Study of CMS sensitivity to neutrinoless τ\tau decay at LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scheduled to start operation in 2006, is foreseen to provide in the first year of running a total of $\sim 10^{12}$ $\tau$ leptons. CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) is a general-purpose experiment designed to study proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions at LHC. Even if the Susy particles and Higgs searches togheter with the B-physics present its main goal, the large amount of $\tau$-lepton, could allow a systematic study of tau-physics. We have performed a full simulation of CMS using GEANT 3 package and the object-oriented reconstruction program ORCA to study the sensitivity to neutrinoless tau decay $\tau \to \mu^+ \mu^- \mu^-$ and $\tau \to \mu \gamma$. We present the analysis developed for these channels and the results obtained.Comment: Invited talk at the seventh international Workshop on tau lepton physics (TAU02), Santa Cruz, Ca, Usa, September 2002 10 pages 15 eps figure

Inhomogeneity effects in Cosmology

This article looks at how inhomogeneous spacetime models may be significant for cosmology. First it looks at how the averaging process may affect large scale dynamics, with backreaction effects leading to effective contributions to the averaged energy-momentum tensor. Secondly it considers how local inhomogeneities may affect cosmological observations in cosmology, possibly significantly affecting the concordance model parameters. Thirdly it presents the possibility that the universe is spatially inhomogeneous on Hubble scales, with a violation of the Copernican principle leading to an apparent acceleration of the universe. This could perhaps even remove the need for the postulate of dark energy.Comment: 29 pages. For special issue of CQG on inhomogeneous cosmologie

Visions of visualization aids: Design philosophy and experimental results

Aids for the visualization of high-dimensional scientific or other data must be designed. Simply casting multidimensional data into a two- or three-dimensional spatial metaphor does not guarantee that the presentation will provide insight or parsimonious description of the phenomena underlying the data. Indeed, the communication of the essential meaning of some multidimensional data may be obscured by presentation in a spatially distributed format. Useful visualization is generally based on pre-existing theoretical beliefs concerning the underlying phenomena which guide selection and formatting of the plotted variables. Two examples from chaotic dynamics are used to illustrate how a visulaization may be an aid to insight. Two examples of displays to aid spatial maneuvering are described. The first, a perspective format for a commercial air traffic display, illustrates how geometric distortion may be introduced to insure that an operator can understand a depicted three-dimensional situation. The second, a display for planning small spacecraft maneuvers, illustrates how the complex counterintuitive character of orbital maneuvering may be made more tractable by removing higher-order nonlinear control dynamics, and allowing independent satisfaction of velocity and plume impingement constraints on orbital changes

Pictorial communication: Pictures and the synthetic universe

Principles for the design of dynamic spatial instruments for communicating quantitative information to viewers are considered through a brief review of the history of pictorial communication. Pictorial communication is seen to have two directions: (1) from the picture to the viewer; and (2) from the viewer to the picture. Optimization of the design of interactive instruments using pictorial formats requires an understanding of the manipulative, perceptual, and cognitive limitations of human viewers

Biaxial experiments supporting the development of constitutive theories for advanced high-temperature materials

Complex states of stress and strain are introduced into components during service in engineering applications. It follows that analysis of such components requires material descriptions, or constitutive theories, which reflect the tensorial nature of stress and strain. For applications involving stress levels above yield, the situation is more complex in that material response is both nonlinear and history dependent. This has led to the development of viscoplastic constitutive theories which introduce time by expressing the flow and evolutionary equation in the form of time derivatives. Models were developed here which can be used to analyze high temperature components manufactured from advanced composite materials. In parallel with these studies, effort was directed at developing multiaxial testing techniques to verify the various theories. Recent progress in the development of constitutive theories from both the theoretical and experimental viewpoints are outlined. One important aspect is that material descriptions for advanced composite materials which can be implemented in general purpose finite element codes and used for practical design are verified

Heavy Quark Production at High Energy

We report on QCD radiative corrections to heavy quark production valid at high energy. The formulae presented will allow a matched calculation of the total cross section which is correct at O(\as^3) and includes resummation of all terms of order \as^3 [\as \ln (s/m^2)]^n. We also include asymptotic estimates of the effect of the high energy resummation. A complete description of the calculation of the heavy quark impact factor is included in an appendix.Comment: 32 pages (LaTeX) with three figures. Resubmission to agree with published version, which contains a new note added in proof and modifications of text of appendix

Exact non-equilibrium solutions of the Einstein-Boltzmann equations. II

We find exact solutions of the Einstein-Boltzmann equations with relaxational collision term in FRW and Bianchi I spacetimes. The kinematic and thermodynamic properties of the solutions are investigated. We give an exact expression for the bulk viscous pressure of an FRW distribution that relaxes towards collision-dominated equilibrium. If the relaxation is toward collision-free equilibrium, the bulk viscosity vanishes - but there is still entropy production. The Bianchi I solutions have zero heat flux and bulk viscosity, but nonzero shear viscosity. The solutions are used to construct a realisation of the Weyl Curvature Hypothesis.Comment: 16 pages LaTex, CQG documentstyle (ioplppt