New results for a photon-photon collider

We present new results from studies in progress on physics at a two-photon collider. We report on the sensitivity to top squark parameters of MSSM Higgs boson production in two-photon collisions; Higgs boson decay to two photons; radion production in models of warped extra dimensions; chargino pair production; sensitivity to the trilinear Higgs boson coupling; charged Higgs boson pair production; and we discuss the backgrounds produced by resolved photon-photon interactions.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figure

Minimum Conductivity and Evidence for Phase Transitions in Ultra-clean Bilayer Graphene

Bilayer graphene (BLG) at the charge neutrality point (CNP) is strongly susceptible to electronic interactions, and expected to undergo a phase transition into a state with spontaneous broken symmetries. By systematically investigating a large number of singly- and doubly-gated bilayer graphene (BLG) devices, we show that an insulating state appears only in devices with high mobility and low extrinsic doping. This insulating state has an associated transition temperature Tc~5K and an energy gap of ~3 meV, thus strongly suggesting a gapped broken symmetry state that is destroyed by very weak disorder. The transition to the intrinsic broken symmetry state can be tuned by disorder, out-of-plane electric field, or carrier density

Critical properties of the four-state Commutative Random Permutation Glassy Potts model in three and four dimensions

We investigate the critical properties of the four-state commutative random permutation glassy Potts model in three and four dimensions by means of Monte Carlo simulation and of a finite size scaling analysis. Thanks to the use of a field programmable gate array we have been able to thermalize a large number of samples of systems with large volume. This has allowed us to observe a spin-glass ordered phase in d=4 and to study the critical properties of the transition. In d=3, our results are consistent with the presence of a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition, but we cannot exclude transient effects due to a value of the lower critical dimension slightly below 3.Comment: 9 pages, 8 Postscript figure

Diagnostic ability and capacity of optical coherence tomography-angiography to detect retinal and vascular changes in patients with fibromyalgia

Background. To evaluate the neuroretina and retinal vasculature of fibromyalgia (FM) patients and calculate a linear discriminant function (LDF) to improve retinal parameters’ contribution to FM diagnosis. Methods. Fifty FM patients and 232 healthy controls underwent retinal evaluation using swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) angiography (Triton plus; Topcon) and spectral domain OCT (SD-OCT) (Spectralis; Heidelberg). The macular (m) and peripapillary (p) retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) and ganglion cell layer (GCL) were assessed, as was the macular vascular density. A logistic regression analysis was performed, and an LDF was calculated to evaluate OCT’s contribution to FM diagnosis. Results. With Triton OCT, the patients presented pRNFL thinning in the temporal sector (). Spectralis OCT measurements showed decreased pRNFL in patients in the following sectors: superonasal, ; nasal, ; inferonasal, ; temporal, ; and inferotemporal, . No significant differences were observed in the macular vascular plexus between patients and controls. However, vascular density in the superior sector showed a strong inverse correlation with disease duration (r = −0.978, ). The LDF calculated for Spectralis OCT yielded an area under the ROC curve of 0.968. Conclusions. FM patients present RNFL thinning observable using SS- and SD-OCT. However, these patients show similar vascular density in the macular area to healthy controls. The LDF that combines several RNFL parameters obtained using Spectralis OCT gives this device a powerful ability to differentiate between healthy individuals and individuals with FM

Full configuration interaction calculation of BeH adiabatic states

An all-electron full configuration interaction (FCI) calculation of the adiabatic potential energy curves of some of the lower states of BeH molecule is presented. A moderately large ANO basis set of atomic natural orbitals (ANO) augmented with Rydberg functions has been used in order to describe the valence and Rydberg states and their interactions. The Rydberg set of ANOs has been placed on the Be at all bond distances. So, the basis set can be described as 4s3p2d1f/3s2p1d(Be/H)+4s4p2d(Be). The dipole moments of several states and transition dipole strengths from the ground state are also reported as a function of the RBe–H distance. The position and the number of states involved in several avoided crossings present in this system have been discussed. Spectroscopic parameters have been calculated from a number of the vibrational states that result from the adiabatic curves except for some states in which this would be completely nonsense, as it is the case for the very distorted curves of the 3s and 3p math states or the double-well potential of the 4p math state. The so-called “D complex” at 54 050 cm−1 (185.0 nm) is resolved into the three 3d substates (math,math,math). A diexcited valence state is calculated as the lowest state of math symmetry and its spectroscopic parameters are reported, as well as those of the 2 math (4d) state The adiabatic curve of the 4 math state shows a swallow well at large distances (around 4.1 Å) as a result of an avoided crossing with the 3 math state. The probability that some vibrational levels of this well could be populated is discussed within an approached Landau–Zerner model and is found to be high. No evidence is found of the E(4sσ) math state in the region of the “D complex”. Instead, the spectroscopic properties obtained from the (4sσ) 6 math adiabatic curve of the present work seem to agree with those of the experimental F(4pσ) math state. The FCI calculations provide benchmark results for other correlation models for the open-shell BeH system and evidence both the limitations and capabilities of the basis [email protected] [email protected]

The Spin Glass Phase in the Four-State, Three-Dimensional Potts Model

We perform numerical simulations, including parallel tempering, on the Potts glass model with binary random quenched couplings using the JANUS application-oriented computer. We find and characterize a glassy transition, estimating the location of the transition and the value of the critical exponents. We show that there is no ferromagnetic transition in a large temperature range around the glassy critical temperature. We also compare our results with those obtained recently on the "random permutation" Potts glass.Comment: 7 pages and 3 figures. Corrected minor typo

Argot2: a large scale function prediction tool relying on semantic similarity of weighted Gene Ontology terms

Background: Predicting protein function has become increasingly demanding in the era of next generation sequencing technology. The task to assign a curator-reviewed function to every single sequence is impracticable. Bioinformatics tools, easy to use and able to provide automatic and reliable annotations at a genomic scale, are necessary and urgent. In this scenario, the Gene Ontology has provided the means to standardize the annotation classification with a structured vocabulary which can be easily exploited by computational methods.Results: Argot2 is a web-based function prediction tool able to annotate nucleic or protein sequences from small datasets up to entire genomes. It accepts as input a list of sequences in FASTA format, which are processed using BLAST and HMMER searches vs UniProKB and Pfam databases respectively; these sequences are then annotated with GO terms retrieved from the UniProtKB-GOA database and the terms are weighted using the e-values from BLAST and HMMER. The weighted GO terms are processed according to both their semantic similarity relations described by the Gene Ontology and their associated score. The algorithm is based on the original idea developed in a previous tool called Argot. The entire engine has been completely rewritten to improve both accuracy and computational efficiency, thus allowing for the annotation of complete genomes.Conclusions: The revised algorithm has been already employed and successfully tested during in-house genome projects of grape and apple, and has proven to have a high precision and recall in all our benchmark conditions. It has also been successfully compared with Blast2GO, one of the methods most commonly employed for sequence annotation. The server is freely accessible at http://www.medcomp.medicina.unipd.it/Argot2Journal Articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Multifractal analysis of the electronic states in the Fibonacci superlattice under weak electric fields

Influence of the weak electric field on the electronic structure of the Fibonacci superlattice is considered. The electric field produces a nonlinear dynamics of the energy spectrum of the aperiodic superlattice. Mechanism of the nonlinearity is explained in terms of energy levels anticrossings. The multifractal formalism is applied to investigate the effect of weak electric field on the statistical properties of electronic eigenfunctions. It is shown that the applied electric field does not remove the multifractal character of the electronic eigenfunctions, and that the singularity spectrum remains non-parabolic, however with a modified shape. Changes of the distances between energy levels of neighbouring eigenstates lead to the changes of the inverse participation ratio of the corresponding eigenfunctions in the weak electric field. It is demonstrated, that the local minima of the inverse participation ratio in the vicinity of the anticrossings correspond to discontinuity of the first derivative of the difference between marginal values of the singularity strength. Analysis of the generalized dimension as a function of the electric field shows that the electric field correlates spatial fluctuations of the neighbouring electronic eigenfunction amplitudes in the vicinity of anticrossings, and the nonlinear character of the scaling exponent confirms multifractality of the corresponding electronic eigenfunctions.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

ChPT tests at the NA48 and NA62 experiments at CERN

The NA48/2 Collaboration at CERN has accumulated unprecedented statistics of rare kaon decays in the Ke4 modes: Ke4(+-) ($K^\pm \to \pi^+ \pi^- e^\pm \nu$) and Ke4(00) ($K^\pm \to \pi^0 \pi^0 e^\pm \nu$) with nearly one percent background contamination. The detailed study of form factors and branching rates, based on these data, has been completed recently. The results brings new inputs to low energy strong interactions description and tests of Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) and lattice QCD calculations. In particular, new data support the ChPT prediction for a cusp in the $\pi^0\pi^0$ invariant mass spectrum at the two charged pions threshold for Ke4(00) decay. New final results from an analysis of about 400 $K^\pm \to \pi^\pm \gamma \gamma$ rare decay candidates collected by the NA48/2 and NA62 experiments at CERN during low intensity runs with minimum bias trigger configurations are presented. The results include a model-independent decay rate measurement and fits to ChPT description.Comment: XIIth International Conference on Heavy Quarks and Leptons 2014, Mainz, German

Recent NA48/2 and NA62 results

The NA48/2 Collaboration at CERN has accumulated and analysed unprecedented statistics of rare kaon decays in the $K_{e4}$ modes: $K_{e4}(+-)$ ($K^\pm \to \pi^+ \pi^- e^\pm \nu$) and $K_{e4}(00)$ ($K^\pm \to \pi^0 \pi^0 e^\pm \nu$) with nearly one percent background contamination. It leads to the improved measurement of branching fractions and detailed form factor studies. New final results from the analysis of 381 $K^\pm \to \pi^\pm \gamma \gamma$ rare decay candidates collected by the NA48/2 and NA62 experiments at CERN are presented. The results include a decay rate measurement and fits to Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) description.Comment: Prepared for the Proceedings of "Moriond QCD and High Energy Interactions. March 22-29 2014." conferenc