119472596
Constraining gamma from K* pi and rho K Decays
We show that information on the weak phase gamma can be extracted from the K* pi and rho K decays. Less hadronic uncertainty is involved when the observables of four of these modes are combined together. We further point out two approximate relations in these decay modes can help determine whether there are new physics contributions in Delta I = 1 transitions, as hinted in the K pi modes.
119255219
Partially strong WW scattering
What if only a light Higgs boson is discovered at the CERN LHC? Conventional wisdom tells us that the scattering of longitudinal weak gauge bosons would not grow strong at high energies. However, this is generally not true. In some composite models or general two-Higgs-doublet models, the presence of a light Higgs boson does not guarantee complete unitarization of the WW scattering. After partial unitarization by the light Higgs boson, the WW scattering becomes strongly interacting until it hits one or more heavier Higgs bosons or other strong dynamics. We analyze how LHC experiments can reveal this interesting possibility of partially strong WW scattering.
15356463
Flavor SU(3) analysis of charmless B meson decays to two pseudoscalar mesons
Global fits to charmless B→PP decays in the framework of flavor SU(3) symmetry are updated and improved without reference to the sin 2β measured from the charmonium decay modes. Fit results directly constrain the (,) vertex of the unitarity triangle, and are used to predict the branching ratios and CP asymmetries of all decay modes, including those of the Bs system. Different schemes of SU(3) breaking in decay amplitude sizes are analyzed. The major breaking effect between strangeness-conserving and strangeness-changing decays can be accounted for by including a ratio of decay constants in tree and color-suppressed amplitudes. The possibility of having a new physics contribution to Kπ decays is also examined from the data fitting point of view.
117495229
Light gluino and the running of alpha(s)
A gluino in the mass range 12--16 GeV combined with a light (2--5.5 GeV) bottom squark, as has been proposed recently to explain an excess of b quark hadroproduction, would affect the momentum-scale dependence (``running'') of the strong coupling constant alpha_s in such a way as to raise its value at M_Z by about 0.014 +/- 0.001. If one combines sources of uncertainty at low (m_b) and high (M_Z) mass scales, one can only distinguish such an effect at slightly more than the 2 sigma level. Prospects for improvement in this situation, which include better lattice QCD simulations and better measurements at M_Z, are discussed.
119207675
Phenomenology of large mixing for the CP-even neutral scalars of the Higgs triplet model
The Higgs triplet model contains two CP-even neutral scalar eigenstates, each having components from an isospin doublet and an isospin triplet scalar field. The mixing angle can be maximal if the masses of the scalar eigenstates are close to degeneracy. We quantify the dependence of the mixing angle on the mass splitting and on the vacuum expectation value of the neutral triplet scalar. We determine the parameter space for maximal mixing, and study the observability of both CP-even Higgs bosons at the CERN LHC.
96443947
Discovery in Drell-Yan processes at the LHC
We study the Drell-Yan process mediated by a new bosonic resonance at the LHC. The bosons of spin-0, 1, and 2 with the most general leading-order couplings to standard model fermions and gluons are considered, which provides a model-independent formulation for future exploration of the resonance properties, such as its spin, mass and couplings. In the case of neutral resonances, we demonstrate how the shapes of the kinematical distributions change as one varies the chiral couplings of the quarks and leptons, and show how to analyze the couplings by making use of the forward-backward asymmetry. In the case of charged resonances, we propose a novel technique to effectively reconstruct the angular distribution in the center-of-mass frame, to a large extent avoiding the two-fold ambiguity due to the missing neutrino. Similar to the case of a neutral resonance, the spin information of the resonance can be extracted unambiguously, and chiral couplings and the asymmetries can be explored in a statistical manner. With the current LHC data, we present bounds on the mass and cross section times branching fraction of the new resonance and estimate the future reach.
54957266
Constraining the detailed balance condition in Hořava gravity with cosmic accelerating expansion
In 2009 Hořava proposed a power-counting renormalizable quantum gravity theory. Afterwards a term in the action that softly violates the detailed balance condition has been considered with the attempt of obtaining a more realistic theory in its IR-limit. This term is proportional to ωR(3), where ω is a constant parameter and R(3) is the spatial Ricci scalar. In this paper we derive constraints on this IR-modified Hořava theory using the late-time cosmic accelerating expansion observations. We obtain a lower bound of |ω| that is nontrivial and depends on ΛW, the cosmological constant of the three dimensional spatial action in the Hořava gravity. We find that to preserve the detailed balance condition, one needs to fine-tune ΛW such that −2.29 × 10−4 < (c2ΛW)/(H20ΩDE)−2 < 0, where H0 and ΩDE are the Hubble parameter and dark energy density fraction in the present epoch, respectively. On the other hand, if we do not insist on the detailed balance condition, then the valid region for ΛW is much relaxed to −0.39 < (c2ΛW)/(H20ΩDE)−2 < 0.12. We find that although the detailed balance condition cannot be ruled out, it is strongly disfavored.
119279372
Position-dependent power spectrum of the large-scale structure: a novel method to measure the squeezed-limit bispectrum
The influence of large-scale density fluctuations on structure formation on small scales is described by the three-point correlation function (bispectrum) in the so-called ``squeezed configurations,'' in which one wavenumber, say k3, is much smaller than the other two, i.e., k3 << k1 ≈ k2. This bispectrum is generated by non-linear gravitational evolution and possibly also by inflationary physics. In this paper, we use this fact to show that the bispectrum in the squeezed configurations can be measured without employing three-point function estimators. Specifically, we use the ``position-dependent power spectrum,'' i.e., the power spectrum measured in smaller subvolumes of the survey (or simulation box), and correlate it with the mean overdensity of the corresponding subvolume. This correlation directly measures an integral of the bispectrum dominated by the squeezed configurations. Measuring this correlation is only slightly more complex than measuring the power spectrum itself, and sidesteps the considerable complexity of the full bispectrum estimation. We use cosmological N-body simulations of collisionless particles with Gaussian initial conditions to show that the measured correlation between the position-dependent power spectrum and the long-wavelength overdensity agrees with the theoretical expectation. The position-dependent power spectrum thus provides a new, efficient, and promising way to measure the squeezed-limit bispectrum from large-scale structure observations such as galaxy redshift surveys.
119227092
Dark matter detection with polarized detectors
Abstract We consider the prospects to use polarized dark-matter detectors to discriminate between various dark-matter models. If WIMPs are fermions and participate in parity-violating interactions with ordinary matter, then the recoil-direction and recoil-energy distributions of nuclei in detectors will depend on the orientation of the initial nuclear spin with respect to the velocity of the detector through the Galactic halo. If, however, WIMPS are scalars, the only possible polarization-dependent interactions are extremely velocity-suppressed and, therefore, unobservable. Since the amplitude of this polarization modulation is fixed by the detector speed through the halo, in units of the speed of light, exposures several times larger than those of current experiments will be required to be probe this effect.
12835808
Galaxy redshift surveys with sparse sampling
Survey observations of the three-dimensional locations of galaxies are a powerful approach to measure the distribution of matter in the universe, which can be used to learn about the nature of dark energy, physics of inflation, neutrino masses, etc. A competitive survey, however, requires a large volume (e.g., Vsurvey ~ 10Gpc3) to be covered, and thus tends to be expensive. A ``sparse sampling'' method offers a more affordable solution to this problem: within a survey footprint covering a given survey volume, Vsurvey, we observe only a fraction of the volume. The distribution of observed regions should be chosen such that their separation is smaller than the length scale corresponding to the wavenumber of interest. Then one can recover the power spectrum of galaxies with precision expected for a survey covering a volume of Vsurvey (rather than the volume of the sum of observed regions) with the number density of galaxies given by the total number of observed galaxies divided by Vsurvey (rather than the number density of galaxies within an observed region). We find that regularly-spaced sampling yields an unbiased power spectrum with no window function effect, and deviations from regularly-spaced sampling, which are unavoidable in realistic surveys, introduce calculable window function effects and increase the uncertainties of the recovered power spectrum. On the other hand, we show that the two-point correlation function (pair counting) is not affected by sparse sampling. While we discuss the sparse sampling method within the context of the forthcoming Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment, the method is general and can be applied to other galaxy surveys.