3,303 research outputs found
Handel opera presentation, past and present : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
What differences, if any, exist between the performance of Handel opera during his lifetime, and contemporary performances? To what extent do these differences reflect the need to adapt Handel's operas when performed out of their original context, and how does knowledge of original performance practices enhance the singer's ability to interpret and present characters in performance? This study investigates the ideas outlined above, exploring the social and cultural environment of opera seria, its conventions, and the way in which Handel's operas were presented during his lifetime, later providing a comparison with contemporary productions. It aims to enhance understanding of the production and musical aspects of staging a Handel opera, and to illustrate how this knowledge can assist in performance
Bringing transparency to financial reporting: towards an improved accounting framework in the aftermath of the credit crisis.
The credit crisis, amongst other things, is a crisis of confidence. What was once considered a problem limited to losses on US subprime mortgages has now spread throughout the global fi nancial landscape. A lack of understanding of where these losses have landed has resulted in a significant downturn in financial and economic activity. Confidence will only return once investors are satisfied that the true extent and location of these losses has been fully disclosed. For this to be achieved –despite siren calls the contrary– the financial system requires greater, not reduced levels of transparency and disclosure. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is mindful of its responsibilities, and its work in conjunction with the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) is aimed at improving financial reporting in a number of key areas.
Signals of a Sneutrino (N)LSP at the LHC
The sneutrino is a viable candidate for the NLSP in SUSY spectra with
gravitino LSP. In this work we study the collider implications of this
possibility. In particular, we investigate whether the LHC can distinguish it
(at least, in some cases) from alternative spectra, such as those with a
neutralino LSP. We show that there exists a complete family of experimentally
allowed and theoretically motivated spectra with sneutrino NLSP, which exhibit
very distinctive multilepton signals that are difficult to fake within the
MSSM. We study these signals in detail, including the techniques necessary to
find them. We demonstrate our analysis approach on simulations incorporating
backgrounds.Comment: 41 pages, 13 figures. V2: Tau-tau background added and background
discussion in subsection V.C modified. Short discussion about early discovery
in subsection V.D added. Minors changes and refs. adde
The Fate of Long-Lived Superparticles with Hadronic Decays after LHC Run 1
Supersymmetry searches at the LHC are both highly varied and highly
constraining, but the vast majority are focused on cases where the final-stage
visible decays are prompt. Scenarios featuring superparticles with
detector-scale lifetimes have therefore remained a tantalizing possibility for
sub-TeV SUSY, since explicit limits are relatively sparse. Nonetheless, the
extremely low backgrounds of the few existing searches for collider-stable and
displaced new particles facilitates recastings into powerful long-lived
superparticle searches, even for models for which those searches are highly
non-optimized. In this paper, we assess the status of such models in the
context of baryonic R-parity violation, gauge mediation, and mini-split SUSY.
We explore a number of common simplified spectra where hadronic decays can be
important, employing recasts of LHC searches that utilize different detector
systems and final-state objects. The LSP/NLSP possibilities considered here
include generic colored superparticles such as the gluino and light-flavor
squarks, as well as the lighter stop and the quasi-degenerate Higgsino
multiplet motivated by naturalness. We find that complementary coverage over
large swaths of mass and lifetime is achievable by superimposing limits,
particularly from CMS's tracker-based displaced dijet search and heavy stable
charged particle searches. Adding in prompt searches, we find many cases where
a range of sparticle masses is now excluded from zero lifetime to infinite
lifetime with no gaps. In other cases, the displaced searches furnish the only
extant limits at any lifetime.Comment: 36 pages, 10 figures, plus appendix and reference
Density Perturbations in Chain Inflation
We consider the model of ``Chain Inflation,'' in which the period of
inflation in our universe took the form of a long sequence of quantum tunneling
events. We find that in the simplest such scenario, in which the tunneling
processes are uniform, approximately 10^4 vacua per e-folding of inflation are
required in order that the density perturbations produced are of an acceptable
size. We arrive at this conclusion through a combination of analytic and
numerical techniques, which could also serve as starting points for
calculations with more general sets of assumptions.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figures; v2: corrected typos, increased resolution on
D=2+1 data point
Electroweak Splitting Functions and High Energy Showering
We derive the electroweak (EW) collinear splitting functions for the Standard
Model, including the massive fermions, gauge bosons and the Higgs boson. We
first present the splitting functions in the limit of unbroken SU(2)xU(1) and
discuss their general features in the collinear and soft-collinear regimes. We
then systematically incorporate EW symmetry breaking (EWSB), which leads to the
emergence of additional "ultra-collinear" splitting phenomena and naive
violations of the Goldstone-boson Equivalence Theorem. We suggest a
particularly convenient choice of non-covariant gauge (dubbed "Goldstone
Equivalence Gauge") that disentangles the effects of Goldstone bosons and gauge
fields in the presence of EWSB, and allows trivial book-keeping of leading
power corrections in the VEV. We implement a comprehensive, practical EW
showering scheme based on these splitting functions using a Sudakov evolution
formalism. Novel features in the implementation include a complete accounting
of ultra-collinear effects, matching between shower and decay, kinematic
back-reaction corrections in multi-stage showers, and mixed-state evolution of
neutral bosons (gamma/Z/h) using density-matrices. We employ the EW showering
formalism to study a number of important physical processes at O(1-10 TeV)
energies. They include (a) electroweak partons in the initial state as the
basis for vector-boson-fusion; (b) the emergence of "weak jets" such as those
initiated by transverse gauge bosons, with individual splitting probabilities
as large as O(30%); (c) EW showers initiated by top quarks, including Higgs
bosons in the final state; (d) the occurrence of O(1) interference effects
within EW showers involving the neutral bosons; and (e) EW corrections to new
physics processes, as illustrated by production of a heavy vector boson (W')
and the subsequent showering of its decay products.Comment: 67 pages, 12 figures; v2, published in JHEP, some expanded
discussions and other minor revision
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