SUSY Searches in All-Hadronic States with Large MET at the LHC

The CMS and ATLAS search strategy for SUSY in inclusive multijet plus high missing transverse energy final states is reviewed. This canonical SUSY signature may be a viable discovery channel for low mass SUSY in the early phase of the LHC. Methods for Standard Model background estimates, MET studies and filters for instrumental background are presented.Comment: Submitted for the SUSY07 proceedings, 4 pages, LaTeX, 13 eps figure

Q(2) dependence of nuclear transparency for exclusive rho(0) production

Exclusive coherent and incoherent electroproduction of the rho(0) meson from H-1 and N-14 targets has been studied at the HERMES experiment as a function of coherence length (l(c)), corresponding to the lifetime of hadronic fluctuations of the virtual photon, and squared four-momentum of the virtual photon (-Q(2)). The ratio of N-14 to H-1 cross sections per nucleon, called nuclear transparency, was found to increase (decrease) with increasing l(c) for coherent (incoherent) rho(0) electroproduction. For fixed l(c), a rise of nuclear transparency with Q(2) is observed for both coherent and incoherent rho(0) production, which is in agreement with theoretical calculations of color transparency

Species doubling and effective Lagrangians

Coupling gauge fields to the chiral currents from an effective Lagrangian for pseudoscalar mesons naturally gives rise to a species doubling phenomenon similar to that seen with fermionic fields in lattice gauge theory.Comment: 4 pages, uses espcrc.sty. Talk presented at LATTICE96(poster

Evidence for quark-hadron duality in the proton spin asymmetry A(1)

Spin-dependent lepton-nucleon scattering data have been used to investigate the validity of the concept of quark-hadron duality for the spin asymmetry A(1). Longitudinally polarized positrons were scattered off a longitudinally polarized hydrogen target for values of Q(2) between 1.2 and 12 GeV2 and values of W-2 between 1 and 4 GeV2. The average double-spin asymmetry in the nucleon resonance region is found to agree with that measured in deep-inelastic scattering at the same values of the Bjorken scaling variable x. This finding implies that the description of A(1) in terms of quark degrees of freedom is valid also in the nucleon resonance region for values of Q(2) above 1.6 GeV2

Exploring Advanced Detector Technologies for Muon Radiography Applications

Muon radiography often referred to as muography, is an imaging technique that uses freely available cosmic-ray muons to study the interior structure of natural or man-made large-scale objects. The amount of multidisciplinary applications of this technique keeps increasing over time and a variety of basic detector types have already been used in the construction of muon telescopes. Here, we are investigating the use of advanced gaseous detectors for muography. As our basic solution, given its robustness and ease of operation in remote, outdoor environments, a scintillator-based muon telescope with silicon photomultiplier readout is being developed. To enhance the telescope performance, we are proposing the use of Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chambers (mRPCs) and Thick Gas Electron Multipliers (THGEMs). While the former offer superior time resolution which could be beneficial for detector background rejection, the latter detector type offers excellent spatial resolution, can be manufactured at low cost and operated with a simple gas mixture. Currently, prototype detector planes for each of these proposed types are being designed and constructed, and initial performance tests are in progress. In parallel, a Geant4- based muon telescope simulation is being developed, which will enable us to e.g. optimize our telescope geometry and study the use of superior time resolution for background rejection. The design and status of the three detector prototype planes and the muon telescope, along with the initial results of their performance tests and of the Geant4 simulation studies are reported

Lattice Formulation of the Standard Model

Combining the Kaplan surface mode approach for chiral fermions with added terms motivated by Eichten and Preskill suggests the possibility for a lattice regularization of the standard model which is finite, exactly gauge invariant, and only has physically desired states in its low energy spectrum. The conjectured scheme manifestly requires anomaly cancelation and explicitly contains baryon and lepton number violating terms.Comment: 11 pages, late

Portable Resistive Plate Chambers for Muography in confined environments

Muography (or muon radiography) is an imaging technique that relies on the use of cosmogenic muons as a free and safe radiation source. It can be applied in various fields such as archaeology, civil engineering, geology, nuclear reactor monitoring, nuclear waste characterization, underground surveys, etc. In such applications, sometimes deploying muon detectors is challenging due to logistics, e.g. in a narrow underground tunnel or mine. Therefore, we are developing muon detectors whose design goals include portability, robustness, autonomy, versatility, and safety. Our portable muon detectors (or ``muoscopes'') are based on Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC), planar detectors that use ionization in a thin gas gap to detect cosmic muons. Prototype RPCs of active area $16 \times 16~cm^2$ and $28 \times 28~cm^2$ were built in our laboratories at Louvain-la-Neuve (UCLouvain) and Ghent (UGent) to test and compare various design options. Benefiting from the experience gained in building and operating these prototypes, we are proceeding towards the development of improved prototypes with more advanced technical layout and readiness. In this paper we provide the status of our performance studies, including the cross-validation of the two types of prototypes in a joint data taking, and an outline of the direction ahead