Chopper-controlled discharge life cycling studies on lead-acid batteries

State-of-the-art 6 volt lead-acid golf car batteries were tested. A daily charge/discharge cycling to failure points under various chopper controlled pulsed dc and continuous current load conditions was undertaken. The cycle life and failure modes were investigated for depth of discharge, average current chopper frequency, and chopper duty cycle. It is shown that battery life is primarily and inversely related to depth of discharge and discharge current. Failure mode is characterized by a gradual capacity loss with consistent evidence of cell element aging

CP Studies of the Higgs Sector

The CP structure of the Higgs sector will be of great interest to future colliders. The measurement of the CP properties of candidate Higgs particles will be essential in order to distinguish models of electroweak symmetry breaking, and to discover or place limits on CP-violation in the Higgs sector. In this report we briefly summarize various methods of determining the CP properties of Higgs bosons at different colliders and identify areas where more study is required. We also provide an example of a synergy between the LHC, an e+e- Linear Collider and a Photon Collider, for the examination of CP-violation in a Two-Higgs-Doublet-Model.Comment: A contribution to the LHC / LC Study Group document; 9 pages, 2 figure

SUSY-QCD corrections to stop and sbottom decays into Higgs bosons

We calculate the order(\alpha_s) SUSY-QCD corrections to the widths of stop and sbottom decays into Higgs bosons within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. We give the complete analytical formulae paying particular attention to the on-shell renormalization of the soft SUSY-breaking parameters. We also perform a detailed numerical analysis of both stop and sbottom decays into all Higgs bosons h^0, H^0, A^0, and H^\pm. We find that the SUSY-QCD corrections are significant, mostly negative and of the order of a few ten percent.Comment: revised version, one figure and a few comments adde

Light Sneutrino Dark Matter at the LHC

In supersymmetric (SUSY) models with Dirac neutrino masses, a weak-scale trilinear A-term that is not proportional to the small neutrino Yukawa couplings can induce a sizable mixing between left and right-handed sneutrinos. The lighter sneutrino mass eigenstate can hence become the lightest SUSY particle (LSP) and a viable dark matter candidate. In particular, it can be an excellent candidate for light dark matter with mass below ~10 GeV. Such a light mixed sneutrino LSP has a dramatic effect on SUSY signatures at the LHC, as charginos decay dominantly into the light sneutrino plus a charged lepton, and neutralinos decay invisibly to a neutrino plus a sneutrino. We perform a detailed study of the LHC potential to resolve the light sneutrino dark matter scenario by means of three representative benchmark points with different gluino and squark mass hierarchies. We study in particular the determination of the LSP (sneutrino) mass from cascade decays involving charginos, using the mT2 variable. Moreover, we address measurements of additional invisible sparticles, in our case the lightest neutralino, and the question of discrimination against the MSSM.Comment: 25 pages, 16 figure

Sfermion Pair Production at μ+μ−\mu^+ \mu^- Colliders

We discuss pair production of stops, sbottoms, staus and tau--sneutrinos at a $\mu^+ \mu^-$ collider. We present the formulae for the production cross sections and perform a detailed numerical analysis within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. In particular, we consider sfermion production near $\sqrt{s} = m_{H^0}$ and $\sqrt{s} = m_{A^0}$.Comment: 21 pages, Latex, uses Revtex (included), 8 figures (included as PS-files

Long-lived stops in MSSM scenarios with a neutralino LSP

This work investigates the possibility of a long-lived stop squark in supersymmetric models with the neutralino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). We study the implications of meta-stable stops on the sparticle mass spectra and the dark matter density. We find that in order to obtain a sufficiently long stop lifetime so as to be observable as a stable R-hadron at an LHC experiment, we need to fine tune the mass degeneracy between the stop and the LSP considerably. This increases the stop-neutralino coanihilation cross section, leaving the neutralino relic density lower than what is expected from the WMAP results for stop masses ~1.5 TeV/c^2. However, if such scenarios are realised in nature we demonstrate that the long-lived stops will be produced at the LHC and that stop-based R-hadrons with masses up to 1 TeV/c^2 can be detected after one year of running at design luminosity

Gauge dependence of the on-shell renormalized mixing matrices

It was recently pointed out that the on-shell renormalization of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix in the method by Denner and Sack causes a gauge parameter dependence of the amplitudes. We analyze the gauge dependence of the on-shell renormalization of the mixing matrices both for fermions and scalars in general cases, at the one-loop level. We then show that this gauge dependence can be avoided by fixing the counterterms for the mixing matrices in terms of the off-diagonal wave function corrections for fermions and scalars after a rearrangement, in a similar manner to the pinch technique for gauge bosons. We finally present explicit calculation of the gauge dependence for two cases: CKM matrix in the Standard Model, and left-right mixing of scalar quarks in the minimal supersymmetric standard model.Comment: 16 pages, minor correction

Summary of the SUSY Working Group of the 1999 Les Houches Workshop

The results obtained by the Working Group on Supersymmetry at the 1999 Les Houches Workshop on Collider Physics are summarized. Separate chapters treat "general" supersymmetry, R-parity violation, gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking, and anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking.Comment: LaTeX, 110 pages with numerous .ps and .eps files. proc.tex is main tex fil

Three-Body Decays of Top and Bottom Squarks

We investigate the decays of third generation scalar quarks in the Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, focusing on the three-body modes. We calculate the partial widths of the decays of heavier top and bottom squarks into the lighter ones and a fermion pair [through virtual vector boson, Higgs boson or gaugino exchanges] and the partial widths of the three-body decays of both top squarks into bottom quarks and a pair of fermion and scalar fermion [we consider the case of lighter $\tilde{\tau}$ or $\tilde{b}$ states] and into a bottom quark, the lightest neutralino and a $W$ or a charged Higgs boson $H^\pm$. Some of these decay modes are shown to have substantial branching ratios in some areas of the parameter space.Comment: 24 pages with 4 psfigures, late

THE TOOLS AND MONTE CARLO WORKING GROUP Summary Report from the Les Houches 2009 Workshop on TeV Colliders

This is the summary and introduction to the proceedings contributions for the Les Houches 2009 "Tools and Monte Carlo" working group.Comment: 144 Pages. Workshop site http://wwwlapp.in2p3.fr/conferences/LesHouches/Houches2009/ . Conveners were Butterworth, Maltoni, Moortgat, Richardson, Schumann and Skand