Hybrid Performance of the Pierre Auger Observatory

A key feature of the Pierre Auger Observatory is its hybrid design, in which ultra high energy cosmic rays are detected simultaneously by fluorescence telescopes and a ground array. The two techniques see air showers in complementary ways, providing important cross-checks and measurement redundancy. Much of the hybrid capability stems from the accurate geometrical reconstruction it achieves, with accuracy better than either the ground array detectors or a single telescope could achieve independently. We have studied the geometrical and longitudinal profile reconstructions of hybrid events. We present the results for the hybrid performance of the Observatory, including trigger efficiency, energy and angular resolution, and the efficiency of the event selection.Comment: Contribution to the 30th International Cosmic Ray Conference, Merida Mexico, July 200

Past, Present and Future of UHECR Observations

Great advances have been made in the study of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) in the past two decades. These include the discovery of the spectral cut-off near 5 x 10^19 eV and complex structure at lower energies, as well as increasingly precise information about the composition of cosmic rays as a function of energy. Important improvements in techniques, including extensive surface detector arrays and high resolution air fluorescence detectors, have been instrumental in facilitating this progress. We discuss the status of the field, including the open questions about the nature of spectral structure, systematic issues related to our understanding of composition, and emerging evidence for anisotropy at the highest energies. We review prospects for upgraded and future observatories including Telescope Array, Pierre Auger and JEM-EUSO and other space-based proposals, and discuss promising new technologies based on radio emission from extensive air showers produced by UHECR.Comment: Review paper accepted by Progress of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. 42 pages, 10 figures. Typo correcte

Higgs Boson Production with Bottom Quarks at Hadron Colliders

We present results for the production cross section of a Higgs Boson with a pair of bottom/anti-bottom quarks, including next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, uses ws-ijmpa.cls. Talk given by C.B. Jackson at the Meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF2004) in Riverside, CA, August 26-31, 200

Chiral-logarithmic Corrections to the S and T Parameters in Higgsless Models

Recently, Higgsless models have proven to be viable alternatives to the Standard Model (SM) and supersymmetric models in describing the breaking of the electroweak symmetry. Whether extra-dimensional in nature or their deconstructed counterparts, the physical spectrum of these models typically consists of ``towers'' of massive vector gauge bosons which carry the same quantum numbers as the SM W and Z. In this paper, we calculate the one-loop, chiral-logarithmic corrections to the S and T parameters from the lightest (i.e. SM) and the next-to-lightest gauge bosons using a novel application of the Pinch Technique. We perform our calculation using generic Feynman rules with generic couplings such that our results can be applied to various models. To demonstrate how to use our results, we calculate the leading chiral-logarithmic corrections to the S and T parameters in the deconstructed three site Higgsless model. As we point out, however, our results are not exclusive to Higgsless models and may, in fact, be used to calculate the one-loop corrections from additional gauge bosons in models with fundamental (or composite) Higgs bosons.Comment: 45 pages, 15 figures, added references, analysis of three site model expanded to include delocalized fermion

SUSY QCD Corrections to Higgs-b Production : Is the \Delta_b Approximation Accurate?

The associated production of a Higgs boson with a b quark is a discovery channel for the lightest MSSM neutral Higgs boson. We consider the SUSY QCD contributions from squarks and gluinos and discuss the decoupling properties of these effects. A detailed comparison of our exact order(alpha_s) results with those of a widely used effective Lagrangian approach, the \Delta_b approximation, is presented. The \Delta_b approximation is shown to accurately reproduce the exact one-loop SQCD result to within a few percent over a wide range of parameter space.Comment: figures added, version to be published in Phys Rev

One-loop Corrections to the S Parameter in the Four-site Model

We compute the leading chiral-logarithmic corrections to the S parameter in the four-site Higgsless model. In addition to the usual electroweak gauge bosons of the Standard Model, this model contains two sets of heavy charged and neutral gauge bosons. In the continuum limit, the latter gauge bosons can be identified with the first excited Kaluza-Klein states of the W^\pm and Z bosons of a warped extra-dimensional model with an SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R \times U(1)_X bulk gauge symmetry. We consider delocalized fermions and show that the delocalization parameter must be considerably tuned from its tree-level ideal value in order to reconcile experimental constraints with the one-loop results. Hence, the delocalization of fermions does not solve the problem of large contributions to the S parameter in this class of theories and significant contributions to S can potentially occur at one-loop.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figure