Japan's new security agenda

New Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has only been in office since late September, but already the outlines of his administration are becoming clearer, both in expected and unexpected directions. Abe’s administration is proving to be conservative and revisionist, and even more so than that of his predecessor Junichirō Koizumi. Abe has certainly moved to improve ties with China and South Korea—Beijing and Seoul the October destinations for his first overseas visits within two weeks of taking power—and thereby to limit the damage wrought by Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine and bilateral wrangling over Japan’s colonial history. However, the general thrust of Abe’s diplomacy is built upon much of the legacy left by Koizumi, and is attempting to shift it on to a yet more pro-active and assertive path

Neutralino Dark Matter in a Class of Unified Theories

The cosmological significance of the neutralino sector is studied for a class of models in which electroweak symmetry breaking is seeded by a gauge singlet. Extensive use is made of the renormalisation group equations to significantly reduce the parameter space, by deriving analytic expressions for all the supersymmetry-breaking couplings in terms of the universal gaugino mass $m_{1/2}$, the universal scalar mass $m_0$ and the coupling $A$. The composition of the LSP is determined exactly below the W mass, no approximations are made for sfermion masses, and all particle exchanges are considered in calculating the annihilation cross-section; the relic abundance is then obtained by an analytic approximation. We find that in these models, stable neutralinos may make a significant contribution to the dark matter in the universe.Comment: 24 Pages, OUTP-92-10

Strong lensing constraints on the velocity dispersion and density profile of elliptical galaxies

We use the statistics of strong gravitational lensing from the CLASS survey to impose constraints on the velocity dispersion and density profile of elliptical galaxies. This approach differs from much recent work, where the luminosity function, velocity dispersion and density profile were typically {\it assumed} in order to constrain cosmological parameters. It is indeed remarkable that observational cosmology has reached the point where we can consider using cosmology to constrain astrophysics, rather than vice versa. We use two different observables to obtain our constraints (total optical depth and angular distributions of lensing events). In spite of the relatively poor statistics and the uncertain identification of lenses in the survey, we obtain interesting constraints on the velocity dispersion and density profiles of elliptical galaxies. For example, assuming the SIS density profile and marginalizing over other relevant parameters, we find 168 km/s < sigma_* < 200 km/s (68% CL), and 158 km/s < sigma_* < 220 km/s (95% CL). Furthermore, if we instead assume a generalized NFW density profile and marginalize over other parameters, the slope of the profile is constrained to be 1.50 < beta < 2.00 (95% CL). We also constrain the concentration parameter as a function of the density profile slope in these models. These results are essentially independent of the exact knowledge of cosmology. We briefly discuss the possible impact on these constraints of allowing the galaxy luminosity function to evolve with redshift, and also possible useful future directions for exploration.Comment: Uses the final JVAS/CLASS sample, more careful choice of ellipticals, added discussion of possible biases. Final results essentially unchanged. Matches the MNRAS versio

Improving NLO-parton shower matched simulations with higher order matrix elements

In recent times the algorithms for the simulation of hadronic collisions have been subject to two substantial improvements: the inclusion, within parton showering, of exact higher order tree level matrix elements (MEPS) and, separately, next-to-leading order corrections (NLOPS). In this work we examine the key criteria to be met in merging the two approaches in such a way that the accuracy of both is preserved, in the framework of the POWHEG approach to NLOPS. We then ask to what extent these requirements may be fulfilled using existing simulations, without modifications. The result of this study is a pragmatic proposal for merging MEPS and NLOPS events to yield much improved MENLOPS event samples. We apply this method to W boson and top quark pair production. In both cases results for distributions within the remit of the NLO calculations exhibit no discernible changes with respect to the pure NLOPS prediction; conversely, those sensitive to the distribution of multiple hard jets assume, exactly, the form of the corresponding MEPS results.Comment: 38 pages, 17 figures. v2: added citations and brief discussion of related works, MENLOPS prescription localized in a subsection. v3: cited 4 more MEPS works in introduction

On the reheating stage after inflation

We point out that inflaton decay products acquire plasma masses during the reheating phase following inflation. The plasma masses may render inflaton decay kinematicaly forbidden, causing the temperature to remain frozen for a period at a plateau value. We show that the final reheating temperature may be uniquely determined by the inflaton mass, and may not depend on its coupling. Our findings have important implications for the thermal production of dangerous relics during reheating (e.g., gravitinos), for extracting bounds on particle physics models of inflation from Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy data, for the production of massive dark matter candidates during reheating, and for models of baryogenesis or leptogensis where massive particles are produced during reheating.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. Submitted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Superheavy Dark Matter with Discrete Gauge Symmetries

We show that there are discrete gauge symmetries protect naturally heavy X particles from decaying into the ordinary light particles in the supersymmetric standard model. This makes the proposal very attractive that the superheavy X particles constitute a part of the dark matter in the present universe. It is more interesting that there are a class of discrete gauge symmetries which naturally accommodate a long-lived unstable X particle. We find that in some discrete Z_{10} models, for example, a superheavy X particle has lifetime \tau_X \simeq 10^{11}-10^{26} years for its mass M_X \simeq 10^{13}-10^{14} GeV. This long lifetime is guaranteed by the absence of lower dimensional operators (of light particles) couple to the X. We briefly discuss a possible explanation for the recently observed ultra-high-energy cosmic ray events by the decay of this unstable X particle.Comment: 9 pages, Late

The Long-Term Future of Extragalactic Astronomy

If the current energy density of the universe is indeed dominated by a cosmological constant, then high-redshift sources will remain visible to us only until they reach some finite age in their rest-frame. The radiation emitted beyond that age will never reach us due to the acceleration of the cosmic expansion rate, and so we will never know what these sources look like as they become older. As a source image freezes on a particular time frame along its evolution, its luminosity distance and redshift continue to increase exponentially with observation time. The higher the current redshift of a source is, the younger it will appear as it fades out of sight. For the popular set of cosmological parameters, I show that a source at a redshift z=5-10 will only be visible up to an age of 4-6 billion years. Arguments relating the properties of high-redshift sources to present-day counterparts will remain indirect even if we continue to monitor these sources for an infinite amount of time. These sources will not be visible to us when they reach the current age of the universe.Comment: Phys. Rev. D, in press (2001

Dark Matters in Axino Gravitino Cosmology

It is suggested that the axino mass in the 1 MeV region and gravitino mass in the eV region can provide an axino lifetime of order of the time of photon decoupling. In this case, some undecayed axinos act like cold dark matters and some axino decay products (gravitinos and hot axions) act like hot dark matters at the time of galaxy formation.Comment: 9 pages, Late

ALPGEN, a generator for hard multiparton processes in hadronic collisions

This paper presents a new event generator, ALPGEN, dedicated to the study of multiparton hard processes in hadronic collisions. The code performs, at the leading order in QCD and EW interactions, the calculation of the exact matrix elements for a large set of parton-level processes of interest in the study of the Tevatron and LHC data. The current version of the code describes the following final states: (W -> ffbar') QQbar+ N jets (Q being a heavy quark, and f=l,q), with N f fbar)+QQbar+Njets (f=l,nu), with N ffbar') + charm + N jets (f=l,q), N f fbar') + N jets (f=l,q) and (Z/gamma* -> f fbar)+ N jets (f=l,nu), with N<=6; nW+mZ+lH+N jets, with n+m+l+N<=8 and N<=3 including all 2-fermion decay modes of W and Z bosons, with spin correlations; Q Qbar+N jets (N b f fbar' decays and relative spin correlations included if Q=t; Q Qbar Q' Qbar'+N jets, with Q and Q' heavy quarks (possibly equal) and N b f fbar' decays and relative spin correlations included if Q=t; N jets, with N<=6. Parton-level events are generated, providing full information on their colour and flavour structure, enabling the evolution of the partons into fully hadronised final states.Comment: 1+38 pages, uses JHEP.cls. Documents code version 1.2: extended list of processes, updated documentation and bibliograph