Exclusive processes in pp collisions in CMS

We report the results on the searches of exclusive production of low- and high-mass pairs with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV. The analyses comprise the central exclusive $\gamma\gamma$ production, the exclusive two-photon production of dileptons, $e^{+}e^{-}$ and $\mu^{+}\mu^{-}$, and the exclusive two-photon production of $W$ pairs in the asymmetric $e^{\pm}\mu^{\mp}$ decay channel. No diphotons candidates are observed in data and an upper limit on the cross section is set to 1.18 pb with 95% confidence level for $E_{T}(\gamma)>$ 5.5 GeV and $|\eta(\gamma)|<$ 2.5. In the measurement of exclusive dilepton production, seventeen $e^{+}e^{-}$ candidates are observed in data with $E_{T}(e)>$ 5.5 GeV and $|\eta(e)|<$ 2.5, and the cross section for the exclusive dimuon production is set to $\sigma(pp\to p\,\mu^{+}\mu^{-}\,p)=3.38^{+0.58}_{-0.55}$ (stat.) $\pm$ 0.16 (syst.) $\pm$ 0.14 (lumi.) pb for $m(\mu^{+}\mu^{-})>$ 11.5 GeV, $p_{\textrm{T}}(\mu)>$ 4 GeV and $|\eta(\mu)|<$ 2.1, both in agreement with the theoretical predictions. For high-mass systems, two events are observed in data for the exclusive two-photon production of $W$ pairs for $p_{\textrm{T}}(\mu)>$ 4 GeV, $|\eta(\mu)|$ 20 GeV. Moreover, the study of the tail of the dilepton transverse momentum distribution resulted in model-independent upper limits for the anomalous quartic gauge couplings, which are of the order of 10$^{-4}$.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, presented at the XXI International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects, April 2013, Marseille, Franc

Defects in Jackiw-Teitelboim Quantum Gravity

We classify and study defects in 2d Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity. We show these are holographically described by a deformation of the Schwarzian theory where the reparametrization mode is integrated over different coadjoint orbits of the Virasoro group. We show that the quantization of each coadjoint orbit is connected to 2d Liouville CFT between branes with insertions of Verlinde loop operators. We also propose an interpretation for the exceptional orbits. We use this perspective to solve these deformations of the Schwarzian theory, computing their partition function and correlators. In the process, we define two geometric observables: the horizon area operator $\Phi_h$ and the geodesic length operator $L(\gamma)$. We show this procedure is structurally related to the deformation of the particle-on-a-group quantum mechanics by the addition of a chemical potential. As an example, we solve the low-energy theory of complex SYK with a U(1) symmetry and generalize to the non-abelian case.Comment: 66 pages, v4: clarifications added, typos corrected, matches published versio

Inequality of opportunity and growth

Theoretical and empirical studies exploring the effects of income inequality upon growth reach a disappointing inconclusive result. This paper postulates that one reason for this ambiguity is that income inequality is actually a composite measure of at least two different sorts of inequality: inequality of opportunity and inequality of returns to effort. These two types of inequality affect growth through opposite channels, so the relationship between income inequality and growth is positive or negative depending on which component is larger. We test this proposal using inequality-of-opportunity measures computed from the PSID database for 23 states of the U.S. in 1980 and 1990. We find robust support for a negative relationship between inequality of opportunity and growth, and a positive relationship between inequality of returns to effort and growth.income inequality; inequality of opportunity; economic growth.

Cosmological black holes and the direction of time

Macroscopic irreversible processes emerge from fundamental physical laws of reversible character. The source of the local irreversibility seems to be not in the laws themselves but in the initial and boundary conditions of the equations that represent the laws. In this work we propose that the screening of currents by black hole event horizons determines, locally, a preferred direction for the flux of electromagnetic energy. We study the growth of black hole event horizons due to the cosmological expansion and accretion of cosmic microwave background radiation, for different cosmological models. We propose generalized McVittie co-moving metrics and integrate the rate of accretion of cosmic microwave background radiation onto a supermassive black hole over cosmic time. We find that for flat, open, and closed Friedmann cosmological models, the ratio of the total area of the black hole event horizons with respect to the area of a radial co-moving space-like hypersurface always increases. Since accretion of cosmic radiation sets an absolute lower limit to the total matter accreted by black holes, this implies that the causal past and future are not mirror symmetric for any spacetime event. The asymmetry causes a net Poynting flux in the global future direction; the latter is in turn related to the ever increasing thermodynamic entropy. Thus, we expose a connection between four different "time arrows": cosmological, electromagnetic, gravitational, and thermodynamic.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures in Foundations of Science (2017

Long-range-corrected hybrids including RPA correlation

We recently demonstrated a connection between the random phase approximation (RPA) and coupled cluster theory [J. Chem. Phys. 129, 231101 (2008)]. Based on this result, we here propose and test a simple scheme for introducing long-range RPA correlation into density functional theory. Our method provides good thermochemical results and models van derWaals interactions accurately.Comment: Accepted version of the manuscrip