Slepton mass splittings and cLFV in the SUSY seesaw in the light of recent experimental results

Following recent experimental developments, in this study we re-evaluate if the interplay of high- and low-energy lepton flavour violating observables remains a viable probe to test the high-scale type-I supersymmetric seesaw. Our analysis shows that fully constrained supersymmetric scenarios no longer allow to explore this interplay, since recent LHC data precludes the possibility of having sizeable slepton mass differences for a slepton spectrum sufficiently light to be produced, and in association to BR(mu -> e gamma) within experimental reach. However, relaxing the strict universality of supersymmetric soft-breaking terms, and fully exploring heavy neutrino dynamics, still allows to have slepton mass splittings O(few %), for slepton masses accessible at the LHC, with associated mu -> e gamma rates within future sensitivity. For these scenarios, we illustrate how the correlation between high- and low-energy lepton flavour violating observables allows to probe the high-scale supersymmetric seesaw.Comment: 19 pages, 12 eps figures. References updated; matches version accepted by JHE

When Do Firms Hire Lobbyists? The Organization of Lobbying at the Federal Communications Commission

This paper examines the explanatory power of transaction cost economics to explain vertical integration decisions for lobbying by firms. We examine 150 lobbying contacts at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the issue of payphone compensation for dial-around calls. When firms lobby on topics that are highly firm-specific and prone to sensitive-information leakage, they are more likely to use employees to lobby the FCC. However, when topics arise that are more general to the industry and do not include sensitive information, firms are more likely to use outside counsel to lobby the FCC.

Phenomenology of LFV at low-energies and at the LHC: strategies to probe the SUSY seesaw

We study the impact of a type-I SUSY seesaw concerning lepton flavour violation (LFV) at low-energies and at the LHC. At the LHC, $\chi_2^0\to \tilde \ell \,\ell \to \ell \,\ell\,\chi_1^0$ decays, in combination with other observables, render feasible the reconstruction of the masses of the intermediate sleptons, and hence the study of $\ell_i - \ell_j$ mass differences. If interpreted as being due to the violation of lepton flavour, high-energy observables, such as large slepton mass splittings and flavour violating neutralino and slepton decays, are expected to be accompanied by low-energy manifestations of LFV such as radiative and three-body lepton decays. We discuss how to devise strategies based in the interplay of slepton mass splittings as might be observed at the LHC and low-energy LFV observables to derive important information on the underlying mechanism of LFV.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Tau Lepton Physics (TAU2010), Manchester, UK, 13-17 September 201