Leptogenic Supersymmetry at the LHC

Leptogenic Supersymmetry is a scenario characterized by copious lepton production in cascade decays. Due to the high lepton multiplicity and the lack of significant missing energy, leptogenic supersymmetry provides very clean channels which can be probed already with the early LHC data. Furthermore, the Higgs may be discovered in the h->b bbar mode because the leptons accompanying Higgs production efficiently suppress the background.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of SUSY 09, Northeastern University, Boston, M

Electro-optical sampling of quantum vacuum fluctuations in dispersive dielectrics

Electro-optical sampling has been recently used to perform spectrally-resolved measurements of electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations. In order to understand which information on the ground state of an interacting system can be acquired thanks to this technique, in this paper we will develop the quantum theory of electro-optical sampling in arbitrary dispersive dielectrics. Our theory shows that a measure of the time correlations of the vacuum fluctuations effectively implements an ellipsometry measurement on the quantum vacuum, allowing to access the frequency-dependent dielectric function. We discuss consequences of these results on the possibility to use electro-optical sampling to probe the population of ground-state virtual photons in the ultrastrong light-matter coupling regime

How Do Trade in Intermediates and Geographical Forces Interact in Determining the Localisation of Industries in Central Eastern European Countries?

Growing inflows of FDI and the increasing integration Central Eastern European Countries’ firms in International Production Networks set by EU-15 principals have brought to a rise in trade in parts and components. As a consequence, new patterns of localisation of industrial activities in CEECs have been observed. I put forward a general equilibrium model of trade and production which tries to explain cross-country variations of sectoral output on the basis of home market effect, trade in middle products, comparative advantages and market potential. Results coming from the empirical estimation allow me to draw some considerations about the driving forces behind the localisation over the second half of the 1990s of the four sectors in which most of the CEECs’ trade in intermediates with EU-15 is concentrated. I also argue that the proposed framework can be employed to test for the effectiveness of alternative trade theories.Trade in Parts and Components, International Production Networks, Market Potential, Industry Localisation, Home Market Effect

On Resonant Leptogenesis

It has been recently shown that the quantum Boltzmann equations may be relevant for the leptogenesis scenario. In particular, they lead to a time-dependent CP asymmetry which depends upon the previous dynamics of the system. This memory effect in the CP asymmetry is particularly important in resonant leptogenesis where the asymmetry is generated by the decays of nearly mass-degenerate right-handed neutrinos. We study the impact of the nontrivial time evolution of the CP asymmetry in resonant leptogenesis, both in the one-flavour case and with flavour effects included. We show that significant qualitative and quantitative differences arise with respect to the case in which the time dependence of the CP asymmetry is neglected.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures. IOP LaTeX class used. Minor corrections and references added. Matches the version published in JCA

On the Impact of Flavour Oscillations in Leptogenesis

When lepton flavour effects in thermal leptogenesis are active, they introduce important differences with respect to the case in which they are neglected, the so-called one-flavour approximation. We investigate analytically and numerically the transition from the one-flavour to the two-flavour case when the $\tau$-lepton flavour becomes distinguishable from the other two flavours. We study the impact of the oscillations of the asymmetries in lepton flavour space on the final lepton asymmetries, for the hierarchical right-handed neutrino mass spectrum. Flavour oscillations project the lepton state on the flavour basis very efficiently. We conclude that flavour effects are relevant typically for M_1\lsim 10^{12} GeV, where $M_1$ is the mass of the lightest right-handed neutrino.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures. Minor corrections; version published in JCA