Higgs coupling constants as a probe of new physics

We study new physics effects on the couplings of weak gauge bosons with the lightest CP-even Higgs boson ($h$), $hZZ$, and the tri-linear coupling of the lightest Higgs boson, $hhh$, at the one loop order, as predicted by the two Higgs doublet model. Those renormalized coupling constants can deviate from the Standard Model (SM) predictions due to two distinct origins; the tree level mixing effect of Higgs bosons and the quantum effect of additional particles in loop diagrams. The latter can be enhanced in the renormalized $hhh$ coupling constant when the additional particles show the non-decoupling property. Therefore, even in the case where the $hZZ$ coupling is close to the SM value, deviation in the $hhh$ coupling from the SM value can become as large as plus 100 percent, while that in the $hZZ$ coupling is at most minus 1 percent level. Such large quantum effect on the Higgs tri-linear coupling is distinguishable from the tree level mixing effect, and is expected to be detectable at a future linear collider.Comment: 52 pages, 10 figures, revtex

The Spinning Particles as a Nonlinear Realizations of the Superworldline Reparametrization Invariance

The superdiffeomorphisms invariant description of $N$ - extended spinning particle is constructed in the framework of nonlinear realizations approach. The action is universal for all values of $N$ and describes the time evolution of $D+2$ different group elements of the superdiffeomorphisms group of the $(1,N)$ superspace. The form of this action coincides with the one-dimensional version of the gravity action, analogous to Trautman's one.Comment: 4 pages, RevTe

Ancestral Hybridization Facilitated Species Diversification in the Lake Malawi Cichlid Fish Adaptive Radiation.

The adaptive radiation of cichlid fishes in East African Lake Malawi encompasses over 500 species that are believed to have evolved within the last 800,000 years from a common founder population. It has been proposed that hybridization between ancestral lineages can provide the genetic raw material to fuel such exceptionally high diversification rates, and evidence for this has recently been presented for the Lake Victoria region cichlid superflock. Here, we report that Lake Malawi cichlid genomes also show evidence of hybridization between two lineages that split 3-4 Ma, today represented by Lake Victoria cichlids and the riverine Astatotilapia sp. "ruaha blue." The two ancestries in Malawi cichlid genomes are present in large blocks of several kilobases, but there is little variation in this pattern between Malawi cichlid species, suggesting that the large-scale mosaic structure of the genomes was largely established prior to the radiation. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of polymorphic variants apparently derived from the hybridization are interspersed in the genomes. These loci show a striking excess of differentiation across ecological subgroups in the Lake Malawi cichlid assemblage, and parental alleles sort differentially into benthic and pelagic Malawi cichlid lineages, consistent with strong differential selection on these loci during species divergence. Furthermore, these loci are enriched for genes involved in immune response and vision, including opsin genes previously identified as important for speciation. Our results reinforce the role of ancestral hybridization in explosive diversification by demonstrating its significance in one of the largest recent vertebrate adaptive radiations.We acknowledge funding from Wellcome Trust grants WT206194 and WT207492 (H.S. and R.D.), the European Research Council, ERC CoG “CICHLID~X” (617585) and Swiss National Science Foundation, grant nr. 176039 (W.S) and the Royal Society – Leverhulme Trust Africa Awards AA100023 and AA130107 to MJG, BPN and GFT

Genomic islands of speciation separate cichlid ecomorphs in an East African crater lake

The genomic causes and effects of divergent ecological selection during speciation are still poorly understood. Here, we report the discovery and detailed characterization of early-stage adaptive divergence of two cichlid fish ecomorphs in a small (700m diameter) isolated crater lake in Tanzania. The ecomorphs differ in depth preference, male breeding color, body shape, diet and trophic morphology. With whole genome sequences of 146 fish, we identify 98 clearly demarcated genomic ‘islands’ of high differentiation and demonstrate association of genotypes across these islands to divergent mate preferences. The islands contain candidate adaptive genes enriched for functions in sensory perception (including rhodopsin and other twilight vision associated genes), hormone signaling and morphogenesis. Our study suggests mechanisms and genomic regions that may play a role in the closely related mega-radiation of Lake Malawi.The work was funded by Royal Society-Leverhulme Trust Africa Awards AA100023 and AA130107 (M.J.G., B.P.N. and G.F.T.), a Wellcome Trust PhD studentship grant 097677/Z/11/Z (M.M.), Wellcome Trust grant WT098051 (S.S. and R.D.), Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK core support and a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (E.A.M.), a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship RF-2014-686 (M.J.G.), a University of Bristol Research Committee award (M.G.), a Bangor University Anniversary PhD studentship (to A.M.T.) and a Fisheries Society of the British Isles award (G.F.T.). Raw sequencing reads are in the SRA nucleotide archive: RAD sequencing (BioProject: PRJNA286304; accessions SAMN03768857 to SAMN03768912) and whole genome sequencing (BioProject PRJEB1254: sample accessions listed in Table S16). The RAD based phylogeny and alignments have been deposited in TreeBase (TB2:S18241). Whole genome variant calls in the VCF format, phylogenetic trees, and primer sequences for Sequenom genotyping are available from the Dryad Digital Repository (http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.770mc). RD declares his interests as a founder and non-executive director of Congenica Ltd., that he owns stock in Illumina from previous consulting, and is a scientific advisory board member of Dovetail Inc. We thank R. Schley for generating pharyngeal jaw data; S. Mzighani, J. Kihedu and staff of the Tanzanian Fisheries Research Institute for logistical support; A. Smith, H. Sungani, A. Shechonge, P. Parsons, J. Swanstrom, G. Cooke and J. Bridle for contributions to sampling and aquarium maintenance, the Sanger Institute sequencing core for DNA sequencing and Dr. H. Imai (Kyoto University) for the use of spectrometer in his laboratory.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from AAAS via http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aac992

Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment and mu -> e gamma in B-L Model with Inverse Seesaw

We study the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, a_\mu, and lepton flavor violating decay \mu -> e \gamma in TeV scale B-L extension of the Standard Model (SM) with inverse seesaw mechanism. We show that the B-L contributions to a_\mu are severely constrained, therefore the SM contribution remains intact. We also emphasize that the current experimental limit of BR(\mu -> e \gamma) can be satisfied for a wide range of parameter space and it can be within the reach of MEG experiment.Comment: 10 pages, 4 Figure

Non-standard interactions versus non-unitary lepton flavor mixing at a neutrino factory

The impact of heavy mediators on neutrino oscillations is typically described by non-standard four-fermion interactions (NSIs) or non-unitarity (NU). We focus on leptonic dimension-six effective operators which do not produce charged lepton flavor violation. These operators lead to particular correlations among neutrino production, propagation, and detection non-standard effects. We point out that these NSIs and NU phenomenologically lead, in fact, to very similar effects for a neutrino factory, for completely different fundamental reasons. We discuss how the parameters and probabilities are related in this case, and compare the sensitivities. We demonstrate that the NSIs and NU can, in principle, be distinguished for large enough effects at the example of non-standard effects in the $\mu$-$\tau$-sector, which basically corresponds to differentiating between scalars and fermions as heavy mediators as leading order effect. However, we find that a near detector at superbeams could provide very synergistic information, since the correlation between source and matter NSIs is broken for hadronic neutrino production, while NU is a fundamental effect present at any experiment.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figures. Final version published in JHEP. v3: Typo in Eq. (27) correcte

MSMC and MSMC2: the multiple sequentially markovian coalescent

The Multiple Sequentially Markovian Coalescent (MSMC) is a population genetic method and software for inferring demographic history and population structure through time from genome sequences. Here we describe the main program MSMC and its successor MSMC2. We go through all the necessary steps of processing genomic data from BAM files all the way to generating plots of inferred population size and separation histories. Some background on the methodology itself is provided, as well as bash scripts and python source code to run the necessary programs. The reader is also referred to community resources such as a mailing list and github repositories for further advice

THE RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY USE FOR MONITORING OF CHANGES IN THE GLASS STRUCTURE OF THE THIN LAYERS CAUSED BY ION IMPLANTATION

In this paper, we have demonstrated the utility of Raman spectroscopy as a technique for the characterisation of changes in the glass structure of the thin layers caused by ion implantation. Various types of silicate glasses were implanted by Au+ ions with energy of 1.7 MeV and a fluence of 1 x 1016 ions.cm-2 to create gold nanoparticles in thin sub-surface layer of the glass. It was proved that the structure of the glass has an indisputable impact on the extent of depolymerisation of the glass network after implantation. It was shown that the degree of glass matrix depolymerisation can be described using the evaluation of Qn factors in the implanted layers from different depths. After analysis of Raman spectra, the relation between nucleation and the resulting parameters of the gold nanoparticles was put into connection with the feasibility of the glass to recover its structure during post-implantation annealing. Also the creation of new bonds in the glass network was discussed

A common framework for learning causality

[EN] Causality is a fundamental part of reasoning to model the physics of an application domain, to understand the behaviour of an agent or to identify the relationship between two entities. Causality occurs when an action is taken and may also occur when two happenings come undeniably together. The study of causal inference aims at uncovering causal dependencies among observed data and to come up with automated methods to find such dependencies. While there exist a broad range of principles and approaches involved in causal inference, in this position paper we argue that it is possible to unify different causality views under a common framework of symbolic learning.This work is supported by the Spanish MINECO project TIN2017-88476-C2-1-R. Diego Aineto is partially supported by the FPU16/03184 and Sergio Jimenez by the RYC15/18009, both programs funded by the Spanish government.Onaindia De La Rivaherrera, E.; Aineto, D.; Jiménez-Celorrio, S. (2018). A common framework for learning causality. Progress in Artificial Intelligence. 7(4):351-357. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13748-018-0151-yS35135774Aineto, D., Jiménez, S., Onaindia, E.: Learning STRIPS action models with classical planning. In: International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, ICAPS-18 (2018)Amir, E., Chang, A.: Learning partially observable deterministic action models. J. Artif. Intell. Res. 33, 349–402 (2008)Asai, M., Fukunaga, A.: Classical planning in deep latent space: bridging the subsymbolic–symbolic boundary. In: National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-18 (2018)Cresswell, S.N., McCluskey, T.L., West, M.M.: Acquiring planning domain models using LOCM. Knowl. Eng. Rev. 28(02), 195–213 (2013)Ebert-Uphoff, I.: Two applications of causal discovery in climate science. In: Workshop Case Studies of Causal Discovery with Model Search (2013)Ebert-Uphoff, I., Deng, Y.: Causal discovery from spatio-temporal data with applications to climate science. In: 13th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications, ICMLA 2014, Detroit, MI, USA, 3–6 December 2014, pp. 606–613 (2014)Giunchiglia, E., Lee, J., Lifschitz, V., McCain, N., Turner, H.: Nonmonotonic causal theories. Artif. Intell. 153(1–2), 49–104 (2004)Halpern, J.Y., Pearl, J.: Causes and explanations: a structural-model approach. Part I: Causes. Br. J. Philos. Sci. 56(4), 843–887 (2005)Heckerman, D., Meek, C., Cooper, G.: A Bayesian approach to causal discovery. In: Jain, L.C., Holmes, D.E. (eds.) Innovations in Machine Learning. Theory and Applications, Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing, chapter 1, pp. 1–28. Springer, Berlin (2006)Li, J., Le, T.D., Liu, L., Liu, J., Jin, Z., Sun, B.-Y., Ma, S.: From observational studies to causal rule mining. ACM TIST 7(2), 14:1–14:27 (2016)Malinsky, D., Danks, D.: Causal discovery algorithms: a practical guide. Philos. Compass 13, e12470 (2018)McCain, N., Turner, H.: Causal theories of action and change. In: Proceedings of the Fourteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Ninth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference, AAAI 97, IAAI 97, 27–31 July 1997, Providence, Rhode Island, pp. 460–465 (1997)McCarthy, J.: Epistemological problems of artificial intelligence. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Cambridge, MA, USA, 22–25 August 1977, pp. 1038–1044 (1977)McCarthy, J., Hayes, P.: Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial intelligence. Mach. Intell. 4, 463–502 (1969)Pearl, J.: Reasoning with cause and effect. AI Mag. 23(1), 95–112 (2002)Pearl, J.: Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2009)Spirtes, C.G.P., Scheines, R.: Causation, Prediction and Search, 2nd edn. The MIT Press, Cambridge (2001)Spirtes, P., Zhang, K.: Causal discovery and inference: concepts and recent methodological advances. Appl. Inform. 3, 3 (2016)Thielscher, M.: Ramification and causality. Artif. Intell. 89(1–2), 317–364 (1997)Triantafillou, S., Tsamardinos, I.: Constraint-based causal discovery from multiple interventions over overlapping variable sets. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 16, 2147–2205 (2015)Yang, Q., Kangheng, W., Jiang, Y.: Learning action models from plan examples using weighted MAX-SAT. Artif. Intell. 171(2–3), 107–143 (2007)Zhuo, H.H., Kambhampati, S: Action-model acquisition from noisy plan traces. In: International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-13, pp. 2444–2450. AAAI Press (2013

Near-field interactions between metal nanoparticle surface plasmons and molecular excitons in thin-films: part I: absorption

In this and the following paper (parts I and II, respectively), we systematically study the interactions between surface plasmons of metal nanoparticles (NPs) with excitons in thin-films of organic media. In an effort to exclusively probe near-field interactions, we utilize spherical Ag NPs in a size-regime where far-field light scattering is negligibly small compared to absorption. In part I, we discuss the effect of the presence of these Ag NPs on the absorption of the embedding medium by means of experiment, numerical simulations, and analytical calculations, all shown to be in good agreement. We observe absorption enhancement in the embedding medium due to the Ag NPs with a strong dependence on the medium permittivity, the spectral position relative to the surface plasmon resonance frequency, and the thickness of the organic layer. By introducing a low index spacer layer between the NPs and the organic medium, this absorption enhancement is experimentally confirmed to be a near field effect In part II, we probe the impact of the Ag NPs on the emission of organic molecules by time-resolved and steady-state photoluminescence measurements