Virtual moduli cycles and Gromov-Witten invariants of algebraic varieties

We introduce a method of constructing the virtual cycle of any scheme associated with a tangent-obstruction complex. We apply this method to constructing the virtual moduli cycle of the moduli of stable maps from n-pointed genus g curves to any smooth projective variety. As an application, we give an algebraic definition of GW-invariants for any smooth projective variety.Comment: 68 pages, Amstex. Revised version. It appeared in J. of Amer. Math. Soc. Jan 9

Spin Correlations in top quark pair production near threshold at the e−e+ e^- e^+ Linear Collider

We investigate the spin correlations in top quark pair production near threshold at the $e^- e^+$ linear collider. Comparing with the results above the threshold region, we find that near the threshold region the off-diagonal basis, the optimized decomposition of the top quark spins above the threshold region, does not exist, and the beamline basis is the optimal basis, in which there are the dominant spin components: the up-down (UD) component for $e_L^- e^+$ scattering and the down-up (DU) component for $e_R^- e^+$ scattering can make up more than 50% of the total cross section, respectively.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, minor modification

Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for associated production of top squarks and charginos at the CERN LHC

We present the calculations of the complete next-to-leading order (NLO) inclusive total cross sections for the associated production processes $pp\to \tilde{t}_i\tilde{\chi}_k^-+X$ in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Our calculations show that the total cross sections for the $\tilde{t}_1\tilde{\chi}_1^-$ production for the lighter top squark masses in the region 100 GeV $< m_{\tilde{t}_1}<$ 160 GeV can reach 1 pb in the favorable parameter space allowed by the current precise experiments, and in other cases the total cross sections generally vary from 10 fb to several hundred fb except both $m_{\tilde{t}_1}>$ 500 GeV and the $\tilde{t}_2\tilde{\chi}_2^-$ production channel. Moreover, we find that the NLO QCD corrections in general enhance the leading order total cross sections significantly, and vastly reduce the dependence of the total cross sections on the renormalization/factorization scale, which leads to increased confidence in predictions based on these results.Comment: 42 pages, 13 figures, RevTex4. Journal-ref adde