104 research outputs found
Bostonia. Volume 4
Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs
Signals from extra dimensions decoupled from the compactification scale
Multilocalization provides a simple way of decoupling the mass scale of new
physics from the compactification scale of extra dimensions. It naturally
appears, for example, when localization of fermion zero modes is used to
explain the observed fermion spectrum, leaving low energy remnants of the
geometrical origin of the fermion mass hierarchy. We study the phenomenology of
the simplest five dimensional model with order one Yukawa couplings reproducing
the standard fermion masses and mixing angles and with a light Kaluza-Klein
quark Q_{2/3} saturating experimental limits on V_{tb} and m_Q, and then with
observable new effects at Tevatron.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figs; v2 reference and comments added to match the
published version. A discussion of the limits from precision electroweak data
is included. Conclusions are unchange
Chromosphere of K giant stars Geometrical extent and spatial structure detection
We aim to constrain the geometrical extent of the chromosphere of non-binary
K giant stars and detect any spatial structures in the chromosphere. We
performed observations with the CHARA interferometer and the VEGA beam combiner
at optical wavelengths. We observed seven non-binary K giant stars. We measured
the ratio of the radii of the photosphere to the chromosphere using the
interferometric measurements in the Halpha and the Ca II infrared triplet line
cores. For beta Ceti, spectro-interferometric observations are compared to an
non-local thermal equilibrium (NLTE) semi-empirical model atmosphere including
a chromosphere. The NLTE computations provide line intensities and contribution
functions that indicate the relative locations where the line cores are formed
and can constrain the size of the limb-darkened disk of the stars with
chromospheres. We measured the angular diameter of seven K giant stars and
deduced their fundamental parameters: effective temperatures, radii,
luminosities, and masses. We determined the geometrical extent of the
chromosphere for four giant stars. The chromosphere extents obtained range
between 16% to 47% of the stellar radius. The NLTE computations confirm that
the Ca II/849 nm line core is deeper in the chromosphere of ? Cet than either
of the Ca II/854 nm and Ca II/866 nm line cores. We present a modified version
of a semi-empirical model atmosphere derived by fitting the Ca II triplet line
cores of this star. In four of our targets, we also detect the signature of a
differential signal showing the presence of asymmetries in the chromospheres.
Conclusions. It is the first time that geometrical extents and structure in the
chromospheres of non-binary K giant stars are determined by interferometry.
These observations provide strong constrains on stellar atmosphere models.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figure
B decays and Supersymmetry
I discuss how supersymmetry affects various observables in B decays, and
point out the interesting channels in the context of B factories.Comment: LaTex file of working group talk presented at WHEPP-7, HRI,
Allahabad, Jan. 200
Direct Detection of Dark Matter in Supersymmetric Models
We evaluate neutralino-nucleon scattering rates in several well-motivated
supersymmetric models, and compare against constraints on the neutralino relic
density, BF( b\to s\gamma ) as well as the muon anomalous magnetic moment a_\mu
. In the mSUGRA model, the indirect constraints favor the hyperbolic
branch/focus point (HB/FP) region of parameter space, and in fact this region
is just where neutralino-nucleon scattering rates are high enough to be
detected in direct dark matter search experiments! In Yukawa unified SUSY
SO(10) models with scalar mass non-universality, the relic density of
neutralinos is almost always above experimental bounds, while the corresponding
direct detection rates are below experimental levels. Conversely, in five
dimensional SO(10) models where gauge symmetry breaking is the result of
compactification of the extra dimension, and supersymmetry breaking is
communicated via gaugino mediation, the relic density is quite low, while
direct detection rates can be substantial.Comment: 25 page latex file including 18 EPS figures; revised version with
references added and cross sections rescaled; figures changed. A copy of the
paper with better resolution figures can be found at
http://www.hep.fsu.edu/~belyaev/projects/directz1
Identification of Radiopure Titanium for the LZ Dark Matter Experiment and Future Rare Event Searches
The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment will search for dark matter particle
interactions with a detector containing a total of 10 tonnes of liquid xenon
within a double-vessel cryostat. The large mass and proximity of the cryostat
to the active detector volume demand the use of material with extremely low
intrinsic radioactivity. We report on the radioassay campaign conducted to
identify suitable metals, the determination of factors limiting radiopure
production, and the selection of titanium for construction of the LZ cryostat
and other detector components. This titanium has been measured with activities
of U~1.6~mBq/kg, U~0.09~mBq/kg,
Th~~mBq/kg, Th~~mBq/kg, K~0.54~mBq/kg, and Co~0.02~mBq/kg (68\% CL).
Such low intrinsic activities, which are some of the lowest ever reported for
titanium, enable its use for future dark matter and other rare event searches.
Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to assess the expected background
contribution from the LZ cryostat with this radioactivity. In 1,000 days of
WIMP search exposure of a 5.6-tonne fiducial mass, the cryostat will contribute
only a mean background of (stat)(sys) counts.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astroparticle
Physic
Large Beyond-Leading-Order Effects in b -> s gamma in Supersymmetry with General Flavor Mixing
We examine squark--gluino loop effects on the process in
minimal supersymmetry with general flavor mixing in the squark sector. In the
regime of heavy squarks and gluino, we derive analytic expressions for the
beyond--LO corrections to the Wilson coefficients and find them to be often
large, especially at large and . The ensuing ranges of
values of the Wilson coefficients are typically smaller than in the LO
approximation, and sometimes even change sign. This has the effect of often
reducing, relative to the LO, the magnitude of supersymmetric contributions to
. This ``focusing effect'' is caused by contributions
from: (i) an RG evolution of the Wilson coefficients; (ii) a correction to the
LO chargino contribution to the Wilson coefficients, which can considerably
reduce the LO gluino contribution. This partial cancellation of the two
contributions takes place only in the case of general flavor mixing. As a
result, stringent lower bounds on the mass scale of superpartners, which apply
in the case of minimal flavor violation, can be substantially reduced for even
small departures from the scenario. The often disfavored case of can
also become allowed for as small as 200 GeV, compared to >
500 GeV at LO and over 2 TeV in the case of minimal flavor violation.
Limits on the allowed amount of flavor mixing among the 2nd and 3rd generation
down--type squarks are also typically considerably weakened. The input CKM
matrix element can be larger than the experimental value by a
factor of ten, or can be as small as zero.Comment: 46 page, 36 figures. v2: some clarifications and Ref.[5] added.
Version to appear in JHE
Large-Scale Discovery and Characterization of Protein Regulatory Motifs in Eukaryotes
The increasing ability to generate large-scale, quantitative proteomic data has brought with it the challenge of analyzing such data to discover the sequence elements that underlie systems-level protein behavior. Here we show that short, linear protein motifs can be efficiently recovered from proteome-scale datasets such as sub-cellular localization, molecular function, half-life, and protein abundance data using an information theoretic approach. Using this approach, we have identified many known protein motifs, such as phosphorylation sites and localization signals, and discovered a large number of candidate elements. We estimate that ∼80% of these are novel predictions in that they do not match a known motif in both sequence and biological context, suggesting that post-translational regulation of protein behavior is still largely unexplored. These predicted motifs, many of which display preferential association with specific biological pathways and non-random positioning in the linear protein sequence, provide focused hypotheses for experimental validation
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