Some Cosmological Implications of Hidden Sectors

We discuss some cosmological implications of extensions of the Standard Model with hidden sector scalars coupled to the Higgs boson. We put special emphasis on the conformal case, in which the electroweak symmetry is broken radiatively with a Higgs mass above the experimental limit. Our refined analysis of the electroweak phase transition in this kind of models strengthens the prediction of a strongly first-order phase transition as required by electroweak baryogenesis. We further study gravitational wave production and the possibility of low-scale inflation as well as a viable dark matter candidate.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures; some comments added, published versio

The MSSM from Scherk-Schwarz Supersymmetry Breaking

We present a five-dimensional model compactified on an interval where supersymmetry is broken by the Scherk-Schwarz mechanism. The gauge sector propagates in the bulk, two Higgs hypermultiplets are quasilocalized, and quark and lepton multiplets localized, in one of the boundaries. The effective four-dimensional theory is the MSSM with very heavy gauginos, heavy squarks and light sleptons and Higgsinos. The soft tree-level squared masses of the Higgs sector can be negative and they can (partially) cancel the positive one-loop contributions from the gauge sector. Electroweak symmetry breaking can then comfortably be triggered by two-loop radiative corrections from the top-stop sector. The fine tuning required to obtain the electroweak scale is found to be much smaller than in the MSSM, with essentially no fine-tuning for few TeV gaugino masses. All bounds from direct Higgs searches at LEP and from electroweak precision observables can be satisfied. The lightest supersymmetric particle is a (Higgsino-like) neutralino that can accomodate the abundance of Dark Matter consistently with recent WMAP observations.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure

Cross section of pseudoscalar meson photoproduction within the ELA

We study the contributions of background and resonance terms to the total cross section of photoproduction of mesons off the free nucleon. The model we use is consistent and based on an effective Lagrangian approach (ELA) which includes nucleon Born terms, vector meson exchange terms, and nucleon resonances. The interaction Lagrangians are chiral symmetric, gauge invariant and crossing symmetric. The results we obtain are compared to available experimental data and agreement is found in the energy region from threshold up to 0.55 GeV in the case of π photoproduction. We outline the possibility to extend this calculation to the case of η meson photoproduction.Facultad de Ciencias Exacta

Cross section of pseudoscalar meson photoproduction within the ELA

We study the contributions of background and resonance terms to the total cross section of photoproduction of mesons off the free nucleon. The model we use is consistent and based on an effective Lagrangian approach (ELA) which includes nucleon Born terms, vector meson exchange terms, and nucleon resonances. The interaction Lagrangians are chiral symmetric, gauge invariant and crossing symmetric. The results we obtain are compared to available experimental data and agreement is found in the energy region from threshold up to 0.55 GeV in the case of π photoproduction. We outline the possibility to extend this calculation to the case of η meson photoproduction.Facultad de Ciencias Exacta

On the monitoring of surface displacement in connection with volcano reactivation in Tenerife, Canary Islands, using space techniques

Geodetic volcano monitoring in Tenerife has mainly focused on the Las Cañadas Caldera, where a geodetic micronetwork and a levelling profile are located. A sensitivity test of this geodetic network showed that it should be extended to cover the whole island for volcano monitoring purposes. Furthermore, InSAR allowed detecting two unexpected movements that were beyond the scope of the traditional geodetic network. These two facts prompted us to design and observe a GPS network covering the whole of Tenerife that was monitored in August 2000. The results obtained were accurate to one centimetre, and confirm one of the deformations, although they were not definitive enough to confirm the second one. Furthermore, new cases of possible subsidence have been detected in areas where InSAR could not be used to measure deformation due to low coherence. A first modelling attempt has been made using a very simple model and its results seem to indicate that the deformation observed and the groundwater level variation in the island may be related. Future observations will be necessary for further validation and to study the time evolution of the displacements, carry out interpretation work using different types of data (gravity, gases, etc) and develop models that represent the island more closely. The results obtained are important because they might affect the geodetic volcano monitoring on the island, which will only be really useful if it is capable of distinguishing between displacements that might be linked to volcanic activity and those produced by other causes. One important result in this work is that a new geodetic monitoring system based on two complementary techniques, InSAR and GPS, has been set up on Tenerife island. This the first time that the whole surface of any of the volcanic Canary Islands has been covered with a single network for this purpose. This research has displayed the need for further similar studies in the Canary Islands, at least on the islands which pose a greater risk of volcanic reactivation, such as Lanzarote and La Palma, where InSAR techniques have been used already

The Supersymmetric Origin of Matter

The Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) can provide the correct neutralino relic abundance and baryon number asymmetry of the universe. Both may be efficiently generated in the presence of CP violating phases, light charginos and neutralinos, and a light top squark. Due to the coannihilation of the neutralino with the light stop, we find a large region of parameter space in which the neutralino relic density is consistent with WMAP and SDSS data. We perform a detailed study of the additional constraints induced when CP violating phases, consistent with the ones required for baryogenesis, are included. We explore the possible tests of this scenario from present and future electron Electric Dipole Moment (EDM) measurements, direct neutralino detection experiments, collider searches and the b -> s gamma decay rate. We find that the EDM constraints are quite severe and that electron EDM experiments, together with stop searches at the Tevatron and Higgs searches at the LHC, will provide a definite test of our scenario of electroweak baryogenesis in the next few years.Comment: 30 pages, 14 figure

Different vertex parameterizations and propagators for the Δ contribution in π-photoproduction

We evaluate the total cross section for the π-photoproduction process and analyze the behavior of the Δ(1232) resonance contribution when the photon energy is increased from threshold up to 0.7 GeV. Within this energy range we compare two different parameterizations for the γNΔ vertex: the normal parity and the covariant multipole decomposition ones. For completeness, we also compare different versions for the Δ propagator: the first is the dressed propagator obtained including one-loop self-energy contributions (EXACT), the second is the complex mass scheme which consists in replacing mΔ → mΔ - iΩΔ/2 in the bare propagator, and the third is an intermediate approximation between the two previous ones (EXCMS). We conclude that, in order to extend the present calculation to include more energetic resonances in the future and to obtain non-divergent results for the total cross section we will need to use the MD parametrization and the EXCMS propagator.Instituto de Física La Plat

Facilitating Access to the Role Models of Women in STEM: W-STEM Mobile App

W-STEM is a research project funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ program in order to develop concrete actions to modernise the government, management and operation of higher education institutions in Latin America to improve women’s access to STEM programs. Among the main objectives of the project, there is the development of a mobile app to be used in attraction campaigns conducted by the Latin American higher education institutions involved in the project. Specifically, the app aims to facilitate access to the role models of women in areas related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The main content inside the app will be a set of video interviews with women from different ages, cultural backgrounds, profiles, sharing their experiences about their careers, occupation and future plans. This work aims to describe the prototype of the mobile app and the exploratory study conducted with a group of students from secondary education to know their perceptions and opinions about the proposed app and the video interviews

Non-line-of-sight transient rendering

The capture and analysis of light in flight, or light in transient state, has enabled applications such as range imaging, reflectance estimation and especially non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging. For this last case, hidden geometry can be reconstructed using time-resolved measurements of indirect diffuse light emitted by a laser. Transient rendering is a key tool for developing such new applications, significantly more challenging than its steady-state counterpart. In this work, we introduce a set of simple yet effective subpath sampling techniques targeting transient light transport simulation in occluded scenes. We analyze the usual capture setups of NLOS scenes, where both the camera and light sources are focused on particular points in the scene. Also, the hidden geometry can be difficult to sample using conventional techniques. We leverage that configuration to reduce the integration path space. We implement our techniques in a modified version of Mitsuba 2 adapted for transient light transport, allowing us to support parallelization, polarization, and differentiable rendering. © 2022 The Author(s