153 research outputs found
Invisible Higgs and Scalar Dark Matter
In this proceeding, we show that when we combined WMAP and the most recent
results of XENON100, the invisible width of the Higgs to scalar dark matter is
negligible(<10%), except in a small region with very light dark matter (< 10
GeV) not yet excluded by XENON100 or around 60 GeV where the ratio can reach
50% to 60%. The new results released by the Higgs searches of ATLAS and CMS set
very strong limits on the elastic scattering cross section.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, proceeding TAUP2011 References adde
Metastable Vacua in Flux Compactifications and Their Phenomenology
In the context of flux compactifications, metastable vacua with a small
positive cosmological constant are obtained by combining a sector where
supersymmetry is broken dynamically with the sector responsible for moduli
stabilization, which is known as the F-uplifting. We analyze this procedure in
a model-independent way and study phenomenological properties of the resulting
vacua.Comment: 21 pages, 19 figures; v2: matches version published in JHE
Infrared Quasi Fixed Point Structure in Extended Yukawa Sectors and Application to R-parity Violation
We investigate one-loop renormalization group evolutions of extended sectors
of Yukawa type couplings. It is shown that Landau Poles which usually provide
necessary low energy upper bounds that saturate quickly with increasing initial
value conditions, lead in some cases to the opposite behaviour: some of the low
energy couplings decrease and become vanishingly small for increasingly large
initial conditions. We write down the general criteria for this to happen in
typical situations, highlighting a concept of {\sl repulsive} quasi-fixed
points, and illustrate the case both within a two-Yukawa toy model as well as
in the minimal supersymmetric standard model with R-parity violation. In the
latter case we consider the theoretical upper bounds on the various couplings,
identifying regimes where are
dynamically suppressed due to the Landau Pole. We stress the importance of
considering a large number of couplings simultaneously. This leads altogether
to a phenomenologically interesting seesaw effect in the magnitudes of the
various R-parity violating couplings, complementing and in some cases improving
the existing limits.Comment: Latex, 33 pages, 6 figure
Direct detection of Higgs-portal dark matter at the LHC
We consider the process in which a Higgs particle is produced in association
with jets and show that monojet searches at the LHC already provide interesting
constraints on the invisible decays of a 125 GeV Higgs boson. Using the
existing monojet searches performed by CMS and ATLAS, we show the 95%
confidence level limit on the invisible Higgs decay rate is of the order of the
total Higgs production rate in the Standard Model. This limit could be
significantly improved when more data at higher center of mass energies are
collected, provided systematic errors on the Standard Model contribution to the
monojet background can be reduced. We also compare these direct constraints on
the invisible rate with indirect ones based on measuring the Higgs rates in
visible channels. In the context of Higgs portal models of dark matter, we then
discuss how the LHC limits on the invisible Higgs branching fraction impose
strong constraints on the dark matter scattering cross section on nucleons
probed in direct detection experiments.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; v2: references added; v3: monojet and Higgs data
updated, version published in EPJ
Gamma Ray Lines from a Universal Extra Dimension
Indirect Dark Matter searches are based on the observation of secondary
particles produced by the annihilation or decay of Dark Matter. Among them,
gamma-rays are perhaps the most promising messengers, as they do not suffer
deflection or absorption on Galactic scales, so their observation would
directly reveal the position and the energy spectrum of the emitting source.
Here, we study the detailed gamma-ray energy spectrum of Kaluza--Klein Dark
Matter in a theory with 5 Universal Extra Dimensions. We focus in particular on
the two body annihilation of Dark Matter particles into a photon and another
particle, which produces monochromatic photons, resulting in a line in the
energy spectrum of gamma rays. Previous calculations in the context of the five
dimensional UED model have computed the line signal from annihilations into
\gamma \gamma, but we extend these results to include \gamma Z and \gamma H
final states. We find that these spectral lines are subdominant compared to the
predicted \gamma \gamma signal, but they would be important as follow-up
signals in the event of the observation of the \gamma \gamma line, in order to
distinguish the 5d UED model from other theoretical scenarios.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure
Activity and safety of RAD001 (everolimus) in patients affected by biliary tract cancer progressing after prior chemotherapy: a phase II ITMO study.
BACKGROUND:
Biliary tract cancer (BTC) is a highly lethal disease for which the best available therapy remains undetermined. The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is up-regulated in several cancers, including BTC, and preclinical evidence indicates that mTOR inhibition may be effective in the treatment of BTC. We sought to evaluate the activity and tolerability of the mTOR inhibitor RAD001-everolimus-in patients with BTC progressing after prior chemotherapy.
PATIENTS AND METHODS:
This was an open-label, single-arm, phase II study (EUDRACT 2008-007152-94) conducted in eight sites in Italy. Patients with locally advanced, metastatic or recurrent BTC progressing despite previous chemotherapy received a daily oral dose of everolimus 10 mg administered continuously in 28-day cycles. The two primary end points were disease control rate (DCR) and objective response rate (ORR). Secondary end points were progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS) and time-to-progression (TTP).
RESULTS:
Thirty-nine patients were enrolled. The DCR was 44.7%, and the ORR was 5.1%. One patient showed a partial response at 2 months and one patient showed a complete response sustained up to 8 months. The median (95% confidence interval) PFS was 3.2 (1.8-4.0) months, and the median OS was 7.7 (5.5-13.2) months. The median TTP was 2.0 (1.7-3.7) months. Most common toxicities were asthenia (43.6%), thrombocytopenia (35.9%), pyrexia (30.8%) and erythema, mainly of mild-to-moderate severity. Two patients required dose reduction due to adverse events.
CONCLUSION:
Everolimus demonstrated a favourable toxicity profile and encouraging anti-tumour activity. Further trials are needed to establish the role of everolimus in the treatment of BTC. EUDRACT 2008-007152-94
Moduli stabilization with Fayet-Iliopoulos uplift
In the recent years, phenomenological models of moduli stabilization were
proposed, where the dynamics of the stabilization is essentially
supersymmetric, whereas an O'Rafearthaigh supersymmetry breaking sector is
responsible for the "uplift" of the cosmological constant to zero. We
investigate the case where the uplift is provided by a Fayet-Iliopoulos sector.
We find that in this case the modulus contribution to supersymmetry breaking is
larger than in the previous models. A first consequence of this class of
constructions is for gauginos, which are heavier compared to previous models.
In some of our explicit examples, due to a non-standard gauge-mediation type
negative contribution to scalars masses, the whole superpartner spectrum can be
efficiently compressed at low-energy. This provides an original phenomenology
testable at the LHC, in particular sleptons are generically heavier than the
squarks.Comment: 29 pages, 2 figure
Gauge vs. Gravity mediation in models with anomalous U(1)'s
In an attempt to implement gauge mediation in string theory, we study string
effective supergravity models of supersymmetry breaking, containing anomalous
gauge factors. We discuss subtleties related to gauge invariance and the
stabilization of the Green-Schwarz moduli, which set non-trivial constraints on
the transmission of supersymmetry breaking to MSSM via gauge interactions.
Given those constraints, it is difficult to obtain the dominance of gauge
mediation over gravity mediation. Furthermore, generically the gauge
contributions to soft terms contain additional non-standard terms coming from
D-term contributions. Motivated by this, we study the phenomenology of recently
proposed hybrid models, where gravity and gauge mediations compete at the GUT
scale, and show that such a scenario can respect WMAP constraints and would be
easily testable at LHC.Comment: 40 pages, 5 figure
Charged Higgs production from SUSY particle cascade decays at the LHC
We analyze the cascade decays of the scalar quarks and gluinos of the Minimal
Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, which are abundantly produced
at the Large Hadron Collider, into heavier charginos and neutralinos which then
decay into the lighter ones and charged Higgs particles, and show that they can
have substantial branching fractions. The production rates of these Higgs
bosons can be much larger than those from the direct production mechanisms, in
particular for intermediate values of the parameter , and could
therefore allow for the detection of these particles. We also discuss charged
Higgs boson production from direct two-body top and bottom squark decays as
well as from two- and three-body gluino decays.Comment: 30 pages with 10 figures, latex. Uses axodraw.sty and epsfig.st
Galactic-Centre Gamma Rays in CMSSM Dark Matter Scenarios
We study the production of gamma rays via LSP annihilations in the core of
the Galaxy as a possible experimental signature of the constrained minimal
supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (CMSSM), in which
supersymmetry-breaking parameters are assumed to be universal at the GUT scale,
assuming also that the LSP is the lightest neutralino chi. The part of the
CMSSM parameter space that is compatible with the measured astrophysical
density of cold dark matter is known to include a stau_1 - chi coannihilation
strip, a focus-point strip where chi has an enhanced Higgsino component, and a
funnel at large tanb where the annihilation rate is enhanced by the poles of
nearby heavy MSSM Higgs bosons, A/H. We calculate the total annihilation rates,
the fractions of annihilations into different Standard Model final states and
the resulting fluxes of gamma rays for CMSSM scenarios along these strips. We
observe that typical annihilation rates are much smaller in the coannihilation
strip for tanb = 10 than along the focus-point strip or for tanb = 55, and that
the annihilation branching ratios differ greatly between the different dark
matter strips. Whereas the current Fermi-LAT data are not sensitive to any of
the CMSSM scenarios studied, and the calculated gamma-ray fluxes are probably
unobservably low along the coannihilation strip for tanb = 10, we find that
substantial portions of the focus-point strips and rapid-annihilation funnel
regions could be pressured by several more years of Fermi-LAT data, if
understanding of the astrophysical background and/or systematic uncertainties
can be improved in parallel.Comment: 33 pages, 12 figures, comments and references added, version to
appear in JCA
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