Lepton flavour violation in future linear colliders in the long-lived stau NLSP scenario

We analyze the prospects of observing lepton flavour violation in future e-e- and e+e- linear colliders in scenarios where the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle, and the stau is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle. The signals consist of multilepton final states with two heavily ionizing charged tracks produced by the long-lived staus. The Standard Model backgrounds are very small and the supersymmetric backgrounds can be kept well under control by the use of suitable kinematical cuts. We discuss in particular the potential of the projected International Linear Collider to discover lepton flavour violation in this class of scenarios, and we compare the estimated sensitivity with the constraints stemming from the non-observation of rare decays.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures. Discussion extended to include the efficiency of identifying long-lived staus, references added. To appear in JHE

Observations of transients and pulsars with LOFAR international stations

The LOw FRequency ARray - LOFAR is a new radio telescope that is moving the science of radio pulsars and transients into a new phase. Its design places emphasis on digital hardware and flexible software instead of mechanical solutions. LOFAR observes at radio frequencies between 10 and 240 MHz where radio pulsars and many transients are expected to be brightest. Radio frequency signals emitted from these objects allow us to study the intrinsic pulsar emission and phenomena such as propagation effects through the interstellar medium. The design of LOFAR allows independent use of its stations to conduct observations of known bright objects, or wide field monitoring of transient events. One such combined software/hardware solution is called the Advanced Radio Transient Event Monitor and Identification System (ARTEMIS). It is a backend for both targeted observations and real-time searches for millisecond radio transients which uses Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) technology to remove interstellar dispersion and detect millisecond radio bursts from astronomical sources in real-time using a single LOFAR station.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the Electromagnetic Radiation from Pulsars and Magnetars conference, Zielona Gora, 2012. 4 pages, 1 figur

Non-universal gauge boson Z′Z' and the spin correlation of top quark pair production at e−e+e^{-}e^{+} colliders

In the off-diagonal basis, we discuss the contributions of the non-universal gauge boson $Z'$ predicted by the topcolor-assisted technicolor ($TC2$) model to the spin configurations and the spin correlation observable of the top quark pair production via the process $e^{-}e^{+}\to t\bar{t}$. Our numerical results show that the production cross sections for the like-spin states, which vanish in the standard model, can be significantly large as $M_{Z'}\approx \sqrt{S}$. With reasonable values of the $Z'$ mass $M_{Z'}$ and the coupling parameter $k_{1}$, $Z'$ exchange can generate large corrections to the spin correlation observable.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Squark anti-squark pair production at the LHC: the electroweak contribution

We present the complete NLO electroweak contribution of $\mathcal{O}(\alpha^2_s \alpha)$ to the production of diagonal squark--anti-squark pairs in proton--proton collisions. Compared to the lowest-order $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s\alpha + \alpha^2)$ electroweak terms, the NLO contributions are also significant. We discuss the LO and NLO electroweak effects in cross sections and distributions at the LHC for the production of squarks different from top squarks, in various supersymmetric benchmark scenarios.Comment: 38 pages, 21 figures. Replaced with the version published in JHE

Radiative corrections to the semileptonic and hadronic Higgs-boson decays H -> W W/Z Z -> 4 fermions

The radiative corrections of the strong and electroweak interactions are calculated for the Higgs-boson decays H -> WW/ZZ -> 4f with semileptonic or hadronic four-fermion final states in next-to-leading order. This calculation is improved by higher-order corrections originating from heavy-Higgs-boson effects and photonic final-state radiation off charged leptons. The W- and Z-boson resonances are treated within the complex-mass scheme, i.e. without any resonance expansion or on-shell approximation. The calculation essentially follows our previous study of purely leptonic final states. The electroweak corrections are similar for all four-fermion final states; for integrated quantities they amount to some per cent and increase with growing Higgs-boson mass M_H, reaching 7-8% at M_H \sim 500 GeV. For distributions, the corrections are somewhat larger and, in general, distort the shapes. Among the QCD corrections, which include corrections to interference contributions of the Born diagrams, only the corrections to the squared Born diagrams turn out to be relevant. These contributions can be attributed to the gauge-boson decays, i.e. they approximately amount to \alpha_s/\pi for semileptonic final states and 2\alpha_s/\pi for hadronic final states. The discussed corrections have been implemented in the Monte Carlo event generator PROPHECY4F.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX, 30 postscript figure

NLO electroweak contributions to gluino pair production at hadron colliders

We calculate the full $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^2\alpha)$ corrections to the process of gluino pair production at hadron colliders in the framework of the real MSSM. We show that these contributions can be neglected at the LHC performing a scan over a wide region of the parameter space. The impact of these corrections in the parameter range investigated at the Tevatron is small.Comment: 26 pages, 12 figure

CP violation in the secluded U(1)'-extended MSSM

We study the Higgs sector of the secluded $U(1)'$-extended MSSM (sMSSM) focusing on CP violation. Using the one-loop effective potential that includes contributions from quarks and squarks in the third generation, we search for the allowed region under theoretical and experimental constraints. It is found that the possible region for the electroweak vacuum to exist is quite limited, depending on the parameters in the model. The masses and couplings of the Higgs bosons are calculated with/without CP violation. Even at the tree level, CP violation is possible by complex soft SUSY breaking masses. Similar to the CPX scenario in the MSSM, the scalar-pseudoscalar mixing enables the lightest Higgs boson mass to become smaller than the $Z$ boson mass while the coupling with the $Z$ boson is sufficiently suppressed to avoid the LEP experimental constraints. However, unlike the CPX scenario, large $\mu$ and $A$ are not required for the realization of large CP violation. The typical spectrum of the SUSY particles is thus different. We also investigate the possible upper bound of the lightest Higgs boson in the case of spontaneous CP violation. The maximal value of it can reach above 100 GeV with maximal CP-violating phases.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figures, JHEP styl