Spectroscopy of four-dimensional N=1\mathcal{N}=1 supersymmetric SU(3) Yang-Mills theory

Supersymmetric gauge theories are an important building block for extensions of the standard model. As a first step towards Super-QCD we investigate the pure gauge sector with gluons and gluinos on the lattice, in particular the low energy mass spectrum: meson-like gluinoballs, gluino-glueballs and pure glueballs. We report on some first calculations performed with clover improved Wilson fermions on rather small lattices. The supersymmetric continuum limit and particle masses are discussed and compared to predictions from effective field theory.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, talk presented at the 35th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, 18-24 June 2017, Granada, Spai

Hyperfine splitting in positronium to O(α7me){\cal O}(\alpha^7m_e): one-photon annihilation contribution

We present the complete result for the ${\cal O}(\alpha^7m_e)$ one-photon annihilation contribution to the hyperfine splitting of the ground state energy levels in positronium. Numerically it increases the prediction of quantum electrodynamics by $217\pm 1$ kHz.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Pelvic floor muscle group therapy for the treatment of urinary incontinence during pregnancy and post-partum:A randomized controlled trial

Objective: Pelvic Floor Muscle Group Therapy (PFMGT) is an effective treatment option in the general population. However, the effect of therapy during pregnancy and shortly thereafter is unclear. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of PFMGT in peri-partum women with UI compared to care-as-usual. Materials and Methods: Two randomized controlled trials: Study 1: Pregnant women and study 2: 6 weeks post-partum women, were performed. The primary outcome was UI severity based on the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire-Urinary Incontinence Short form (ICIQ-UI SF). Secondary outcomes were the Global Impression of Severity (GPE) measuring patient’s self-reported improvement and the Incontinence Impact Questionnaire-7 (IIQ-7), measuring UI impact. Descriptive and univariate analysis were reported and the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare differences between groups. Results: Inclusion numbers could not be met, and therefore all women received individual Pelvic floor muscles training (PFMT). Study 1 showed no significant results regarding the prevalence of UI (ICIQ-UI SF), GPE and IIQ-7 at any measurement moment. As compared to baseline, study 2 showed a significant improvement for prevalence of UI and impact of UI at 4 months post-partum, however there was no significant difference between groups at other measurement moments. Significant subjective improvement was seen at 4th and 9th months post-partum, in favor of the PFMT group (p=0.02). Conclusion: PFMT, started after childbirth, demonstrated improved UI and quality of life with a lower number of complaints at the 4 months post-partum assessment. However, the full potential of effectiveness of PFMT could not be established due to insufficient inclusions

Amino Acids Rather than Glucose Account for the Majority of Cell Mass in Proliferating Mammalian Cells

Cells must duplicate their mass in order to proliferate. Glucose and glutamine are the major nutrients consumed by proliferating mammalian cells, but the extent to which these and other nutrients contribute to cell mass is unknown. We quantified the fraction of cell mass derived from different nutrients and found that the majority of carbon mass in cells is derived from other amino acids, which are consumed at much lower rates than glucose and glutamine. While glucose carbon has diverse fates, glutamine contributes most to protein, suggesting that glutamine's ability to replenish tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediates (anaplerosis) is primarily used for amino acid biosynthesis. These findings demonstrate that rates of nutrient consumption are indirectly associated with mass accumulation and suggest that high rates of glucose and glutamine consumption support rapid cell proliferation beyond providing carbon for biosynthesis.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant U54CA143874

Approaching N = 1 Super-Yang-Mills theory with improved lattice actions

Investigations of the non-perturbative effects of N=1 Super-Yang-Mills theory on the lattice are demanding. The lattice breaks translation invariance to a discrete subgroup and consequently also supersymmetry. With a fine-tuning of the Wilson fermions to a critical point, it can be achieved that supersymmetry (as well as chiral symmetry) are restored in the continuum limit. This thesis is intended to contribute to weaken the associated restrictions. Unbroken supersymmetry in the continuum arranges the bound states in supermultiplets. When susy is broken, for example by the lattice discretization, then the mass-degeneracy ends. Based on this observation, we tried to modify the fermionic lattice action to minimize the mass difference of states within a supermultiplet and thus the supersymmetry breaking. The first extension of the Wilson Dirac operator was a clover term. It is known from the Symanzik improvement program that a proper choice of the coefficient reduces the lattice discretization artifacts to the order O(a) in the lattice spacing. There are several possibilities to determine this coefficient and we compared them with a heuristic parameter scan. As an alternative, we added a twisted mass term to the Wilson Dirac operator. When the difference of the untwisted mass parameter to its critical value corresponds to the value of the parity-breaking mass, then the two mesonic partners a- and a-f approach at finite lattice spacing the same mass. After we observed this improvement of the supermultiplet in the numerical data, we also found an analytical proof. Additionally we investigated the eigenvalues of the free Dirac operator with twists in the mass term and the Wilson term. There we found an O(a) improvement when those two terms are orthogonal to each other. With the 45°-mass-twisted Wilson Dirac operator, we performed simulations on a 16^3x32 lattice and analyzed all states of the Veneziano-Yankielowicz and Farrar-Gabadadze-Schwetz supermultiplets

Spectroscopy of four-dimensional N = 1 supersymmetric SU(3) Yang-Mills theory

Supersymmetric gauge theories are an important building block for extensions of the standard model. As a first step towards Super-QCD we investigate the pure gauge sector with gluons and gluinos on the lattice, in particular the low energy mass spectrum: meson-like gluinoballs, gluino-glueballs and pure glueballs. We report on some first calculations performed with clover improved Wilson fermions on rather small lattices. The supersymmetric continuum limit and particle masses are discussed and compared to predictions from effective field theory