Drell-Yan plus missing energy as a signal for extra dimensions

We explore the search sensitivity for signals of large extra dimensions at hadron colliders via the Drell-Yan process pp -> l+ l- + E_T(miss) X (l = e,mu) where the missing transverse energy is the result of escaping Kaluza-Klein gravitons. We find that one is able to place exclusion limits on the gravity scale up to 560 GeV at the Fermilab Tevatron, and to 4.0 (3.3) TeV at the CERN LHC, for n = 3 (4) extra dimensions.Comment: 5 pages, 2 PS figs, revised verseion to be published in Physics Letters

MONDO: A tracker for the characterization of secondary fast and ultrafast neutrons emitted in particle therapy

n/

Increased risk of malignant mesothelioma of the pleura after residential or domestic exposure to asbestos: a case-control study in Casale Monferrato, Italy.

The association of malignant mesothelioma (MM) and nonoccupational asbestos exposure is currently debated. Our study investigates environmental and domestic asbestos exposure in the city where the largest Italian asbestos cement (AC) factory was located. This population-based case-control study included pleural MM (histologically diagnosed) incidents in the area in 1987-1993, matched by age and sex to two controls (four if younger than 60). Diagnoses were confirmed by a panel of five pathologists. We interviewed 102 cases and 273 controls in 1993-1995, out of 116 and 330 eligible subjects. Information was checked and completed on the basis of factory and Town Office files. We adjusted analyses for occupational exposure in the AC industry. In the town there were no other relevant industrial sources of asbestos exposure. Twenty-three cases and 20 controls lived with an AC worker [odds ratio (OR) = 4.5; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.8-11.1)]. The risk was higher for the offspring of AC workers (OR = 7.4; 95% CI, 1.9-28.1). Subjects attending grammar school in Casale also showed an increased risk (OR = 3.3; 95% CI, 1.4-7.7). Living in Casale was associated with a very high risk (after selecting out AC workers: OR = 20.6; 95% CI, 6.2-68.6), with spatial trend with increasing distance from the AC factory. The present work confirms the association of environmental asbestos exposure and pleural MM, controlling for other sources of asbestos exposure, and suggests that environmental exposure caused a greater risk than domestic exposure

Renormalization Group Flows for Brane Couplings

Field theories in the presence of branes encounter localized divergences that renormalize brane couplings. The sources of these brane-localized divergences are understood as arising either from broken translation invariance, or from short distance singularities as the brane thickness vanishes. While the former are generated only by quantum corrections, the latter can appear even at the classical level. Using as an example six-dimensional scalar field theory in the background of a 3-brane, we show how to interpret such classical divergences by the usual regularization and renormalization procedure of quantum field theory. In our example, the zero thickness divergences are logarithmic, and lead classically to non-trivial renormalization group flows for the brane couplings. We construct the tree level renormalization group equations for these couplings as well as the one-loop corrections to these flows from bulk-to-brane renormalization effects.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX. References and an appendix adde

Supergravity loop contributions to brane world supersymmetry breaking

We compute the supergravity loop contributions to the visible sector scalar masses in the simplest 5D `brane-world' model. Supersymmetry is assumed to be broken away from the visible brane and the contributions are UV finite due to 5D locality. We perform the calculation with N = 1 supergraphs, using a formulation of 5D supergravity in terms of N = 1 superfields. We compute contributions to the 4D effective action that determine the visible scalar masses, and we find that the mass-squared terms are negative.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX 2

Fermion Mass Hierarchies and Small Mixing Angles from Extra Dimensions

In this paper we study renormalization-group evolutions of Yukawa matrices enhanced by Kaluza-Klein excited modes and analyze their infrared fixed-point structure. We derive necessary conditions to obtain hierarchies between generations on the fixed point. These conditions restrict how the fields in the models can extend to higher dimension. Several specific mechanisms to realize the conditions are presented. We also take account of generation mixing effects and find a scenario where the mixing angles become small at low energy even with large initial values at high-energy scale. A toy model is shown to lead realistic quark mass matrices.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, LaTeX, a supplementary explanation and references adde

Minimal Gaugino Mediation

We propose Minimal Gaugino Mediation as the simplest known solution to the supersymmetric flavor and CP problems. The framework predicts a very minimal structure for the soft parameters at ultra-high energies: gaugino masses are unified and non-vanishing whereas all other soft supersymmetry breaking parameters vanish. We show that this boundary condition naturally arises from a small extra dimension and present a complete model which includes a new extra-dimensional solution to the mu problem. We briefly discuss the predicted superpartner spectrum as a function of the two parameters of the model. The commonly ignored renormalization group evolution above the GUT scale is crucial to the viability of Minimal Gaugino Mediation but does not introduce new model dependence.Comment: LaTeX, 16 pages, 4 figures, running of the bottom and tau Yukawas included, plots revise

Oblique Parameter Constraints on Large Extra Dimensions

We consider the Kaluza-Klein scenario in which gravity propagates in the $4+n$ dimensional bulk of spacetime and the Standard Model particles are confined to a 3-brane. We calculate the gauge boson self-energy corrections arising from the exchange of virtual gravitons and present our results in the $STU$-formalism. We find that the new physics contributions to $S$, $T$ and $U$ decouple in the limit that the string scale $M_S$ goes to infinity. The oblique parameters constrain the lower limit on $M_S$. Taking the quantum gravity cutoff to be $M_S$, $S$-parameter constraints impose $M_S>1.55$ TeV for $n=2$ at the 1$\sigma$ level. $T$-parameter constraints impose $M_S>1.25 (0.75)$ TeV for $n=3 (6)$.Comment: Version to appear in PR

Indirect Collider Signals for Extra Dimensions

A recent suggestion that quantum gravity may become strong near the weak scale has several testable consequences. In addition to probing for the new large (submillimeter) extra dimensions associated with these theories via gravitational experiments, one could search for the Kaluza Klein towers of massive gravitons which are predicted in these models and which can interact with the fields of the Standard Model. Here we examine the indirect effects of these massive gravitons being exchanged in fermion pair production in \epem annihilation and Drell-Yan production at hadron colliders. In the latter case, we examine a novel feature of this theory, which is the contribution of gluon gluon initiated processes to lepton pair production. We find that these processes provide strong bounds, up to several TeV, on the string scale which are essentially independent of the number of extra dimensions. In addition, we analyze the angular distributions for fermion pair production with spin-2 graviton exchanges and demonstrate that they provide a smoking gun signal for low-scale quantum gravity which cannot be mimicked by other new physics scenarios.Comment: Corrected typos, added table and reference