Isospin Symmetry Breaking within the HLS Model: A Full (ρ,ω,ϕ\rho, \omega, \phi) Mixing Scheme

We study the way isospin symmetry violation can be generated within the Hidden Local Symmetry (HLS) Model. We show that isospin symmetry breaking effects on pseudoscalar mesons naturally induces correspondingly effects within the physics of vector mesons, through kaon loops. In this way, one recovers all features traditionally expected from \rho-\omg mixing and one finds support for the Orsay phase modelling of the e^+e^- \ra \pi^+ \pi^- amplitude. We then examine an effective procedure which generates mixing in the whole $\rho$, \omg, $\phi$ sector of the HLS Model. The corresponding model allows us to account for all two body decays of light mesons accessible to the HLS model in modulus and phase, leaving aside the \rho \ra \pi \pi and K^* \ra K \pi modes only, which raise a specific problem. Comparison with experimental data is performed and covers modulus and phase information; this represents 26 physics quantities successfully described with very good fit quality within a constrained model which accounts for SU(3) breaking, nonet symmetry breaking in the pseudoscalar sector and, now, isospin symmetry breaking.Comment: 38 pages, version published in Eur. Phys. J.

VMD, the WZW Lagrangian and ChPT: The Third Mixing Angle

We show that the Hidden Local Symmetry Model, supplemented with well-known procedures for breaking flavor SU(3) and nonet symmetry, provides all the information contained in the standard Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) Lagrangian ${\cal L}^{(0)}+{\cal L}^{(1)}$. This allows to rely on radiative decays of light mesons ($VP\gamma$ and $P \gamma\gamma$) in order to extract some numerical information of relevance to ChPT: a value for $\Lambda_1=0.20 \pm 0.04$, a quark mass ratio of $\simeq 21.2 \pm 2.4$, and a negligible departure from the Gell-Mann--Okubo mass formula. The mixing angles are $\theta_8=-20.40^\circ \pm 0.96^\circ$ and $\theta_0=-0.05^\circ \pm 0.99^\circ$. We also give the values of all decay constants. It is shown that the common mixing pattern with one mixing angle $\theta_P$ is actually quite appropriate and algebraically related to the $\eta/\eta'$ mixing pattern presently preferred by the ChPT community. For instance the traditional $\theta_P$ is functionally related to the ChPT $\theta_8$ and fulfills $\theta_P \simeq \theta_8/2$. The vanishing of $\theta_0$, supported by all data on radiative decays, gives a novel relation between mixing angles and the violation of nonet symmetry in the pseudoscalar sector. Finally, it is shown that the interplay of nonet symmetry breaking through U(3) \ra SU(3)$\times$ U(1) satisfies all requirements of the physics of radiative decays without any need for additional glueballs.Comment: 31 pages, 1 figur

Constraints on New Physics from Baryogenesis and Large Hadron Collider Data

We demonstrate the power of constraining theories of new physics by insisting that they lead to electroweak baryogenesis, while agreeing with current data from the Large Hadron Collider. The general approach is illustrated with a singlet scalar extension of the Standard Model. Stringent bounds can already be obtained, which reduce the viable parameter space to a small island.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. References added, figures updated. Version to appear in PR

Colour-Kinematics Duality for One-Loop Rational Amplitudes

Colour-kinematics duality is the conjecture of a group theory-like structure for the kinematic dependence of scattering amplitudes in gauge theory and gravity. This structure has been verified at tree level in various ways, but similar progress has been lacking at loop level, where the power of the duality would be most significant. Here we explore colour-kinematics duality at one loop using the self-dual sector as a starting point. The duality is shown to exist in pure Yang-Mills theory for two infinite classes of amplitudes: amplitudes with any number of particles either all of the same helicity or with one particle helicity opposite the rest. We provide a simple Lagrangian-based argument in favour of the double copy relation between gauge theory and gravity amplitudes in these classes, and provide some explicit examples. We further discuss aspects of the duality which persist after integration, leading to relations among partial amplitudes. Finally, we describe form factors in the self-dual theory at tree level which also satisfy the duality.Comment: 36 pages, 5 figures; v2: published versio

Understanding Stephen Collins Foster His World and Music

This dissertation is an explanation of the life and music of the American composer Stephen Collins Foster in terms of his historical world. Foster captured the essential dynamics of the antebellum mind and heart, which accounted for the immense popularity of his music even during the composer's lifetime. Consequently, by placing Foster and his music within the historical context of his own antebellum society, culture, and history, I sought explanations for the following: the function of sentimentality in Foster's tear-inducing parlor songs and in his blackface plantation songs; the Copperhead, anti-Lincoln politics of the Foster family; Foster's non-companionate marriage to the high-tempered yet independent "Jeanie;" what the young Foster learned during his stay in the free city of Cincinnati, located just across the river from a slave state; Foster's position on minstrelsy and how he transformed the racially denigrating minstrel song into the refined, sentimental hybrid plantation song that sympathized with the slaves; how and why the piano girls were the major purchasers of Foster's parlor songs; the meaning behind the ghost-like images of the women in Foster's songs; life in Civil War New York along the Bowery where Foster spent his final years and a re-evaluation of his New York songs; and, finally, the curious conditions of his tragic death from an "accident" in his hotel room on the Bowery. Although Foster's association with the minstrel stage is often viewed as a source of embarrassment by twenty-first century Americans, I was able to demonstrate that ivStephen Foster wrote his greatest plantation songs during the years when blackface minstrelsy expressed sympathy for the slaves, and that he abandoned the genre when it did not

RascalC: A Jackknife Approach to Estimating Single and Multi-Tracer Galaxy Covariance Matrices

To make use of clustering statistics from large cosmological surveys, accurate and precise covariance matrices are needed. We present a new code to estimate large scale galaxy two-point correlation function (2PCF) covariances in arbitrary survey geometries that, due to new sampling techniques, runs $\sim 10^4$ times faster than previous codes, computing finely-binned covariance matrices with negligible noise in less than 100 CPU-hours. As in previous works, non-Gaussianity is approximated via a small rescaling of shot-noise in the theoretical model, calibrated by comparing jackknife survey covariances to an associated jackknife model. The flexible code, RascalC, has been publicly released, and automatically takes care of all necessary pre- and post-processing, requiring only a single input dataset (without a prior 2PCF model). Deviations between large scale model covariances from a mock survey and those from a large suite of mocks are found to be be indistinguishable from noise. In addition, the choice of input mock are shown to be irrelevant for desired noise levels below $\sim 10^5$ mocks. Coupled with its generalization to multi-tracer data-sets, this shows the algorithm to be an excellent tool for analysis, reducing the need for large numbers of mock simulations to be computed.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. Code is available at http://github.com/oliverphilcox/RascalC with documentation at http://rascalc.readthedocs.io