Volatility spillover in the foreign exchange market: The Indian experience

We find evidences of significant volatility co-movements and/ or spillover from different financial markets to forex market for Indian economy. Among a large number of variables examined, volatility spillovers from stock market, government securities market, overnight index swap, Ted spread and international crude oil prices to the foreign exchange market are found to be most important. Empirical findings also indicate that the volatility spillover differed across variables in terms of their influence through shocks and in terms of lagged volatility (persistence) coefficients. There are evidences of asymmetric reactions in the forex market volatility. Comparisons between pre-crisis and post-crisis periods indicate that the reform measures and changes in financial markets microstructure during the crisis period had significant impact on volatility spillover. During the post-crisis period, it is the past volatility (persistent or fundamental) changes, rather than the temporary shocks, that had significant spillover effect on forex volatility. There are evidences of decline in asymmetric response in the forex market during the post-crisis period for the Indian economy

Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions : Obviating Oscillation Experiments

Searching for non-standard neutrino interactions, as a means for discovering physics beyond the Standard Model, has one of the key goals of dedicated neutrino experiments, current and future. We demonstrate here that much of the parameter space accessible to such experiments is already ruled out by the RUN II data of the Large Hadron Collider experiment.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Multi-leptons and Top-jets in the Hunt for Gluinos in R-parity Violating Supersymmetry

The presence of R-parity ($\mathcal{R}_p$) violation offers intersting decay channels for the gluinos. In this work we present a new search strategy for the gluinos in the presence of semileptonic $\mathcal{R}_p$ violating couplings $\lambda^{'}_{133}$ and $\lambda^{'}_{233}$. We consider two scenarios (i) $\lambda^{'}$ induced 3-body decay of gluinos to a top quark ($t$), a bottom quark ($b$) and a light lepton ($\ell$) (ii) cascade decay of gluinos to top quarks and neutralinos ($\widetilde{\chi}_1^0$) followed by the decay of $\widetilde{\chi}_1^0$ to $t$, $b$ and $\ell$ through $\lambda^{'}$ couplings. We present two different search procedures which are common to both the scenarios. While the first one involves the traditional approach with multi-leptons and $b$-tagged jets, the second one employs the more recent technique to reconstruct highly energetic hadronically decaying top quarks. We perform a detailed simulation of the signal as well as all the relevant Standard Model backgrounds to show that the second procedure offers slightly better sensitivity for gluino discovery. In both the procedures, a $\geq$ 5$\sigma$ discovery is possible for the gluino mass in the range 1.5 -1.7 TeV at 14 TeV LHC with 50 fb$^{-1}$ integrated luminosity.Comment: Event selection cuts optimized, results significantly improved, more discussions added. Version to appear in JHE

Linear magnetoelectricity at room temperature in perovskite superlattices by design

Discovering materials that display a linear magnetoelectric effect at room temperature is challenge. Such materials could facilitate novel devices based on the electric-field control of magnetism. Here we present simple, chemically intuitive design rules to identify a new class of bulk magnetoelectric materials based on the 'bicolor' layering of $Pnma$ ferrite perovskites, e.g., LaFeO$_3$/ LnFeO$_3$ superlattices for which Ln = lanthanide cation. We use first-principles density-functional theory calculations to confirm these ideas. Additionally, we elucidate the origin of this effect and show it is a general consequence of the layering of any bicolor, $Pnma$ perovskite superlattice in which the number of constituent layers are odd (leading to a form of hybrid improper ferroelectricity) and Goodenough- Kanamori rules. Here, the polar distortions induce both weak ferromagnetism and a linear magnetoelectric effect. Our calculations suggest that the effect is 2-3 times greater in magnitude than that observed for the prototypical magnetoelectric material, Cr$_2$O$_3$. We use a simple mean field model to show that the considered materials order magnetically above room temperature

Smart as democratically transformative? An analysis of ‘Smart City’ sociotechnical imaginary in India

‘Smart cities’ as sociotechnical imaginaries have been enthusiastically embraced by urban planners and policymakers around the world. In 2014, the government of India launched its Smart Cities Mission ostensibly to create socially inclusive and sustainable cities. Aspiring to make their cities smart, and following guidelines provided by the national government, urban authorities from all corners of India submitted proposals to compete in a Smart City Challenge. If successful, they would receive financial and technical support from the national government, to carry out the proposed smart transformations. Focussing on the urban mobility aspects of one such proposal, submitted by New Town, Kolkata, we assess how democratically transformative was the collective process of imagining smart cities in India. A democratically transformative process not only imagines the benefits of smart transformations to be widely distributed across different sections of the city, but it is also participatory and articulated. A participatory process affords possibilities to the most marginalised citizens to engage and raise their diverging and dissenting voices. And an articulated process registers the voices of the most marginalised in the sociotechnical imaginary it produces. Our results indicate that while considerable efforts were made to engage with citizens in the making of the imaginary, the process remained highly uneven and technology-centric, shaped by ‘globalised’ aspirations of urban smartness and by the upper and middle classes, leaving behind the voices and needs of poor and marginalised citizens of Kolkata

Fermion Dark Matter with Scalar Triplet at Direct and Collider Searches

Fermion dark matter (DM) as an admixture of additional singlet and doublet vector like fermions provides an attractive and allowed framework by relic density and direct search constraints within TeV scale, although limited by its discovery potential at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). An extension of the model with scalar triplet can yield neutrino masses and provide some cushion to the direct search constraint of the DM through pseudo-Dirac mass splitting. This in turn, allow the model to live in a larger region of the parameter space and open the door for detection at LHC, even if slightly. The model however can see an early discovery at International Linear Collider (ILC) without too much of fine-tuning. The complementarity of LHC, ILC and direct search prospect of this framework is studied in this paper.Comment: 55 pages, 28 figures, version accepted in PR

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We give a 5 k n O(1) time fixed-parameter algorithm for determining whether a given undirected graph on n vertices has a subset of at most k vertices whose deletion results in a tree. Such a subset is a restricted form of a feedback vertex set. While parameterized complexity of feedback vertex set problem and several of its variations have been well studied, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first fixed-parameter algorithm for this version of feedback vertex set. Submitted