870 research outputs found
Phenomenology of a light scalar: the dilaton
We make use of the language of non-linear realizations to analyze
electro-weak symmetry breaking scenarios in which a light dilaton emerges from
the breaking of a nearly conformal strong dynamics, and compare the
phenomenology of the dilaton to that of the well motivated light composite
Higgs scenario. We argue that -- in addition to departures in the
decay/production rates into massless gauge bosons mediated by the conformal
anomaly -- characterizing features of the light dilaton scenario (as well as
other scenarios admitting a light CP-even scalar not directly related to the
breaking of the electro-weak symmetry) are off-shell events at high invariant
mass involving two longitudinally polarized vector bosons and a dilaton, and
tree-level flavor violating processes. Accommodating both electro-weak
precision measurements and flavor constraints appears especially challenging in
the ambiguous scenario in which the Higgs and the dilaton fields strongly mix.
We show that warped higgsless models of electro-weak symmetry breaking are
explicit and tractable realizations of this limiting case.
The relation between the naive radion profile often adopted in the study of
holographic realizations of the light dilaton scenario and the actual dynamical
dilaton field is clarified in the Appendix.Comment: 21 page
Discovering the composite Higgs through the decay of a heavy fermion
A possible composite nature of the Higgs could be revealed at the early stage
of the LHC, by analyzing the channels where the Higgs is produced from the
decay of a heavy fermion. The Higgs production from a singly-produced heavy
bottom, in particular, proves to be a promising channel. For a value \lambda=3
of the Higgs coupling to a heavy bottom, for example, we find that, considering
a 125 GeV Higgs which decays into a pair of b-quarks, a discovery is possible
at the 8 TeV LHC with 30 fb^{-1} if the heavy bottom is lighter than roughly
530 GeV (while an observation is possible for heavy bottom masses up to 650
GeV). Such a relatively light heavy bottom is realistic in composite Higgs
models of the type considered and, up to now, experimentally allowed. At
\sqrt{s}=14 TeV the LHC sensitivity on the channel increases significantly.
With \lambda=3 a discovery can occur, with 100 fb^{-1}, for heavy bottom masses
up to 1040 GeV. In the case the heavy bottom was as light as 500 GeV, the 14
TeV LHC would be sensitive to the measure of the \lambda\ coupling in basically
the full range \lambda>1 predicted by the theory.Comment: 25 pp. v2: Minor changes. v3: Version accepted for publication in
JHEP. v4: typos fixe
Strain rate, temperature and deformation state effect on Ecoflex 00-50 silicone mechanical behaviour
Silicone elastomers are extremely attractive materials due to their wide range of possible applications, from biomedical engineering to soft robotics. In this work, an extensive thermo-mechanical characterization of Ecoflex Shore hardness 00â50, a commercially available silicone elastomer, has been carried out to compensate for the lack of relevant literature. The mechanical behaviour of the material has been characterized by performing monotonic and cyclic loading tests. These tests were performed in different deformation states, i.e. uniaxial tension, pure shear and biaxial tension, at different strain rates and temperatures. Experimental findings allowed to highlight the material time-dependent response and quantify the contribution of dissipative deformation phenomena to the overall strain energy. Uniaxial tensile tests performed at different temperatures (between â40 °C and 140 °C) showed that the material mechanical behaviour is sensitive to temperature in this range: a decrease of the ultimate stress and strain has been observed with increasing temperature. Finally, the data obtained from the latter tests have been used to define a failure envelope, applied for the first time to Ecoflex silicones, and valuable to describe the material ultimate stress and strain at any temperature and strain rate
Physical Tuning and Naturalness
We present a radically new proposal for the solution of the
naturalness/hierarchy problem, where the fine-tuning of the Higgs mass finds
its physical explanation and the well-known multiplicative renormalization of
the usual perturbative approach emerges as an IR property of the
non-perturbative running of the mass.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON NH3/H2/AIR COMBUSTION IN SPARK-IGNITION ENGINE CONDITIONS
International audienceThe mitigation of climate change implies the increasing use of variable renewable energy sources. Energy storage and transport solutions will contribute to ensure the stability, reliability and flexibility of the energy systems. Ammonia is a well-known chemical of formula NH3 and, amongst other electrofuels, a promising energy carrier and carbon-free combustible fuel. There-fore, it is of significant interest to study ammonia combustion systems. The present investiga-tion focusses on premixed ammonia/hydrogen/air combustion to assess stability ranges, perfor-mance and pollutant emissions by means of a systematic parametric study, in the purpose of optimization in the case of a current spark-ignition engine. Gaseous ammonia blends with a wide range of hydrogen fuel fractions and equivalence ratio were tested at two different loads. Results show a power output and indicated efficiency benefit of low H2 enrichment for slightly rich and slightly lean mixtures, respectively. Hydrogen is therefore mainly an ignition promoter, rather than a global combustion promoter assumedly due to high thermal losses. A small amount of H2, along with supercharged operation greatly improves the performances of the engine and its stability, thus rendering NH3 a very suitable fuel for SI-engines in case of in-situ H2 gener-ation. Hydrogen also mitigates unburned NH3 emissions, yet not sufficiently but those could be combined with the evenly elevated NOx emissions in dedicated selective catalytic reduction systems
Partially Supersymmetric Composite Higgs Models
We study the idea of the Higgs as a pseudo-Goldstone boson within the
framework of partial supersymmetry in Randall-Sundrum scenarios and their CFT
duals. The Higgs and third generation of the MSSM are composites arising from a
strongly coupled supersymmetric CFT with global symmetry SO(5) spontaneously
broken to SO(4), whilst the light generations and gauge fields are elementary
degrees of freedom whose couplings to the strong sector explicitly break the
global symmetry as well as supersymmetry. The presence of supersymmetry in the
strong sector may allow the compositeness scale to be raised to ~10 TeV without
fine tuning, consistent with the bounds from precision electro-weak
measurements and flavour physics. The supersymmetric flavour problem is also
solved. At low energies, this scenario reduces to the "More Minimal
Supersymmetric Standard Model" where only stops, Higgsinos and gauginos are
light and within reach of the LHC.Comment: 28 pages. v2 minor changes and Refs. adde
Cosmological Consequences of Nearly Conformal Dynamics at the TeV scale
Nearly conformal dynamics at the TeV scale as motivated by the hierarchy
problem can be characterized by a stage of significant supercooling at the
electroweak epoch. This has important cosmological consequences. In particular,
a common assumption about the history of the universe is that the reheating
temperature is high, at least high enough to assume that TeV-mass particles
were once in thermal equilibrium. However, as we discuss in this paper, this
assumption is not well justified in some models of strong dynamics at the TeV
scale. We then need to reexamine how to achieve baryogenesis in these theories
as well as reconsider how the dark matter abundance is inherited. We argue that
baryonic and dark matter abundances can be explained naturally in these setups
where reheating takes place by bubble collisions at the end of the strongly
first-order phase transition characterizing conformal symmetry breaking, even
if the reheating temperature is below the electroweak scale GeV. We
also discuss inflation as well as gravity wave smoking gun signatures of this
class of models.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure
S-particles at their naturalness limits
We draw attention on a particular configuration of supersymmetric particle
masses, motivated by naturalness and flavour considerations. All its relevant
phenomenological properties for the LHC are described in terms of a few
physical parameters, irrespective of the underlying theoretical model. This
allows a simple characterization of its main features, useful to define a
strategy for its discovery.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, added reference
Heavy-light decay topologies as a new strategy to discover a heavy gluon
We study the collider phenomenology of the lightest Kaluza-Klein excitation
of the gluon, G*, in theories with a warped extra dimension. We do so by means
of a two-site effective lagrangian which includes only the lowest-lying spin-1
and spin-1/2 resonances. We point out the importance of the decays of G* to one
SM plus one heavy fermion, that were overlooked in the previous literature. It
turns out that, when kinematically allowed, such heavy-light decays are
powerful channels for discovering the G*. In particular, we present a
parton-level Montecarlo analysis of the final state Wtb that follows from the
decay of G* to one SM top or bottom quark plus its heavy partner. We find that
at \sqrt{s} = 7 TeV and with 10 fb^{-1} of integrated luminosity, the LHC can
discover a KK gluon with mass in the range M_{G*} = (1.8 - 2.2) TeV if its
coupling to a pair of light quarks is g_{G*qqbar} = (0.2-0.5) g_3. The same
process is also competitive for the discovery of the top and bottom partners as
well. We find, for example, that the LHC at \sqrt{s} = 7 TeV can discover a 1
TeV KK bottom quark with an integrated luminosity of (5.3 - 0.61) fb^{-1} for
g_{G*qqbar} = (0.2-0.5) g_3.Comment: 36 pages, 13 figures. v2: a few typos corrected, comments added,
version published in JHE
Multiâtarget directed ligands (Mtdls) binding the Ï1 receptor as promising therapeutics: State of the art and perspectives
The sigmaâ1 (Ï1) receptor is a âpluripotent chaperoneâ protein mainly expressed at the mitochondriaâendoplasmic reticulum membrane interfaces where it interacts with several client proteins. This feature renders the Ï1 receptor an ideal target for the development of multifunctional ligands, whose benefits are now recognized because several pathologies are multifactorial. Indeed, the current therapeutic regimens are based on the administration of different classes of drugs in order to counteract the diverse unbalanced physiological pathways associated with the pathology. Thus, the multiâtargeted directed ligand (MTDL) approach, with one molecule that exerts polypharmacological actions, may be a winning strategy that overcomes the pharmacokinetic issues linked to the administration of diverse drugs. This review aims to point out the progress in the development of MTDLs directed toward Ï1 receptors for the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) and cancer diseases, with a focus on the perspectives that are proper for this strategy. The evidence that some drugs in clinical use unintentionally bind the Ï1 protein (as offâtarget) provides a proof of concept of the potential of this strategy, and it strongly supports the promise that the Ï1 receptor holds as a target to be hit in the context of MTDLs for the therapy of multifactorial pathologies
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