Inhomogeneous Superconductivity in Condensed Matter and QCD

Inhomogeneous superconductivity arises when the species participating in the pairing phenomenon have different Fermi surfaces with a large enough separation. In these conditions it could be more favorable for each of the pairing fermions to stay close to its Fermi surface and, differently from the usual BCS state, for the Cooper pair to have a non zero total momentum. For this reason in this state the gap varies in space, the ground state is inhomogeneous and a crystalline structure might be formed. This situation was considered for the first time by Fulde, Ferrell, Larkin and Ovchinnikov, and the corresponding state is called LOFF. The spontaneous breaking of the space symmetries in the vacuum state is a characteristic feature of this phase and is associated to the presence of long wave-length excitations of zero mass. The situation described here is of interest both in solid state and in elementary particle physics, in particular in Quantum Chromo-Dynamics at high density and small temperature. In this review we present the theoretical approach to the LOFF state and its phenomenological applications using the language of the effective field theories.Comment: RevTex, 83 pages, 26 figures. Submitted to Review of Modern Physic

Search for beautiful tetraquarks in the <i>ϒ</i>(1<i>S</i>)μ⁺μ⁻ invariant-mass spectrum

International audienceThe ϒ(1S)μ$^{+}$μ$^{−}$ invariant-mass distribution is investigated for a possible exotic meson state composed of two b quarks and two $\overline{b}$ quarks, ${X}_{b\overline{b}b\overline{b}}$ . The analysis is based on a data sample of pp collisions recorded with the LHCb detector at centre-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s}=7$ , 8 and 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 6.3 fb$^{−1}$. No significant excess is found, and upper limits are set on the product of the production cross-section and the branching fraction as functions of the mass of the ${X}_{b\overline{b}b\overline{b}}$ state. The limits are set in the fiducial volume where all muons have pseudorapidity in the range [2.0, 5.0], and the ${X}_{b\overline{b}b\overline{b}}$ state has rapidity in the range [2.0, 4.5] and transverse momentum less than 15 GeV/c

Physics of the HL-LHC, and perspectives at the HE-LH: report from working group 4: opportunities in flavour physics at the HL-LHC and HE-LHC

Motivated by the success of the flavour physics programme carried out over the last decade at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), we characterize in detail the physics potential of its High-Luminosity and High-Energy upgrades in this domain of physics. We document the extraordinary breadth of the HL/HE-LHC programme enabled by a putative Upgrade II of the dedicated flavour physics experiment LHCb and the evolution of the established flavour physics role of the ATLAS and CMS general purpose experiments. We connect the dedicated flavour physics programme to studies of the top quark, Higgs boson, and direct high-pT searches for new particles and force carriers. We discuss the complementarity of their discovery potential for physics beyond the Standard Model, affirming the necessity to fully exploit the LHC’s flavour physics potential throughout its upgrade eras

Clinical Evaluation of the Cepheid Xpert® TV Assay for Detection of Trichomonas Vaginalis with Prospectively Collected Female and Male Specimens.

Trichomoniasis is the most prevalent curable sexually transmitted disease (STD). It has been associated with preterm birth and acquisition/transmission of HIV. Recently, nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT) have been FDA-cleared in the United States for detection of Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) in specimens from both women and men. This current study reports the results of a multicenter study recently conducted using the Xpert TV Assay to test specimens from both men and women. On-demand results were available in as little as 40 minutes for positive specimens. A total of 1867 women and 4791 men were eligible for inclusion in the analysis. In women, the performance of the Xpert TV Assay was compared to a patient infected status (PIS) derived from results of InPouch TV broth culture and Aptima NAAT for TV. Diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of the Xpert TV Assay for the combined female specimens (urines, self-collected vaginal swabs, and endocervical swabs) ranged from 99.5 - 100% and 99.4 - 99.9%, respectively. For male urines, diagnostic sensitivity and specificity was 97.2% and 99.9% respectively, compared to a PIS derived from results of broth culture for TV and bi-directional gene sequencing of the amplicons. Excellent performance characteristics were seen using both female and male specimens. The ease of using the Xpert TV Assay should result in opportunities for enhanced screening for TV in both men and women and hopefully improved control of this infection

Clinical Evaluation of the Cepheid Xpert TV Assay for Detection of Trichomonas vaginalis with Prospectively Collected Specimens from Men and Women

Trichomoniasis is the most prevalent curable sexually transmitted disease (STD). It has been associated with preterm birth and the acquisition and transmission of HIV. Recently, nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT) have been FDA cleared in the United States for detection of Trichomonas vaginalis in specimens from both women and men. This study reports the results of a multicenter study recently conducted using the Xpert TV (T. vaginalis) assay to test specimens from both men and women. On-demand results were available in as little as 40 min for positive specimens. A total of 1,867 women and 4,791 men were eligible for inclusion in the analysis. In women, the performance of the Xpert TV assay was compared to the patient infected status (PIS) derived from the results of InPouch TV broth culture and Aptima NAAT for T. vaginalis The diagnostic sensitivities and specificities of the Xpert TV assay for the combined female specimens (urine samples, self-collected vaginal swabs, and endocervical swabs) ranged from 99.5 to 100% and 99.4 to 99.9%, respectively. For male urine samples, the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity were 97.2% and 99.9%, respectively, compared to PIS results derived from the results of broth culture for T. vaginalis and bidirectional gene sequencing of amplicons. Excellent performance characteristics were seen using both female and male specimens. The ease of using the Xpert TV assay should result in opportunities for enhanced screening for T. vaginalis in both men and women and, hopefully, improved control of this infection

Optimization of performance in top-level athletes: an action-focused coping approach

In their target article, Yuri Hanin and Muza Hanina outlined a novel multidisciplinary approach to performance optimisation for sport psychologists called the Identification-Control-Correction (ICC) programme. According to the authors, this empirically-verified, psycho-pedagogical strategy is designed to improve the quality of coaching and consistency of performance in highly skilled athletes and involves a number of steps including: (i)identifying and increasing self-awareness of ‘optimal’ and ‘non-optimal’ movement patterns for individual athletes; (ii) learning to deliberately control the process of task execution; and (iii), correcting habitual and random errors and managing radical changes of movement patterns. Although no specific examples were provided, the ICC programme has apparently been successful in enhancing the performance of Olympic-level athletes. In this commentary, we address what we consider to be some important issues arising from the target article. We specifically focus attention on the contentious topic of optimization in neurobiological movement systems, the role of constraints in shaping emergent movement patterns and the functional role of movement variability in producing stable performance outcomes. In our view, the target article and, indeed, the proposed ICC programme, would benefit from a dynamical systems theoretical backdrop rather than the cognitive scientific approach that appears to be advocated. Although Hanin and Hanina made reference to, and attempted to integrate, constructs typically associated with dynamical systems theoretical accounts of motor control and learning (e.g., Bernstein’s problem, movement variability, etc.), these ideas required more detailed elaboration, which we provide in this commentar

Exclusive hadronic B decays to charm and charmonium final states

We have fully reconstructed decays of both B&lt;sup&gt;-0&lt;/sup&gt; and B&lt;sup&gt;-&lt;/sup&gt; mesons into final states containing either D, D*, D**, ψ, ψ’, or χ&lt;sub&gt;c1&lt;/sub&gt; mesons. This allows us to obtain new results on many physics topics including branching ratios, tests of the factorization hypothesis, color suppression, resonant substructure, and the B&lt;sup&gt;--&lt;/sup&gt;B&lt;sup&gt;-0&lt;/sup&gt; mass difference