The first dozen years of the history of ITEP Theoretical Physics Laboratory

The theoretical investigations at ITEP in the years 1945-1958 are reviewed. There are exposed the most important theoretical results, obtained in the following branches of physics: 1) the theory of nuclear reactors on thermal neutrons; 2) the hydrogen bomb project ("Tube" in USSR and "Classical Super" in USA); 3) radiation theory; ~4) low temperature physics; 5) quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theories; 6) parity violation in weak interactions, the theory of $\beta$-decay and other weak processes; 7) strong interaction and nuclear physics. To the review are added the English translations of few papers, originally published in Russian, but unknown (or almost unknown) to Western readers.Comment: 55 pages, 5 fig

Spacetime and vacuum as seen from Moscow

An extended text of the talk given at the conference ``2001: A Spacetime Odyssey'', to be published in the Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 21-25 May 2001, M.J. Duff and J.T. Liu eds., World Scientific, Singapore, 2002; and of Historical Lecture ``Vacuum as seen from Moscow'' at the CERN Summer School, 10 August, 2001. Contents: Introduction; Pomeranchuk on vacuum; Landau on parity, P, and combined parity, CP; Search and discovery of $K_L^0 \to \pi^+ \pi^-$; "Mirror world"; Zeldovich and cosmological term; QCD vacuum condensates; Sakharov and baryonic asymmetry of the universe, BAU; Kirzhnits and phase transitions; Vacuum domain walls; Monopoles, strings, instantons, and sphalerons; False vacuum; Inflation; Brane and Bulk; Acknowledgments; References.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

Positronium Portal into Hidden Sector: A new Experiment to Search for Mirror Dark Matter

The understanding of the origin of dark matter has great importance for cosmology and particle physics. Several interesting extensions of the standard model dealing with solution of this problem motivate the concept of hidden sectors consisting of SU(3)xSU(2)_LxU(1)_Y singlet fields. Among these models, the mirror matter model is certainly one of the most interesting. The model explains the origin of parity violation in weak interactions, it could also explain the baryon asymmetry of the Universe and provide a natural ground for the explanation of dark matter. The mirror matter could have a portal to our world through photon-mirror photon mixing (epsilon). This mixing would lead to orthopositronium (o-Ps) to mirror orthopositronium oscillations, the experimental signature of which is the apparently invisible decay of o-Ps. In this paper, we describe an experiment to search for the decay o-Ps -> invisible in vacuum by using a pulsed slow positron beam and a massive 4pi BGO crystal calorimeter. The developed high efficiency positron tagging system, the low calorimeter energy threshold and high hermiticity allow the expected sensitivity in mixing strength to be epsilon about 10^-9, which is more than one order of magnitude below the current Big Bang Nucleosynthesis limit and in a region of parameter space of great theoretical and phenomenological interest. The vacuum experiment with such sensitivity is particularly timely in light of the recent DAMA/LIBRA observations of the annual modulation signal consistent with a mirror type dark matter interpretation.Comment: 40 pages, 29 Figures 2 Tables v2: Ref. added, Fig. 29 and some text added to explain idea for backscattering e+ background suppression, corrected typos v3: minor corrections: Eq 2.1 corrected (6 lines-> 5 lines), Eq.2.17: two extra "-" signs remove

The Relativistic Electrodynamics Least Action Principles Revisited: New Charged Point Particle and Hadronic String Models Analysis

The classical relativistic least action principle is revisited from the vacuum field theory approach. New physically motivated versions of relativistic Lorentz type forces are derived, a new relativistic hadronic string model is proposed and analyzed in detail.Comment: n/

Physical mechanism of the linear beam-size effect at colliders

We present qualitative but precise description of the linear beam-size effect predicted for the processes in which unstable but long--living particles collide with each other. We derive physically pronounced equation for the events rate which proves that the linear beam-size effect corresponds to the scattering of one beam of particles on the decay products of the other. We compare this linear beam-size effect with the known logarithmic beam-size effect measured in the experiments on a single bremsstrahlung at VEPP-4 and HERA.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX, 1 figur

TeV-scale bileptons, see-saw type II and lepton flavor violation in core-collapse supernova

Electrons and electron neutrinos in the inner core of the core-collapse supernova are highly degenerate and therefore numerous during a few seconds of explosion. In contrast, leptons of other flavors are non-degenerate and therefore relatively scarce. This is due to lepton flavor conservation. If this conservation law is broken by some non-standard interactions, electron neutrinos are converted to muon and tau-neutrinos, and electrons - to muons. This affects the supernova dynamics and the supernova neutrino signal. We consider lepton flavor violating interactions mediated by scalar bileptons, i.e. heavy scalars with lepton number 2. It is shown that in case of TeV-mass bileptons the electron fermi gas is equilibrated with non-electron species inside the inner supernova core at a time-scale of order of (1-100) ms. In particular, a scalar triplet which generates neutrino masses through the see-saw type II mechanism is considered. It is found that supernova core is sensitive to yet unprobed values of masses and couplings of the triplet.Comment: accepted to Eur.Phys.J.