Cosmic Flows on 100 Mpc/h Scales: Standardized Minimum Variance Bulk Flow, Shear and Octupole Moments

The low order moments, such as the bulk flow and shear, of the large scale peculiar velocity field are sensitive probes of the matter density fluctuations on very large scales. In practice, however, peculiar velocity surveys are usually sparse and noisy, which can lead to the aliasing of small scale power into what is meant to be a probe of the largest scales. Previously, we developed an optimal ``minimum variance'' (MV) weighting scheme, designed to overcome this problem by minimizing the difference between the measured bulk flow (BF) and that which would be measured by an ideal survey. Here we extend this MV analysis to include the shear and octupole moments, which are designed to have almost no correlations between them so that they are virtually orthogonal. We apply this MV analysis to a compilation of all major peculiar velocity surveys, consisting of 4536 measurements. Our estimate of the BF on scales of ~ 100 Mpc/h has a magnitude of |v|= 416 +/- 78 km/s towards Galactic l = 282 degree +/- 11 degree and b = 6 degree +/- 6 degree. This result is in disagreement with LCDM with WMAP5 cosmological parameters at a high confidence level, but is in good agreement with our previous MV result without an orthogonality constraint, showing that the shear and octupole moments did not contaminate the previous BF measurement. The shear and octupole moments are consistent with WMAP5 power spectrum, although the measurement noise is larger for these moments than for the BF. The relatively low shear moments suggest that the sources responsible for the BF are at large distances.Comment: 13 Pages, 7 figures, 4 tables. Some changes to reflect the published versio

Exclusive Signals of an Extended Higgs Sector

Expectations for the magnitude of Higgs boson signals in standard Higgs search channels at the LHC relative to Standard Model (SM) expectations are investigated within the framework of various types of CP and flavor conserving two Higgs doublet models (2HDMs). Signals of the SM-like Higgs boson in different classes of 2HDM may be parameterized in terms of particular two-dimensional sub-spaces of the general four-dimensional space of Higgs couplings to the massive vector bosons, top quark, bottom quark, and tau lepton. We find fairly strong correlations among the inclusive di-photon channel and the exclusive di-photon and di-tau channels from vector boson fusion or associated production. Order one deviations from SM expectations in some of these channels could provide discriminating power among various types of 2HDMs. The ratio of exclusive di-photon to di-tau channels is particularly sensitive to deviations from SM expectations. We also emphasize that deviations from SM expectations in standard Higgs search channels may imply observable signals of non-SM-like Higgs bosons in some of these same channels, in particular in di-photon and di-vector boson channels. The results cataloged here provide a roadmap for interpreting standard Higgs search channels in the context of 2HDMs.Comment: 24 pages, 14 figures, 3 tables; v2: minor corrections, extended discussion of current Higgs signals; version appearing in JHE