Observations of B335 in the Millimeter Continuum and the 226 GHz H2CO Line

The protostar B335 was observed in the 1.3 mm continuum and in the H2CO 312 - 211 line with an angular resolution of about 8 arcsec. The mass of the inner envelope detected by the dust continuum emission is about 0.02 Msun. The H2CO spectrum at the protostellar position shows a blue-skewed double peak profile, suggesting that the kinematics of the inner envelope is dominated by infall motion. When the blueshifted and the redshifted peaks were imaged separately, however, there is a small east-west displacement between the maximum positions. This displacement suggests that some part of the H2CO emission might come from the outflowing gas. A combined effect of the infalling envelope and the outflow on the radiative transfer is discussed. This effect can make the line profile asymmetry severer than what is expected from infall-only models

A new scalar resonance at 750 GeV: Towards a proof of concept in favor of strongly interacting theories

We interpret the recently observed excess in diphoton invariant mass as a new spin-0 resonant particle. On the theoretical ground, an interesting question is whether this new scalar resonance belongs to a strongly coupled sector or a well-defined weakly coupled theory. A possible UV-completion that has been widely considered in literature is based on the existence of new vector-like fermions whose loop contributions---Yukawa-coupled to the new resonance---explain the observed signal rate. The large total width preliminarily suggested by data seems to favor a large Yukawa coupling, at the border of a healthy perturbative definition. This potential problem can be fixed by introducing multiple vector-like fermions or large electric charges, bringing back the theory to a weakly coupled regime. However, this solution risks to be only a low-energy mirage: Large multiplicity or electric charge can dangerously reintroduce the strong regime by modifying the renormalization group running of the dimensionless couplings. This issue is also tightly related to the (in)stability of the scalar potential. First, we study---in the theoretical setup described above---the parametric behavior of the diphoton signal rate, total width, and one-loop $\beta$ functions. Then, we numerically solve the renormalization group equations, taking into account the observed diphoton signal rate and total width, to investigate the fate of the weakly coupled theory. We find that---with the only exception of few fine-tuned directions---weakly coupled interpretations of the excess are brought back to a strongly coupled regime if the running is taken into account.Comment: 32 pages, 38 figures, version appeared in JHEP, Fig.1 and 4 revised, references added, new section V.C adde

Anomaly-Mediation and Sequestering from a Higher-Dimensional viewpoint

We study a five-dimensional supergravity model with boundary-localized visible sector exhibiting anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking, in which the central requirements of sequestering and radius stabilization are achieved perturbatively. This makes it possible to understand these various mechanisms in a more integrated and transparent fashion, mostly from the higher-dimensional viewpoint. Local supersymmetry, in the presence of visible sector quantum effects, is enforced by the formalism of the five-dimensional superconformal tensor calculus. The construction results in only mild warping, which allows a natural supersymmetry-breaking mediation mechanism of (finite) boundary-to-boundary gravity loops to co-dominate with anomaly-mediation, thereby solving the latter's tachyonic slepton problem. We make the non-trivial check that this can occur while dangerous loops of stabilizing fields remain highly suppressed. Our discussion is a well-controlled starting point for considering other generalizations of anomaly-mediation, or for string theory realizations.Comment: 33 pages, typos corrected, added references, version appearing in JHE

Radio Imaging of the NGC 1333 IRAS 4B Region

The NGC 1333 IRAS 4B region was observed in the 6.9 mm and 1.3 cm continuum with an angular resolution of about 0.4 arcseconds. IRAS 4BI was detected in both bands, and BII was detected in the 6.9 mm continuum only. The 1.3 cm source of BI seems to be a disk-like flattened structure with a size of about 50 AU. IRAS 4BI does not show any sign of multiplicity. Examinations of archival infrared images show that the dominating emission feature in this region is a bright peak in the southern outflow driven by BI, corresponding to the molecular hydrogen emission source HL 9a. Both BI and BII are undetectable in the mid-IR bands. The upper limit on the far-IR flux of IRAS 4BII suggests that it may be a very low luminosity young stellar object.Comment: To appear in the JKA