133 research outputs found
Damping of Tensor Modes in Cosmology
An analytic formula is given for the traceless transverse part of the
anisotropic stress tensor due to free streaming neutrinos, and used to derive
an integro-differential equation for the propagation of cosmological
gravitational waves. The solution shows that anisotropic stress reduces the
squared amplitude by 35.6 % for wavelengths that enter the horizon during the
radiation-dominated phase, independent of any cosmological parameters. This
decreases the tensor temperature and polarization correlation functions for
these wavelengths by the same amount. The effect is less for wavelengths that
enter the horizon at later times. At the longest wavelengths the decrease in
the tensor correlation functions due to neutrino free streaming ranges from
10.7% for to 9.0% for . An Appendix gives a
general proof that tensor as well as scalar modes satisfy a conservation law
for perturbations outside the horizon, even when the anisotropic stress tensor
is not negligible.Comment: 14 pages. The original version of this paper has been expanded to
deal with perturbations of any wavelength. While for wavelengths short enough
to enter the horizon during radiation dominance, temperature and polarization
correlations are damped by 35.6%, at the longest wavelengths the damping is
from 9.0% to 11%. An added Appendix gives a general proof that tensor as well
as scalar modes satisfy a conservation law outside the horizon, even during
neutrino decoupling. Some references are also adde
Signals from R-parity violating top quark decays at LHC
We evaluate the potential of the CERN LHC collider to observe rare decays of
the top quark in channels involving R-parity violating (RPV) interactions. We
stress the importance of calculating top quark production and decay
simultaneously as a true 2->4 process.
The process of tt-bar pair production followed by RPV decay of one of the top
quarks is analyzed with fast detector simulation. We show that intermediate
supersymmetric particles can be observed as resonances even if they are heavier
than the top quark due to the significant off-shell top-quark mass effects. The
approach where the top quark is produced on-mass-shell and then decays into 2-
or 3-body final state would in general lead to incorrect kinematical
distributions and rates. The rates of the 2 -> 4 process with top quark
production and RPV 3-body decay depend on the total width of the heavy
intermediate sfermion which could,therefore, be measured indirectly.
We find that the LHC collider offers a unique potential to study rare top
quark decays in the framework of supersymmetry with broken R-parity for
branching fractions of RPV top decays as low as 10^{-6}Comment: 23 pages, 22 figure
Axion and neutrino physics from anomaly cancellation
It has been recently shown that the requirement of anomaly cancellation in a
(non-supersymmetric) six-dimensional version of the standard model fixes the
field content to the known three generations. We discuss the phenomenological
consequences of the cancellation of the local anomalies: the strong CP problem
is solved and the fundamental scale of the theory is bounded by the physics of
the axion. Neutrinos acquire a mass in the range suggested by atmospheric
experiments.Comment: 9 pages, RevTeX
Natural Inflation From Fermion Loops
``Natural'' inflationary theories are a class of models in which inflation is
driven by a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson. In this paper we consider two models,
one old and one new, in which the potential for inflation is generated by loop
effects from a fermion sector which explicitly breaks a global symmetry.
In both models, we retrieve the ``standard'' natural inflation potential,
, as a limiting case of the exact one-loop potential, but we
carry out a general analysis of the models including the limiting case.
Constraints from the COBE DMR observation and from theoretical consistency are
used to limit the parameters of the models, and successful inflation occurs
without the necessity of fine-tuning the parameters.Comment: (Revised) 15 pages, LaTeX (revTeX), 8 figures in uuencoded PostScript
format. Version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D 15. Corrected
definition of power spectrum and added three reference
Emergency department visits for acute gastrointestinal illness after a major water pipe break in 2010
Background: When a water pipe breaks, contaminants can enter the drinking water system and cause waterborne illnesses such as acute gastrointestinal illness. In May 2010, a major water pipe broke near Boston, MA, and a boil water order was issued to nearly two million residents. Methods: Using a case-crossover study design, we examined the association between the water pipe break and subsequent emergency department visits for acute gastrointestinal illness. We identified cases of illness according to ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes and selected control dates 2 weeks before and after each case. We estimated the risk of visiting the emergency department during the 0-3 and 4-7 days after the water pipe break using conditional logistic regression models. Results: Our analysis included 5,726 emergency department visits for acute gastrointestinal illness from 3 April 2010 to 5 June 2010. Overall, there was a 1.3-fold increased odds for visiting the emergency department for acute gastrointestinal illness during the 0-3 days after the water pipe break (odds ratio [OR] = 1.3; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.1, 1.4) compared with referent dates selected 2 weeks before and after. During the 4-7 days after the break, the association diminished overall (OR = 1.1; 95% CI = 0.96, 1.2). However, in communities over 12 miles from the break, the 4- to 7-day association was elevated (OR = 1.4; 95% CI = 1.1, 1.8). Conclusions: This study suggests that a major water pipe break was associated with emergency department visits for acute gastrointestinal illness, particularly during the 0-3 days after the break, when a boil water order was in effect
Relativistic Two-Body Processes in Axial-Charge Transitions
We study the contribution of two-body meson-exchange processes to axial
charge transitions for nuclei in the lead, tin and oxygen regions. We conduct
calculations in the Dirac-Hartree (the Walecka model) and the relativistic
Hartree (where the full one-nucleon-loop effects are included) approximations.
We present results indicating that one- and two-body processes enhance the
matrix elements of the axial-charge operator by some (100+-20)% in all three
regions studied. This agrees well with the fit of eighteen first-forbidden
beta-decay transitions conducted by Warburton in the lead region. We also
discuss some sensitivities present in the calculation.Comment: 23 pages, RevTeX format, 5 PostScript figures available on reques
On a Light Spinless Particle Coupled to Photons
A pseudoscalar or scalar particle that couples to two photons but not
to leptons, quarks and nucleons would have effects in most of the experiments
searching for axions, since these are based on the coupling.
We examine the laboratory, astrophysical and cosmological constraints on
and study whether it may constitute a substantial part of the dark matter. We
also generalize the interactions to possess gauge
invariance, and analyze the phenomenological implications.Comment: LaTex, 20p., 6 figures. Changes in sections 4, 5 and figure 2, our
bounds are now more stringent. To be published in Physical Review
General Relativistic Mean Field Theory for Rotating Nuclei
We formulate a general relativistic mean field theory for rotating nuclei
starting from the special relativistic model Lagrangian. The
tetrad formalism is adopted to generalize the model to the accelerated frame.Comment: 13 pages, REVTeX, no figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett., the word
`curved' is replaced by `non-inertial' or `accelerated' in several places to
clarify the physical situation interested, some references are added, more
detail discussions are given with omitting some redundant sentence
Theta angle versus CP violation in the leptonic sector
Assuming that the axion mechanism of solving the strong CP problem does not
exist and the vanishing of theta at tree level is achieved by some
model-building means, we study the naturalness of having large CP-violating
sources in the leptonic sector. We consider the radiative mechanisms which
transfer a possibly large CP-violating phase in the leptonic sector to the
theta parameter. It is found that large theta cannot be induced in the models
with one Higgs doublet as at least three loops are required in this case. In
the models with two or more Higgs doublets the dominant source of theta is the
phases in the scalar potential, induced by CP violation in leptonic sector.
Thus, in the MSSM framework the imaginary part of the trilinear soft-breaking
parameter A_l generates the corrections to the theta angle already at one loop.
These corrections are large, excluding the possibility of large phases, unless
the universality in the slepton sector is strongly violated.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
CMB Imprints of a Pre-Inflationary Climbing Phase
We discuss the implications for cosmic microwave background (CMB)
observables, of a class of pre-inflationary dynamics suggested by string models
where SUSY is broken due to the presence of D-branes and orientifolds
preserving incompatible portions of it. In these models the would-be inflaton
is forced to emerge from the initial singularity climbing up a mild exponential
potential, until it bounces against a steep exponential potential of "brane
SUSY breaking" scenarios, and as a result the ensuing descent gives rise to an
inflationary epoch that begins when the system is still well off its eventual
attractor. If a pre-inflationary climbing phase of this type had occurred
within 6-7 e-folds of the horizon exit for the largest observable wavelengths,
displacement off the attractor and initial-state effects would conspire to
suppress power in the primordial scalar spectrum, enhancing it in the tensor
spectrum and typically superposing oscillations on both. We investigate these
imprints on CMB observables over a range of parameters, examine their
statistical significance, and provide a semi-analytic rationale for our
results. It is tempting to ascribe at least part of the large-angle anomalies
in the CMB to pre-inflationary dynamics of this type.Comment: 38 pages, LaTeX, 11 eps figures, references added, matches version to
appear in JCA
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