The light-cone distribution amplitudes (LCDAs) of the ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}^{\pm }$ baryons up to twist-6 are investigated on the basis of the QCD conformal partial wave expansion approach. The calculations are carried out to the next-to-leading order of conformal spin accuracy. The nonperturbative parameters relevant to the LCDAs are determined in the framework of the QCD sum rule method. The explicit expressions of the LCDAs are given as the main results.

The group factor for the higher representations of the $SU(4)$ gauge group is investigated. For the zero N-ality representations, the minimum values of the real part of the group factor which appear at large distances are located at the points where 50% of the maximum vortex flux is in the Wilson loop. This amount is equal to 60% for the representations that belong to the $\mathrm{N}\text{−}\text{ality}=1$ class except the fundamental representation. The value of the real part of the group factor at the minimum points is equal to the value of the center of the group factor at intermediate distances. The appearance of these points is due to the difference between the asymptotic and intermediate string tensions. The group factor passes the phase factor to create a larger intermediate string tension than the asymptotic one.

The aim of the present work is to study the phenomenological behavior of unitegrated parton distribution functions (UPDF) by using the Kimber-Martin-Ryskin (KMR) and Martin-Ryskin-Watt (MRW) formalisms. In the first method, the leading order (LO) UPDF of the KMR prescription is extracted, by taking into account the PDF of Martin et al., i.e., MSTW2008-LO and MRST99-NLO and. While in the second scheme, the next-to-leading order (NLO) UPDF of the (MRW) procedure is generated through the set of MSTW2008-NLO PDFas the inputs. The different aspects of the UPDF in the two approaches, as well as the input PDF are discussed. Then, the deep inelastic proton structure functions, $F_2(x,Q^2)$, are calculated from the above UPDF in the two schemes, and compared with the data, which are extracted from the ZEUS, NMC, and $\mathrm{H}1+\mathrm{ZEUS}$ experimental measurements. In general, it is shown that the calculated structure functions based on the UPDF of two schemes, are consistent to the experimental data, and by a good approximation, they are independent to the input PDF. But the proton structure functions, which are extracted from the KMR prescription, have better agreement to the data with respect to that of MRW. Although the MRW formalism is in more compliance with the Dokshitzer-Bribov-Lipatov-Altarelli-Parisi (DGLAP) evolution equation requisites, but it seems in the KMR case, the angular ordering constraint spreads the UPDF to the whole transverse momentum region, and makes the results to sum up the leading DGLAP and Balitski-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov (BFKL) Logarithms. This point is under study by the authors.

The discovery of the Higgs boson, with a mass known to be better than the percent level, enables precision Higgs boson analyses for the first time. Toward this goal, we define an expansion formalism of the Higgs boson partial widths and branching fractions that facilitates such studies. This expansion yields the observables as a perturbative expansion around reference values of Standard Model input observables (quark masses, QCD coupling constant, etc.). We compute the coefficients of the expansion using state-of-the-art results. We also study the various sources of uncertainties in computing the partial widths and branching fractions more precisely. We discuss the impact of these results with efforts to discern new physics through precision Higgs boson studies.

We consider a brane configuration consisting of a D5-brane, D1-branes and D3-branes. According to the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence this system realizes a ’t Hooft operator embedded in the interface in the gauge theory side. In the gravity side the near-horizon geometry is ${\mathrm{AdS}}_5\times S^5$. The D5-brane is treated as a probe in the ${\mathrm{AdS}}_5\times S^5$ and the D1-branes become the gauge flux on the D5-brane. We examine the condition for preserving an appropriate amount of supersymmetry and derive a set of differential equations which is the sufficient and necessary condition. This supersymmetric configuration shows bubbling behavior. We try to derive the relation between the probe D5-brane and the Young diagram which labels the corresponding ’t Hooft operator. We propose the dictionary of the correspondence between the Young diagram and the probe D5-brane configuration.

We study properties of gravitational waves (GWs) from the rotating core collapse of a $15M_{\odot }$ star by performing three-dimensional general-relativistic hydrodynamic simulations with an approximate neutrino transport. By parametrically changing the precollapse angular momentum, we focus on the effects of rotation on the GW signatures in the early postbounce evolution. Regarding three-flavor neutrino transport, we solve the energy-averaged set of radiation energy and momentum based on the Thorne’s momentum formalism. In addition to the gravitational quadrupole radiation from matter motions, we take into account GWs from anisotropic neutrino emission. With these computations, our results present supporting evidence for the previous anticipation that nonaxisymmetric instabilities play an essential role in determining the postbounce GW signatures. During prompt convection, we find that the waveforms show narrow-band and highly quasiperiodic signals which persist until the end of simulations. We point out that such features reflect the growth of the one-armed spiral modes. The typical frequency of the quasiperiodic waveforms can be well explained by the propagating acoustic waves between the stalled shock and the rotating proto-neutron star surface, which suggests the appearance of the standing-accretion-shock instability. Although the GW signals exhibit strong variability between the two polarizations and different observer directions, they are within the detection limits of next-generation detectors such as KAGRA and Advanced LIGO, if the source with sufficient angular momentum is located in our Galaxy.

We show that the rotating asymptotically anti-de Sitter black hole solution of new massive gravity in three dimensions can support a static stealth configuration given by a conformally coupled scalar field. By static stealth configuration, we mean a nontrivial time-independent scalar field in which the energy-momentum tensor vanishes identically on the rotating black hole metric solution of new massive gravity. The existence of this configuration is rendered possible because of the presence of a gravitational hair in the black hole metric that prevents the scalar field from being trivial. In the extremality due to the gravitational hair, the stealth scalar field diverges at the horizon, as it occurs for the conformal scalar field of the Bocharova-Bronnikov-Melnikov-Bekenstein solution in four dimensions.

The first fully nonlinear numerical simulations of colliding charged black holes in $D=4$ Einstein-Maxwell theory were recently reported [Zilhão et al., Phys. Rev. D 85, 124062 (2012)]. These collisions were performed for black holes with equal charge-to-mass ratio, for which initial data can be found in closed analytic form. Here we generalize the study of collisions of charged black holes to the case of unequal charge-to-mass ratios. We focus on oppositely charged black holes, as to maximize acceleration-dependent effects. As $|Q|/M$ increases from 0 to 0.99, we observe that the gravitational radiation emitted increases by a factor of $\sim 2.7$; the electromagnetic radiation emission becomes dominant for $|Q|/M\gtrsim 0.37$ and at $|Q|/M=0.99$ is larger, by a factor of $\sim 5.8$, than its gravitational counterpart. We observe that these numerical results exhibit a precise and simple scaling with the charge. Furthermore, we show that the results from the numerical simulations are qualitatively captured by a simple analytic model that computes the electromagnetic dipolar radiation and the gravitational quadrupolar radiation of two nonrelativistic interacting particles in Minkowski spacetime.

We carefully analyze the causal patches which belong to observers falling into an old black hole. We show that without a distillation-like process, the Almheiri-Marolf-Polchinski-Sully (AMPS) paradox cannot challenge complementarity. That is because the two ingredients for the paradox, the interior region and the early Hawking radiation, cannot be spacelike separated and both low energy within any single causal patch. Either the early quanta have Planckian wavelengths, or the interior region is exponentially smaller than the Schwarzschild size. This means that their appearances in the low-energy theory are strictly timelike separated, which nullifies the problem of double entanglement/purity or quantum cloning. This verifies that the AMPS paradox is either only a paradox in the global description like the original information paradox, or a direct consequence of the assumption that a distillation process is feasible without hidden consequences. We discuss possible relations to cosmological causal patches and the possibility of transferring energy without transferring quantum information.

The experimental situation of dark matter direct detection has reached an exciting crossroads, with potential hints of a discovery of dark matter (DM) from the CDMS, CoGeNT, CRESST-II and DAMA experiments in tension with null results from xenon-based experiments such as XENON100 and LUX. Given the present controversial experimental status, it is important that the analytical method used to search for DM in direct detection experiments is both robust and flexible enough to deal with data for which the distinction between signal and background points is difficult, and hence where the choice between setting a limit or defining a discovery region is debatable. In this article we propose a novel (Bayesian) analytical method, which can be applied to all direct detection experiments and which extracts the maximum amount of information from the data. We apply our method to the XENON100 experiment data as a worked example, and show that firstly our exclusion limit at 90% confidence is in agreement with their own for the 225 live days data, but is several times stronger for the 100 live days data. Secondly we find that, due to the two points at low values of S1 and S2 in the 225 days data set, our analysis points to either weak consistency with low-mass dark matter or the possible presence of an unknown background. Given the null result from LUX, the latter scenario seems the more plausible.

The dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies of the Milky Way are some of the most dark-matter-dominated objects known. Due to their proximity, high dark matter content, and lack of astrophysical backgrounds, dwarf spheroidal galaxies are widely considered to be among the most promising targets for the indirect detection of dark matter via $\gamma$ rays. Here we report on $\gamma$-ray observations of 25 Milky Way dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies based on 4 years of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) data. None of the dwarf galaxies are significantly detected in $\gamma$ rays, and we present $\gamma$-ray flux upper limits between 500 MeV and 500 GeV. We determine the dark matter content of 18 dwarf spheroidal galaxies from stellar kinematic data and combine LAT observations of 15 dwarf galaxies to constrain the dark matter annihilation cross section. We set some of the tightest constraints to date on the annihilation of dark matter particles with masses between 2 GeV and 10 TeV into prototypical standard model channels. We find these results to be robust against systematic uncertainties in the LAT instrument performance, diffuse $\gamma$-ray background modeling, and assumed dark matter density profile.

The supersymmetry (SUSY) flavor, $CP$, gravitino and proton-decay problems are all solved to varying degrees by a decoupling solution wherein first/second generation matter scalars would exist in the multi-TeV regime. Recent models of natural SUSY presumably allow for a coexistence of naturalness with the decoupling solution. We show that if sfermions are heavier than $\sim 10\mathrm{TeV}$, then a small first/second generation contribution to electroweak fine-tuning requires a rather high degree of intra-generational degeneracy of either 1. (separately) squarks and sleptons, 2. (separately) left- and right-type sfermions, 3. members of $SU(5)$ multiplets, or 4. all members of a single generation, as in $SO(10)$. These (partial) degeneracy patterns required by naturalness hint at the necessity of an organizing principle and highlight the limitations of models such as the phenomenological minimal supersymmetric standard model in the case of decoupled first/second generation scalars.

We propose a new observable designed to probe $CP$-violating coupling of the Higgs boson to $W$ bosons using associated Higgs production. We define an asymmetry that measures the number of leptons from $W$ decays relative to the plane defined by the beam line and the Higgs boson momentum. The orientation of that plane is determined by the direction of fermions in the initial state, so that in a proton-proton collider it requires rapidity cuts that preferentially select quarks over antiquarks.

The nonperturbative quark gap equation under the rainbow truncation and with two versions of a phenomenological one-gluon exchange interaction is studied in the presence of a uniform external magnetic field, with emphasis on the small field limit. The chiral quark condensate, magnetic moment, and susceptibility are calculated and compared to recent lattice data.

We construct cosmological solutions of higher spin gravity in $2+1$ dimensional de Sitter space. We show that a consistent thermodynamics can be obtained for their horizons by demanding appropriate holonomy conditions. This is equivalent to demanding the integrability of the Euclidean boundary conformal field theory partition function, and it reduces to Gibbons-Hawking thermodynamics in the spin-2 case. By using the prescription of Maldacena, we relate the thermodynamics of these solutions to those of higher spin black holes in ${\mathrm{AdS}}_3$.

We present a technique, the uniform asymptotic approximation, to construct accurate analytical solutions of the linear perturbations of inflation after quantum effects of the early Universe are taken into account, for which the dispersion relations generically become nonlinear. We construct explicitly the error bounds associated with the approximations and then study them in detail. With the understanding of the errors and the proper choice of the Liouville transformations of the differential equations of the perturbations, we show that the analytical solutions describe the exact evolution of the linear perturbations extremely well even when only the first-order approximation is used. As an application of the approximate analytical solutions, we calculate the power spectra and indices of scalar and tensor perturbations in the slow-roll inflation, and find that the amplitudes of the power spectra get modified due to the quantum effects, while the power spectrum indices remain the same as in the linear case.

The Einstein equations for an inhomogeneous irrotational dust universe are analyzed. A set of mild assumptions, all of which are shared by the standard Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker–type scenarios, results in a model that depends only on the distribution of scalar spatial curvature. If the shape of this distribution is made to fit the structure of the present Universe, with most of the matter in galaxy clusters and very little in the voids that will eventually dominate the volume, then there is a period of accelerated expansion after cluster formation, even in the absence of a cosmological constant.

The recent observation of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos can be used to constrain violations of Lorentz invariance emerging from a quantum theory of gravity. We perform threshold and Čerenkov analyses that improve existing bounds by factors ranging from about a million to $10^{20}$.

Within the context of the concordance model of cosmology we test the consistency of the angular power spectrum data from WMAP and Planck looking for possible systematics. The best fit concordance model to each observation is used as a mean function along with a Crossing function with an orthogonal basis to fit the data from the other observation searching for any possible deviation. We report that allowing an overall amplitude shift in the observed angular power spectra of the two observations, the best fit mean function from Planck data is consistent with WMAP 9-year data but the best fit mean function generated from WMAP-9 data is not consistent with Planck data at the $3\sigma$ level. This is an expected result when there is no clear systematic/tension between two observations and one of them has a considerably higher precision. We conclude that there is no clear tension between Planck and WMAP 9-year angular power spectrum data from a statistical point of view (allowing the overall amplitude shift). Our result highlights the fact that while the angular power spectrum from cosmic microwave background observations is a function of various cosmological parameters, comparing individual parameters might be misleading in the presence of cosmographic degeneracies. Another main result of our analysis is the importance of the overall amplitudes of the observed spectra from Planck and WMAP observations. Fixing the amplitudes at their reported values results in an unresolvable tension between the two observations at more than $3\sigma$ level which can be a hint towards a serious systematic.