New U(1) Gauge Symmetry of Quarks and Leptons

Instead of anchoring the seesaw mechanism with the conventional heavy right-handed neutrino singlet, a small Majorana neutrino mass may be obtained just as well with the addition of a heavy triplet of leptons per family to the minimal standard model of particle interactions. The resulting model is shown to have the remarkable property of accommodating a new U(1) symmetry which is anomaly-free and may thus be gauged. There are many possible phenomenological consequences of this proposal which may be already relevant in explaining one or two recent potential experimental discrepancies.Comment: minor word changes, to appear in MPL

Branching Ratio and CP Asymmetry of B_s \to K^*_0(1430)\pi Decays in the PQCD Approach

In the two-quark model supposition for $K_0^{*}(1430)$, the branching ratios and the direct CP-violating asymmetries for decays $\bar B_s^0\to K^{*0}_0(1430)\pi^0, K^{*+}_0(1430)\pi^-$ are studied by employing the perturbative QCD factorization approach. We find that although these two decays are both tree-dominated, the ratio of their penguin to tree contributions are very different: there is only a few percent for the decay $\bar B_s^0\to K^{*+}_0(1430)\pi^-$, while about 37% in scenario I, even 51% in scenario II for the decay $\bar B_s^0\to K^{*0}_0(1430)\pi^0$. It results that these two decays have very different values in the branching ratios and the direct CP asymmetries. The branching ratio of the decay $\bar B_s^0\to K^{*+}_0(1430)\pi^-$ is at the order of $10^{-5}$, and its direct CP asymmetry is about (20-30)%. While for the decay $\bar B_s^0\to K^{*0}_0(1430)\pi^0$, its direct CP-violating asymmetry is very large and about 90%, but it is difficult to measure it, because the branching ratio for this channel is small and only $10^{-7}$ order.Comment: 8pages, 2figure

Study of f_0(980) and f_0(1500) from B_s \to f_0(980)K, f_0(1500)K Decays

In this paper, we calculate the branching ratios and CP-violating asymmetries for \bar B^0_s \to f_0(980)K, f_0(1500)K within Perturbative QCD approach based on k_T factorization. If the mixing angle $\theta$ falls into the range of 25^\circ<\theta<40^\circ, the branching ratio of \bar B^0_s\to f_0(980)K is 2.0\times 10^{-6}<{\cal B}(\bar B^0_s\to f_0(980)K)<2.6\times 10^{-6}, while $\theta$ lies in the range of 140^\circ<\theta<165^\circ, {\cal B}(\bar B^0_s\to f_0(980)K) is about 6.5\times 10^{-7}. As to the decay {\cal B}(\bar B^0_s\to f_0(1500)K), when the mixing scheme \mid f_0(1500)>=0.84\mid s\bar s>-0.54\mid n\bar n> for f_0(1500) is used, it is difficult to determine which scenario is more preferable than the other one from the branching ratios for these two scenarios, because they are both close to 1.0\times10^{-6}. But there exists large difference in the form factor F^{\bar B_s^0\to f_0(1500)} for two scenarios.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, submitted to J. Phys.

Floquet Energies and Quantum Hall Effect in a Periodic Potential

The Quantum Hall Effect for free electrons in external periodic field is discussed without using the linear response approximation. We find that the Hall conductivity is related in a simple way to Floquet energies (associated to the Schroedinger equation in the co-moving frame). By this relation one can analyze the dependence of the Hall conductivity from the electric field. Sub-bands can be introduced by the time average of the expectation value of the Hamiltonian on the Floquet states. Moreover we prove previous results in form of sum rules as, for instance: the topological character of the Hall conductivity (being an integer multiple of e^2/h), the Diofantine equation which constrains the Hall conductivity by the rational number which measures the flux of the magnetic field through the periodicity cell. The Schroedinger equation fixes in a natural way the phase of the wave function over the reduced Brillouin zone: thus the topological invariant providing the Hall conductivity can be evaluated numerically without ambiguity.Comment: LaTex (revtex), 18 pages, 10 figures in .eps using epsf.sty. Changes in eq. (3.2). References adde

Open charm scenarios

We discuss possibilities of identifying open charm effects in direct production processes, and propose that direct evidence for the open charm effects can be found in $e^+ e^-\to J/\psi\pi^0$. A unique feature with this process is that the $D\bar{D^*}+c.c.$ open channel is located in a relatively isolated energy, i.e. $\sim 3.876$ GeV, which is sufficiently far away from the known charmonia $\psi(3770)$ and $\psi(4040)$. Due to the dominance of the isospin-0 component at the charmonium energy region, an enhanced model-independent cusp effect between the thresholds of $D^0\bar{D^{*0}}+c.c.$ and $D^+ D^{*-}+c.c.$ can be highlighted. An energy scan over this energy region in the $e^+e^-$ annihilation reaction can help us to understand the nature of X(3900) recently observed by Belle Collaboration in $e^+ e^-\to D\bar{D}+c.c.$, and establish the open charm effects as an important non-perturbative mechanism in the charmonium energy region.Comment: 6 pages, Proceeding contribution to the Rutherford Centennial Conference, Aug. 8-12, 2011, Manchester, U.

Non-functional immunoglobulin G transcripts in a case of hyper-immunoglobulin M syndrome similar to type 4

86% of immunoglobulin G (IgG) heavy-chain gene transcripts were found to be non-functional in the peripheral blood B cells of a patient initially diagnosed with common variable immunodeficiency, who later developed raised IgM, whereas no non-functionally rearranged transcripts were found in the cells of seven healthy control subjects. All the patient's IgM heavy-chain and κ light-chain transcripts were functional, suggesting that either non-functional rearrangements were being selectively class-switched to IgG, or that receptor editing was rendering genes non-functional after class-switching. The functional γ-chain sequences showed a normal rate of somatic hypermutation while non-functional sequences contained few somatic mutations, suggesting that most came from cells that had no functional gene and therefore were not receiving signals for hypermutation. However, apoptosis of peripheral blood lymphocytes was not impaired. No defects have been found in any of the genes currently known to be responsible for hyper-IgM syndrome but the phenotype fits best to type 4

eta_c production at the Large Hadron Collider

We have studied the production of the 1S_0 charmonium state, eta_c, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the framework of Non-Relativistic Quantum Chromodynamics (NRQCD) using heavy-quark symmetry. We find that NRQCD predicts a large production cross-section for this resonance at the LHC even after taking account the small branching ratio of eta_c into two photons. We show that it will be possible to test NRQCD through its predictions for eta_c, with the statistics that will be achieved at the early stage of the LHC, running at a center of mass energy of 7 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 100 pb^{-1}Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

The CDF dijet excess from intrinsic quarks

The CDF collaboration reported an excess in the production of two jets in association with a $W$. We discuss constraints on possible new particle state interpretations of this excess. The fact of no statistically significant deviation from the SM expectation for {$Z$+dijet} events in CDF data disfavors the new particle explanation. We show that the nucleon intrinsic strange quarks provide an important contribution to the $W$ boson production in association with a single top quark production. Such {$W$+t} single top quark production can contribute to the CDF {$W$+dijet} excess, thus the nucleon intrinsic quarks can provide a possible explanation to the CDF excess in {$W$+dijet} but not in {$Z$+dijet} events.Comment: 4 latex pages, 1 figure. Version for journal publicatio

Composition of the Pseudoscalar Eta and Eta' Mesons

The composition of the eta and eta' mesons has long been a source of discussion and is of current interest with new experimental results appearing. We investigate what can be learnt from a number of different processes: V to P gamma and P to V gamma (V and P are light vector and pseudoscalar mesons respectively), P to gamma gamma, J/psi,psi' to P gamma, J/psi,psi' to P V, and chi_{c0,2} to PP. These constrain the eta-eta' mixing angle to a consistent value, phi approx 42 degrees; we find that the c cbar components are lesssim 5% in amplitude. We also find that, while the data hint at a small gluonic component in the eta', the conclusions depend sensitively on unknown form factors associated with exclusive dynamics. In addition, we predict BR(psi' to eta' gamma) approx 1 10^{-5} and BR(chi_{c0} to eta eta') approx 2 10^{-5} - 1 10^{-4}. We provide a method to test the mixing using chi_{c2} to eta eta, eta' eta', and eta eta' modes and make some general observations on chi_{c0,2} decays. We also survey the semileptonic and hadronic decays of bottom and charmed mesons and find some modes where the mixing angle can be extracted cleanly with the current experimental data, some where more data will allow this, and some where a more detailed knowledge of the different amplitudes is required.Comment: 34 pages, 11 figures. v2: version published in JHEP, added substantial section on B and D meson electroweak decays, added comment on psi' to eta(')/eta_c gamma, Figs 5 and 6 split and made clearer, added references, other minor revisions which don't change conclusion

b→sb \to s Transitions in Family-dependent U(1)′U(1)^\prime Models

We analyze flavor-changing-neutral-current (FCNC) effects in the $b\to s$ transitions that are induced by family non-universal $U(1)'$ gauge symmetries. After systematically developing the necessary formalism, we present a correlated analysis for the $\Delta B =1, 2$ processes. We adopt a model-independent approach in which we only require family-universal charges for the first and second generations and small fermion mixing angles. We analyze the constraints on the resulting parameter space from $B_s - \bar B_s$ mixing and the time-dependent CP asymmetries of the penguin-dominated $B_d \to (\pi, \phi, \eta', \rho, \omega, f_0)K_S$ decays. Our results indicate that the currently observed discrepancies in some of these modes with respect to the Standard Model predictions can be consistently accommodated within this general class of models.Comment: 36 pages, 11 figure