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

Dissociation in a polymerization model of homochirality

A fully self-contained model of homochirality is presented that contains the effects of both polymerization and dissociation. The dissociation fragments are assumed to replenish the substrate from which new monomers can grow and undergo new polymerization. The mean length of isotactic polymers is found to grow slowly with the normalized total number of corresponding building blocks. Alternatively, if one assumes that the dissociation fragments themselves can polymerize further, then this corresponds to a strong source of short polymers, and an unrealistically short average length of only 3. By contrast, without dissociation, isotactic polymers becomes infinitely long.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Orig. Life Evol. Biosp

Compact Drawings of 1-Planar Graphs with Right-Angle Crossings and Few Bends

We study the following classes of beyond-planar graphs: 1-planar, IC-planar, and NIC-planar graphs. These are the graphs that admit a 1-planar, IC-planar, and NIC-planar drawing, respectively. A drawing of a graph is 1-planar if every edge is crossed at most once. A 1-planar drawing is IC-planar if no two pairs of crossing edges share a vertex. A 1-planar drawing is NIC-planar if no two pairs of crossing edges share two vertices. We study the relations of these beyond-planar graph classes (beyond-planar graphs is a collective term for the primary attempts to generalize the planar graphs) to right-angle crossing (RAC) graphs that admit compact drawings on the grid with few bends. We present four drawing algorithms that preserve the given embeddings. First, we show that every $n$-vertex NIC-planar graph admits a NIC-planar RAC drawing with at most one bend per edge on a grid of size $O(n) \times O(n)$. Then, we show that every $n$-vertex 1-planar graph admits a 1-planar RAC drawing with at most two bends per edge on a grid of size $O(n^3) \times O(n^3)$. Finally, we make two known algorithms embedding-preserving; for drawing 1-planar RAC graphs with at most one bend per edge and for drawing IC-planar RAC graphs straight-line

Axino dark matter in brane world cosmology

We discuss dark matter in the brane world scenario. We work in the Randall-Sundrum type II brane world and assume that the lightest supersymmetric particle is the axino. We find that the axinos can play the role of cold dark matter in the universe, provided that the five-dimensional Planck mass is bounded both from below and from above. This is possible for higher reheating temperatures compared to the conventional four-dimensional cosmology due to a novel expansion law for the universe.Comment: 1+11 pages, version submitted to JCA

Looking for CP Violation in W Production and Decay

We describe CP violating observables in resonant $W^\pm$ and $W^\pm$ plus one jet production at the Tevatron. We present simple examples of CP violating effective operators, consistent with the symmetries of the Standard Model, which would give rise to these observables. We find that CP violating effects coming from new physics at the $TeV$ scale could in principle be observable at the Tevatron with $10^6$ $W^\pm$ decays.Comment: 15 pgs with standard LATEX, 7 ps figures embedded with eps

Gravitino Dark Matter and Cosmological Constraints

The gravitino is a promising candidate for cold dark matter. We study cosmological constraints on scenarios in which the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle and a charged slepton the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP). We obtain new results for the hadronic nucleosynthesis bounds by computing the 4-body decay of the NLSP slepton into the gravitino, the associated lepton, and a quark-antiquark pair. The bounds from the observed dark matter density are refined by taking into account gravitinos from both late NLSP decays and thermal scattering in the early Universe. We examine the present free-streaming velocity of gravitino dark matter and the limits from observations and simulations of cosmic structures. Assuming that the NLSP sleptons freeze out with a thermal abundance before their decay, we derive new bounds on the slepton and gravitino masses. The implications of the constraints for cosmology and collider phenomenology are discussed and the potential insights from future experiments are outlined. We propose a set of benchmark scenarios with gravitino dark matter and long-lived charged NLSP sleptons and describe prospects for the Large Hadron Collider and the International Linear Collider.Comment: 51 pages, 20 figures, revised version matches published version (results unchanged, JHEP style used, figures replaced with new high-quality figures, typos corrected, references added

Top Production in Hadron-Hadron Collisions and Anomalous Top-Gluon Couplings

We discuss the influence of anomalous tbar-t-G couplings on total and differential tbar-t production cross sections in hadron-hadron collisions. We study in detail the effects of a chromoelectric and a chromomagnetic dipole moment, d' and \mu', of the top quark. In the d'-\mu' plane, we find a whole region where the anomalous couplings give a zero net contribution to the total top production rate. In differential cross sections, the anomalous moments have to be quite sizable to give measurable effects. We estimate the values of d' and \mu' which are allowed by the present Tevatron experimental results on top production. A chromoelectric dipole moment of the top violates CP invariance. We discuss a simple CP-odd observable which allows for a direct search for CP violation in top production.Comment: footnote pg. 4 changed, acknowledgments extende

How much do we really lose?—Yield losses in the proximity of natural landscape elements in agricultural landscapes

Natural landscape elements (NLEs) in agricultural landscapes contribute to biodiversity and ecosystem services, but are also regarded as an obstacle for large‐scale agricultural production. However, the effects of NLEs on crop yield have rarely been measured. Here, we investigated how different bordering structures, such as agricultural roads, field‐to‐field borders, forests, hedgerows, and kettle holes, influence agricultural yields. We hypothesized that (a) yield values at field borders differ from mid‐field yields and that (b) the extent of this change in yields depends on the bordering structure. We measured winter wheat yields along transects with log‐scaled distances from the border into the agricultural field within two intensively managed agricultural landscapes in Germany (2014 near Göttingen, and 2015–2017 in the Uckermark). We observed a yield loss adjacent to every investigated bordering structure of 11%–38% in comparison with mid‐field yields. However, depending on the bordering structure, this yield loss disappeared at different distances. While the proximity of kettle holes did not affect yields more than neighboring agricultural fields, woody landscape elements had strong effects on winter wheat yields. Notably, 95% of mid‐field yields could already be reached at a distance of 11.3 m from a kettle hole and at a distance of 17.8 m from hedgerows as well as forest borders. Our findings suggest that yield losses are especially relevant directly adjacent to woody landscape elements, but not adjacent to in‐field water bodies. This highlights the potential to simultaneously counteract yield losses close to the field border and enhance biodiversity by combining different NLEs in agricultural landscapes such as creating strips of extensive grassland vegetation between woody landscape elements and agricultural fields. In conclusion, our results can be used to quantify ecocompensations to find optimal solutions for the delivery of productive and regulative ecosystem services in heterogeneous agricultural landscapes

The declining representativeness of the British party system, and why it matters

In a recent article, Michael Laver has explained ‘Why Vote-Seeking Parties May Make Voters Miserable’. His model shows that, while ideological convergence may boost congruence between governments and the median voter, it can reduce congruence between the party system and the electorate as a whole. Specifically, convergence can increase the mean distance between voters and their nearest party. In this article we show that this captures the reality of today’s British party system. Policy scale placements in British Election Studies from 1987 to 2010 confirm that the pronounced convergence during the past decade has left the Conservatives and Labour closer together than would be optimal in terms of minimising the policy distance between the average voter and the nearest major party. We go on to demonstrate that this comes at a cost. Respondents who perceive themselves as further away from one of the major parties in the system tend to score lower on satisfaction with democracy. In short, vote-seeking parties have left the British party system less representative of the ideological diversity in the electorate, and thus made at least some British voters miserable