Constraints from orbital motions around the Earth of the environmental fifth-force hypothesis for the OPERA superluminal neutrino phenomenology

It has been recently suggested by Dvali and Vikman that the superluminal neutrino phenomenology of the OPERA experiment may be due to an environmental feature of the Earth, naturally yielding a long-range fifth force of gravitational origin whose coupling with the neutrino is set by the scale M_*, in units of reduced Planck mass. Its characteristic length lambda should not be smaller than one Earth's radius R_e, while its upper bound is expected to be slightly smaller than the Earth-Moon distance (60 R_e). We analytically work out some orbital effects of a Yukawa-type fifth force for a test particle moving in the modified field of a central body. Our results are quite general since they are not restricted to any particular size of lambda; moreover, they are valid for an arbitrary orbital configuration of the particle, i.e. for any value of its eccentricity $e$. We find that the dimensionless strength coupling parameter alpha is constrained to |alpha| <= 1 10^-10-4 10^-9 for 1 R_e <= lambda <= 10 R_e by the laser data of the Earth's artificial satellite LAGEOS II, corresponding to M_* >= 4 10^9 -1.6 10^10. The Moon perigee allows to obtain |alpha| <= 3 10^-11 for the Earth-Moon pair in the range 15 R_e <= lambda = 3 10^10 - 4.5 10^10. Our results are neither necessarily limited to the superluminal OPERA scenario nor to the Dvali-Vikman model, in which it is M_* = 10^-6 at lambda = 1 R_e, in contrast with our bounds: they generally extend to any theoretical scenario implying a fifth-force of Yukawa-type.Comment: LaTex2e, 18 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, 81 reference

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum