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

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

The Three-body Force and the Tetraquark Interpretation of Light Scalar Mesons

We study the possible tetraquark interpretation of light scalar meson states $a_0(980)$, $f_0(980)$, $\kappa$, $\sigma$ within the framework of the non-relativistic potential model. The wave functions of tetraquark states are obtained in a space spanned by multiple Gaussian functions. We find that the mass spectra of the light scalar mesons can be well accommodated in the tetraquark picture if we introduce a three-body quark interaction in the quark model. Using the obtained multiple Gaussian wave functions, the decay constants of tetraquarks are also calculated within the ``fall apart'' mechanism

Phase space constraints and statistical jet studies in heavy-ion collisions

The effect of the correlation induced by global momentum conservation on the two-particle distribution in nucleus-nucleus collisions is discussed, with a focus on the generic case of collisions with a non-vanishing impact parameter.Comment: 5 pages, invited talk at the RHIC & AGS Annual Users' Meeting, Brookhaven Nat. Lab. (USA) and at the EPS HEP 2007 Conference, Manchester (UK

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 scalar-fermion pair production in high energy e+e- collisions

We study the one-loop radiative corrections to pair production of the supersymmetric scalar partners of the standard fermions in e+e- annihilation. Both electroweak and SUSY-QCD corrections are considered. Applications are for production of scalar fermions of the third generation, e^+e^-\to \wt{f}_i \wt{f}_j^* (i,j=1,2), $f=t, b,\tau$, as well as for production of scalar quarks of the first and second generation. Effects on integrated cross sections are discussed and also the one-loop induced forward-backward asymmetries are studied. It is found that at low energy, \sqrt{s}\approx 500 \to 1000 GeV, the corrections are dominated by the QCD contributions, At high energy, $\sqrt{s}\geq 2$ TeV, the electroweak box diagrams give a substantial contribution and even dominate in some regions of parameters space. The purely loop-induced forward-backward asymmetry can reach values of several per cent.Comment: 23 pages, latex, 13 figure

Leptogenesis in models with multi-Higgs bosons

We study the leptogenesis scenario in models with multi-Higgs doublets. It is pointed out that the washing-out process through the effective dimension five interactions, which has not been taken into account seriously in the conventional scenario, can be effective, and the resultant baryon asymmetry can be exponentially suppressed. This fact implies new possible scenario where the observed baryon asymmetry is the remnant of the washed out lepton asymmetry which was originally much larger than the one in the conventional scenario. Our new scenario is applicable to some neutrino mass matrix models which predict too large CP-violating parameter and makes them viable through the washing-out process.Comment: Latex 2e, 11 pages, 2 figures. Many parts in the original manuscript have been revised, but conclusions are unchange

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