Higgs Boson Production with Bottom Quarks at Hadron Colliders

We present results for the production cross section of a Higgs Boson with a pair of bottom/anti-bottom quarks, including next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, uses ws-ijmpa.cls. Talk given by C.B. Jackson at the Meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF2004) in Riverside, CA, August 26-31, 200

Do arsenic levels in rice pose a health risk to the UK population?

Consumption of rice and rice products can be a significant exposure pathway to inorganic arsenic (iAs), which is a group 1 carcinogen to humans. The UK follows the current European Commission regulations so that iAs concentrations must be  0.1 mg kg-1 were selected for As speciation using HPLC-ICP-MS. Based on the average concentration of iAs of our samples, we calculated values for the Lifetime Cancer Risk (LCR), Target Hazard Quotient (THQ) and Margin of Exposure (MoE). We found a statistically significant difference between organically and non-organically grown rice. We also found that brown rice contained a significantly higher concentration of iAs compared to white or wild rice. Notably, 28 rice samples exceeded the iAs maximum limit stipulated by the EU (0.1 mg kg-1) with an average iAs concentration of 0.13 mg kg-1; therefore consumption of these rice types could be riskier for infants than adults. Based on the MoE, it was found that infants up to 1 year must be restricted to a maximum of 20 g per day for the 28 rice types to avoid carcinogenic risks. We believe that consumers could be better informed whether the marketed product is fit for infants and young children, via appropriate product labelling containing information about iAs concentration

Theoretical progress for the associated production of a Higgs boson with heavy quarks at hadron colliders

The production of a Higgs boson in association with a pair of top-antitop or bottom-antibottom quarks plays a very important role at both the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider. The theoretical prediction of the corresponding cross sections has been improved by including the complete next-to-leading order QCD corrections. After a brief introduction, we review the results obtained for both the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 3 pages, 6 figures, uses svjour.cls. Talk given by L. Reina at the HEP2003 Europhysics Conference in Aachen, Germany (EPS 2003), July 17-23, 200

Optical Quantum Computation with Perpetually Coupled Spins

The possibility of using strongly and continuously interacting spins for quantum computation has recently been discussed. Here we present a simple optical scheme that achieves this goal while avoiding the drawbacks of earlier proposals. We employ a third state, accessed by a classical laser field, to create an effective barrier to information transfer. The mechanism proves to be highly efficient both for continuous and pulsed laser modes; moreover it is very robust, tolerating high decay rates for the excited states. The approach is applicable to a broad range of systems, in particular dense structures such as solid state self-assembled (e.g., molecular) devices. Importantly, there are existing structures upon which `first step' experiments could be immediately performed.Comment: 5 pages including 3 figures. Updated to published versio

CP violation in the decay mode B→πγγB\to \pi \gamma \gamma

Within the framework of Standard Model, the exclusive decay mode $B\to \pi \gamma \gamma$ is studied. Although the usual short distance contribution is small compared to the similar $B\to K\gamma\gamma$ mode, the process offers the possibility of studying the CP violation, a feature absent in the $B \to K$ counterpart.Comment: 11 page latex file including 2 ps figures. Typos corrected, minor changes. To appear in PR

Exclusive Higgs Boson Production with bottom quarks at Hadron Colliders

We present the next-to-leading order QCD corrected rate for the production of a scalar Higgs boson with a pair of high p_T bottom and anti-bottom quarks at the Tevatron and at the Large Hadron Collider. Results are given for both the Standard Model and the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. The exclusive b-bbar-h production rate is small in the Standard Model, but it can be greatly enhanced in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model for large tan(beta), making b-bbar-h an important discovery mode. We find that the next-to-leading order QCD results are much less sensitive to the renormalization and factorization scales than the lowest order results, but have a significant dependence on the choice of the renormalization scheme for the bottom quark Yukawa coupling.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figures, RevTeX