Electroweak non-resonant corrections to top pair production close to threshold

The production of W+ W- b bbar from e+ e- collisions at energies close to the t tbar threshold is dominated by the resonant process with a nearly on-shell t tbar intermediate state. The W b pairs in the final state can also be reached through the decay of off-shell tops or through background processes containing no or only single top quarks. This non-resonant production starts to contribute at NLO to the W+ W- b bbar total cross section in the non-relativistic power-counting v ~ alpha_s ~ sqrt(alpha_EW). The NLO non-resonant corrections presented in this talk represent the non-trivial NLO electroweak corrections to the e+ e- -> W+ W- b bbar cross section in the top anti-top resonance region. In contrast to the QCD corrections which have been calculated (almost) up to NNNLO, the parametrically larger NLO electroweak contributions have not been completely known so far, but are mandatory for the required accuracy at a future linear collider. We consider the total cross section of the e+ e- -> W+ W- b bbar process and additionally implement cuts on the invariant masses of the W+ b and W- bbar pairs.Comment: Talk presented at the 35th International Conference of High Energy Physics - ICHEP2010, July 22-28, 2010, Paris France. 4 pages, 2 figure

Stationary configurations of two extreme black holes obtainable from the Kinnersley-Chitre solution

Stationary axisymmetric systems of two extreme Kerr sources separated by a massless strut, which arise as subfamilies of the well-known Kinnersley-Chitre solution, are studied. We present explicit analytical formulas for the individual masses and angular momenta of the constituents and establish the range of the parameters for which such systems can be regarded as describing black holes. The mass-angular momentum relations and the interaction force in the black-hole configurations are also analyzed. Furthermore, we construct a charging generalization of the Kinnersley-Chitre metric and, as applications of the general formulas obtained, discuss two special cases describing a pair of identical co- and counterrotating extreme Kerr-Newman black holes kept apart by a conical singularity. From our analysis it follows in particular that the equality $m^2-a^2-e^2=0$ relating the mass, angular momentum per unit mass and electric charge of a single Kerr-Newman extreme black hole is no longer verified by the analogous extreme black-hole constituents in binary configurations.Comment: final version revised according to referee's suggestion

Constraint preserving boundary conditions for the Z4c formulation of general relativity

We discuss high order absorbing constraint preserving boundary conditions for the Z4c formulation of general relativity coupled to the moving puncture family of gauges. We are primarily concerned with the constraint preservation and absorption properties of these conditions. In the frozen coefficient approximation, with an appropriate first order pseudo-differential reduction, we show that the constraint subsystem is boundary stable on a four dimensional compact manifold. We analyze the remainder of the initial boundary value problem for a spherical reduction of the Z4c formulation with a particular choice of the puncture gauge. Numerical evidence for the efficacy of the conditions is presented in spherical symmetry.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure