Low energy threshold corrections to neutrino masses and mixing angles

We compute the low energy threshold corrections to neutrino masses and mixing in the Standard Model (SM) and its minimal supersymmetric version, using the effective theory technique. We demonstrate that they stabilize the renormalization group (RG) running with respect to the choice of the scale to which the RG equation is integrated. This confirms the correctness of the recent re-derivation of the RGE for the SM in hep-ph/0108005. The explicit formulae for the low energy threshold corrections corrections can be applied to specific models of neutrino masses and mixing.Comment: 20 pages, 2 postscript figure

ALEPH Four-Jet Excess, RbR_b and R−R-Parity Violation

We review briefly the indications for some relatively light superpartners based on the ~$R_b$ ~anomaly and discuss the dependence of the potential increase in $R_b$ on the assumption about ~$R-$parity (non)conservation. We point out that the exotic 4-jet events reported by ALEPH may constitute a signal for supersymmetry with such a light spectrum and with explicitly broken $R-$parity. A parton level simulation shows that production of a pair of light charginos with their subsequent baryon-number violating decays (either through a stop or through a neutralino) could possibly give rise to this excess. The decay \chi^- \ra \tilde{t}_R^\ast b \ra d s b with m_{\chi^-_1} \sim 60 \gev and m_{\tilde t} \sim 52 \gev leads to signatures very close to the experimental observations.Comment: 17 pages, submited as uuencoded gz-compressed .tar file containing LATEX file and figures. Some typos fixed and the important error in the caption of Fig. 7 correcte

Flavour Changing Neutral Currents and Inverted Sfermion Mass Hierarchy

We study the contraints on non-flavour-blind soft supersymmetry breaking terms coming from flavour and CP violating processes in the presence of hierarchical Yukawa couplings, and quantify how much these constraints are weakened in the regions of the MSSM parameter space characterized by heavy gauginos and multi-TeV sfermion masses, respectively. We also study the inverted sfermion mass hierarchy scenario in the context of D-term supersymmetry breaking, and show that generic hierarchical Yukawa couplings with arbitrary phases require first generation squarks in the few 10 TeV range.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. Talk given at the XLth Rencontres de Moriond on Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories, La Thuile, Aosta Valley, Italy, 5-12 March 2005. V3: one reference correcte

Up-dating for the paper "The mass of the Higgs boson in the standard model from precision tests"

The bounds on the Higgs mass in the Standard Model are re-analyzed using the precision electroweak data presented at the International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics, Brussels, 27 July -- 2 August, 199