Anomalous Flux Flow Resistivity in Two Gap Superconductor MgB_2

The flux flow resistivity associated with purely viscous motion of vortices in high-quality MgB_2 was measured by microwave surface impedance. Flux flow resistivity exhibits unusual field dependence with strong enhancement at low field, which is markedly different to conventional s-wave superconductors. A crossover field which separates two distinct flux flow regimes having different flux flow resistivity slopes was clearly observed in H//ab-plane. The unusual H-dependence indicates that two very differently sized superconducting gaps in MgB_2 manifest in the vortex dynamics and almost equally contribute to energy dissipation. The carrier scattering rate in two different bands is also discussed with the present results, compared to heat capacity and thermal conductivity results.Comment: 4 pages, 3figure

Stop the Top Background of the Stop Search

The main background for the supersymmetric stop direct production search comes from Standard Model ttbar events. For the single-lepton search channel, we introduce a few kinematic variables to further suppress this background by focusing on its dileptonic and semileptonic topologies. All are defined to have end points in the background, but not signal distributions. They can substantially improve the stop signal significance and mass reach when combined with traditional kinematic variables such as the total missing transverse energy. Among them, our variable M^W_T2 has the best overall performance because it uses all available kinematic information, including the on-shell mass of both W's. We see 20%-30% improvement on the discovery significance and estimate that the 8 TeV LHC run with 20 fb-1 of data would be able to reach an exclusion limit of 650-700 GeV for direct stop production, as long as the stop decays dominantly to the top quark and a light stable neutralino. Most of the mass range required for the supersymmetric solution of the naturalness problem in the standard scenario can be covered.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Search for tau -> e gamma decay at Belle

We have searched for the lepton-flavor-violating decay tau -> e gamma using a data sample of 86.7/fb collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric e^+ e^- collider. No evidence for a signal is obtained, and we set an upper limit for the branching fraction Br(tau -> e gamma) < 3.9 x 10^-7 at the 90% C.L.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, ReVTeX4, eps

Search for neutrinoless decays tau -> 3l

We have searched for neutrinoless tau lepton decays into three charged leptons using an 87.1 fb^{-1} data sample collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB e^+e^- collider. Since the number of signal candidate events is compatible with that expected from the background, we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fractions in the range (1.9-3.5) x 10^{-7} for various decay modes tau -> l l l where l represents e or mu.Comment: 12 pages, 4figure

Stochastic Ion Channel Gating in Dendritic Neurons: Morphology Dependence and Probabilistic Synaptic Activation of Dendritic Spikes

Neuronal activity is mediated through changes in the probability of stochastic transitions between open and closed states of ion channels. While differences in morphology define neuronal cell types and may underlie neurological disorders, very little is known about influences of stochastic ion channel gating in neurons with complex morphology. We introduce and validate new computational tools that enable efficient generation and simulation of models containing stochastic ion channels distributed across dendritic and axonal membranes. Comparison of five morphologically distinct neuronal cell types reveals that when all simulated neurons contain identical densities of stochastic ion channels, the amplitude of stochastic membrane potential fluctuations differs between cell types and depends on sub-cellular location. For typical neurons, the amplitude of membrane potential fluctuations depends on channel kinetics as well as open probability. Using a detailed model of a hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neuron, we show that when intrinsic ion channels gate stochastically, the probability of initiation of dendritic or somatic spikes by dendritic synaptic input varies continuously between zero and one, whereas when ion channels gate deterministically, the probability is either zero or one. At physiological firing rates, stochastic gating of dendritic ion channels almost completely accounts for probabilistic somatic and dendritic spikes generated by the fully stochastic model. These results suggest that the consequences of stochastic ion channel gating differ globally between neuronal cell-types and locally between neuronal compartments. Whereas dendritic neurons are often assumed to behave deterministically, our simulations suggest that a direct consequence of stochastic gating of intrinsic ion channels is that spike output may instead be a probabilistic function of patterns of synaptic input to dendrites

Search for Lepton Flavor Violating tau- Decays Including with a K0s Meson

We have searched for the lepton flavor violating decays \tau^-\to \ell^-\ks ($\ell = e {or} \mu$), using a data sample of 281 fb$^{-1}$ collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB $e^+e^-$ asymmetric-energy collider. No evidence for a signal was found in either of the decay modes, and we set the following upper limits for the branching fractions: {\cal{B}}(\tau^-\to e^-\ks) < 5.6\times 10^{-8} and {\cal{B}}(\tau^-\to \mu^-\ks) < 4.9\times 10^{-8} at the 90% confidence level. These results improve the previously published limits set by the CLEO collaboration by factors of 16 and 19, respectively.Comment: 9 pages, 3figures, submitted to Phys.Lett.

Search for neutrinoless decays tau -> lhh and tau -> lV0

We have searched for neutrinoless tau lepton decays into l h h or l V0, where l stands for an electron or muon, h for a charged light hadron, pi or K, and V0 for a neutral vector meson, rho, K*(892) and phi, using a 158 /fb data sample collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB e+e- collider. Since the number of events observed are consistent with the expected background, we set upper limits on the branching fractions in the range of 1.6-8.0 x 10-7 for various decay modes at the 90% confidence level.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Phys. Lett.

Search for lepton flavor violating decays tau- -> l- pi0, l- eta, l- eta'

We have searched for lepton flavor violating semileptonic tau decays using a data sample of 153.8/fb accumulated with the Belle detector at the KEKB e+e- collider. For the six decay modes studied, the observed yield is compatible with the estimated background and the following upper limits are set at the 90% confidence level: B(tau- -> e- eta) mu- eta) < 1.5 x 10^-7, B(tau- -> e- pi0) mu- pi0) < 4.1 x 10^-7, B(tau- -> e- eta') mu- eta') < 4.7 x 10^-7. These results are 10 to 64 times more restrictive than previous limits.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, RevTex