fraction. Based on the dual requirements of Yukawa
coupling unification and dark matter relic density, we predict new physics
signals at the LHC from pair production of 350--450 GeV gluinos. The events are
characterized by very high b-jet multiplicity and a dilepton mass edge around
mz2-mz1 \sim 50-75 GeV.Comment: 35 pages with 21 eps figure
Implications of Compressed Supersymmetry for Collider and Dark Matter Searches
Martin has proposed a scenario dubbed ``compressed supersymmetry'' (SUSY)
where the MSSM is the effective field theory between energy scales M_{\rm weak}
and M_{\rm GUT}, but with the GUT scale SU(3) gaugino mass M_3<< M_1 or M_2. As
a result, squark and gluino masses are suppressed relative to slepton, chargino
and neutralino masses, leading to a compressed sparticle mass spectrum, and
where the dark matter relic density in the early universe may be dominantly
governed by neutralino annihilation into ttbar pairs via exchange of a light
top squark. We explore the dark matter and collider signals expected from
compressed SUSY for two distinct model lines with differing assumptions about
GUT scale gaugino mass parameters. For dark matter signals, the compressed
squark spectrum leads to an enhancement in direct detection rates compared to
models with unified gaugino masses. Meanwhile, neutralino halo annihilation
rates to gamma rays and anti-matter are also enhanced relative to related
scenarios with unified gaugino masses but, depending on the halo dark matter
distribution, may yet be below the sensitivity of indirect searches underway.
In the case of collider signals, we compare the rates for the potentially
dominant decay modes of the stop_1 which may be expected to be produced in
cascade decay chains at the LHC: \tst_1\to c\tz_1 and \tst_1\to bW\tz_1. We
examine the extent to which multilepton signal rates are reduced when the
two-body decay mode dominates. For the model lines that we examine here, the
multi-lepton signals, though reduced, still remain observable at the LHC.Comment: 22 pages including 24 eps figure
Aspects of CP violation in the HZZ coupling at the LHC
We examine the CP-conserving (CPC) and CP-violating (CPV) effects of a
general HZZ coupling through a study of the process H -> ZZ* -> 4 leptons at
the LHC. We construct asymmetries that directly probe these couplings. Further,
we present complete analytical formulae for the angular distributions of the
decay leptons and for some of the asymmetries. Using these we have been able to
identify new observables which can provide enhanced sensitivity to the CPV coupling. We also explore probing CP violation through shapes of
distributions in different kinematic variables, which can be used for Higgs
bosons with mH < 2 mZ.Comment: 36 pages, 17 figures, LaTeX, version accepted for publicatio