Harmonic drive gear error: Characterization and compensation for precision pointing and tracking

Imperfections and geometry effects in harmonic drive gear reducers cause a cyclic gear error, which at a systems level, results in high frequency torque fluctuations. To address this problem, gear error testing was performed on a wide variety of sizes and types of harmonic drives. It was found that although all harmonic drives exhibit a significant first harmonic, higher harmonics varied greatly with each unit. From life tests, small changes were found in harmonic content, phase shift, and error magnitude (on the order of .008 deg peak-to-peak maximum) occurred for drives with many millions of degrees of output travel. Temperature variations also influenced gear error. Over a spread of approximately 56 C (100 F), the error varied in magnitude approximately 20 percent but changes in a repeatable and predictable manner. Concentricity and parallelness tests of harmonic drive parts resulted in showing alignment influence gear error amplitude. Tests on dedoidaled harmonic drives showed little effect on gear error; surprisingly, in one case for a small drive, gear error actually improved. Electronic compensation of gear error in harmonic drives was shown to be substantially effective for units that are first harmonic dominant

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

Relic density of neutralino dark matter in the MSSM with CP violation

We calculate the relic density of dark matter in the MSSM with CP violation. We analyse various scenarios of neutralino annihilation: the cases of a bino, bino-wino and bino-Higgsino LSP, annihilation through Higgs, as well as sfermion coannihilation scenarios. Large phase effects are found, on the one hand due to shifts in the masses, on the other hand due to modifications of the couplings. Taking special care to disentangle the effects in masses and couplings, we demonstrate that the presence of CP phases can have a significant influence on the neutralino relic abundance. Typical variations in \Omega h^2 solely from modifications in the couplings are O(10%-100%), but can reach an order of magnitude in some cases.Comment: 36 pages, 21 figures (low resolution). A version with high-resolution figures can be downloaded from http://cern.ch/kraml/papers/omc

Probing CP-violating Higgs contributions in gamma-gamma -> f anti-f through fermion polarization

We discuss the use of fermion polarization for studying neutral Higgs bosons at a photon collider. To this aim we construct polarization asymmetries which can isolate the contribution of a Higgs boson $\phi$ in $\gamma\gamma\to f \bar f$, $f=\tau/t$, from that of the QED continuum. This can help in getting information on the $\gamma\gamma\phi$ coupling in case $\phi$ is a CP eigenstate. We also construct CP-violating asymmetries which can probe CP mixing in case $\phi$ has indeterminate CP. Furthermore, we take the MSSM with CP violation as an example to demonstrate the potential of these asymmetries in a numerical analysis. We find that these asymmetries are sensitive to the presence of a Higgs boson as well as its CP properties over a wide range of MSSM parameters. In particular, the method suggested can cover the region where a light Higgs boson may have been missed by LEP due to CP violation in the Higgs sector, and may be missed as well at the LHC.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, typeset in revtex4. Version which has appeared in Physical Review D; typos in two references correcte

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

Three-body decays of sleptons in models with non-universal Higgs masses

We compute the three-body decays of charged sleptons and sneutrinos into other sleptons. These decays are of particular interest in SUSY-breaking models with non-universal Higgs mass parameters, where the left-chiral sleptons can be lighter than the right-chiral ones, and lighter than the lightest neutralino. We present the formulas for the three-body decay widths together with a numerical analysis in the context of gaugino-mediated SUSY breaking with a gravitino LSP.Comment: Version published in JHEP. See http://cern.ch/kraml/papers/ for high-res 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

CP violating asymmetries in single top quark production at the Tevatron p pbar collider

Analytic expressions for the angular distributions of the $b$-quarks associated with single $t$-quark production in $p \bar p \to W^* \to t \bar b \to b \bar b W$ and of the leptons from the subsequent decay $W \to l\nu$ are obtained in the laboratory system. CP violation in the $t$-production vertex is assumed. Different angular and total cross section CP violating asymmetries are considered. Relations testing CP violation solely in the $t$-decay vertex are also obtained. A numerical analysis is performed in the MSSM with a CP violating phase of the trilinear coupling $A_{\tilde t}$. The asymmetries are typically of the order $10^{-3}$ - $10^{-4}$.Comment: The numerical results are corrected and some changes that meet the requirements of Phys. Rev. D are mad