The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation's Tropical Disease Research Program: A 25-Year Retrospective Review 1976-1999

Documents and details the foundation's commitment to the program from its inception, and provides an analysis of its successes until the completion of the program in 1999

A Mechanism for Ordinary-Sterile Neutrino Mixing

Efficient oscillations between ordinary (active) and sterile neutrinos can occur only if Dirac and Majorana mass terms exist which are both small and comparable. It is shown that this can occur naturally in a class of string models, in which higher-dimensional operators in the superpotential lead to an intermediate scale expectation value for a scalar field and to suppressed Dirac and Majorana fermion masses.Comment: 12 page

Mass signature of supernova νμ\nu_\mu and ντ\nu_\tau neutrinos in SuperKamiokande

The $\nu_\mu$ and $\nu_\tau$ neutrinos (and their antiparticles) from a Galactic core-collapse supernova can be observed in a water-\v{C}erenkov detector by the neutral-current excitation of $^{16}$O. The number of events expected is several times greater than from neutral-current scattering on electrons. The observation of this signal would be a strong test that these neutrinos are produced in core-collapse supernovae, and with the right characteristics. In this paper, this signal is used as the basis for a technique of neutrino mass determination from a future Galactic supernova. The masses of the $\nu_\mu$ and $\nu_\tau$ neutrinos can either be measured or limited by their delay relative to the $\bar{\nu}_e$ neutrinos. By comparing to the high-statistics $\bar{\nu}_e$ data instead of the theoretical expectation, much of the model dependence is canceled. Numerical results are presented for a future supernova at 10 kpc as seen in the SuperKamiokande detector. Under reasonable assumptions, and in the presence of the expected counting statistics, $\nu_\mu$ and $\nu_\tau$ masses down to about 50 eV can be simply and robustly determined. The signal used here is more sensitive to small neutrino masses than the signal based on neutrino-electron scattering.Comment: 13 pages including 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. D; second version has minor corrections and is in two-column for

Theory and phenomenology of two-Higgs-doublet models

We discuss theoretical and phenomenological aspects of two-Higgs-doublet extensions of the Standard Model. In general, these extensions have scalar mediated flavour changing neutral currents which are strongly constrained by experiment. Various strategies are discussed to control these flavour changing scalar currents and their phenomenological consequences are analysed. In particular, scenarios with natural flavour conservation are investigated, including the so-called type I and type II models as well as lepton-specific and inert models. Type III models are then discussed, where scalar flavour changing neutral currents are present at tree level, but are suppressed by either specific ansatze for the Yukawa couplings or by the introduction of family symmetries. We also consider the phenomenology of charged scalars in these models. Next we turn to the role of symmetries in the scalar sector. We discuss the six symmetry-constrained scalar potentials and their extension into the fermion sector. The vacuum structure of the scalar potential is analysed, including a study of the vacuum stability conditions on the potential and its renormalization-group improvement. The stability of the tree level minimum of the scalar potential in connection with electric charge conservation and its behaviour under CP is analysed. The question of CP violation is addressed in detail, including the cases of explicit CP violation and spontaneous CP violation. We present a detailed study of weak basis invariants which are odd under CP. A careful study of spontaneous CP violation is presented, including an analysis of the conditions which have to be satisfied in order for a vacuum to violate CP. We present minimal models of CP violation where the vacuum phase is sufficient to generate a complex CKM matrix, which is at present a requirement for any realistic model of spontaneous CP violation.Comment: v3: 180 pages, 506 references, new chapter 7 with recent LHC results; referee comments taken into account; submitted to Physics Report

CP Violation and Baryogenesis due to Heavy Majorana Neutrinos

We analyze the scenario of baryogenesis through leptogenesis induced by the out-of-equilibrium decays of heavy Majorana neutrinos and pay special attention to CP violation. Extending a recently proposed resummation formalism for two-fermion mixing to decay amplitudes, we calculate the resonant phenomenon of CP violation due to the mixing of two nearly degenerate heavy Majorana neutrinos. Solving numerically the relevant Boltzmann equations, we find that the isosinglet Majorana mass may range from 1 TeV up to the grand unification scale, depending on the mechanism of CP violation and/or the flavour structure of the neutrino mass matrix assumed. Finite temperature effects and possible constraints from the electric dipole moment of electron and other low-energy experiments are briefly discussed.Comment: 46 pages, LaTeX, 4 encapsulated figures include

Inclusive Search for Anomalous Production of High-pT Like-Sign Lepton Pairs in Proton-Antiproton Collisions at sqrt{s}=1.8 TeV

We report on a search for anomalous production of events with at least two charged, isolated, like-sign leptons with pT > 11 GeV/c using a 107 pb^-1 sample of 1.8 TeV ppbar collisions collected by the CDF detector. We define a signal region containing low background from Standard Model processes. To avoid bias, we fix the final cuts before examining the event yield in the signal region using control regions to test the Monte Carlo predictions. We observe no events in the signal region, consistent with an expectation of 0.63^(+0.84)_(-0.07) events. We present 95% confidence level limits on new physics processes in both a signature-based context as well as within a representative minimal supergravity (tanbeta = 3) model.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures. Minor textual changes, cosmetic improvements to figures and updated and expanded reference

Search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu decay channel, where l = e or mu, in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The data were collected at the LHC, with the CMS detector, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 inverse femtobarns. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation, and upper limits are set on the Higgs boson production cross section. The presence of the standard model Higgs boson with a mass in the 270-440 GeV range is excluded at 95% confidence level.Comment: Submitted to JHE

Search for anomalous t t-bar production in the highly-boosted all-hadronic final state

A search is presented for a massive particle, generically referred to as a Z', decaying into a t t-bar pair. The search focuses on Z' resonances that are sufficiently massive to produce highly Lorentz-boosted top quarks, which yield collimated decay products that are partially or fully merged into single jets. The analysis uses new methods to analyze jet substructure, providing suppression of the non-top multijet backgrounds. The analysis is based on a data sample of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 inverse femtobarns. Upper limits in the range of 1 pb are set on the product of the production cross section and branching fraction for a topcolor Z' modeled for several widths, as well as for a Randall--Sundrum Kaluza--Klein gluon. In addition, the results constrain any enhancement in t t-bar production beyond expectations of the standard model for t t-bar invariant masses larger than 1 TeV.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics; this version includes a minor typo correction that will be submitted as an erratu

Search for New Physics with Jets and Missing Transverse Momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search for new physics is presented based on an event signature of at least three jets accompanied by large missing transverse momentum, using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 inverse picobarns collected in proton--proton collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC. No excess of events is observed above the expected standard model backgrounds, which are all estimated from the data. Exclusion limits are presented for the constrained minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model. Cross section limits are also presented using simplified models with new particles decaying to an undetected particle and one or two jets

Combined search for the quarks of a sequential fourth generation

Results are presented from a search for a fourth generation of quarks produced singly or in pairs in a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 inverse femtobarns recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011. A novel strategy has been developed for a combined search for quarks of the up and down type in decay channels with at least one isolated muon or electron. Limits on the mass of the fourth-generation quarks and the relevant Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements are derived in the context of a simple extension of the standard model with a sequential fourth generation of fermions. The existence of mass-degenerate fourth-generation quarks with masses below 685 GeV is excluded at 95% confidence level for minimal off-diagonal mixing between the third- and the fourth-generation quarks. With a mass difference of 25 GeV between the quark masses, the obtained limit on the masses of the fourth-generation quarks shifts by about +/- 20 GeV. These results significantly reduce the allowed parameter space for a fourth generation of fermions.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO