Interfacing Modbus Plus to EPICS for KEKB Accelerator Control System

The KEKB Accelerator control system[1] is based on EPICS(Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System)[2] and uses many PLCs in the magnet protec-tion systems and the radiation safety system. In order to monitor the interlock status, Modbus Plus[3] is adopted as the protocol between an IOC(Input/Output Controller) and PLCs. For this purpose, a device support and a driver support for Modbus Plus have been developed. The device/driver support modules allow an IOC to communicate with PLC-s by asynchronous I/O transactions, in such a manner that the GPIB devices do. With the software modules, an IOC works always as a master device on the Modbus Plus net-work to read the status of controlled devices from PLC memory. While the main use of the software is to read the interlock status, it is also used to reset the interlock sys-tems. Details of the software structure are described. An ap-plication of this software in the KEKB accelerator control system is also presented.

Jet angular correlation in vector-boson fusion processes at hadron colliders

Higgs boson and massive-graviton productions in association with two jets via vector-boson fusion (VBF) processes and their decays into a vector-boson pair at hadron colliders are studied. They include scalar and tensor boson production processes via weak-boson fusion in quark-quark collisions, gluon fusion in quark-quark, quark-gluon and gluon-gluon collisions, as well as their decays into a pair of weak bosons or virtual gluons which subsequently decay into $\ell\bar\ell$, $q\bar q$ or $gg$. We give the helicity amplitudes explicitly for all the VBF subprocesses, and show that the VBF amplitudes dominate the exact matrix elements not only for the weak-boson fusion processes but also for all the gluon fusion processes when appropriate selection cuts are applied, such as a large rapidity separation between two jets and a slicing cut for the transverse momenta of the jets. We also show that our off-shell vector-boson current amplitudes reduce to the standard quark and gluon splitting amplitudes with appropriate gluon-polarization phases in the collinear limit. Nontrivial azimuthal angle correlations of the jets in the production and in the decay of massive spin-0 and -2 bosons are manifestly expressed as the quantum interference among different helicity states of the intermediate vector-bosons. Those correlations reflect the spin and the CP nature of the Higgs bosons and the massive gravitons.Comment: 47 pages, 7 figures, 10 tables; references added, version to appear in JHE

MHV Rules for Higgs Plus Multi-Gluon Amplitudes

We use tree-level perturbation theory to show how non-supersymmetric one-loop scattering amplitudes for a Higgs boson plus an arbitrary number of partons can be constructed, in the limit of a heavy top quark, from a generalization of the scalar graph approach of Cachazo, Svrcek and Witten. The Higgs boson couples to gluons through a top quark loop which generates, for large top mass, a dimension-5 operator H tr G^2. This effective interaction leads to amplitudes which cannot be described by the standard MHV rules; for example, amplitudes where all of the gluons have positive helicity. We split the effective interaction into the sum of two terms, one holomorphic (selfdual) and one anti-holomorphic (anti-selfdual). The holomorphic interactions give a new set of MHV vertices -- identical in form to those of pure gauge theory, except for momentum conservation -- that can be combined with pure gauge theory MHV vertices to produce a tower of amplitudes with more than two negative helicities. Similarly, the anti-holomorphic interactions give anti-MHV vertices that can be combined with pure gauge theory anti-MHV vertices to produce a tower of amplitudes with more than two positive helicities. A Higgs boson amplitude is the sum of one MHV-tower amplitude and one anti-MHV-tower amplitude. We present all MHV-tower amplitudes with up to four negative-helicity gluons and any number of positive-helicity gluons (NNMHV). These rules reproduce all of the available analytic formulae for Higgs + n-gluon scattering (n<=5) at tree level, in some cases yielding considerably shorter expressions.Comment: 34 pages, 8 figures; v2, references correcte

Single-top production at future ep colliders

The production of top quarks in single mode at future ep colliders is studied, the attention being mainly focused to the case of the proposed LEPXLHC collider. We are motivated to reanalyse such a process following the discovery of the top quark at Fermilab. Thanks to the measurement of its mass one is now able to establish more accurately the relevance of single top production for itself and for many other processes to which it may act as a background. In addition, the recent improvement of our knowledge of the quark and gluon dynamics inside the proton now allows one to pin down the dependence of single top production on the partonic structure functions. Both the leptonic and hadronic decay channels of the top quark are studied and compared to the yield of the corresponding irreducible background in presence of b-taggingComment: 28 pages, latex, epsfig, 10 postscript figures, complete paper available at ftp://axpa.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/moretti/cavendish_9704 and at http://www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/theory/papers

Aspects of CP violation in the HZZ coupling at the LHC

We examine the CP-conserving (CPC) and CP-violating (CPV) effects of a general HZZ coupling through a study of the process H -> ZZ* -> 4 leptons at the LHC. We construct asymmetries that directly probe these couplings. Further, we present complete analytical formulae for the angular distributions of the decay leptons and for some of the asymmetries. Using these we have been able to identify new observables which can provide enhanced sensitivity to the CPV $H ZZ$ coupling. We also explore probing CP violation through shapes of distributions in different kinematic variables, which can be used for Higgs bosons with mH < 2 mZ.Comment: 36 pages, 17 figures, LaTeX, version accepted for publicatio

Biological characteristics of a cold-adapted influenza A virus mutation residing on a polymerase gene

The biological function of a cold-adapted (ca) mutation residing on the PB2 gene of an influenza A/Ann Arbor/6/60 (A/AA/6/60) ca variant virus in the viral replication cycle at 25° C was studied. The viral polypeptide synthesis of A/AA/6/60 ca variant at 25° C was evident approximately 6 hours earlier than the wild type (wt) virus and yielded twice as many products. The quantitative analysis of viral complementary RNA (cRNA), synthesized in the presence of cycloheximide, revealed that A/AA/6/60 ca variant and a single gene reassortant that contains only the PB2 gene of the ca variant with remaining genes of the wt virus produced equal amount of cRNA at 25° and 33° C, which was an amount approximately four fold greater than the wt virus' cRNA synthesized at 25° C. These results strongly suggest that the ca mutation residing on the PB2 gene of A/AA/6/60 ca variant affects the messenger RNA synthesis at 25° C in the primary transcription.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41692/1/705_2005_Article_BF01310893.pd

Selection of antigenically advanced variants of seasonal influenza viruses.

Influenza viruses mutate frequently, necessitating constant updates of vaccine viruses. To establish experimental approaches that may complement the current vaccine strain selection process, we selected antigenic variants from human H1N1 and H3N2 influenza virus libraries possessing random mutations in the globular head of the haemagglutinin protein (which includes the antigenic sites) by incubating them with human and/or ferret convalescent sera to human H1N1 and H3N2 viruses. We also selected antigenic escape variants from human viruses treated with convalescent sera and from mice that had been previously immunized against human influenza viruses. Our pilot studies with past influenza viruses identified escape mutants that were antigenically similar to variants that emerged in nature, establishing the feasibility of our approach. Our studies with contemporary human influenza viruses identified escape mutants before they caused an epidemic in 2014-2015. This approach may aid in the prediction of potential antigenic escape variants and the selection of future vaccine candidates before they become widespread in nature.This work was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Global Health Grant OPPGH5383; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Public Health Service research grants (USA); ERATO (Japan Science and Technology Agency); the Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis (CRIP) funded by the NIAID Contracts HHSN266200700010C and HHSN27 2201400008C; the Japan Initiative for Global Research Network on Infectious Diseases; Grants-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Japan; Grants-in-Aid from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan; grants from the Strategic Basic Research Program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency; and by the Advanced Research & Development Programs for Medical Innovation from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED). C.A.R. was supported by a University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society. The authors acknowledge a Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) VICI grant, European Union (EU) FP7 programs EMPERIE (223498) and ANTIGONE (278976); Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) program grant P0050/2008; Wellcome 087982AIA; and NIH Director's Pioneer Award DP1-OD000490-01. D.F.B and D.J.S. acknowledge CamGrid, the University of Cambridge distributed computer system. The Melbourne WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza is supported by the Australian Government Department of Health.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.5

Complete Higgs sector constraints on dimension-6 operators

Constraints on the full set of Standard Model dimension-6 operators have previously used triple-gauge couplings to complement the constraints obtainable from Higgs signal strengths. Here we extend previous analyses of the Higgs sector constraints by including information from the associated production of Higgs and massive vector bosons (H+V production), which excludes a direction of limited sensitivity allowed by partial cancellations in the triple-gauge sector measured at LEP. Kinematic distributions in H+V production provide improved sensitivity to dimension-6 operators, as we illustrate here with simulations of the invariant mass and pT distributions measured by D0 and ATLAS, respectively. We provide bounds from a global fit to a complete set of CP-conserving operators affecting Higgs physics