The B -- TAU FCNC connection in SUSY Unified Theories

In the context of SUSY grand unification a link is established between the hadronic and leptonic soft breaking sectors. Such relation is here exploited in particular for FCNC processes in B physics. It is shown how bounds on leptonic FCNC involving the third generation translate into constraints on FC B decays. In the second part of the contribution we show that tests of lepton universality in K and B decays can represent an interesting handle to obtain relevant information on the amount of FCNC in the second and third fermion generation.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. Based on talks given at: DIF06, International Workshop on discoveries in flavour physics at e+e- colloders, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (Italy), February 28- March 03, 2006; XLIst Rencontres de Moriond, La Thuile, 5-11 March 2006; CORFU2005, Corfu Summer Institute on EPP, Corfu, Greece, September 4-26, 200

Higgs-Mediated e -> mu transitions in II Higgs doublet Model and Supersymmetry

We study the phenomenology of the e-mu lepton flavour violation (LFV) in a general two Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM) including the supersymmetric case. We compute the decay rate expressions of mu -> e gamma, mu -> eee, and mu -> e conversion in nuclei at two loop level. In particular, it is shown that mu -> e gamma is generally the most sensitive channel to probe Higgs-mediated LFV. The correlations among the decay rates of the above processes are also discussed.Comment: v2=published version: 16 pages, 2 figures. Discussions and references added. Results and conclusions unchange

Scaling law of diffusivity generated by a noisy telegraph signal with fractal intermittency

In many complex systems the non-linear cooperative dynamics determine the emergence of self-organized, metastable, structures that are associated with a birth-death process of cooperation. This is found to be described by a renewal point process, i.e., a sequence of crucial birth-death events corresponding to transitions among states that are faster than the typical long-life time of the metastable states. Metastable states are highly correlated, but the occurrence of crucial events is typically associated with a fast memory drop, which is the reason for the renewal condition. Consequently, these complex systems display a power-law decay and, thus, a long-range or scale-free behavior, in both time correlations and distribution of inter-event times, i.e., fractal intermittency. The emergence of fractal intermittency is then a signature of complexity. However, the scaling features of complex systems are, in general, affected by the presence of added white or short-term noise. This has been found also for fractal intermittency. In this work, after a brief review on metastability and noise in complex systems, we discuss the emerging paradigm of Temporal Complexity. Then, we propose a model of noisy fractal intermittency, where noise is interpreted as a renewal Poisson process with event rate rp. We show that the presence of Poisson noise causes the emergence of a normal diffusion scaling in the long-time range of diffusion generated by a telegraph signal driven by noisy fractal intermittency. We analytically derive the scaling law of the long-time normal diffusivity coefficient. We find the surprising result that this long-time normal diffusivity depends not only on the Poisson event rate, but also on the parameters of the complex component of the signal: the power exponent μ of the inter-event time distribution, denoted as complexity index, and the time scale T needed to reach the asymptotic power-law behavior marking the emergence of complexity. In particular, in the range μ < 3, we find the counter-intuitive result that normal diffusivity increases as the Poisson rate decreases. Starting from the diffusivity scaling law here derived, we propose a novel scaling analysis of complex signals being able to estimate both the complexity index μ and the Poisson noise rate rp

Probing New Physics through mu-e Universality in K->lnu

The recent NA48/2 improvement on R_K=Gamma(K->e nu_e)/Gamma(K->mu nu_mu) emphasizes the role of K_l2 decays in probing the mu-e universality. Supersymmetric (SUSY) extensions of the Standard Model can exhibit mu-e non-universal contributions. Their origin is twofold: those deriving from lepton flavor conserving couplings are subdominant with respect to those arising from lepton flavor violating (LFV) sources. We show that mu-e non-universality in K_l2 is quite effective in constraining relevant regions of SUSY models with LFV (for instance, supergravities with a see-saw mechanism for neutrino masses). A comparison with analogous bounds coming from tau LFV decays proves the relevance of the measurement of R_K to probe LFV in SUSY.Comment: v2: 5 pages, 1 figure. Comments and 2 references adde

Stability analysis of solid particle motion in rotational flows

A two-dimensional model of a rotational flow field is used to perform the stability analysis of solid particle motion. It results that the stagnation points are equilibrium points for the motion of particles and the stability analysis allows to estimate their role in the general features of particle motion and to identify different regimes of motion. Furthermore, the effects of Basset history force on the motion of particles lighter than the fluid (bubbles) are evaluated by means of a comparison with the analytical results found in the case of Stokes drag. Specifically, in the case of bubbles, the vortex centres are stable (attractive) points, so the motion is dominated by the stability properties of these points. A typical convergence time scale towards the vortex centre is defined and studied as a function of the Stokes number St and the density ratio γ. The convergence time scale shows a minimum (nearly, in the range 0.1 < St < 1), in the case either with or without the Basset term. In the considered range of parameters, the Basset force modifies the convergence time scale without altering the qualitative features of the particle trajectory. In particular, a systematic shift of the minimum convergence time scale toward the inviscid region is noted. For particles denser than the fluid, there are no stable points. In this case, the stability analysis is extended to the vortex vertices. It results that the qualitative features of motion depend on the stability of both the centres and the vertices of the vortices. In particular, the different regimes of motion (diffusive or ballistic) are related to the stability properties of the vortex vertices. The criterion found in this way is in agreement with the results of previous authors (see, e.g., Wang et al. (Phys. Fluids, 4 (1992) 1789))

A renewal model for the emergence of anomalous solute crowding in liposomes

A fundamental evolutionary step in the onset of living cells is thought to be the spontaneous formation of lipid vesicles (liposomes) in the pre-biotic mixture. Even though it is well known that hydrophobic forces drive spontaneous liposome formation in aqueous solutions, how the components of the earliest biochemical pathways were trapped and concentrated in the forming vesicles is an issue that still needs to be clarified. In recent years, some authors carried out a set of experiments where a unexpectedly high amount of solutes were found in a small number of liposomes, spontaneously formed in aqueous solution. A great number of empty liposomes were found in the same experiments and the global observed behavior was that of a distribution of solute particles into liposomes in agreement with a inverse power-law function rather than with the expected Poisson distribution. The chemical and physical mechanisms leading to the observed "anomalous solute crowding" are still unclear, but the non-Poisson power-law behavior is associated with some cooperative behavior with strong non-linear interactions in the biochemical processes occurring in the solution. For tackling this issue we propose a model grounding on the Cox's theory of renewal point processes, which many authors consider to play a central role in the description of complex cooperative systems. Starting from two very basic hypotheses and the renewal assumption, we derive a model reproducing the behavior outlined above. In particular, we show that the assumption of a "cooperative" interaction between the solute molecules and the forming liposomes is sufficient for the emergence of the observed power-law behavior. Even though our approach does not provide experimental evidences of the chemical and physical bases of the solute crowding, it suggests promising directions for experimental research and it also provide a first theoretical prediction that could possibly be tested in future experimental investigations

The challenge of brain complexity: A brief discussion about a fractal intermittency-based approach

In the last years, the complexity paradigm is gaining momentum in many research fields where large multidimensional datasets are made available by the advancements in instrumental technology. A complex system is a multi-component system with a large number of units characterized by cooperative behavior and, consequently, emergence of well-defined self-organized structures, such as communities in a complex network. The self-organizing behavior of the brain neural network is probably the most important prototype of complexity and is studied by means of physiological signals such as the ElectroEncephaloGram (EEG). Physiological signals are typically intermittent, i.e., display non-smooth rapid variations or crucial events (e.g., cusps or abrupt jumps) that occur randomly in time, or whose frequency changes randomly. In this work, we introduce a complexity-based approach to the analysis and modeling of physiological data that is focused on the characterization of intermittent events. Recent findings about self-similar or fractal intermittency in human EEG are reviewed. The definition of brain event is a crucial aspect of this approach that is discussed in the last part of the paper, where we also propose and discuss a first version of a general-purpose event detection algorithm for EEG signal

The emergence of self-organization in complex systems-Preface

[No abstract available