10836022
Numerical object oriented quantum field theory calculations
The qft++ package is a library of C++ classes that facilitate numerical (not algebraic) quantum field theory calculations. Mathematical objects such as matrices, tensors, Dirac spinors, polarization and orbital angular momentum tensors, etc. are represented as C++ objects in qft++. The package permits construction of code which closely resembles quantum field theory expressions, allowing for quick and reliable calculations.
118508186
Time-integrated measurements and prospects for the CKM angle gamma at LHCb
The status and prospects of time-integrated measurements of the CKM angle gamma at LHCb, the LHC's dedicated flavor physics experiment, are reviewed. Yields obtained from early data taking are presented and extrapolations are made to estimate what can be expected to be obtained from the 2011 data. The conclusions drawn from these extrapolations are that LHCb will produce the world's best measurement of gamma by the end of 2011 and that the long-term outlook is excellent.
118830218
Prospects for the measurement of the unitarity triangle angle gamma from B-0 -> DK+pi(-) decays
The potential for a precise measurement of the unitarity triangle angle gamma in future experiments from the decay B-0 -> DK*0 is well known. It has recently been suggested that the sensitivity can be significantly enhanced by analyzing the B-0 -> DK+pi(-) Dalitz plot to extract amplitudes relative to those of the flavor-specific decay B-0 -> D2*-K+. An extension to this method which includes the case where the neutral D meson is reconstructed in suppressed final states is presented. The sensitivity to gamma is estimated using this method and compared to that obtained using the B-0 -> DK*0 decay alone. Experimental effects, such as background contamination, are also considered. This approach appears to be a highly attractive addition to the family of methods that can be used to determine gamma.
209834699
Analysis of the resonant components in B¯º → J/ ψπ+π-
Interpretation of CP violation measurements using charmonium decays, in both the B¯o and B¯os systems, can be subject to changes due to "penguin" type diagrams. These effects can be investigated using measurements of the Cabibbo-suppressed B¯o → J/ ψπ+π- decays. The final state composition of this channel is investigated using a 1.0 fb(-1) sample of data produced in 7 TeV pp collisions at the LHC and collected by the LHCb experiment. A modified Dalitz-plot analysis is performed using both the invariant mass spectra and the decay angular distributions. An improved measurement of the B¯o → J/ ψπ+π- branching fraction of (3.97 ± 0.09 ± 0.11 ± 0.16) x 10(-5) is reported where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic, and the third is due to the uncertainty of the branching fraction of the decay B¯ → J/ ψ K¯ used as a normalization channel. Significant production of fₒ(500) and ρ(770) resonances is found in the substructure of the J/ ψπ+π- final state, and this indicates that they are viable final states for CP violation studies. In contrast evidence for the fₒ(980) resonance is not found. This allows us to establish the first upper limit on the branching fraction product Β(B¯o → J/ ψfₒ (980)) x Β(fₒ(980) → π+π- < 1.1 x 10(-6), leading to an upper limit on the absolute value of the mixing angle of the fₒ(980) with the fₒ(500) of less than 31°, both at 90% confidence level.
117676442
An Ad-Hoc Method for Obtaining chi**2 Values from Unbinned Maximum Likelihood Fits
A common goal in an experimental physics analysis is to extract information from a reaction with multi-dimensional kinematics. The preferred method for such a task is typically the unbinned maximum likelihood method. In fits using this method, the likelihood is a goodness-of-fit quantity in that it effectively discriminates between available hypotheses; however, it does not provide any information as to how well the best hypothesis describes the data. 
In this paper, we present an {\em ad-hoc} procedure for obtaining chi**2/n.d.f. values from unbinned maximum likelihood fits. This method does not require binning the data, making it very applicable to multi-dimensional problems.
118648061
ObservingCPviolation in many-body decays
It is well known that observing $CP$ violation in many-body decays could provide strong evidence for physics beyond the standard model. Many searches have been carried out; however, no $5\ensuremath{\sigma}$ evidence for $CP$ violation has yet been found in these types of decays. A novel model-independent method for observing $CP$ violation in many-body decays is presented in this paper. It is shown that the sensitivity of this method is significantly larger than those used to-date.
53667729
Accidental SUSY: enhanced bulk supersymmetry from brane back-reaction
A bstractWe compute how bulk loops renormalize both bulk and brane effective interactions for codimension-two branes in 6D gauged chiral supergravity, as functions of the brane tension and brane-localized flux. We do so by explicitly integrating out hyper- and gauge-multiplets in 6D gauged chiral supergravity compactified to 4D on a flux-stabilized 2D rugby-ball geometry, specializing the results of a companion paper, arXiv:1210.3753, to the supersymmetric case. While the brane back-reaction generically breaks supersymmetry, we show that the bulk supersymmetry can be preserved if the amount of brane- localized flux is related in a specific BPS-like way to the brane tension, and verify that the loop corrections to the brane curvature vanish in this special case. In these systems it is the brane-bulk couplings that fix the size of the extra dimensions, and we show that in some circumstances the bulk geometry dynamically adjusts to ensure the supersymmetric BPS-like condition is automatically satisfied. We investigate the robustness of this residual supersymmetry to loops of non-supersymmetric matter on the branes, and show that supersymmetry-breaking effects can enter only through effective brane-bulk interactions involving at least two derivatives. We comment on the relevance of this calculation to proposed applications of codimension-two 6D models to solutions of the hierarchy and cosmological constant problems.
118724352
Gravitational forces on a codimension-2 brane
A bstractWe compute the gravitational response of six dimensional gauged, chiral supergravity to localized stress energy on one of two space-filling branes, including the effects of compactifying the extra dimensions and brane back-reaction. We find a broad class of exact solutions, including various black-brane solutions. Several approximate solutions are also described, such as the near-horizon geometry of a small black hole which is argued to be approximately described by a 6D Schwarzschild (or Kerr) black hole, with event horizon appropriately modified to encode the brane back-reaction. The general linearized far-field solutions are found in the 4D regime very far from the source, and all integration constants are related to physical quantities describing the branes and the localized energy source. The localized source determines two of these, corresponding to the source mass and the size of the strength of a coupling to a 4D scalar mode whose mass is parametrically smaller than the KK scale. At large distances the solutions agree with those of 4D general relativity, but for an intermediate range of distances (larger than the KK scale) the solutions better fit a Brans-Dicke theory. For a realistic choice of parameters the KK scale could lie at a micron, while the crossover to Brans-Dicke behaviour could occur at around 10 microns. While allowed by present data this points to potentially measurable changes to Newton’s Law arising at distances larger than the KK scale.
117248378
Accidental Supersymmetry and the Naturalness of Codimension-2 Branes
This thesis addresses two separate naturalness issues which generically come to bear on physical theories with large extra dimensions, and so a gravity scale much lower than the Planck scale. The first is related to the observed stability of the proton, wherein we determine the relevant constraints on an additional gauge boson which conserves baryon number. Although several such proposals have been previously considered, our analysis is distinctive in its interest in lighter gauge boson masses (which naturally arise in such models), and in its focus on the dependence of constraints due to kinetic mixing effects. The second is related to the main purpose of large extra dimensions—namely, to address the smallness of the observed vacuum energy—wherein we compute the leading-order quantum corrections to the four-dimensional (4D) vacuum energy resulting from loops of extradimensional fields. We compute the contributions from bulk scalars (spin 0), fermions (spin 12 ), and gauge fields (spin 1) in a flux-stabilized, spheroidal extra-dimensional geometry whose rugbyball shape is due to two codimension-2 branes—one at each pole. (We also obtain the corresponding beta functions for both bulk and brane operators.) These results are then combined to obtain the net contribution from various multiplets in the context of a particular supersymmetric extra-dimensional model that has been shown to give a vanishing result for the 4D vacuum energy at the classical level. Surprisingly, we find that supersymmetry can be preserved dynamically at one loop in the case of identical branes, without arranging any particular relationship between the brane parameters. Perturbing away from the case of identical branes is shown to give a positive 1-loop contribution to the 4D vacuum energy whose size is set by the radius of the extra dimensions.
53692432
Distributed SUSY breaking: dark energy, Newton’s law and the LHC
A bstractWe identify the underlying symmetry mechanism that suppresses the low-energy effective 4D cosmological constant within some 6D supergravity models, generically leading to results suppressed by powers of the KK scale, mK K2, relative to the much larger size, m4, associated with mass-m particles localized in these models on codimension-2 branes. These models are examples for which the local conditions for unbroken supersymmetry can be satisfied locally everywhere within the extra dimensions, but are obstructed only by global conditions like flux quantization or by the mutual inconsistency of the boundary conditions required at the various branes. Consequently quantities (like vacuum energies) forbidden by supersymmetry cannot become nonzero until wavelengths of order the KK scale are integrated out, since only such long wavelength modes can see the entire space and so ‘know’ that supersymmetry has broken. We verify these arguments by extending earlier rugby-ball calculations of one-loop vacuum energies within these models to more general pairs of branes within two warped extra dimensions. For the Standard Model confined to one of two otherwise identical branes, the predicted effective 4D vacuum energy density is of order ρvac ⋍ C(mMg/4πMp)4 = C(5.6 × 10−5 eV)4, where Mg ≳ 10 TeV (corresponding to extra-dimensional size r ≲ 1 μm) and Mp = 2.44 × 1018 GeV are the 6D and 4D rationalized Planck scales, and m is the heaviest brane-localized particle. (For numerical purposes we take m to be the top-quark mass and take Mg as small as possible, consistent with energy-loss bounds from supernovae.) C is a constant depending on the details of the bulk spectrum, which could easily be of order 500 for each of hundreds of fields in the bulk. The value C ∼ 6 × 106 would give the observed Dark Energy density.
118339212
Technically natural vacuum energy at the tip of a supersymmetric teardrop
A minimal supersymmetric brane-world model is presented which has: i) zero classical four-dimensional vacuum curvature, despite the large naive vacuum energy due to contributions from Standard Model particles; ii) one-(bulk)-loop quantum corrections to the vacuum energy with a size set by the radius of the extra-dimensional spheroid. These corrections are technically natural because a BPS-like relation between the brane tension and R-charge---which would have preserved (half of) the bulk supersymmetry---is violated by the requirement that the stabilizing R-symmetry gauge flux be quantized. The extra-dimensional geometry is similar to previous rugby-ball geometries, but is simpler in that there is only one brane and so fewer free parameters. Although the sign of the renormalized vacuum energy ends up being the unphysical one for this model (in the limit considered here, where the massive bulk loop is the leading contribution), it serves as an illustrative example of the relevant physics.