4,759 research outputs found
Neutrino Mass Implications for Muon Decay Parameters
We use the scale of neutrino mass to derive model-independent naturalness
constraints on possible contributions to muon decay Michel parameters from new
physics above the electroweak symmetry-breaking scale. Focusing on Dirac
neutrinos, we obtain a complete basis of effective dimension four and dimension
six operators that are invariant under the gauge symmetry of the Standard Model
and that contribute to both muon decay and neutrino mass. We show that -- in
the absence of fine tuning -- the most stringent bounds on chirality-changing
operators relevant to muon decay arise from one-loop contributions to neutrino
mass. The bounds we obtain on their contributions to the Michel parameters are
four or more orders of magnitude stronger than bounds previously obtained in
the literature. We also show that there exist chirality-changing operators that
contribute to muon decay but whose flavor structure allows them to evade
neutrino mass naturalness bounds. We discuss the implications of our analysis
for the interpretation of muon decay experiments.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure
Three-dimensional topological lattice models with surface anyons
We study a class of three dimensional exactly solvable models of topological
matter first put forward by Walker and Wang [arXiv:1104.2632v2]. While these
are not models of interacting fermions, they may well capture the topological
behavior of some strongly correlated systems. In this work we give a full
pedagogical treatment of a special simple case of these models, which we call
the 3D semion model: We calculate its ground state degeneracies for a variety
of boundary conditions, and classify its low-lying excitations. While point
defects in the bulk are confined in pairs connected by energetic strings, the
surface excitations are more interesting: the model has deconfined point
defects pinned to the boundary of the lattice, and these exhibit semionic
braiding statistics. The surface physics is reminiscent of a bosonic
fractional quantum Hall effect in its topological limit, and these
considerations help motivate an effective field theoretic description for the
lattice models as variants of theories. Our special example of the 3D
semion model captures much of the behavior of more general `confined
Walker-Wang models'. We contrast the 3D semion model with the closely related
3D version of the toric code (a lattice gauge theory) which has deconfined
point excitations in the bulk and we discuss how more general models may have
some confined and some deconfined excitations. Having seen that there exist
lattice models whose surfaces have the same topological order as a bosonic
fractional quantum Hall effect on a confining bulk, we construct a lattice
model whose surface has similar topological order to a fermionic quantum hall
effect. We find that in these models a fermion is always deconfined in the
three dimensional bulk
Calibration and Irradiation Study of the BGO Background Monitor for the BEAST II Experiment
Beam commissioning of the SuperKEKB collider began in 2016. The Beam Exorcism
for A STable experiment II (BEAST II) project is particularly designed to
measure the beam backgrounds around the interaction point of the SuperKEKB
collider for the Belle II experiment. We develop a system using bismuth
germanium oxide (BGO) crystals with optical fibers connecting to a multianode
photomultiplier tube (MAPMT) and a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)
embedded readout board for monitoring the real-time beam backgrounds in BEAST
II. The overall radiation sensitivity of this system is estimated to be
Gy/ADU (analog-to-digital unit) with the standard
10 m fibers for transmission and the MAPMT operating at 700 V. Our -ray
irradiation study of the BGO system shows that the exposure of BGO crystals to
Co -ray doses of 1 krad has led to immediate light output
reductions of 25--40%, and the light outputs further drop by 30--45% after the
crystals receive doses of 2--4 krad. Our findings agree with those of the
previous studies on the radiation hard (RH) BGO crystals grown by the low
thermal gradient Czochralski (LTG Cz) technology. The absolute dose from the
BGO system is also consistent with the simulation, and is estimated to be about
1.18 times the equivalent dose. These results prove that the BGO system is able
to monitor the background dose rate in real time under extreme high radiation
conditions. This study concludes that the BGO system is reliable for the beam
background study in BEAST II
Estimation of Bermudagrass Forage Intake from Canopy Spectral Absorbance Measurements Using Hyperspectral Radiometry
Comparison Between Electropositive and Electronegative Cold Atmospheric-Pressure Plasmas: A Modelling Study
Cold atmospheric-pressure He + N2 and He + O2 plasmas are chosen as the representatives for electropositive and electronegative plasmas, of which the discharge characteristics are studied and then compared to each other by fluid models. As the increase of the impurity (N2 or O2) fraction from 0 to 10%, for He + N2 plasmas the electron density and ion density increase, the spatiotemporal distributions of electron density, ion density, electron temperature and electron generation rate change a little. On contrast, for He + O2 plasmas the electron density decreases, the ion density first increases and then decreases, the electron temperature increases in the bulk region, but decreases in the sheath region, and the plasmas transform from ᵞ mode to α mode as the significant change of electron generation rate distributions. Larger electric field is needed in the bulk region to sustain the electronegative plasma, so the electrical characteristics of He + O2 plasmas transform form capacitive to resistive with increasing O2fraction. Meanwhile, the ion-coupling power increases dramatically, which can be estimated by a formula based on the electronegativity. A new criterion for determining the sheath boundary, |ΔE| = 5 kV/cm2, is put forward, which is found suitable for both the electropositive and electronegative plasmas
Critical points and supersymmetric vacua, III: String/M models
A fundamental problem in contemporary string/M theory is to count the number
of inequivalent vacua satisfying constraints in a string theory model. This
article contains the first rigorous results on the number and distribution of
supersymmetric vacua of type IIb string theories compactified on a Calabi-Yau
3-fold with flux. In particular, complete proofs of the counting formulas
in Ashok-Douglas and Denef-Douglas are given, together with van der Corput
style remainder estimates. We also give evidence that the number of vacua
satisfying the tadpole constraint in regions of bounded curvature in moduli
space is of exponential growth in .Comment: Final revision for publication in Commun. Math. Phys. Minor
corrections and editorial change
Bergman Kernel from Path Integral
We rederive the expansion of the Bergman kernel on Kahler manifolds developed
by Tian, Yau, Zelditch, Lu and Catlin, using path integral and perturbation
theory, and generalize it to supersymmetric quantum mechanics. One physics
interpretation of this result is as an expansion of the projector of wave
functions on the lowest Landau level, in the special case that the magnetic
field is proportional to the Kahler form. This is relevant for the quantum Hall
effect in curved space, and for its higher dimensional generalizations. Other
applications include the theory of coherent states, the study of balanced
metrics, noncommutative field theory, and a conjecture on metrics in black hole
backgrounds. We give a short overview of these various topics. From a
conceptual point of view, this expansion is noteworthy as it is a geometric
expansion, somewhat similar to the DeWitt-Seeley-Gilkey et al short time
expansion for the heat kernel, but in this case describing the long time limit,
without depending on supersymmetry.Comment: 27 page
Identification of Mechanism-Based Inactivation in P450-Catalyzed Cyclopropanation Facilitates Engineering of Improved Enzymes
Following the recent discovery that heme proteins can catalyze the cyclopropanation of styrenyl olefins with high efficiency and selectivity, interest in developing new enzymes for a variety of non-natural carbene transfer reactions has burgeoned. The fact that diazo compounds and other carbene precursors are known mechanism-based inhibitors of P450s, however, led us to investigate if they also interfere with this new enzyme function. We present evidence for two inactivation pathways that are operative during cytochrome P450-catalyzed cyclopropanation. Using a combination of UV–vis, mass spectrometry, and proteomic analyses, we show that the heme cofactor and several nucleophilic side chains undergo covalent modification by ethyl diazoacetate (EDA). Substitution of two of the affected residues with less-nucleophilic amino acids led to a more than twofold improvement in cyclopropanation performance (total TTN). Elucidating the inactivation pathways of heme protein-based carbene transfer catalysts should aid in the optimization of this new biocatalytic function
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