Neutrinos and Collider Physics

We review the collider phenomenology of neutrino physics and the synergetic aspects at energy, intensity and cosmic frontiers to test the new physics behind the neutrino mass mechanism. In particular, we focus on seesaw models within the minimal setup as well as with extended gauge and/or Higgs sectors, and on supersymmetric neutrino mass models with seesaw mechanism and with $R$-parity violation. In the simplest Type-I seesaw scenario with sterile neutrinos, we summarize and update the current experimental constraints on the sterile neutrino mass and its mixing with the active neutrinos. We also discuss the future experimental prospects of testing the seesaw mechanism at colliders and in related low-energy searches for rare processes, such as lepton flavor violation and neutrinoless double beta decay. The implications of the discovery of lepton number violation at the LHC for leptogenesis are also studied.Comment: 38 pages, 12 figures; invited review prepared for the New Journal of Physics; journal versio

Application of Monte Carlo-based statistical significance determinations to the Beta Cephei stars V400 Car, V401 Car, V403 Car and V405 Car

We have used Lomb-Scargle periodogram analysis and Monte Carlo significance tests to detect periodicities above the 3-sigma level in the Beta Cephei stars V400 Car, V401 Car, V403 Car and V405 Car. These methods produce six previously unreported periodicities in the expected frequency range of excited pulsations: one in V400 Car, three in V401 Car, one in V403 Car and one in V405 Car. One of these six frequencies is significant above the 4-sigma level. We provide statistical significances for all of the periodicities found in these four stars.Comment: 11 pages, 17 figure

Non-Universality of Density and Disorder in Jammed Sphere Packings

We show for the first time that collectively jammed disordered packings of three-dimensional monodisperse frictionless hard spheres can be produced and tuned using a novel numerical protocol with packing density $\phi$ as low as 0.6. This is well below the value of 0.64 associated with the maximally random jammed state and entirely unrelated to the ill-defined ``random loose packing'' state density. Specifically, collectively jammed packings are generated with a very narrow distribution centered at any density $\phi$ over a wide density range $\phi \in [0.6,~0.74048\ldots]$ with variable disorder. Our results support the view that there is no universal jamming point that is distinguishable based on the packing density and frequency of occurence. Our jammed packings are mapped onto a density-order-metric plane, which provides a broader characterization of packings than density alone. Other packing characteristics, such as the pair correlation function, average contact number and fraction of rattlers are quantified and discussed.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Magnetic Fields in Stellar Jets

Although several lines of evidence suggest that jets from young stars are driven magnetically from accretion disks, existing observations of field strengths in the bow shocks of these flows imply that magnetic fields play only a minor role in the dynamics at these locations. To investigate this apparent discrepancy we performed numerical simulations of expanding magnetized jets with stochastically variable input velocities with the AstroBEAR MHD code. Because the magnetic field B is proportional to the density n within compression and rarefaction regions, the magnetic signal speed drops in rarefactions and increases in the compressed areas of velocity-variable flows. In contrast, B ~ n^0.5 for a steady-state conical flow with a toroidal field, so the Alfven speed in that case is constant along the entire jet. The simulations show that the combined effects of shocks, rarefactions, and divergent flow cause magnetic fields to scale with density as an intermediate power 1 > p > 0.5. Because p > 0.5, the Alfven speed in rarefactions decreases on average as the jet propagates away from the star. This behavior is extremely important to the flow dynamics because it means that a typical Alfven velocity in the jet close to the star is significantly larger than it is in the rarefactions ahead of bow shocks at larger distances, the one place where the field is a measurable quantity. We find that the observed values of weak fields at large distances are consistent with strong fields required to drive the observed mass loss close to the star. For a typical stellar jet the crossover point inside which velocity perturbations of 30 - 40 km/s no longer produce shocks is ~ 300 AU from the source

Asymptotic safety in higher-derivative gravity

We study the non-perturbative renormalization group flow of higher-derivative gravity employing functional renormalization group techniques. The non-perturbative contributions to the $\beta$-functions shift the known perturbative ultraviolet fixed point into a non-trivial fixed point with three UV-attractive and one UV-repulsive eigendirections, consistent with the asymptotic safety conjecture of gravity. The implication of this transition on the unitarity problem, typically haunting higher-derivative gravity theories, is discussed.Comment: 8 pages; 1 figure; revised versio

AUTOPLAN: A PC-based automated mission planning tool

A PC-based automated mission and resource planning tool, AUTOPLAN, is described, with application to small-scale planning and scheduling systems in the Space Station program. The input is a proposed mission profile, including mission duration, number of allowable slip periods, and requirement profiles for one or more resources as a function of time. A corresponding availability profile is also entered for each resource over the whole time interval under study. AUTOPLAN determines all integrated schedules which do not require more than the available resources

Simple Applications of q-Bosons

A deformation of the harmonic oscillator algebra associated with the Morse potential and the SU(2) algebra is derived using the quantum analogue of the anharmonic oscillator. We use the quantum oscillator algebra or $q$-boson algebra which is a generalisation of the Heisenberg-Weyl algebra obtained by introducing a deformation parameter $q$. Further, we present a new algebraic realization of the $q$-bosons, for the case of $q$ being a root of unity, which corresponds to a periodic structure described by a finite-dimensional representation. We show that this structure represents the symmetry of a linear lattice with periodic boundary conditions.Comment: LATEX2e, 10 pages, v2: few misprints corrected, added Journal-re

Production of f0(1710)f_0(1710), f0(1500)f_0(1500), and f0(1370)f_0(1370) in J/ψJ/\psi hadronic decays

A coherent study of the production of $f_0^i$ ($i=1$, 2, 3 corresponding to $f_0(1710)$, $f_0(1500)$, and $f_0(1370)$) in $J/\psi\to V f_0 \to V PP$ is reported based on a previously proposed glueball and $Q\bar{Q}$ nonet mixing scheme, and a factorization for the decay of $J/\psi\to V f_0^i$, where $V$ denotes the isoscalar vector mesons $\phi$ and $\omega$, and $P$ denotes pseudoscalar mesons. The results show that the $J/\psi$ decays are very sensitive to the structure of those scalar mesons, and suggest a glueball in the $1.5-1.7$ GeV region, in line with Lattice QCD. The presence of significant glueball mixings in the scalar wavefunctions produces peculiar patterns in the branching ratios for $J/\psi\to V f_0^i\to VPP$, which are in good agreement with the recently published experimental data from the BES collaboration.Comment: Version accepted by PRD; Numerical results in Tab IV and VI changed due to correction of an error in quoting an experimental datum; Conclusion is not change

A comparison of the entanglement measures negativity and concurrence

In this paper we investigate two different entanglement measures in the case of mixed states of two qubits. We prove that the negativity of a state can never exceed its concurrence and is always larger then $\sqrt{(1-C)^2+C^2}-(1-C)$ where $C$ is the concurrence of the state. Furthermore we derive an explicit expression for the states for which the upper or lower bound is satisfied. Finally we show that similar results hold if the relative entropy of entanglement and the entanglement of formation are compared

Bimetric gravity is cosmologically viable

Bimetric theory describes gravitational interactions in the presence of an extra spin-2 field. Previous work has suggested that its cosmological solutions are generically plagued by instabilities. We show that by taking the Planck mass for the second metric, $M_f$, to be small, these instabilities can be pushed back to unobservably early times. In this limit, the theory approaches general relativity with an effective cosmological constant which is, remarkably, determined by the spin-2 interaction scale. This provides a late-time expansion history which is extremely close to $\Lambda$CDM, but with a technically-natural value for the cosmological constant. We find $M_f$ should be no larger than the electroweak scale in order for cosmological perturbations to be stable by big-bang nucleosynthesis. We further show that in this limit the helicity-0 mode is no longer strongly-coupled at low energy scales.Comment: 8+2 pages, 2 tables. Version published in PLB. Minor typo corrections from v