Fully differential NLO predictions for rare and radiative lepton decays

We present a general purpose, parton-level Monte Carlo program for the calculation of the radiative ($L\to\nu\bar\nu l+\gamma$) and rare ($L\to\nu\bar\nu l'+ l^+l^-$) muon and tau decays at NLO in the effective Fermi theory. In the case of muon, these processes are irreducible Standard Model backgrounds to searches for lepton flavour violation at the PSI experiments MEG and Mu3e as they become indistinguishable from the corresponding signals when the neutrinos carry little energy. Furthermore, we argue that fully differential NLO corrections are very important for the analysis of measurements aiming at the percent level or better. This is especally true if very stringent phase-space cuts are applied. To illustrate this, we use a tension between BaBar's recent measurement of the radiative tau decay and the Standard Model prediction as an example of such an analysis. Finally, we present the branching ratios of the rare tau decay $\tau\to\nu\bar\nu l' l^+l^-$ at NLO. We generally find that QED corrections of $\mathcal{O}(10\%)$ are very well possible.Comment: Proceedings of the 19th International Workshop on Neutrinos from Accelerators (NUFACT 2017

Fully differential NLO predictions for the radiative decay of muons and taus

We present a general purpose Monte Carlo program for the calculation of the radiative muon decay $\mu\to e\,\nu \bar{\nu}\gamma$ and the radiative decays $\tau\to e\, \nu \bar{\nu}\gamma$ and $\tau\to\mu\,\nu \bar{\nu}\gamma$ at next-to-leading order in the Fermi theory. The full dependence on the lepton masses and polarization of the initial-sate lepton are kept. We study the branching ratios for these processes and show that fully-differential next-to-leading order corrections are important for addressing a tension between BaBar's recent measurement of the branching ratio $\mathcal{B}(\tau\to e\, \nu\bar{\nu}\gamma)$ and the Standard Model prediction. In addition, we study various distributions of the process $\mu\to e\,\nu \bar{\nu}\gamma$ and obtain precise predictions for the irreducible background to $\mu\to e \gamma$ searches, tailored to the geometry of the MEG detector.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, published versio

Small-mass effects in heavy-to-light form factors

We present the heavy-to-light form factors with two different non-vanishing masses at next-to-next-to-leading order and study its expansion in the small mass. The leading term of this small-mass expansion leads to a factorized expression for the form factor. The presence of a second mass results in a new feature, in that the soft contribution develops a factorization anomaly. This cancels with the corresponding anomaly in the collinear contribution. With the generalized factorization presented here, it is possible to obtain the leading small-mass terms for processes with large masses, such as muon-electron scattering, from the corresponding massless amplitude and the soft contribution.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, 1 ancillary file, published versio

Is there a universality of the helix-coil transition in protein models?

The similarity in the thermodynamic properties of two completely different theoretical models for the helix-coil transition is examined critically. The first model is an all-atomic representation for a poly-alanine chain, while the second model is a minimal helix-forming model that contains no system specifics. Key characteristics of the helix-coil transition, in particular, the effective critical exponents of these two models agree with each other, within a finite-size scaling analysis.Comment: Latex, to appear in Eur. Phys. J.

Nitrogen fluorescence in air for observing extensive air showers

Extensive air showers initiate the fluorescence emissions from nitrogen molecules in air. The UV-light is emitted isotropically and can be used for observing the longitudinal development of extensive air showers in the atmosphere over tenth of kilometers. This measurement technique is well-established since it is exploited for many decades by several cosmic ray experiments. However, a fundamental aspect of the air shower analyses is the description of the fluorescence emission in dependence on varying atmospheric conditions. Different fluorescence yields affect directly the energy scaling of air shower reconstruction. In order to explore the various details of the nitrogen fluorescence emission in air, a few experimental groups have been performing dedicated measurements over the last decade. Most of the measurements are now finished. These experimental groups have been discussing their techniques and results in a series of Air Fluorescence Workshops commenced in 2002. At the 8$^{\rm{th}}$ Air Fluorescence Workshop 2011, it was suggested to develop a common way of describing the nitrogen fluorescence for application to air shower observations. Here, first analyses for a common treatment of the major dependences of the emission procedure are presented. Aspects like the contributions at different wavelengths, the dependence on pressure as it is decreasing with increasing altitude in the atmosphere, the temperature dependence, in particular that of the collisional cross sections between molecules involved, and the collisional de-excitation by water vapor are discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 17 figures, 2 tables, International Symposium on Future Directions in UHECR Physics, 13-16 February 2012, CERN, Geneva (Switzerland); the updated version corrects for a typo in Eq. (1

The classification of non-local chiral CFT with c<1

All non-local but relatively local irreducible extensions of Virasoro chiral CFTs with c<1 are classified. The classification, which is a prerequisite for the classification of local c<1 boundary CFTs on a two-dimensional half-space, turns out to be 1 to 1 with certain pairs of A-D-E graphs with distinguished vertices.Comment: 13 pages. v3: additional material (concerning the Hilbert spaces) adde

Binary black-hole evolutions of excision and puncture data

We present a new numerical code developed for the evolution of binary black-hole spacetimes using different initial data and evolution techniques. The code is demonstrated to produce state-of-the-art simulations of orbiting and inspiralling black-hole binaries with convergent waveforms. We also present the first detailed study of the dependence of gravitational waveforms resulting from three-dimensional evolutions of different types of initial data. For this purpose we compare the waveforms generated by head-on collisions of superposed Kerr-Schild, Misner and Brill-Lindquist data over a wide range of initial separations.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, final version accepted for publication in PR

Magnetic Resonant excitations in High-{Tc\rm T_c} superconductors

The observation of an unusual spin resonant excitation in the superconducting state of various High-Tc ~copper oxides by inelastic neutron scattering measurements is reviewed. This magnetic mode % (that does not exist in conventional superconductors) is discussed in light of a few theoretical models and likely corresponds to a spin-1 collective mode.Comment: 4 figures, Proceedings conference MSM'03 (september 2003) in Monastir (Tunisia) to be published in Phys. Stat. Solid

Current-Driven Domain-Wall Dynamics in Curved Ferromagnetic Nanowires

The current-induced motion of a domain wall in a semicircle nanowire with applied Zeeman field is investigated. Starting from a micromagnetic model we derive an analytical solution which characterizes the domain-wall motion as a harmonic oscillation. This solution relates the micromagnetic material parameters with the dynamical characteristics of a harmonic oscillator, i.e., domain-wall mass, resonance frequency, damping constant, and force acting on the wall. For wires with strong curvature the dipole moment of the wall as well as its geometry influence the eigenmodes of the oscillator. Based on these results we suggest experiments for the determination of material parameters which otherwise are difficult to access. Numerical calculations confirm our analytical solution and show its limitations