195 research outputs found
The fine-tuning price of the early LHC
LHC already probed and excluded half of the parameter space of the
Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model allowed by previous
experiments. Only about 0.3% of the CMSSM parameter space survives. This
fraction rises to about 0.9% if the bound on the Higgs mass can be
circumvented.Comment: 7 pages. v3: updated with new bounds from ATLAS and CMS at 1.1/fb
presented at the EPS-HEP-2011 conferenc
Spin Discrimination in Three-Body Decays
The identification of the correct model for physics beyond the Standard Model
requires the determination of the spin of new particles. We investigate to
which extent the spin of a new particle can be identified in scenarios
where it decays dominantly in three-body decays . Here we
assume that is a candidate for dark matter and escapes direct detection at
a high energy collider such as the LHC. We show that in the case that all
intermediate particles are heavy, one can get information on the spins of
and at the LHC by exploiting the invariant mass distribution of the two
standard model fermions. We develop a model-independent strategy to determine
the spins without prior knowledge of the unknown couplings and test it in a
series of Monte Carlo studies.Comment: 31+1 pages, 4 figures, 8 tables, JHEP.cls include
Vitamin D in pediatric age: consensus of the Italian Pediatric Society and the Italian Society of Preventive and Social Pediatrics, jointly with the Italian Federation of Pediatricians.
Vitamin D plays a pivotal role in the regulation of calcium-phosphorus metabolism, particularly during pediatric age when nutritional rickets and impaired bone mass acquisition may occur.Besides its historical skeletal functions, in the last years it has been demonstrated that vitamin D directly or indirectly regulates up to 1250 genes, playing so-called extraskeletal actions. Indeed, recent data suggest a possible role of vitamin D in the pathogenesis of several pathological conditions, including infectious, allergic and autoimmune diseases. Thus, vitamin D deficiency may affect not only musculoskeletal health but also a potentially wide range of acute and chronic conditions. At present, the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency is high in Italian children and adolescents, and national recommendations on vitamin D supplementation during pediatric age are lacking. An expert panel of the Italian Society of Preventive and Social Pediatrics reviewed available literature focusing on randomized controlled trials of vitamin D supplementation to provide a practical approach to vitamin D supplementation for infants, children and adolescents
Fine Tuning in General Gauge Mediation
We study the fine-tuning problem in the context of general gauge mediation.
Numerical analyses toward for relaxing fine-tuning are presented. We analyse
the problem in typical three cases of the messenger scale, that is, GUT
( GeV), intermediate ( GeV), and relatively low energy
( GeV) scales. In each messenger scale, the parameter space reducing the
degree of tuning as around 10% is found. Certain ratios among gluino mass, wino
mass and soft scalar masses are favorable. It is shown that the favorable
region becomes narrow as the messenger scale becomes lower, and tachyonic
initial conditions of stop masses at the messenger scale are favored to relax
the fine-tuning problem for the relatively low energy messenger scale. Our
spectra would also be important from the viewpoint of the problem.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures, comment adde
Supersymmetry in the shadow of photini
Additional neutral gauge fermions -- "photini" -- arise in string
compactifications as superpartners of U(1) gauge fields. Unlike their vector
counterparts, the photini can acquire weak-scale masses from soft SUSY breaking
and lead to observable signatures at the LHC through mass mixing with the bino.
In this work we investigate the collider consequences of adding photini to the
neutralino sector of the MSSM. Relatively large mixing of one or more photini
with the bino can lead to prompt decays of the lightest ordinary supersymmetric
particle; these extra cascades transfer most of the energy of SUSY decay chains
into Standard Model particles, diminishing the power of missing energy as an
experimental handle for signal discrimination. We demonstrate that the missing
energy in SUSY events with photini is reduced dramatically for supersymmetric
spectra with MSSM neutralinos near the weak scale, and study the effects on
limits set by the leading hadronic SUSY searches at ATLAS and CMS. We find that
in the presence of even one light photino the limits on squark masses from
hadronic searches can be reduced by 400 GeV, with comparable (though more
modest) reduction of gluino mass limits. We also consider potential discovery
channels such as dilepton and multilepton searches, which remain sensitive to
SUSY spectra with photini and can provide an unexpected route to the discovery
of supersymmetry. Although presented in the context of photini, our results
apply in general to theories in which additional light neutral fermions mix
with MSSM gauginos.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, references adde
SUSY, the Third Generation and the LHC
We develop a bottom-up approach to studying SUSY with light stops and
sbottoms, but with other squarks and sleptons heavy and beyond reach of the
LHC. We discuss the range of squark, gaugino and Higgsino masses for which the
electroweak scale is radiatively stable over the "little hierarchy" below ~ 10
TeV. We review and expand on indirect constraints on this scenario, in
particular from flavor and CP tests. We emphasize that in this context,
R-parity violation is very well motivated. The phenomenological differences
between Majorana and Dirac gauginos are also discussed. Finally, we focus on
the light subsystem of stops, sbottom and neutralino with R-parity, in order to
probe the current collider bounds. We find that 1/fb LHC bounds are mild and
large parts of the motivated parameter space remain open, while the 10/fb data
can be much more decisive.Comment: 42 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. V2: minor corrections, references adde
Constraints on supersymmetry with light third family from LHC data
We present a re-interpretation of the recent ATLAS limits on supersymmetry in
channels with jets (with and without b-tags) and missing energy, in the context
of light third family squarks, while the first two squark families are
inaccessible at the 7 TeV run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In contrast
to interpretations in terms of the high-scale based constrained minimal
supersymmetric standard model (CMSSM), we primarily use the low-scale
parametrisation of the phenomenological MSSM (pMSSM), and translate the limits
in terms of physical masses of the third family squarks. Side by side, we also
investigate the limits in terms of high-scale scalar non-universality, both
with and without low-mass sleptons. Our conclusion is that the limits based on
0-lepton channels are not altered by the mass-scale of sleptons, and can be
considered more or less model-independent.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Version published in JHE
Strong Double Higgs Production at the LHC
The hierarchy problem and the electroweak data, together, provide a plausible
motivation for considering a light Higgs emerging as a pseudo-Goldstone boson
from a strongly-coupled sector. In that scenario, the rates for Higgs
production and decay differ significantly from those in the Standard Model.
However, one genuine strong coupling signature is the growth with energy of the
scattering amplitudes among the Goldstone bosons, the longitudinally polarized
vector bosons as well as the Higgs boson itself. The rate for double Higgs
production in vector boson fusion is thus enhanced with respect to its
negligible rate in the SM. We study that reaction in pp collisions, where the
production of two Higgs bosons at high pT is associated with the emission of
two forward jets. We concentrate on the decay mode hh -> WW^(*)WW^(*) and study
the semi-leptonic decay chains of the W's with 2, 3 or 4 leptons in the final
states. While the 3 lepton final states are the most relevant and can lead to a
3 sigma signal significance with 300 fb^{-1} collected at a 14 TeV LHC, the two
same-sign lepton final states provide complementary information. We also
comment on the prospects for improving the detectability of double Higgs
production at the foreseen LHC energy and luminosity upgrades.Comment: 54 pages, 26 figures. v2: typos corrected, a few comments and one
table added. Version published in JHE
On the effect of resonances in composite Higgs phenomenology
We consider a generic composite Higgs model based on the coset SO(5)/SO(4)
and study its phenomenology beyond the leading low-energy effective lagrangian
approximation. Our basic goal is to introduce in a controllable and simple way
the lowest-lying, possibly narrow, resonances that may exist is such models. We
do so by proposing a criterion that we call partial UV completion. We
characterize the simplest cases, corresponding respectively to a scalar in
either singlet or tensor representation of SO(4) and to vectors in the adjoint
of SO(4). We study the impact of these resonances on the signals associated to
high-energy vector boson scattering, pointing out for each resonance the
characteristic patterns of depletion and enhancement with respect to the
leading-order chiral lagrangian. En route we derive the O(p^4) general chiral
lagrangian and discuss its peculiar accidental and approximate symmetries.Comment: v3: a few typos corrected. Conclusions unchange
Hidden SUSY at the LHC: the light higgsino-world scenario and the role of a lepton collider
While the SUSY flavor, CP and gravitino problems seem to favor a very heavy
spectrum of matter scalars, fine-tuning in the electroweak sector prefers low
values of superpotential mass \mu. In the limit of low \mu, the two lightest
neutralinos and light chargino are higgsino-like. The light charginos and
neutralinos may have large production cross sections at LHC, but since they are
nearly mass degenerate, there is only small energy release in three-body
sparticle decays. Possible dilepton and trilepton signatures are difficult to
observe after mild cuts due to the very soft p_T spectrum of the final state
isolated leptons. Thus, the higgsino-world scenario can easily elude standard
SUSY searches at the LHC. It should motivate experimental searches to focus on
dimuon and trimuon production at the very lowest p_T(\mu) values possible. If
the neutralino relic abundance is enhanced via non-standard cosmological dark
matter production, then there exist excellent prospects for direct or indirect
detection of higgsino-like WIMPs. While the higgsino-world scenario may easily
hide from LHC SUSY searches, a linear e^+e^- collider or a muon collider
operating in the \sqrt{s}\sim 0.5-1 TeV range would be able to easily access
the chargino and neutralino pair production reactions.Comment: 20 pages including 12 .eps figure
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