Effects of Higgs sector CP violation in top-quark pair production at the LHC

A striking manifestation of CP violation in the electroweak symmetry breaking sector would be the existence of neutral Higgs boson(s) with undefined CP parity. We analyse signatures of such a boson, with a mass of about 300 GeV or larger, produced in high energy proton-proton collisions at LHC energies in its top-quark antitop-quark decay channel. The large irreducible $t\bar t$ background is taken into account. We propose, both for the dilepton and the lepton + jets decay channels of $t\bar t$, several correlations and asymmetries with which (Higgs sector) CP violation can be traced. We show that for judiciously chosen cuts on the $t\bar t$ invariant mass these CP observables yield, for an LHC integrated luminosity of 100 $\rm{fb}^{-1}$, statistically significant signals for a range of Higgs boson masses and Yukawa couplings.Comment: 36 pages, 25 Postscript figure

Magnetic helicity in stellar dynamos: new numerical experiments

The theory of large scale dynamos is reviewed with particular emphasis on the magnetic helicity constraint in the presence of closed and open boundaries. In the presence of closed or periodic boundaries, helical dynamos respond to the helicity constraint by developing small scale separation in the kinematic regime, and by showing long time scales in the nonlinear regime where the scale separation has grown to the maximum possible value. A resistively limited evolution towards saturation is also found at intermediate scales before the largest scale of the system is reached. Larger aspect ratios can give rise to different structures of the mean field which are obtained at early times, but the final saturation field strength is still decreasing with decreasing resistivity. In the presence of shear, cyclic magnetic fields are found whose period is increasing with decreasing resistivity, but the saturation energy of the mean field is in strong super-equipartition with the turbulent energy. It is shown that artificially induced losses of small scale field of opposite sign of magnetic helicity as the large scale field can, at least in principle, accelerate the production of large scale (poloidal) field. Based on mean field models with an outer potential field boundary condition in spherical geometry, we verify that the sign of the magnetic helicity flux from the large scale field agrees with the sign of alpha. For solar parameters, typical magnetic helicity fluxes lie around 10^{47} Mx^2 per cycle.Comment: 23 pages, 27 figures, Astron. Nach

Hydromagnetic turbulence in computer simulations

In ordinary turbulence research it has been a long standing tradition to solve the equations in spectral space giving the best possible accuracy. This is indeed a natural choice for incompressible problems with periodic boundaries, but it is no longer optimal in many astrophysical circumstances. It is argued that lower order spatial derivatives schemes are unacceptable in view of their low overall accuracy, even when mass, momentum, and energy are conserved to machine accuracy. High order finite difference schemes are therefore found to be quite efficient and physically appropriate. They are also easily and efficiently implemented on massively parallel computers. High order schemes also yield sufficient overall accuracy. Our code uses centered finite differences which make the adaptation to other problems simple. Since the code is not written in conservative form, conservation of mass, energy and momentum can be used to monitor to quality of the solution. A third order Runge-Kutta scheme with 2N-storage is used for calculating the time advance.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures (Proceedings of CCP2001 in Aachen

Spin properties of top quark pairs produced at hadron colliders

We discuss the spin properties of top quark pairs produced at hadron colliders at next-to-leading order in the coupling constant alpha_s of the strong interaction. Specifically we present, for some decay channels, results for differential angular distributions that are sensitive to t tbar spin correlations.Comment: Invited talk given by A. Brandenburg at the Cracow epiphany conference on heavy flavours, 3 - 6 January 2003, Cracow, Polan

Investigation of Top quark spin correlations at hadron collider

We report on our results about hadronic $t\bar t$ production at NLO QCD including $t, \bar t$ spin effects, especially on $t\bar t$ spin correlations.Comment: talk given at the 32nd International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP'04), Beijing, China, 16-22 Aug. 200

Letter from W. A. Brandenburg to Friend and Alumnus

Letter to Friend and Alumnus, regarding the Twenty-First Anniversary, from President W. A. Brandenbur

Christmas Letter to Alumnus of K.S.T.C. from Brandenburg (undated)

Christmas Letter (undated) on the subject of the meaning of Christmas, includes poem Abou Ben Adhe

Christmas Letter to Alumnus of K.S.T.C. from Brandenburg, 1938

Christmas Letter, December 13, 1938, on the subject of peace and the meaning of Christma