PeV-Scale Supersymmetry

Although supersymmetry has not been seen directly by experiment, there are powerful physics reasons to suspect that it should be an ingredient of nature and that superpartner masses should be somewhat near the weak scale. I present an argument that if we dismiss our ordinary intuition of finetuning, and focus entirely on more concrete physics issues, the PeV scale might be the best place for supersymmetry. PeV-scale supersymmetry admits gauge coupling unification, predicts a Higgs mass between 125 GeV and 155 GeV, and generally disallows flavor changing neutral currents and CP violating effects in conflict with current experiment. The PeV scale is motivated independently by dark matter and neutrino mass considerations.Comment: 5 RevTex page

Behaviour change at work: Empowering energy efficiency in the workplace through user-centred design

Copyright @ 2011 University of California eScholarship RepositoryCO2 emissions from non-domestic buildings - primarily workplaces - make up 18 percent of the UK's carbon footprint. A combination of technology advances and behavioural changes have the potential to make significant impact, but interventions have often been planned in ways which do not take into account the needs, levels of understanding and everyday behavioural contexts of building users - and hence do not achieve the hoped-for success.This paper provides a brief introduction to the Empower project, a current industrial-academic collaboration in the UK which is applying methods from user-centred design practice to understand diverse users' needs, priorities, mental models of energy and decision-making heuristics - as well as the affordances available to them - in a number of office buildings. We are developing and trialling a set of low-cost, simple software interventions tailored to multiple user groups with different degrees of agency over their energy use, which seek to influence more energy efficient behaviour at work in areas such as HVAC, lighting and equipment use. The project comprises an ethnographic research phase, a participatory design programme involving building users in the design of interventions, and iterative trials in a large office building in central London

Relativistic Turbulence: A Long Way from Preheating to Equilibrium

We study, both numerically and analytically, the development of equilibrium after preheating. We show that the process is characterised by the appearance of Kolmogorov spectra and the evolution towards thermal equilibrium follows self-similar dynamics. Simplified kinetic theory gives values for all characteristic exponents which are close to what is observed in lattice simulations. The resulting time for thermalization is long, and temperature at thermalization is low, $T \sim 100$ eV in the simple $\lambda \Phi^4$ inflationary model. Our results allow a straightforward generalization to realistic models.Comment: 4 pages, 3figures, LaTe

Chronic bacterial prostatitis: efficacy of short-lasting antibiotic therapy with prulifloxacin (Unidrox®) in association with saw palmetto extract, lactobacillus sporogens and arbutin (Lactorepens®)

Bacterial prostatitis (BP) is a common condition accounting responsible for about 5-10% of all prostatitis cases; chronic bacterial prostatitis (CBP) classified as type II, are less common but is a condition that significantly hampers the quality of life, (QoL) because not only is it a physical condition but also a psychological distress. Commonly patients are treated with antibiotics alone, and in particular fluoroquinolones are suggested by the European Urology guidelines. This approach, although recommended, may not be enough. Thus, a multimodal approach to the prolonged antibiotic therapy may be helpful.210 patients affected by chronic bacterial prostatitis were enrolled in the study. All patients were positive to Meares-Stamey test and symptoms duration was > 3 months. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of a long lasting therapy with a fluoroquinolone in association with a nutraceutical supplement (prulifloxacin 600 mg for 21 days and an association of Serenoa repens 320 mg, Lactobacillus Sporogens 200 mg, Arbutin 100 mg for 30 days). Patients were randomized in two groups (A and B) receiving respectively antibiotic alone and an association of antibiotic plus supplement.Biological recurrence at 2 months in Group A was observed in 21 patients (27.6%) and in Group B in 6 patients (7.8%). Uropathogens found at the first follow-up were for the majority Gram - (E. coli and Enterobacter spp.). A statistically significant difference was found at the time of the follow-up between Group A and B in the NIH-CPSI questionnaire score, symptoms evidence and serum PSA.Broad band, short-lasting antibiotic therapy in association with a nutritional supplement (serenoa repens, lactobacillus sporogens and arbutin) show better control and recurrence rate on patients affected by chronic bacterial prostatitits in comparison with antibiotic treatment alone.NCT02130713Date of trial Registration: 30/04/2014

Loop-Effects in Pseudo-Supersymmetry

We analyze the transmission of supersymmetry breaking in brane-world models of pseudo-supersymmetry. In these models two branes preserve different halves of the bulk supersymmetry. Thus supersymmetry is broken although each sector of the model is supersymmetric when considered separately. The world-volume theory on one brane feels the breakdown of supersymmetry only through two-loop interactions involving a coupling to fields from the other brane. In a 5D toy model with bulk vectors, we compute the diagrams that contribute to scalar masses on one brane and find that the masses are proportional to the compactification scale up to logarithmic corrections, m^2 ~ (2 pi R)^{-2}(ln(2 pi R ms)-1.1), where ms is an ultraviolet cutoff. Thus, for large compactification radii, where this result is valid, the brane scalars acquire a positive mass squared. We also compute the three-loop diagrams relevant to the Casimir energy between the two branes and find E ~ (2 pi R)^{-4}((ln(2 pi R ms)-1.7)^2+0.2). For large radii, this yields a repulsive Casimir force.Comment: Latex, 30 pages, 6 figures, v2: minor corrections, comments on susy algebra and x^5 covariant derivative adde

Brane Cosmology and KK Gravitinos

The cosmology of KK gravitinos in models with extra dimensions is considered. The main result is that the production of such KK modes is not compatible with an epoch of non--standard expansion after inflation. This is so because the BBN constraint on the zero mode forces the reduced five dimensional Planck mass $M_5$ down to values much smaller than the usual four dimensional one, but this in turn implies many KK states available for a given temperature. Once these states are taken into account one finds that there is no $M_5$ for which the produced KK gravitinos satisfy BBN and overclosure constraints. This conclusion holds for both flat and warped models in which only gravity propagates in the full spacetime.Comment: 19 pages, references added, IoP styl

Brane world models need low string scale

Models with large extra dimensions offer the possibility of the Planck scale being of order the electroweak scale, thus alleviating the gauge hierarchy problem. We show that these models suffer from a breakdown of unitarity at around three quarters of the low effective Planck scale. An obvious candidate to fix the unitarity problem is string theory. We therefore argue that it is necessary for the string scale to appear below the effective Planck scale and that the first signature of such models would be string resonances. We further translate experimental bounds on the string scale into bounds on the effective Planck scale

New D-term chaotic inflation in supergravity and leptogenesis

We present a new model of D-term dominated chaotic inflation in supergravity. The F-flat direction present in this model is lifted by the dominant D-term, which leads to chaotic inflation and subsequent reheating. No cosmic string is formed after inflation because the U(1) gauge symmetry is broken during inflation. The leptogenesis scenario via the inflaton decay in our D-term chaotic inflation scenario is also discussed.Comment: 14 pages, no figure, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking and its test in linear colliders

Signatures of anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking in linear colliders are briefly reviewed after presenting an outline of the theoretical framework. A unique and distinct feature of a large class of models of this type is a winolike chargino which is very closely degenerate in mass with the lightest neutralino. The very slow decay of this chargino results in a heavily ionizing charged track and one soft charged pion with a characteristic momentum distribution, leading to unique signals in linear colliders which are essentially free of background. The determination of chargino and slepton masses from such events is a distinctly interesting possibility.Comment: 15 pages, LaTex, 4 PS figures, ws-mpla.cls file included. One reference added. To appear as a Brief Review in Modern Physics Letters