Enhanced Tau Lepton Signatures at LHC in Constrained Supersymmetric Seesaw

We discuss the possible enhancement of the tau lepton events at LHC when the left-handed stau doublet becomes light (which can be even lighter than the right-handed stau). This is illustrated in the constrained supersymmetric seesaw model where the slepton doublet mass is suppressed by the effects of a large neutrino Yukawa coupling. We study a few representative parameter sets in the sneutrino coannihilation regions where the tau sneutrino is NLSP and the stau coannihilation regions where the stau is NLSP both of which yield the thermal neutralino LSP abundance determined by WMAP.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, references adde

Sterile neutrino dark matter in warped extra dimensions

We consider a (long-lived) sterile neutrino dark matter scenario in a five dimensional (5D) warped extra dimension model where the fields can live in the bulk, which is partly motivated from the absence of the absolutely stable particles in a simple Randall-Sundrum model. The dominant production of the sterile neutrino can come from the decay of the radion (the scalar field representing the brane separation) around the electroweak scale. The suppressions of the 4D parameters due to the warp factor and the small wave function overlaps in the extra dimension help alleviate the exceeding fine-tunings typical for a sterile neutrino dark matter scenario in a 4D setup.Comment: Typos corrected and references adde

Supersymmetric Musings on the Predictivity of Family Symmetries

We discuss the predictivity of family symmetries for the soft supersymmetry breaking parameters in the framework of supergravity. We show that unknown details of the messenger sector and the supersymmetry breaking hidden sector enter into the soft parameters, making it difficult to obtain robust predictions. We find that there are specific choices of messenger fields which can improve the predictivity for the soft parameters.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

The Decay of the Inflaton in No-scale Supergravity

We study the decay of the inflaton in no-scale supergravity and show that decay due to the gravitational interactions through supergravity effects is highly suppressed relative to the case in minimal supergravity or models with a generic Kahler potential. We also show that decay to gravitinos is suppressed. We demonstrate that decay and sufficient reheating are possible with the introduction of a non-trivial gauge kinetic term. This channel may be dominant in no-scale supergravity, yet yields a re-heating temperature which is low enough to avoid the gravitino problem while high enough for Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and baryogenesis.Comment: Added the footnote in the conclusion section which discusses the constrains on the explicit inflaton couplings to the matter fields via non-renormalizable operators. To appear in JCA

Positrons in Cosmic Rays from Dark Matter Annihilations for Uplifted Higgs Regions in MSSM

We point out that there are regions in the MSSM parameter space which successfully provide a dark matter (DM) annihilation explanation for observed positron excess (e.g. PAMELA), while still remaining in agreement with all other data sets. Such regions (e.g. the uplifted Higgs region) can realize an enhanced neutralino DM annihilation dominantly into leptons via a Breit-Wigner resonance through the CP-odd Higgs channel. Such regions can give the proper thermal relic DM abundance, and the DM annihilation products are compatible with current antiproton and gamma ray observations. This scenario can succeed without introducing any additional degrees of freedom beyond those already in the MSSM.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

New D-term chaotic inflation in supergravity and leptogenesis

We present a new model of D-term dominated chaotic inflation in supergravity. The F-flat direction present in this model is lifted by the dominant D-term, which leads to chaotic inflation and subsequent reheating. No cosmic string is formed after inflation because the U(1) gauge symmetry is broken during inflation. The leptogenesis scenario via the inflaton decay in our D-term chaotic inflation scenario is also discussed.Comment: 14 pages, no figure, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Synthesis of magnesium ZIF-8 from Mg(BH₄)₂.

Porous Mg(2-methyl imidazolate)2 (Mg-ZIF-8) was synthesised from Mg(BH4)2 as a precursor under an Ar atmosphere. It possesses an uncommon tetrahedral Mg(2+)-N coordination geometry that is stabilised by the formation of a framework, and it exhibits a Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area greater than 1800 m(2) g(-1)

Parameterizing the Power Spectrum: Beyond the Truncated Taylor Expansion

The power spectrum is traditionally parameterized by a truncated Taylor series: $ln P(k) = ln P_* + (n_*-1) ln(k/k_*) + {1/2} n'_* ln^2(k/k_*)$. It is reasonable to truncate the Taylor series if $|n'_* ln(k/k_*)| << |n_*-1|$, but it is not if $|n'_* ln(k/k_*)| \gtrsim |n_*-1|$. We argue that there is no good theoretical reason to prefer $|n'_*| << |n_*-1|$, and show that current observations are consistent with $|n'_* ln(k/k_*)| ~ |n_*-1|$ even for $|ln(k/k_*)| ~ 1$. Thus, there are regions of parameter space, which are both theoretically and observationally relevant, for which the traditional truncated Taylor series parameterization is inconsistent, and hence it can lead to incorrect parameter estimations. Motivated by this, we propose a simple extension of the traditional parameterization, which uses no extra parameters, but that, unlike the traditional approach, covers well motivated inflationary spectra with $|n'_*| ~ |n_*-1|$. Our parameterization therefore covers not only standard-slow-roll inflation models but also a much wider class of inflation models. We use this parameterization to perform a likelihood analysis for the cosmological parameters.Comment: References added. Typo correcte

The Earliest Optical Observations of GRB 030329

We present the earliest optical imaging observations of GRB 030329 related to SN 2003dh. The burst was detected by the HETE-2 satellite at 2003 March 29, 11:37:14.67 UT. Our wide-field monitoring started 97 minutes before the trigger and the burst position was continuously observed. We found no precursor or contemporaneous flare brighter than $V=5.1$ ($V=5.5$) in 32 s (64 s) timescale between 10:00 and 13:00 UT. Follow-up time series photometries started at 12:51:39 UT (75 s after position notice through the GCN) and continued for more than 5 hours. The afterglow was $Rc= 12.35\pm0.07$ at $t=74$ min after burst. Its fading between 1.2 and 6.3 hours is well characterized by a single power-law of the form $f{\rm(mJy)} = (1.99\pm0.02{\rm (statistic)}\pm0.14{\rm (systematic)}) \times (t/1 {\rm day})^{-0.890\pm 0.006 {\rm (statistic)}\pm 0.010 {\rm (systematic)}}$ in $Rc$-band. No significant flux variation was detected and upper limits are derived as $(\Delta f/f)_{\rm RMS} = 3-5$% in minutes to hours timescales and $(\Delta f/f)_{\rm RMS} = 35-5$% in seconds to minutes timescales. Such a featureless lightcurve is explained by the smooth distribution of circumburst medium. Another explanation is that the optical band was above the synchrotron cooling frequency where emergent flux is insensitive to the ambient density contrasts. Extrapolation of the afterglow lightcurve to the burst epoch excludes the presence of an additional flare component at $t<10$ minutes as seen in GRB 990123 and GRB 021211.Comment: ApJL, in pres