(Dys)Zphilia or a custodial breaking Higgs at the LHC

Electroweak precision measurements established that custodial symmetry is preserved to a good accuracy in the gauge sector after electroweak symmetry breaking. However, recent LHC results might be interpreted as pointing towards Higgs couplings that do not respect such symmetry. Motivated by this possibility, we reconsider the presence of an explicitly custodial breaking coupling in a generic Higgs parameterization. After briefly commenting on the large UV sensitivity of the T parameter to such a coupling, we perform a fit to results of Higgs searches at LHC and Tevatron, and find that the apparent enhancement of the ZZ channel with respect to WW can be accommodated. Two degenerate best-fit points are present, which we label `Zphilic' and `dysZphilic' depending on the sign of the hZZ coupling. Finally we highlight some measurements at future linear colliders that may remove such degeneracy.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figure

A modified naturalness principle and its experimental tests

Motivated by LHC results, we modify the usual criterion for naturalness by ignoring the uncomputable power divergences. The Standard Model satisfies the modified criterion ('finite naturalness') for the measured values of its parameters. Extensions of the SM motivated by observations (Dark Matter, neutrino masses, the strong CP problem, vacuum instability, inflation) satisfy finite naturalness in special ranges of their parameter spaces which often imply new particles below a few TeV. Finite naturalness bounds are weaker than usual naturalness bounds because any new particle with SM gauge interactions gives a finite contribution to the Higgs mass at two loop order.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. v3: final version uploaded, references added, numerical error in the last column of table 1 fixe

Implantable medical devices for drug and cell release

This work is focused on the research on how to leverage 3D printing technology in the field of cell transplantation. More specifically, the study of an artificial organ for hormone replacement therapies thanks to the close collaboration between the Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Houston, Texas and Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy. Cell transplantation offers an attractive therapeutic approach for many endocrine deficiencies. Transplanted endocrine cells or engineered cells encapsulated in the here presented 3D printed device, can act as biological sensors detecting changes in hormonal levels and secrete molecules in response to maintain homeostasis. The major advantage of this technology is that patients affected by endocrine disorder could potentially avoid the need of frequent hormone injections, such as insulin or testosterone, resulting in an improved quality of life and lower chronic side effects associated to external hormone supplementations. This implant was extensively tested both in vitro and in vivo condition, providing remarkable results that lead to several publications. The cell encapsulation system was fabricated via 3D printing technology adopting an FDA approved polymeric material. The structure, composed by an array of micro and macro channels, was specifically designed in order to allow vasculature formation within the device and for housing cells while avoiding cell clustering. Over the course of the Ph.D., the technology was designed, fabricated and tested for the encapsulation of several cell lines and for small and large animal models. According to the in vivo results, we demonstrated that our 3D printed device exemplifies a clinically translatable strategy for preserving viability and function of transplanted cells. Currently, is ongoing an experiment in Non-Human Primates (data not shown), last pre- clinical study before the possibility to move to the clinical development in humans. The pre-vascularization approach to achieve an ideal intra-device milieu prior to transplantation, transcutaneous cell loading and refilling capabilities, as well as the potential for rapid device retrievability, addresses current challenges in transplantation. This technology may offer exciting potential for clinical adoption in relevant medical areas of diabetes, hypogonadism, hypothyroidism, cancer, and neurological diseases among others

Precision Probes of QCD at High Energies

New physics, that is too heavy to be produced directly, can leave measurable imprints on the tails of kinematic distributions at the LHC. We use energetic QCD processes to perform novel measurements of the Standard Model (SM) Effective Field Theory. We show that the dijet invariant mass spectrum, and the inclusive jet transverse momentum spectrum, are sensitive to a dimension 6 operator that modifies the gluon propagator at high energies. The dominant effect is constructive or destructive interference with SM jet production. We compare differential next-to-leading order predictions from POWHEG to public 7 TeV jet data, including scale, PDF, and experimental uncertainties and their respective correlations. We constrain a New Physics (NP) scale of 3.5 TeV with current data. We project the reach of future 13 and 100 TeV measurements, which we estimate to be sensitive to NP scales of 8 and 60 TeV, respectively. As an application, we apply our bounds to constrain heavy vector octet colorons that couple to the QCD current. We project that effective operators will surpass bump hunts, in terms of coloron mass reach, even for sequential couplings.Comment: 40 pages, 13 figures, 8 tables. Minor changes. Accepted on JHE