Fermion masses in the economical 3-3-1 model

We show that, in frameworks of the economical 3-3-1 model, all fermions get masses. At the tree level, one up-quark and two down-quarks are massless, but the one-loop corrections give all quarks the consistent masses. This conclusion is in contradiction to the previous analysis in which, the third scalar triplet has been introduced. This result is based on the key properties of the model: First, there are three quite different scales of vacuum expectation values: \om \sim {\cal O}(1) \mathrm{TeV}, v \approx 246 \mathrm{GeV} and $u \sim {\cal O}(1) \mathrm{GeV}$. Second, there exist two types of Yukawa couplings with different strengths: the lepton-number conserving couplings $h$'s and the lepton-number violating ones $s$'s satisfying the condition in which the second are much smaller than the first ones: $s \ll h$. With the acceptable set of parameters, numerical evaluation shows that in this model, masses of the exotic quarks also have different scales, namely, the $U$ exotic quark ($q_U = 2/3$) gains mass $m_U \approx 700$ GeV, while the D_\al exotic quarks (q_{D_\al} = -1/3) have masses in the TeV scale: m_{D_\al} \in 10 \div 80 TeV.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figure

Reimagining the journey to recovery: The COVID-19 pandemic and global mental health

In this editorial, guest editors Vikram Patel, Daisy Fancourt, Lola Kola, and Toshi Furukawa discuss the contents of the special issue on the pandemic and global mental health, highlighting key themes and providing important context

Observation of longitudinal and transverse self-injections in laser-plasma accelerators

Laser-plasma accelerators can produce high quality electron beams, up to giga-electronvolts in energy, from a centimeter scale device. The properties of the electron beams and the accelerator stability are largely determined by the injection stage of electrons into the accelerator. The simplest mechanism of injection is self-injection, in which the wakefield is strong enough to trap cold plasma electrons into the laser wake. The main drawback of this method is its lack of shot-to-shot stability. Here we present experimental and numerical results that demonstrate the existence of two different self-injection mechanisms. Transverse self-injection is shown to lead to low stability and poor quality electron beams, because of a strong dependence on the intensity profile of the laser pulse. In contrast, longitudinal injection, which is unambiguously observed for the first time, is shown to lead to much more stable acceleration and higher quality electron beams.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Probing electron acceleration and X-ray emission in laser-plasma accelerator

While laser-plasma accelerators have demonstrated a strong potential in the acceleration of electrons up to giga-electronvolt energies, few experimental tools for studying the acceleration physics have been developed. In this paper, we demonstrate a method for probing the acceleration process. A second laser beam, propagating perpendicular to the main beam is focused in the gas jet few nanosecond before the main beam creates the accelerating plasma wave. This second beam is intense enough to ionize the gas and form a density depletion which will locally inhibit the acceleration. The position of the density depletion is scanned along the interaction length to probe the electron injection and acceleration, and the betatron X-ray emission. To illustrate the potential of the method, the variation of the injection position with the plasma density is studied

Neutrino masses in the economical 3-3-1 model

We show that, in frameworks of the economical 3-3-1 model, the suitable pattern of neutrino masses arises from the three quite different sources - the lepton-number conserving, the spontaneous lepton-number breaking and the explicit lepton-number violating, widely ranging over the mass scales including the GUT one: $u\sim O(1) \mathrm{GeV}$, $v\approx 246 \mathrm{GeV}$, \om\sim O(1) \mathrm{TeV} and $\mathcal{M}\sim \mathcal{O}(10^{16}) \mathrm{GeV}$. At the tree-level, the model contains three Dirac neutrinos: one massless, two large with degenerate masses in the order of the electron mass. At the one-loop level, the left-handed and right-handed neutrinos obtain Majorana masses $M_{L,R}$ in orders of $10^{-2}-10^{-3} \mathrm{eV}$ and degenerate in $M_R=-M_L$, while the Dirac masses get a large reduction down to $\mathrm{eV}$ scale through a finite mass renormalization. In this model, the contributions of new physics are strongly signified, the degenerations in the masses and the last hierarchy between the Majorana and Dirac masses can be completely removed by heavy particles. All the neutrinos get mass and can fit the data.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure

Variable star classification across the Galactic bulge and disc with the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea survey

We present VIVACE, the VIrac VAriable Classification Ensemble, a catalogue of variable stars extracted from an automated classification pipeline for the Vista Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) infrared survey of the Galactic bar/bulge and southern disc. Our procedure utilises a two-stage hierarchical classifier to first isolate likely variable sources using simple variability summary statistics and training sets of non-variable sources from the Gaia early third data release, and then classify candidate variables using more detailed light curve statistics and training labels primarily from OGLE and VSX. The methodology is applied to point-spread-function photometry for ∼490 million light curves from the VIRAC v2 astrometric and photometric catalogue resulting in a catalogue of ∼1.4 million likely variable stars, of which ∼39, 000 are high-confidence (classification probability >0.9) RR Lyrae ab stars, ∼8000 RR Lyrae c/d stars, ∼187, 000 detached/semi-detached eclipsing binaries, ∼18, 000 contact eclipsing binaries, ∼1400 classical Cepheid variables and ∼2200 Type II Cepheid variables. Comparison with OGLE-4 suggests a completeness of around 90  per cent for RRab and ≲ 60 per cent for RRc/d, and a misclassification rate for known RR Lyrae stars of around 1 per cent for the high confidence sample. We close with two science demonstrations of our new VIVACE catalogue: first, a brief investigation of the spatial and kinematic properties of the RR Lyrae stars within the disc/bulge, demonstrating the spatial elongation of bar-bulge RR Lyrae stars is in the same sense as the more metal-rich red giant population whilst having a slower rotation rate of ∼40 km s−1kpc−1; and secondly, an investigation of the Gaia EDR3 parallax zeropoint using contact eclipsing binaries across the Galactic disc plane and bulge

Lorentz violating kinematics: Threshold theorems

Recent tentative experimental indications, and the subsequent theoretical speculations, regarding possible violations of Lorentz invariance have attracted a vast amount of attention. An important technical issue that considerably complicates detailed calculations in any such scenario, is that once one violates Lorentz invariance the analysis of thresholds in both scattering and decay processes becomes extremely subtle, with many new and naively unexpected effects. In the current article we develop several extremely general threshold theorems that depend only on the existence of some energy momentum relation E(p), eschewing even assumptions of isotropy or monotonicity. We shall argue that there are physically interesting situations where such a level of generality is called for, and that existing (partial) results in the literature make unnecessary technical assumptions. Even in this most general of settings, we show that at threshold all final state particles move with the same 3-velocity, while initial state particles must have 3-velocities parallel/anti-parallel to the final state particles. In contrast the various 3-momenta can behave in a complicated and counter-intuitive manner.Comment: V1: 32 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables. V2: 5 references adde

Stimulated Emission and Lasing from CdSe/CdS/ZnS Core-Multi-Shell Quantum Dots by Simultaneous Three-Photon Absorption

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Three-photon pumped stimulated emission and coherent random lasing from colloidal CdSe/CdS/ZnS core-multishell quantum dots are achieved for the first time. These results can offer new possibilities in biology and photonics, as well as at their intersection of biophotonics. © 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim