210 research outputs found
On the Relation between Solar Activity and Clear-Sky Terrestrial Irradiance
The Mauna Loa Observatory record of direct-beam solar irradiance measurements
for the years 1958-2010 is analysed to investigate the variation of clear-sky
terrestrial insolation with solar activity over more than four solar cycles.
The raw irradiance data exhibit a marked seasonal cycle, extended periods of
lower irradiance due to emissions of volcanic aerosols, and a long-term
decrease in atmospheric transmission independent of solar activity. After
correcting for these effects, it is found that clear-sky terrestrial irradiance
typically varies by about 0.2 +/- 0.1% over the course of the solar cycle, a
change of the same order of magnitude as the variations of the total solar
irradiance above the atmosphere. An investigation of changes in the clear-sky
atmospheric transmission fails to find a significant trend with sunspot number.
Hence there is no evidence for a yet unknown effect amplifying variations of
clear-sky irradiance with solar activity.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, in press at Solar Physics; minor changes to the
text to match final published versio
Axions and their Relatives
A review of the status of axions and axion-like particles is given. Special
attention is devoted to the recent results of the PVLAS collaboration, which
are in conflict with the CAST data and with the astrophysical constraints.
Solutions to the puzzle and the implications for new physics are discussed. The
question of axion-like particles being dark matter is also addressed.Comment: Updated version of an invited talk at the Axion Training (CERN,
December 2005). To appear as a Lecture Notes in Physics (Springer-Verlag),
edited by B. Beltran, M. Kuster and G. Raffel
On the massless "just-so" solution to the solar neutrino problem
We study the effect of the non-resonant, vacuum oscillation-like neutrino
flavor conversion induced by non-standard flavor changing and non-universal
flavor diagonal neutrino interactions with electrons in the sun. We have found
an acceptable fit for the combined analysis for the solar experiments total
rates, the Super-Kamiokande (SK) energy spectrum and zenith angle dependence.
Phenomenological constraints on non-standard flavor changing and non-universal
flavor diagonal neutrino interactions are considered.Comment: 4 pages, Latex, uses eps
Lorentz breaking Effective Field Theory and observational tests
Analogue models of gravity have provided an experimentally realizable test
field for our ideas on quantum field theory in curved spacetimes but they have
also inspired the investigation of possible departures from exact Lorentz
invariance at microscopic scales. In this role they have joined, and sometime
anticipated, several quantum gravity models characterized by Lorentz breaking
phenomenology. A crucial difference between these speculations and other ones
associated to quantum gravity scenarios, is the possibility to carry out
observational and experimental tests which have nowadays led to a broad range
of constraints on departures from Lorentz invariance. We shall review here the
effective field theory approach to Lorentz breaking in the matter sector,
present the constraints provided by the available observations and finally
discuss the implications of the persisting uncertainty on the composition of
the ultra high energy cosmic rays for the constraints on the higher order,
analogue gravity inspired, Lorentz violations.Comment: 47 pages, 4 figures. Lecture Notes for the IX SIGRAV School on
"Analogue Gravity", Como (Italy), May 2011. V.3. Typo corrected, references
adde
Explaining the Higgs Decays at the LHC with an Extended Electroweak Model
We show that the recent discovery of a new boson at the LHC, which we assume
to be a Higgs boson, and the observed enhancement in its diphoton decays
compared to the SM prediction, can be explained by a new doublet of charged
vector bosons from an extended electroweak gauge sector model with
SU(3)_C\otimesSU(3)_L\otimesU(1)_X symmetry. Our results show a good
agreement between our theoretical expected sensitivity to a 126--125 GeV Higgs
boson and the experimental significance observed in the diphoton channel at the
8 TeV LHC. Effects of an invisible decay channel for the Higgs boson are also
taken into account, in order to anticipate a possible confirmation of deficits
in the branching ratios into , , bottom quarks, and tau leptons.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector
A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results
Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC
provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of
lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with
a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the
transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the
anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the
nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of
the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp.
Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in
the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies
smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating
nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and
transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of
inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous
measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables,
submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are
available at
http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02
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