3,205 research outputs found
Casting Light on Dark Matter
The prospects for detecting a candidate supersymmetric dark matter particle
at the LHC are reviewed, and compared with the prospects for direct and
indirect searches for astrophysical dark matter. The discussion is based on a
frequentist analysis of the preferred regions of the Minimal supersymmetric
extension of the Standard Model with universal soft supersymmetry breaking (the
CMSSM). LHC searches may have good chances to observe supersymmetry in the near
future - and so may direct searches for astrophysical dark matter particles,
whereas indirect searches may require greater sensitivity, at least within the
CMSSM.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, contribution to the proceedings of the LEAP
2011 Conferenc
How willing are you to accept sexual requests from slightly unattractive to exceptionally attractive imagined requestors?
This is the post print version of the article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below.In their classic study of differences in mating strategies (Clark & Hatfield, 1989), men and women demonstrated a striking difference in interest in casual sex. The current study examined the role of requestor physical attractiveness (slightly unattractive, moderately attractive and exceptionally attractive) on men's and women's willingness to accept three different requests (go out, come to apartment, go to bed) in a questionnaire study. We tested two hypotheses, using a sample of 427 men and 443 women from three countries. Hypothesis 1 states that men, relative to women, will demonstrate a greater willingness to accept the “come to apartment” and “go to bed” requests but not the “go out” request for all three levels of requestor attractiveness. This hypothesis reflects Clark and Hatfield's (1989) main findings. Hypothesis 2 states that the physical attractiveness of a potential partner will have a greater effect on women's than on men's willingness to accept all three requests, and particularly for the explicit request for casual sex. The results partially supported Hypothesis 1 and fully supported Hypothesis 2. The discussion highlights limitations of the current research and presents directions for future research
The treatment of the infrared region in perturbative QCD
We discuss the contribution coming from the infrared region to NLO matrix
elements and/or coefficient functions of hard QCD processes. Strictly speaking,
this contribution is not known theoretically, since it is beyond perturbative
QCD. For DGLAP evolution all the infrared contributions are collected in the
phenomenological input parton distribution functions (PDFs), at some relatively
low scale Q_0; functions which are obtained from a fit to the `global' data.
However dimensional regularization sometimes produces a non-zero result coming
from the infrared region. Instead of this conventional regularization
treatment, we argue that the proper procedure is to first subtract from the NLO
matrix element the contribution already generated at the same order in \alpha_s
by the LO DGLAP splitting function convoluted with the LO matrix element. This
prescription eliminates the logarithmic infrared divergence, giving a
well-defined result which is consistent with the original idea that everything
below Q_0 is collected in the PDF input. We quantify the difference between the
proposed treatment and the conventional approach using low-mass Drell-Yan
production and deep inelastic electron-proton scattering as examples; and
discuss the potential impact on the `global' PDF analyses. We present arguments
to show that the difference cannot be regarded as simply the use of an
alternative factorization scheme.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, title changed, text considerably modified to
improve presentation, and discussion section enlarge
Neutralino versus axion/axino cold dark matter in the 19 parameter SUGRA model
We calculate the relic abundance of thermally produced neutralino cold dark
matter in the general 19 parameter supergravity (SUGRA-19) model. A scan over
GUT scale parameters reveals that models with a bino-like neutralino typically
give rise to a dark matter density \Omega_{\tz_1}h^2\sim 1-1000, i.e. between 1
and 4 orders of magnitude higher than the measured value. Models with higgsino
or wino cold dark matter can yield the correct relic density, but mainly for
neutralino masses around 700-1300 GeV. Models with mixed bino-wino or
bino-higgsino CDM, or models with dominant co-annihilation or A-resonance
annihilation can yield the correct abundance, but such cases are extremely hard
to generate using a general scan over GUT scale parameters; this is indicative
of high fine-tuning of the relic abundance in these cases. Requiring that
m_{\tz_1}\alt 500 GeV (as a rough naturalness requirement) gives rise to a
minimal probably dip in parameter space at the measured CDM abundance. For
comparison, we also scan over mSUGRA space with four free parameters. Finally,
we investigate the Peccei-Quinn augmented MSSM with mixed axion/axino cold dark
matter. In this case, the relic abundance agrees more naturally with the
measured value. In light of our cumulative results, we conclude that future
axion searches should probe much more broadly in axion mass, and deeper into
the axion coupling.Comment: 23 pages including 17 .eps figure
Electroweak Gauge-Boson Production at Small q_T: Infrared Safety from the Collinear Anomaly
Using methods from effective field theory, we develop a novel, systematic
framework for the calculation of the cross sections for electroweak gauge-boson
production at small and very small transverse momentum q_T, in which large
logarithms of the scale ratio M_V/q_T are resummed to all orders. These cross
sections receive logarithmically enhanced corrections from two sources: the
running of the hard matching coefficient and the collinear factorization
anomaly. The anomaly leads to the dynamical generation of a non-perturbative
scale q_* ~ M_V e^{-const/\alpha_s(M_V)}, which protects the processes from
receiving large long-distance hadronic contributions. Expanding the cross
sections in either \alpha_s or q_T generates strongly divergent series, which
must be resummed. As a by-product, we obtain an explicit non-perturbative
expression for the intercept of the cross sections at q_T=0, including the
normalization and first-order \alpha_s(q_*) correction. We perform a detailed
numerical comparison of our predictions with the available data on the
transverse-momentum distribution in Z-boson production at the Tevatron and LHC.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figure
Probing Shadowed Nuclear Sea with Massive Gauge Bosons in the Future Heavy-Ion Collisions
The production of the massive bosons and could provide an
excellent tool to study cold nuclear matter effects and the modifications of
nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) relative to parton distribution
functions (PDFs) of a free proton in high energy nuclear reactions at the LHC
as well as in heavy-ion collisions (HIC) with much higher center-of mass
energies available in the future colliders. In this paper we calculate the
rapidity and transverse momentum distributions of the vector boson and their
nuclear modification factors in p+Pb collisions at TeV and in
Pb+Pb collisions at TeV in the framework of perturbative QCD
by utilizing three parametrization sets of nPDFs: EPS09, DSSZ and nCTEQ. It is
found that in heavy-ion collisions at such high colliding energies, both the
rapidity distribution and the transverse momentum spectrum of vector bosons are
considerably suppressed in wide kinematic regions with respect to p+p reactions
due to large nuclear shadowing effect. We demonstrate that in the massive
vector boson productions processes with sea quarks in the initial-state may
give more contributions than those with valence quarks in the initial-state,
therefore in future heavy-ion collisions the isospin effect is less pronounced
and the charge asymmetry of W boson will be reduced significantly as compared
to that at the LHC. Large difference between results with nCTEQ and results
with EPS09 and DSSZ is observed in nuclear modifications of both rapidity and
distributions of and in the future HIC.Comment: 13 pages, 21 figures, version accepted for publication in Eur. Phys.
J.
Direct neutralino searches in the NMSSM with gravitino LSP in the degenerate scenario
In the present work a two-component dark matter model is studied adopting the degenerate scenario in the R-parity conserving NMSSM. The gravitino LSP and the neutralino NLSP are extremely degenerate in mass, avoiding the BBN bounds and obtaining a high reheating temperature for thermal leptogenesis. In this model both gravitino (absolutely stable) and neutralino (quasi-stable) contribute to dark matter, and direct detection searches for neutralino are discussed. Points that survive all the constraints correspond to a singlino-like neutralino
b-Initiated processes at the LHC: a reappraisal
Several key processes at the LHC in the standard model and beyond that
involve quarks, such as single-top, Higgs, and weak vector boson associated
production, can be described in QCD either in a 4-flavor or 5-flavor scheme. In
the former, quarks appear only in the final state and are typically
considered massive. In 5-flavor schemes, calculations include quarks in the
initial state, are simpler and allow the resummation of possibly large initial
state logarithms of the type into the
parton distribution function (PDF), being the typical scale of the
hard process. In this work we critically reconsider the rationale for using
5-flavor improved schemes at the LHC. Our motivation stems from the observation
that the effects of initial state logs are rarely very large in hadron
collisions: 4-flavor computations are pertubatively well behaved and a
substantial agreement between predictions in the two schemes is found. We
identify two distinct reasons that explain this behaviour, i.e., the
resummation of the initial state logarithms into the -PDF is relevant only
at large Bjorken and the possibly large ratios 's are
always accompanied by universal phase space suppression factors. Our study
paves the way to using both schemes for the same process so to exploit their
complementary advantages for different observables, such as employing a
5-flavor scheme to accurately predict the total cross section at NNLO and the
corresponding 4-flavor computation at NLO for fully exclusive studies.Comment: Fixed typo in Eq. (A.10) and few typos in Eq. (C.2) and (C.3
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