Quantum Hall Effect in Thin Films of Three-Dimensional Topological Insulators

We show that a thin film of a three-dimensional topological insulator (3DTI) with an exchange field is a realization of the famous Haldane model for quantum Hall effect (QHE) without Landau levels. The exchange field plays the role of staggered fluxes on the honeycomb lattice, and the hybridization gap of the surface states is equivalent to alternating on-site energies on the AB sublattices. A peculiar phase diagram for the QHE is predicted in 3DTI thin films under an applied magnetic field, which is quite different from that either in traditional QHE systems or in graphene.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

A topological look at the quantum spin Hall state

We propose a topological understanding of the quantum spin Hall state without considering any symmetries, and it follows from the gauge invariance that either the energy gap or the spin spectrum gap needs to close on the system edges, the former scenario generally resulting in counterpropagating gapless edge states. Based upon the Kane-Mele model with a uniform exchange field and a sublattice staggered confining potential near the sample boundaries, we demonstrate the existence of such gapless edge states and their robust properties in the presence of impurities. These gapless edge states are protected by the band topology alone, rather than any symmetries.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Weak Decays of Stable Open-bottom Tetraquark by SU(3) Symmetry Analysis

The exotic state $X(5568)$ which was observed by D0 Collaboration is very likely to be a tetraquark state with four different valence quark flavors, though the existence was not confirmed by other collaborations. The possibility of such state still generate lots of interests in theory. In the paper, we will study the properties of the state under the SU(3) flavor symmetry. This four quark state with a heavy bottom quark and three light quarks(anti-quark) can form a $6$ or $\overline {15}$ representation. The weak decays can be dominant and should be discussed carefully while such state is stable against the strong interaction. Therefor we will study the multi-body semileptonic and nonleptonic weak decays systematically. With the help of SU(3) flavor symmetry, we can give the Hamiltonian in the hadronic level, then obtain the parameterized irreducible amplitudes and the relations of different channels. At the end of the article, we collect some Cabibbo allowed two-body and three-body weak decay channels which can be used to reconstruct $X_{b6}$ states at the branching fraction up to be $10^{-5}$.Comment: 53 pages, 2 figure

Top-Quark Decay at Next-to-Next-to-Leading Order in QCD

We present the complete calculation of the top-quark decay width at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD, including next-to-leading electroweak corrections as well as finite bottom quark mass and $W$ boson width effects. In particular, we also show the first results of the fully differential decay rates for top-quark semileptonic decay $t\to W^+(l^+\nu)b$ at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. Our method is based on the understanding of the invariant mass distribution of the final-state jet in the singular limit from effective field theory. Our result can be used to study arbitrary infrared-safe observables of top-quark decay with the highest perturbative accuracy.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures; version accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Weak Decays of Doubly Heavy Baryons: the 1/2→1/21/2\to 1/2 case

Very recently, the LHCb collaboration has observed in the final state $\Lambda_c^+ K^-\pi^+\pi^+$ a resonant structure that is identified as the doubly-charmed baryon $\Xi_{cc}^{++}$. Inspired by this observation, we investigate the weak decays of doubly heavy baryons $\Xi_{cc}^{++}$, $\Xi_{cc}^{+}$, $\Omega_{cc}^{+}$, $\Xi_{bc}^{(\prime)+}$, $\Xi_{bc}^{(\prime)0}$, $\Omega_{bc}^{(\prime)0}$, $\Xi_{bb}^{0}$, $\Xi_{bb}^{-}$ and $\Omega_{bb}^{-}$ and focus on the decays into spin $1/2$ baryons in this paper. At the quark level these decay processes are induced by the $c\to d/s$ or $b\to u/c$ transitions, and the two spectator quarks can be viewed as a scalar or axial vector diquark. We first derive the hadronic form factors for these transitions in the light-front approach and then apply them to predict the partial widths for the semi-leptonic and non-leptonic decays of doubly heavy baryons. We find that a number of decay channels are sizable and can be examined in future measurements at experimental facilities like LHC, Belle II and CEPC.Comment: 40 pages, 4 figures, to appear in EPJ

Resummation prediction on top quark transverse momentum distribution at large pT

We study the factorization and resummation of t-channel top quark transverse momentum distribution at large pT in the SM at both the Tevatron and the LHC with soft-collinear effective theory. The cross section in the threshold region can be factorized into a convolution of hard, jet and soft functions. In particular, we first calculate the NLO soft functions for this process, and give a RG improved cross section by evolving the different functions to a common scale. Our results show that the resummation effects increase the NLO results by about 9%-13% and 4%-9% when the top quark pT is larger than 50 and 70 GeV at the Tevatron and the 8 TeV LHC, respectively. Also, we discuss the scale independence of the cross section analytically, and show how to choose the proper scales at which the perturbative expansion can converge fast.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures, version published in Phys.Rev.