Quirks in supersymmetry with gauge coupling unification

I investigate the phenomenology of supersymmetric models with extra vector-like supermultiplets that couple to the Standard Model gauge fields and transform as the fundamental representation of a new confining non-Abelian gauge interaction. If perturbative gauge coupling unification is to be maintained, the new group can be SU(2), SU(3), or SO(3). The impact on the sparticle mass spectrum is explored, with particular attention to the gaugino mass dominated limit in which the supersymmetric flavor problem is naturally solved. The new confinement length scale is astronomical for SO(3), so the new particles are essentially free. For the SU(2) and SU(3) cases, the new vector-like fermions are quirks; pair production at colliders yields quirk-antiquirk states bound by stable flux tubes that are microscopic but long compared to the new confinement scale. I study the reach of the Tevatron and LHC for the optimistic case that in a significant fraction of events the quirk-antiquirk bound state will lose most of its energy before annihilating as quirkonium.Comment: 28 page

Physics of vacuum at ITEP and around

Recollections about a few episodes from the history of physics of vacuum, connected with the names of Pomeranchuk, Landau, Zeldovich, Sakharov and Kirzhnits. The text of the talk will be published in the Proceedings of the International Conference ``From the Smallest to the Largest Distances'', Tribute to Jean Tran-Thanh-Van, May 24-26, 2001 (``Surveys in High Energy Physics'', Taylor and Francis, 2002, v.16, No.3).Comment: 10 page

Cube or hypercube of natural units

Max Planck introduced four natural units: h, c, G, k. Only the first three of them retained their status, representing the so called cube of theories, after the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics were created and became the pillars of physics. This short note is a little pebble on the tombstone of Michael Samuilovich Marinov.Comment: 7 pages, to be published in ``Multiple facets of quantization and supersymmetry'', Michael Marinov Memorial Volume, Eds. M. Olshanetsky and A. Vainshtein, World Scientific, 200

The impact of the Sakata model

The evolution of the Sakata model is described on the basis of personal recollections, proceedings of international conferences on high energy physics and some journal articles.Comment: 17 pages. To be published in the Proceedings of the International Symposium PNLambda50 `The Jubilee of the Sakata Models'. November 25-26, 2006, Nagoya University, Japa

The Einstein formula: E_0=mc^2 "Isn't the Lord laughing?"

The article traces the way Einstein formulated the relation between energy and mass in his work from 1905 to 1955. Einstein emphasized quite often that the mass $m$ of a body is equivalent to its rest energy $E_0$. At the same time he frequently resorted to the less clear-cut statement of equivalence of energy and mass. As a result, Einstein's formula $E_0=mc^2$ still remains much less known than its popular form, $E=mc^2$, in which $E$ is the total energy equal to the sum of the rest energy and the kinetic energy of a freely moving body. One of the consequences of this is the widespread fallacy that the mass of a body increases when its velocity increases and even that this is an experimental fact. As wrote the playwright A N Ostrovsky "Something must exist for people, something so austere, so lofty, so sacrosanct that it would make profaning it unthinkable."Comment: 20 page

PVLAS experiment, star cooling and BBN constraints: Possible interpretation with temperature dependent gauge symmetry breaking

It is known that the kinetic mixing of photon and another U(1)_ex gauge boson can introduce millicharged particles. Millicharged particles $f$ of mass 0.1 eV can explain the PVLAS experiment. We suggest a temperature dependent gauge symmetry breaking of U(1)_ex for this idea to be consistent with astrophysical and cosmological constraints.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figue