Electroweak Baryogenesis and Colored Scalars

We consider the 2-loop finite temperature effective potential for a Standard Model-like Higgs boson, allowing Higgs boson couplings to additional scalars. If the scalars transform under color, they contribute 2-loop diagrams to the effective potential that include gluons. These 2-loop effects are perhaps stronger than previously appreciated. For a Higgs boson mass of 115 GeV, they can increase the strength of the phase transition by as much as a factor of 3.5. It is the analogue of this effect that is responsible for the survival of the tenuous electroweak baryogenesis window of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. We further illuminate the importance of these 2-loop diagrams by contrasting models with colored scalars to models with singlet scalars. We conclude that baryogenesis favors models with light colored scalars. This motivates searches for pair-produced di-jet resonances or jet(s) + missing energy.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; v2: minor changes, journal versio

Measurements of Top Quark Properties at the Tevatron

The top quark is the most recently discovered of the standard model quarks, and studies of its properties are important tests of the standard model. Many measurements of top properties have been produced by the CDF and D0 collaborations, which study top quarks produced in proton-antiproton collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron with a center-of-mass energy sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV. We describe recent results from top properties measurements at the Tevatron using datasets corresponding to integrated luminosities up to 8.7/fb.Comment: Presented at the 2012 Rencontres de Moriond, QCD and High Energy Interactions, La Thuile, Italy, March 10-17, 2012. 5 pages, 1 figur

CW high intensity non-scaling FFAG proton drivers

Accelerators are playing increasingly important roles in basic science, technology, and medicine including nuclear power, industrial irradiation, material science, and neutrino production. Proton and light-ion accelerators in particular have many research, energy and medical applications, providing one of the most effective treatments for many types of cancer. Ultra high-intensity and high-energy (GeV) proton drivers are a critical technology for accelerator-driven sub-critical reactors (ADS) and many HEP programs (Muon Collider). These high-intensity GeV-range proton drivers are particularly challenging, encountering duty cycle and space-charge limits in the synchrotron and machine size concerns in the weaker-focusing cyclotrons; a 10-20 MW proton driver is not presently considered technically achievable with conventional re-circulating accelerators. One, as-yet, unexplored re-circulating accelerator, the Fixed-field Alternating Gradient, or FFAG, is an attractive alternative to the cyclotron. Its strong focusing optics are expected to mitigate space charge effects, and a recent innovation in design has coupled stable tunes with isochronous orbits, making the FFAG capable of fixed-frequency, CW acceleration, as in the classical cyclotron. This paper reports on these new advances in FFAG accelerator technology and references advanced modeling tools for fixed-field accelerators developed for and unique to the code COSY INFINITY.Comment: 3 pp. Particle Accelerator, 24th Conference (PAC'11) 2011. 28 Mar - 1 Apr 2011. New York, US

Imaging nonequilibrium atomic vibrations with x-ray diffuse scattering

For over a century, x-ray scattering has been the most powerful tool for determining the equilibrium structure of crystalline materials. Deviations from perfect periodicity, for example due to thermal motion of the atoms, reduces the intensity of the Bragg peaks as well as produces structure in the diffuse scattering background. Analysis of the thermal diffuse scattering (TDS) had been used to determine interatomic force constants and phonon dispersion in relatively simple cases before inelastic neutron scattering became the preferred technique to study lattice dynamics. With the advent of intense synchrotron x-ray sources, there was a renewed interest in TDS for measuring phonon dispersion. The relatively short x-ray pulses emanating from these sources also enables the measurement of phonon dynamics in the time domain. Prior experiments on nonequilibrium phonons were either limited by time-resolution and/or to relatively long wavelength excitations. Here we present the first images of nonequilibrium phonons throughout the Brillouin zone in photoexcited III-V semiconductors, indium-phosphide and indium-antimonide, using picosecond time-resolved diffuse scattering. In each case, we find that the lattice remain out of equilibrium for several hundred picoseconds up to nanoseconds after laser excitation. The non-equilibrium population is dominated by transverse acoustic phonons which in InP are directed along high-symmetry directions. The results have wide implications for the detailed study of electron-phonon and phonon-phonon coupling in solids.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

A Multi-Code Analysis Toolkit for Astrophysical Simulation Data

The analysis of complex multiphysics astrophysical simulations presents a unique and rapidly growing set of challenges: reproducibility, parallelization, and vast increases in data size and complexity chief among them. In order to meet these challenges, and in order to open up new avenues for collaboration between users of multiple simulation platforms, we present yt (available at http://yt.enzotools.org/), an open source, community-developed astrophysical analysis and visualization toolkit. Analysis and visualization with yt are oriented around physically relevant quantities rather than quantities native to astrophysical simulation codes. While originally designed for handling Enzo's structure adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) data, yt has been extended to work with several different simulation methods and simulation codes including Orion, RAMSES, and FLASH. We report on its methods for reading, handling, and visualizing data, including projections, multivariate volume rendering, multi-dimensional histograms, halo finding, light cone generation and topologically-connected isocontour identification. Furthermore, we discuss the underlying algorithms yt uses for processing and visualizing data, and its mechanisms for parallelization of analysis tasks.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, emulateapj format. Resubmitted to Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series with revisions from referee. yt can be found at http://yt.enzotools.org

Rhapsody. I. Structural Properties and Formation History From a Statistical Sample of Re-simulated Cluster-size Halos

We present the first results from the Rhapsody cluster re-simulation project: a sample of 96 "zoom-in" simulations of dark matter halos of 10^14.8 +- 0.05 Msun/h, selected from a 1 (Gpc/h)^3 volume. This simulation suite is the first to resolve this many halos with ~5x10^6 particles per halo in the cluster-mass regime, allowing us to statistically characterize the distribution of and correlation between halo properties at fixed mass. We focus on the properties of the main halos and how they are affected by formation history, which we track back to z=12, over five decades in mass. We give particular attention to the impact of the formation history on the density profiles of the halos. We find that the deviations from the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) model and the Einasto model depend on formation time. Late-forming halos tend to have considerable deviations from both models, partly due to the presence of massive subhalos, while early-forming halos deviate less but still significantly from the NFW model and are better described by the Einasto model. We find that the halo shapes depend only moderately on formation time. Departure from spherical symmetry impacts the density profiles through the anisotropic distribution of massive subhalos. Further evidence of the impact of subhalos is provided by analyzing the phase-space structure. A detailed analysis of the properties of the subhalo population in Rhapsody is presented in a companion paper.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures, replaced to match published versio

Rhapsody. II. Subhalo Properties and the Impact of Tidal Stripping From a Statistical Sample of Cluster-Size Halos

We discuss the properties of subhalos in cluster-size halos, using a high-resolution statistical sample: the Rhapsody simulations introduced in Wu et al. (2012). We demonstrate that the criteria applied to select subhalos have significant impact on the inferred properties of the sample, including the scatter in the number of subhalos, the correlation between the subhalo number and formation time, and the shape of subhalos' spatial distribution and velocity structure. We find that the number of subhalos, when selected using the peak maximum circular velocity in their histories (a property expected to be closely related to the galaxy luminosity), is uncorrelated with the formation time of the main halo. This is in contrast to the previously reported correlation from studies where subhalos are selected by the current maximum circular velocity; we show that this difference is a result of the tidal stripping of the subhalos. We also find that the dominance of the main halo and the subhalo mass fraction are strongly correlated with halo concentration and formation history. These correlations are important to take into account when interpreting results from cluster samples selected with different criteria. Our sample also includes a fossil cluster, which is presented separately and placed in the context of the rest of the sample.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures; Paper I: arXiv:1209.3309; replaced to match published versio