A linear moose model with pairs of degenerate gauge boson triplets

The possibility of the existence of a strongly interacting electroweak symmetry breaking sector, as opposed to the weakly interacting light Higgs of the Standard Model, is not yet ruled out by experiments. In this paper we make an extensive study of a deconstructed model (or ``moose'' model) providing a possible effective description of such a strong symmetry breaking sector, and show its compatibility with experimental data for a wide portion of the model parameters space. The model is a direct generalization of the previously proposed D-BESS model.Comment: Latex file, 17 pages, 2 figures, published versio

Effective fermion couplings in warped 5D Higgsless theories

We consider a five dimensional SU(2) gauge theory with fermions in the bulk and with additional SU(2) and U(1) kinetic terms on the branes. The electroweak breaking is obtained by boundary conditions. After deconstruction, fermions in the bulk are eliminated by using their equations of motion. In this way Standard Model fermion mass terms and direct couplings to the internal gauge bosons of the moose are generated. The presence of these new couplings gives a new contribution to the epsilon_3 parameter in addition to the gauge boson term. This allows the possibility of a cancellation between the two contributions, which can be local (site by site) or global. Going back to the continuum, we show that the implementation of local cancellation in any generic warped metric leaves massless fermions. This is due to the presence of one horizon on the infrared brane. However we can require a global cancellation of the new physics contributions to the epsilon_3 parameter. This fixes relations among the warp factor and the parameters of the fermion and gauge sectors.Comment: Latex file, 23 pages, 1 eps figur

Playing with fermion couplings in Higgsless models

We discuss the fermion couplings in a four dimensional SU(2) linear moose model by allowing for direct couplings between the left-handed fermions on the boundary and the gauge fields in the internal sites. This is realized by means of a product of non linear $\sigma$-model scalar fields which, in the continuum limit, is equivalent to a Wilson line. The effect of these new non local couplings is a contribution to the $\epsilon_3$ parameter which can be of opposite sign with respect to the one coming from the gauge fields along the string. Therefore, with some fine tuning, it is possible to satisfy the constraints from the electroweak data.Comment: Latex file, 20 pages, 4 eps figure

Comparing electroweak data with a decoupling model

Present data, both from direct Higgs search and from analysis of electroweak data, are starting to become rather restrictive on the possible values for the mass of the standard model Higgs. We discuss a new physics scenario based on a model with decoupling (both in a linear and in a non linear version) showing how it allows for an excellent fit to the present values of the $\epsilon$ parameters and how it widens the allowed ranges for the Higgs mass (thought as elementary in the linear version, or as composite in the non linear one).Comment: 10 pages, 3 Figures Late

A simple Monte Carlo model for crowd dynamics

In this paper we introduce a simple Monte Carlo method for simulating the dynamics of a crowd. Within our model a collection of hard-disk agents is subjected to a series of two-stage steps, implying (i) the displacement of one specific agent followed by (ii) a rearrangement of the rest of the group through a Monte Carlo dynamics. The rules for the combined steps are determined by the specific setting of the granular flow, so that our scheme should be easily adapted to describe crowd dynamics issues of many sorts, from stampedes in panic scenarios to organized flow around obstacles or through bottlenecks. We validate our scheme by computing the serving times statistics of a group of agents crowding to be served around a desk. In the case of a size homogeneous crowd, we recover intuitive results prompted by physical sense. However, as a further illustration of our theoretical framework, we show that heterogeneous systems display a less obvious behavior, as smaller agents feature shorter serving times. Finally, we analyze our results in the light of known properties of non-equilibrium hard-disk fluids and discuss general implications of our model.Comment: to be published in Physical Review