Results from pQCD for A+A collisions at RHIC & LHC energies

This talk will discuss how to compute initial quantites in heavy ion collisions at RHIC (200 AGeV) and at LHC (5500 AGeV) using perturbative QCD (pQCD) by including the next-to-leading order (NLO) corrections and a dynamical determination of the dominant physical scale. The initial numbers are converted into final ones by assuming kinetic thermalization and adiabatic expansion.Comment: 4 pages, 2 eps-figures, to appear in Proceedings of CIPANP2000, 7th Conference on the Intersections of Particle and Nuclear Physics, May 22-28, 2000, Quebec Cit

Holographic modelling of a light technidilaton

We present a simplified holographic model of chiral symmetry breaking in gauge theory. The chiral condensate is represented by a single scalar field in AdS, with the gauge dynamics input through radial dependence of its mass, representing the running of the anomalous dimension of the qbar q operator. We discuss simple examples of the chiral transition out of the conformal window when the infrared value of the anomalous dimension, \gamma_m, is tuned to one (equivalently the AdS-scalar mass squared is tuned to the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound of -4). The output of the model are the masses of the $\bar{q} q$ scalar meson bound states. We show in an explicit example that if the gradient of the running of the anomalous dimension falls to zero at the scale where the BF bound violation occurs, so that the theory becomes near conformal, then the theory possesses a techni-dilaton state that is parametrically lighter than the dynamically generated quark mass. Indeed the full spectrum of excited meson states also become light (relative to the techni-quark mass) as they approach a conformal spectrum.Comment: 8 pages, 8 pdf figures, added discussion of Fig 3 and new reference

Higgs Mechanism via Bose Einstein Condensation

Recently the Bose-Einstein phenomenon has been proposed as possible physical mechanism underlying the spontaneous symmetry breaking in cold gauge theories. The mechanism is natural and we use it to drive the electroweak symmetry breaking. The mechanism can be implemented in different ways while here we review two simple models in which the Bose-Einstein sector is felt directly or indirectly by all of the standard model fields. The structure of the corrections due to the new mechanism is general and independent on the model used leading to experimental signatures which can be disentangled from other known extensions of the standard model.Comment: Proceedings for the MRST2003 `Joefest' conference held in Syracuse University, Syracuse NY, 13-15 May 2003, US