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.
118732841
Running with rugby balls: bulk renormalization of codimension-2 branes
A bstractWe compute how one-loop bulk effects renormalize both bulk and brane effective interactions for geometries sourced by codimension-two branes. We do so by explicitly integrating out spin-zero, -half and -one particles in 6-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-Scalar theories compactified to 4 dimensions on a flux-stabilized 2D geometry. (Our methods apply equally well for D dimensions compactified to D − 2 dimensions, although our explicit formulae do not capture all divergences when D > 6.) The renormalization of bulk interactions are independent of the boundary conditions assumed at the brane locations, and reproduce standard heat-kernel calculations. Boundary conditions at any particular brane do affect how bulk loops renormalize this brane’s effective action, but not the renormalization of other distant branes. Although we explicitly compute our loops using a rugby ball geometry, because we follow only UV effects our results apply more generally to any geometry containing codimension-two sources with conical singularities. Our results have a variety of uses, including calculating the UV sensitivity of one-loop vacuum energy seen by observers localized on the brane. We show how these one-loop effects combine in a surprising way with bulk back-reaction to give the complete low-energy effective cosmological constant, and comment on the relevance of this calculation to proposed applications of codimension-two 6D models to solutions of the hierarchy and cosmological constant problems.
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.
3581209
EFT beyond the horizon: stochastic inflation and how primordial quantum fluctuations go classical
A bstractWe identify the effective field theory describing the physics of super-Hubble scales and show it to be a special case of a class of effective field theories appropriate to open systems. Open systems are those that allow information to be exchanged between the degrees of freedom of interest and those that are integrated out, such as would be appropriate for particles moving through a fluid. Strictly speaking they cannot in general be described by an effective lagrangian; rather the appropriate ‘low-energy’ limit is instead a Lindblad equation describing the time-evolution of the density matrix of the slow degrees of freedom. We derive the equation relevant to super-Hubble modes of quantum fields in de Sitter (and near-de Sitter) spacetimes and derive two of its implications. We show that the evolution of the diagonal density-matrix elements quickly approach the Fokker-Planck equation of Starobinsky’s stochastic inflationary picture. This allows us both to identify the leading corrections and provide an alternative first-principles derivation of this picture’s stochastic noise and drift. (As applications we show that the noise for massless fields is independent of the details of the window function used, and also compute how the noise changes for systems with a sub-luminal speed of sound, cs< 1.) We then argue that the presence of interactions drive the off-diagonal density-matrix elements to zero in the field
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.
118827257
Who you gonna call? Runaway ghosts, higher derivatives and time-dependence in EFTs
A bstractWe briefly review the formulation of effective field theories (EFTs) in timedependent situations, with particular attention paid to their domain of validity. Our main interest is the extent to which solutions of the EFT capture the dynamics of the full theory. For a simple model we show by explicit calculation that the low-energy action obtained from a sensible UV completion need not take the restrictive form required to obtain only secondorder field equations, and we clarify why runaway solutions are nevertheless typically not a problem for the EFT. Although our results will not be surprising to many, to our knowledge they are only mentioned tangentially in the EFT literature, which (with a few exceptions) largely addresses time-independent situations.
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.
17491315
Multivariate side-band subtraction using probabilistic event weights
A common situation in experimental physics is to have a signal which can not be separated from a non-interfering background through the use of any selection criteria. In this paper, we describe a procedure for determining, on an event-by-event basis, a quality factor (Q-factor) that a given signal candidate originated from the signal sample. This procedure generalizes the ``side-band'' subtraction method to higher dimensions without requiring the data to be divided into bins. The Q-factors can then be used as event weights in subsequent analysis procedures, allowing one to more directly access the true spectrum of the signal.
119203961
Nonparametric regression using the concept of minimum energy
It has recently been shown that an unbinned distance-based statistic, the energy, can be used to construct an extremely powerful nonparametric multivariate two sample goodness-of-fit test. An extension to this method that makes it possible to perform nonparametric regression using multiple multivariate data sets is presented in this paper. The technique, which is based on the concept of minimizing the energy of the system, permits determination of parameters of interest without the need for parametric expressions of the parent distributions of the data sets. The application and performance of this new method is discussed in the context of some simple example analyses.
108512977
Distributed analysis at LHCb
The distributed analysis experience to date at LHCb has been positive: job success rates are high and wait times for high-priority jobs are low. LHCb users access the grid using the GANGA job-management package, while the LHCb virtual organization manages its resources using the DIRAC package. This clear division of labor has benefitted LHCb and its users greatly; it is a major reason why distributed analysis at LHCb has been so successful. The newly formed LHCb distributed analysis support team has also proved to be a success.
119112453
How good are your fits? Unbinned multivariate goodness-of-fit tests in high energy physics
Multivariate analyses play an important role in high energy physics. Such analyses often involve performing an unbinned maximum likelihood fit of a probability density function (p.d.f.) to the data. This paper explores a variety of unbinned methods for determining the goodness of fit of the p.d.f. to the data. The application and performance of each method is discussed in the context of a real-life high energy physics analysis (a Dalitz-plot analysis). Several of the methods presented in this paper can also be used for the non-parametric determination of whether two samples originate from the same parent p.d.f. This can be used, e.g., to determine the quality of a detector Monte Carlo simulation without the need for a parametric expression of the efficiency.