Qualitative Properties of Magnetic Fields in Scalar Field Cosmology

We study the qualitative properties of the class of spatially homogeneous Bianchi VI_o cosmological models containing a perfect fluid with a linear equation of state, a scalar field with an exponential potential and a uniform cosmic magnetic field, using dynamical systems techniques. We find that all models evolve away from an expanding massless scalar field model in which the matter and the magnetic field are negligible dynamically. We also find that for a particular range of parameter values the models evolve towards the usual power-law inflationary model (with no magnetic field) and, furthermore, we conclude that inflation is not fundamentally affected by the presence of a uniform primordial magnetic field. We investigate the physical properties of the Bianchi I magnetic field models in some detail.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures in REVTeX format. to appear in Phys. Rev.

Combination of Searches for Invisible Higgs Boson Decays with the ATLAS Experiment

Dark matter particles, if sufficiently light, may be produced in decays of the Higgs boson. This Letter presents a statistical combination of searches for H -> invisible decays where H is produced according to the standard model via vector boson fusion, Z(ll)H, and W/Z(had)H, all performed with the ATLAS detector using 36.1 fb(-1) of pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of root s = 13 TeV at the LHC. In combination with the results at root s = 7 and 8 TeV, an exclusion limit on the H -> invisible branching ratio of 0.26(0.17(-0.05)(+0.07)) at 95% confidence level is observed (expected).ANPCyT, Argentina; YerPhI, Armenia; ARC, Australia; BMWFW, Austria; FWF, Austria; ANAS, Azerbaijan; SSTC, Belarus; CNPq, Brazil; FAPESP, Brazil; NSERC, Canada; NRC, Canada; CFI, Canada; CERN; CONICYT, Chile; CAS, China; MOST, China; NSFC, China; COLCIENCIAS, Colombia; MSMT CR, Czech Republic; MPO CR, Czech Republic; VSC CR, Czech Republic; DNRF, Denmark; DNSRC, Denmark; IN2P3-CNRS; CEA-DRF/IRFU, France; SRNSFG, Georgia; BMBF, Germany; HGF, Germany; MPG, Germany; GSRT, Greece; RGC, Hong Kong SAR, China; ISF, Israel; Benoziyo Center, Israel; INFN, Italy; MEXT, Japan; JSPS, Japan; CNRST, Morocco; NWO, Netherlands; RCN, Norway; MNiSW, Poland; NCN, Poland; FCT, Portugal; MNE/IFA, Romania; MES of Russia; NRC KI, Russian Federation; JINR; MESTD, Serbia; MSSR, Slovakia; ARRS, Slovenia; MIZS, Slovenia; DST/NRF, South Africa; MINECO, Spain; SRC, Sweden; Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; SERI, Switzerland; SNSF, Switzerland; Canton of Bern, Switzerland; Canton of Geneva, Switzerland; MOST, Taiwan; TAEK, Turkey; STFC, United Kingdom; DOE, United States of America; NSF, United States of America; BCKDF, Canada; CANARIE, Canada; CRC, Canada; Compute Canada, Canada; COST, European Union; ERC, European Union; ERDF, European Union; Horizon 2020, European Union; Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, European Union; Investissements d' Avenir Labex, ANR, France; Idex, ANR, France; DFG, Germany; AvH Foundation, Germany; Herakleitos programme - EU-ESF; Thales programme - EU-ESF; Aristeia programme - EU-ESF; Greek NSRF, Greece; BSF-NSF, Israel; GIF, Israel; CERCA Programme Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain; The Royal Society, United Kingdom; Leverhulme Trust, United KingdomThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Mass Loss Due to Sputtering and Thermal Processes in Meteoroid Ablation

Conventional meteoroid theory assumes that the dominant mode of ablation is by evaporation following intense heating during atmospheric flight. In this paper we consider the question of whether sputtering may provide an alternative disintegration process of some importance.For meteoroids in the mass range from 10^-3 to 10^-13 kg and covering a meteor velocity range from 11 to 71 km/s, we numerically modeled both thermal ablation and sputtering ablation during atmospheric flight. We considered three meteoroid models believed to be representative of asteroidal (3300 kg m^-3 mass density), cometary (1000 kg m^-3) and porous cometary (300 kg m^-3) meteoroid structures. Atmospheric profiles which considered the molecular compositions at different heights were used in the sputtering calculations. We find that while in many cases (particularly at low velocities and for relatively large meteoroid masses) sputtering contributes only a small amount of mass loss during atmospheric flight, in some cases sputtering is very important. For example, a 10^-10 kg porous meteoroid at 40 km/s will lose nearly 51% of its mass by sputtering, while a 10^-13 kg asteroidal meteoroid at 60 km/s will lose nearly 83% of its mass by sputtering. We argue that sputtering may explain the light production observed at very great heights in some Leonid meteors. The impact of this work will be most dramatic for very small meteoroids such as those observed with large aperture radars.Comment: in pdf form, 48 pgs incl figures and table

Aspects of String-Gas Cosmology at Finite Temperature

We study string-gas cosmology in dilaton gravity, inspired by the fact that it naturally arises in a string theory context. Our main interest is the thermodynamical treatment of the string-gas and the resulting implications for the cosmology. Within an adiabatic approximation, thermodynamical equilibrium and a small, toroidal universe as initial conditions, we numerically solve the corresponding equations of motions in two different regimes describing the string-gas thermodynamics: (i) the Hagedorn regime, with a single scale factor, and (ii) an almost-radiation dominated regime, which includes the leading corrections due to the lightest Kaluza Klein and winding modes, with two scale factors. The scale factor in the Hagedorn regime exhibits very slow time evolution with nearly constant energy and negligible pressure. By contrast, in case (ii) we find interesting cosmological solutions where the large dimensions continue to expand and the small ones are kept undetectably small.Comment: 21 pages, 5 eps figure

The Science of Sungrazers, Sunskirters, and Other Near-Sun Comets

This review addresses our current understanding of comets that venture close to the Sun, and are hence exposed to much more extreme conditions than comets that are typically studied from Earth. The extreme solar heating and plasma environments that these objects encounter change many aspects of their behaviour, thus yielding valuable information on both the comets themselves that complements other data we have on primitive solar system bodies, as well as on the near-solar environment which they traverse. We propose clear definitions for these comets: We use the term near-Sun comets to encompass all objects that pass sunward of the perihelion distance of planet Mercury (0.307 AU). Sunskirters are defined as objects that pass within 33 solar radii of the Sun’s centre, equal to half of Mercury’s perihelion distance, and the commonly-used phrase sungrazers to be objects that reach perihelion within 3.45 solar radii, i.e. the fluid Roche limit. Finally, comets with orbits that intersect the solar photosphere are termed sundivers. We summarize past studies of these objects, as well as the instruments and facilities used to study them, including space-based platforms that have led to a recent revolution in the quantity and quality of relevant observations. Relevant comet populations are described, including the Kreutz, Marsden, Kracht, and Meyer groups, near-Sun asteroids, and a brief discussion of their origins. The importance of light curves and the clues they provide on cometary composition are emphasized, together with what information has been gleaned about nucleus parameters, including the sizes and masses of objects and their families, and their tensile strengths. The physical processes occurring at these objects are considered in some detail, including the disruption of nuclei, sublimation, and ionisation, and we consider the mass, momentum, and energy loss of comets in the corona and those that venture to lower altitudes. The different components of comae and tails are described, including dust, neutral and ionised gases, their chemical reactions, and their contributions to the near-Sun environment. Comet-solar wind interactions are discussed, including the use of comets as probes of solar wind and coronal conditions in their vicinities. We address the relevance of work on comets near the Sun to similar objects orbiting other stars, and conclude with a discussion of future directions for the field and the planned ground- and space-based facilities that will allow us to address those science topics

Measurement of the View the tt production cross-section using eμ events with b-tagged jets in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper describes a measurement of the inclusive top quark pair production cross-section (σtt¯) with a data sample of 3.2 fb−1 of proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 13 TeV, collected in 2015 by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. This measurement uses events with an opposite-charge electron–muon pair in the final state. Jets containing b-quarks are tagged using an algorithm based on track impact parameters and reconstructed secondary vertices. The numbers of events with exactly one and exactly two b-tagged jets are counted and used to determine simultaneously σtt¯ and the efficiency to reconstruct and b-tag a jet from a top quark decay, thereby minimising the associated systematic uncertainties. The cross-section is measured to be: σtt¯ = 818 ± 8 (stat) ± 27 (syst) ± 19 (lumi) ± 12 (beam) pb, where the four uncertainties arise from data statistics, experimental and theoretical systematic effects, the integrated luminosity and the LHC beam energy, giving a total relative uncertainty of 4.4%. The result is consistent with theoretical QCD calculations at next-to-next-to-leading order. A fiducial measurement corresponding to the experimental acceptance of the leptons is also presented

Search for strong gravity in multijet final states produced in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV using the ATLAS detector at the LHC

A search is conducted for new physics in multijet final states using 3.6 inverse femtobarns of data from proton-proton collisions at √s = 13TeV taken at the CERN Large Hadron Collider with the ATLAS detector. Events are selected containing at least three jets with scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT) greater than 1TeV. No excess is seen at large HT and limits are presented on new physics: models which produce final states containing at least three jets and having cross sections larger than 1.6 fb with HT > 5.8 TeV are excluded. Limits are also given in terms of new physics models of strong gravity that hypothesize additional space-time dimensions

Search for TeV-scale gravity signatures in high-mass final states with leptons and jets with the ATLAS detector at sqrt [ s ] = 13TeV

A search for physics beyond the Standard Model, in final states with at least one high transverse momentum charged lepton (electron or muon) and two additional high transverse momentum leptons or jets, is performed using 3.2 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2015 at √s = 13 TeV. The upper end of the distribution of the scalar sum of the transverse momenta of leptons and jets is sensitive to the production of high-mass objects. No excess of events beyond Standard Model predictions is observed. Exclusion limits are set for models of microscopic black holes with two to six extra dimensions

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector during 2011 data taking

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector at the LHC during the 2011 data taking period is described. During 2011 the LHC provided proton–proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and heavy ion collisions with a 2.76 TeV per nucleon–nucleon collision energy. The ATLAS trigger is a three level system designed to reduce the rate of events from the 40 MHz nominal maximum bunch crossing rate to the approximate 400 Hz which can be written to offline storage. The ATLAS jet trigger is the primary means for the online selection of events containing jets. Events are accepted by the trigger if they contain one or more jets above some transverse energy threshold. During 2011 data taking the jet trigger was fully efficient for jets with transverse energy above 25 GeV for triggers seeded randomly at Level 1. For triggers which require a jet to be identified at each of the three trigger levels, full efficiency is reached for offline jets with transverse energy above 60 GeV. Jets reconstructed in the final trigger level and corresponding to offline jets with transverse energy greater than 60 GeV, are reconstructed with a resolution in transverse energy with respect to offline jets, of better than 4 % in the central region and better than 2.5 % in the forward direction

Search for dark matter produced in association with a hadronically decaying vector boson in pp collisions at sqrt (s) = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search is presented for dark matter produced in association with a hadronically decaying W or Z boson using 3.2 fb−1 of pp collisions at View the MathML sources=13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Events with a hadronic jet compatible with a W or Z boson and with large missing transverse momentum are analysed. The data are consistent with the Standard Model predictions and are interpreted in terms of both an effective field theory and a simplified model containing dark matter