Laboratory capture, isolation and analysis of microparticles in aerogel: Preparation for the return of Stardust

We present observations from the laboratory capture of particles in aerogel. The paper focuses on a possible extraction technique and the bulk mineral characterization of the captured material using non-destructive analytical techniques

Leptogenesis, neutrino masses and gauge unification

Leptogenesis is considered in its natural context where Majorana neutrinos fit in a gauge unification scheme and therefore couple to some extra gauge bosons. The masses of some of these gauge bosons are expected to be similar to those of the heavy Majorana particles, and this can have important consequences for leptogenesis. In fact, the effect can go both ways. Stricter bounds are obtained on one hand due to the dilution of the CP-violating effect by new decay and scattering channels, while, in a re-heating scheme, the presence of gauge couplings facilitates the re-population of the Majorana states. The latter effect allows in particular for smaller Dirac couplings.Comment: 11pages, 7 figures. v2: definition of the lepton asymmetry corrected, small numerical changes for the baryon number, conclusion does not change; typos corrected and references adde

The Origin and Early Cultivation of Sorghums in Africa.

30 p

On a stochastic partial differential equation with non-local diffusion

In this paper, we prove existence, uniqueness and regularity for a class of stochastic partial differential equations with a fractional Laplacian driven by a space-time white noise in dimension one. The equation we consider may also include a reaction term

Chiral Symmetry and light resonances in hot and dense matter

We present a study of the $\pi\pi$ scattering amplitude in the $\sigma$ and $\rho$ channels at finite temperature and nuclear density within a chiral unitary framework. Meson resonances are dynamically generated in our approach, which allows us to analyze the behavior of their associated scattering poles when the system is driven towards chiral symmetry restoration. Medium effects are incorporated in three ways: (a) by thermal corrections of the unitarized scattering amplitudes, (b) by finite nuclear density effects associated to a renormalization of the pion decay constant, and complementarily (c) by extending our calculation of the scalar-isoscalar channel to account for finite nuclear density and temperature effects in a microscopic many-body implementation of pion dynamics. Our results are discussed in connection with several phenomenological aspects relevant for nuclear matter and Heavy-Ion Collision experiments, such as $\rho$ mass scaling vs broadening from dilepton spectra and chiral restoration signals in the $\sigma$ channel. We also elaborate on the molecular nature of $\pi\pi$ resonances.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures. Contribution to Hard Probes 2008, Illa de A Toxa, Spain, June 8th-14th 200

Constraints on the rare tau decays from mu --> e gamma in the supersymmetric see-saw model

It is now a firmly established fact that all family lepton numbers are violated in Nature. In this paper we discuss the implications of this observation for future searches for rare tau decays in the supersymmetric see-saw model. Using the two loop renormalization group evolution of the soft terms and the Yukawa couplings we show that there exists a lower bound on the rate of the rare process mu --> e gamma of the form BR(mu --> e gamma) > C BR(tau --> mu gamma) BR(tau --> e gamma), where C is a constant that depends on supersymmetric parameters. Our only assumption is the absence of cancellations among the high-energy see-saw parameters. We also discuss the implications of this bound for future searches for rare tau decays. In particular, for large regions of the mSUGRA parameter space, we show that present B-factories could discover either tau --> mu gamma or tau --> e gamma, but not both.Comment: 39 pages, 7 figures. Typos corrected, references adde

Nonlocal charges of T-dual strings

We obtain sets of infinite number of conserved nonlocal charges of strings in a flat space and pp-wave backgrounds, and compare them before and after T-duality transformation. In the flat background the set of nonlocal charges is the same before and after the T-duality transformation with interchanging odd and even-order charges. In the IIB pp-wave background an infinite number of nonlocal charges are independent, contrast to that in a flat background only the zero-th and first order charges are independent. In the IIA pp-wave background, which is the T-dualized compactified IIB pp-wave background, the zero-th order charges are included as a part of the set of nonlocal charges in the IIB background. To make this correspondence complete a variable conjugate to the winding number is introduced as a Lagrange multiplier in the IIB action a la Buscher's transformation.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figur

Low energy effects of neutrino masses

While all models of Majorana neutrino masses lead to the same dimension five effective operator, which does not conserve lepton number, the dimension six operators induced at low energies conserve lepton number and differ depending on the high energy model of new physics. We derive the low-energy dimension six operators which are characteristic of generic Seesaw models, in which neutrino masses result from the exchange of heavy fields which may be either fermionic singlets, fermionic triplets or scalar triplets. The resulting operators may lead to effects observable in the near future, if the coefficients of the dimension five and six operators are decoupled along a certain pattern, which turns out to be common to all models. The phenomenological consequences are explored as well, including their contributions to $\mu \to e \gamma$ and new bounds on the Yukawa couplings for each model.Comment: modifications: couplings in appendix B, formulas (121)-(122) on rare leptons decays (to match with published version) and consequently bounds in table

Minimal Flavour Seesaw Models

We explore realizations of minimal flavour violation (MFV) for the lepton sector. We find that it can be realized within those seesaw models where a separation of the lepton number and lepton flavour violating scales can be achieved, such as type II and inverse seesaw models. We present in particular a simple implementation of the MFV hypothesis which differs in nature from those previously discussed. It allows to reconstruct the flavour structure of the model from the values of the light neutrino masses and mixing parameters, even in the presence of CP-violating phases. Experimentally reachable predictions for rare processes such as mu --> e gamma are given.Comment: Misprints corrected. A reference added. A subtle point in the reconstruction of the flavour parameters is clarifie