The motion of a Schwarzschild black hole with velocity $v_0={\beta }_{0}c$ through a constant magnetic field $B_0$ in vacuum induces a component of the electric field along the magnetic field, generating a nonzero second Poincaré electromagnetic invariant ${}^{*}F·F\ne 0$. This will produce (e.g., via radiative effects and vacuum breakdown) an electric charge density of the order of ${\rho }_{\mathrm{ind}}=B_0{\beta }_0/(2\pi e{R}_G)$, where $R_G=2GM/c^2$ is the Schwarzschild radius and $M$ is the mass of the black hole; the charge density ${\rho }_{\mathrm{ind}}$ is similar to the Goldreich-Julian density. The magnetospheres of moving black holes resemble in many respects the magnetospheres of rotationally-powered pulsars, with pair formation fronts and outer gaps, where the sign of the induced charge changes. As a result, the black hole will generate bipolar electromagnetic jets each consisting of two counter-aligned current flows (four current flows total), each carrying an electric current of the order $I\approx e{B}_0{R}_G{\beta }_0$. The electromagnetic power of the jets is $L\approx (GM{)}^2{B}_0^2{\beta }_0^2/c^3$; for a particular case of merging black holes the resulting Poynting power is $L\approx (GM{)}^3{B}_0^2/(c^{5}R)$, where $R$ is the radius of the orbit. In addition, in limited regions near the horizon the first electromagnetic invariant changes sign, so that the induced electric field becomes larger than the magnetic field, $E>B$. As a result, there will be local dissipation of the magnetic field close to the horizon, within a region with the radial extent $\Delta R\approx R_G{\beta }_0$. The total energy loss from a system of merging black holes is a sum of two components with similar powers, one due to the rotation of space-time within the orbit, driven by the nonzero angular momentum in the system, and the other due to the linear motion of the black holes through the magnetic field. Since the resulting electrodynamics is in many respects similar to pulsars, merging black holes may generate coherent radio and high energy emission beamed approximately along the orbital normal. In addition, merging black holes may produce observable wind-driven cavities.

We show for the first time that the quenching of electronic excitation from nuclear recoils in liquid xenon is well-described by Lindhard theory, if the nuclear recoil energy is reconstructed using the combined (scintillation and ionization) energy scale proposed by Shutt et al. We argue for the adoption of this perspective in favor of the existing preference for reconstructing nuclear recoil energy solely from primary scintillation. We show that signal partitioning into scintillation and ionization is well described by the Thomas-Imel box model. We discuss the implications for liquid xenon detectors aimed at the direct detection of dark matter.

Strong electrical fields inside thunderclouds give rise to fluxes of high-energy electrons and, consequently, gamma rays and neutrons. Gamma rays and electrons are currently detected by the facilities of low orbiting satellites and by networks of surface particle detectors. During intensive particle fluxes, coinciding with thunderstorms, series of particle bursts were detected by the particle detectors of Aragats Space Environmental Center at an altitude of 3250 m. We classify the thunderstorm ground enhancements in 2 categories, one lasting microseconds, and the other lasting tens of minutes. Both types of events can occur at the same time, coinciding with a large negative electric field between the cloud and the ground and negative intracloud lightning. Statistical analysis of the short thunderstorm ground enhancement bursts sample suggests the duration is less than $50\mu \mathrm{s}$ and spatial extension is larger than $1000{\mathrm{m}}^2$. We discuss the origin of thunderstorm ground enhancements and its connection to the terrestrial gamma flashes detected by orbiting gamma-ray observatories.

We extract two-photon exchange amplitudes for the elastic electron-proton scattering at $Q^2=2.5{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$ from the unpolarized cross section and recent polarization transfer measurements. There are three independent amplitudes, but only one of them, $\delta {\mathcal{G}}_M$, can be determined with a reasonable accuracy (about 10%). The result is in good agreement with theoretical predictions. Rough estimates for two other amplitudes are obtained.

In this article we consider chirally enhanced corrections to Higgs vertices in the most general MSSM. We include the contributions stemming from bilinear terms, from the trilinear $A$ terms, and from their nonholomorphic analogues, the $A^{\prime }$ terms, which couple squarks to the “wrong” Higgs field. We perform a consistent renormalization of the Higgs vertices beyond the decoupling limit ($M_{\mathrm{SUSY}}\to \infty$), using a purely diagrammatic approach. The cancellation of the different contributions in and beyond the decoupling limit is discussed and the possible size of decoupling effects which occur if the supersymmetry particles are not much heavier than the electroweak scale are examined. In the decoupling limit we recover the results obtained in the effective-field-theory approach. For the nonholomorphic $A^{\prime }$ terms we find the well known $\tan \beta$ enhancement in the down sector similar to the one for terms proportional to $\mu$. Because of the a priori generic flavor structure of these trilinear terms large flavor-changing neutral Higgs couplings can be induced. We also discover new $\tan \beta$ enhanced contributions involving the usual holomorphic $A$ terms, which were not discussed before in the literature. These corrections occur only if also flavor-diagonal nonholomorphic corrections to the Higgs couplings are present. This reflects the fact that the $A$ terms, and also the chirality-changing self-energies, are physical quantities and cannot be absorbed into renormalization constants.

In the two-quark model supposition for the meson $a_0(1450)$, which can be viewed as either the first excited state (scenario I) or the lowest lying state (scenario II), the branching ratios and the direct $CP$-violating asymmetries for decays $B^{-}\to a_0^0(1450)K^{*-}$, $a_0^{-}(1450)K^{*0}$ and ${\overline{B}}^0\to a_0^{+}(1450)K^{*-}$, $a_0^0(1450){\overline{K}}^{*0}$ are studied by employing the perturbative QCD factorization approach. We find the following results: (a) For the decays $B^{-}\to a_0^{-}(1450)K^{*0}$, ${\overline{B}}^0\to a_0^{+}(1450)K^{*-}$, $a_0^0(1450){\overline{K}}^{*0}$, their branching ratios in scenario II are larger than those in scenario I about one order. So it is easy for the experiments to differentiate between the scenario I and II for the meson $a_0(1450)$. (b) For the decay $B^{-}\to a_0^0(1450)K^{*-}$, due to not receiving the enhancement from the $K^{*}$-emission factorizable diagrams, its penguin operator contributions are the smallest in scenario II, which makes its branching ratio drop into the order of ${10}^{-6}$. Even so, its branching ratio in scenario II is still larger than that in scenario I about 2.5 times. (c) Even though our predictions are much larger than those from the QCD factorization results, they are still consistent with each other within the large theoretical errors from the annihilation diagrams. (d) We predict the direct $CP$-violating asymmetry of the decay $B^{-}\to a_0^{-}(1450)K^{*0}$ is small and only a few percent.

We consider supersymmetric grand unified theory (GUT) with the gaugino mediated supersymmetry breaking and investigate a possibility to discriminate different GUT models in terms of predicted sparticle mass spectra. Taking two example GUT models, the minimal $SU(5)$ and simple $SO(10)$ models, and imposing a variety of theoretical and experimental constraints, we calculate sparticle masses. Fixing parameters of each model so as to result in the same mass of neutralino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP), giving the observed dark matter relic density, we find sizable mass differences in the left-handed slepton and right-handed down-type squark sectors in two models, which can be a probe to discriminate the GUT models realized at the GUT scale far beyond the reach of collider experiments.

We obtain the supersymmetric constraint for $S^1\times S^2$ Gowdy spacetime in the $\mathcal{N}=1$ supergravity formalism of quantum cosmology in four dimensions. The physical states of the model for both polarized and unpolarized cases are presented.

Analytical solutions of Maxwell equations around a black hole immersed in an external uniform magnetic field in the background of the Kehagias-Sfetsos (KS) asymptotically flat black hole solution of Hořava-Lifshitz gravity have been found. The influence of a magnetic field on the effective potential of the radial motion of a charged test particle around a black hole immersed in an external magnetic field in Hořava-Lifshitz gravity has been investigated by using the Hamilton-Jacobi method. An exact analytical solution for dependence of the minimal radius of the circular orbits $r_{\mathrm{mc}}$ from KS parameter $\omega$ for motion of a test particle around a spherical symmetric black hole in Hořava-Lifshitz gravity has been derived. The critical values of the particle’s angular momentum for captured particles by a black hole in Hořava-Lifshitz gravity have been obtained numerically. The comparison of the obtained numerical results with the astrophysical observational data on the radii of the innermost stable circular orbits gives us the estimation of the parameter as $\omega \simeq 3.6·{10}^{-24}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}$.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that in models with large extra dimensions under special conditions one can extract information from the interior of 4D black holes. For this purpose we study an induced geometry on a test brane in the background of a higher-dimensional static black string or a black brane. We show that, at the intersection surface of the test brane and the bulk black string or brane, the induced metric has an event horizon, so that the test brane contains a black hole. We call it a brane hole. When the test brane moves with a constant velocity $V$ with respect to the bulk black object, it also has a brane hole, but its gravitational radius $r_e$ is greater than the size of the bulk black string or brane $r_0$ by the factor $(1-V^2{)}^{-1}$. We show that bulk “photon” emitted in the region between $r_0$ and $r_e$ can meet the test brane again at a point outside $r_e$. From the point of view of observers on the test brane, the events of emission and capture of the bulk photon are connected by a spacelike curve in the induced geometry. This shows an example in which extra dimensions can be used to extract information from the interior of a lower-dimensional black object. Instead of the bulk black string or brane, one can also consider a bulk geometry without a horizon. We show that nevertheless the induced geometry on the moving test brane can include a brane hole. In such a case the extra dimensions can be used to extract information from the complete region of the brane-hole interior. We discuss thermodynamic properties of brane holes and interesting questions which arise when such an extra-dimensional channel for the information mining exists.

We find that anti–de Sitter (AdS) spacetime with a nontrivial linear dilaton field is an exact solution in the effective action of the string theory, which is described by gravity with the Gauss-Bonnet curvature terms coupled to a dilaton field in the string frame without a cosmological constant. The AdS radius is determined by the spacetime dimensions and the coupling constants of curvature corrections. We also construct the asymptotically AdS black hole solutions with a linear dilaton field numerically. We find these AdS black holes for hyperbolic topology and in dimensions higher than four. We discuss the thermodynamical properties of those solutions. Extending the model to the case with the even-order higher Lovelock curvature terms, we also find the exact AdS spacetime with a nontrivial dilaton. We further find a cosmological solution with a bounce of three-dimensional space and a solitonic solution with a nontrivial dilaton field, which is regular everywhere and approaches an asymptotically AdS spacetime.

We develop a velocity-dependent one-scale model for the evolution of domain wall networks in flat expanding or collapsing homogeneous and isotropic universes with an arbitrary number of spatial dimensions, finding the corresponding scaling laws in frictionless and friction dominated regimes. We also determine the allowed range of values of the curvature parameter and the expansion exponent for which a linear scaling solution is possible in the frictionless regime.

We compare the model power spectrum, computed based on perturbation theory, with the power spectrum of luminous red galaxies (LRG) measured from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 catalog, assuming a flat, cold dark matter–dominated cosmology. The model includes the effects of massive neutrinos, nonlinear matter clustering and nonlinear, scale-dependent galaxy bias in a self-consistent manner. We first test the accuracy of the perturbation theory model by comparing the model predictions with the halo power spectrum in real- and redshift-space, measured from 70 simulation realizations for a cold dark matter model without massive neutrinos. We show that the perturbation theory model with bias parameters being properly adjusted can fairly well reproduce the simulation results. As a result, the best-fit parameters obtained from the hypothetical parameter fitting recover, within statistical uncertainties, the input cosmological parameters in simulations, including an upper bound on neutrino mass, if the power spectrum information up to $k\simeq 0.15h{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$ is used. However, for the redshift-space power spectrum, the best-fit cosmological parameters show a sizable bias from the input values if using the information up to $k\simeq 0.2h{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$, probably due to nonlinear redshift distortion effect. Given these tests, we decided, as a conservative choice, to use the LRG power spectrum up to $k=0.1h{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$ in order to minimize possible unknown nonlinearity effects. In combination with the recent results from Wilkinson Microwave Background Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), we derive a robust upper bound on the sum of neutrino masses, given as $\sum _{}^{}{m}_{\nu }\le 0.81\mathrm{eV}$ (95% C.L.), marginalized over other parameters including nonlinear bias parameters and dark energy equation of state parameter. The upper bound is only slightly improved to $\sum _{}^{}{m}_{\nu }\le 0.80\mathrm{eV}$ if including the LRG spectrum up to $k=0.2h{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$, due to severe parameter degeneracies, although the constraint may be biased as discussed above. The neutrino mass limit is improved by a factor of 1.85 compared to the limit from the WMAP5 alone, $\sum _{}^{}{m}_{\nu }\le 1.5\mathrm{eV}$.

Using the solutions of the gap equations of the magnetic-color-flavor-locked (MCFL) phase of paired quark matter in a magnetic field, and taking into consideration the separation between the longitudinal and transverse pressures due to the field-induced breaking of the spatial rotational symmetry, the equation of state of the MCFL phase is self-consistently determined. This result is then used to investigate the possibility of absolute stability, which turns out to require a field-dependent “bag constant” to hold. That is, only if the bag constant varies with the magnetic field, there exists a window in the magnetic field vs bag constant plane for absolute stability of strange matter. Implications for stellar models of magnetized (self-bound) strange stars and hybrid (MCFL core) stars are calculated and discussed.

We investigate the minimal conditions that an asymptotically flat general relativistic spacetime must satisfy in order for a Hawking-like Planckian flux of particles to arrive at future null infinity. We demonstrate that there is no requirement that any sort of horizon form anywhere in the spacetime. We find that the irreducible core requirement is encoded in an approximately exponential “peeling” relationship between affine coordinates on past and future null infinity. As long as a suitable adiabaticity condition holds, then a Planck-distributed Hawking-like flux will arrive at future null infinity with temperature determined by the e-folding properties of the outgoing null geodesics. The temperature of the Hawking-like flux can slowly evolve as a function of time. We also show that the notion of peeling of null geodesics is distinct from the usual notion of “inaffinity” used in Hawking’s definition of surface gravity.

We study here the ${\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ decay mode of a very light $CP$-odd Higgs boson of the NMSSM, $a_1$, produced in association with a bottom-antibottom pair and find that, despite small event rates, a significant signal should be extractable from the SM background at the LHC with high luminosity.

It was recently argued by Hooper and Goodenough [arXiv:1010.2752] that the excess gamma-ray emission from within 1°–2° of the Galactic center can be well described by annihilation of $\sim 8\mathrm{GeV}$ dark matter particles into tau pairs. I show that such a dark matter signal can be obtained naturally in the lepton-specific two-Higgs-doublet model extended by a stable singlet scalar dark matter candidate. The favored parameter region prefers a light Higgs state (below 200 GeV) with enhanced couplings to leptons and a sizable invisible branching fraction. Part of the favored region leads to invisible decays of both of the $CP$-even neutral Higgs states.

In supergravity where the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle, the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle decays to the gravitino with a naturally long lifetime (${10}^4–{10}^8\mathrm{s}$). However, cosmological constraints favor charged slepton next-to-lightest supersymmetric particles with lifetimes below a year as the natural next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle candidate. For this scenario we report a method to accurately determine the slepton lifetime and supersymmetry cross section from observation of the decays of sleptons trapped in the material comprising the main detector (ATLAS, CMS). A measurement of the lifetime to 5% is possible after 3 yr at nominal luminosity and running conditions. This method is sensitive to the cosmologically preferred stau lifetime of $\sim 37\mathrm{days}$ and does not require the use of ancillary trapping volumes or special LHC experiment initiated beam dump requirements.

Starting from quarks, gluons, and their dynamics, we consider the existence of two-baryon bound states of total isospin $I=1$ in an imaginary-time formulation of a strongly coupled $3+1$-dimensional $\mathrm{SU}(3{)}_c$ lattice QCD with two flavors and $4\times 4$ spin matrices, defined using the Wilson action. For a small hopping parameter $\kappa >0$ and a much smaller gauge coupling $0<\beta \ll \kappa \ll 1$ (heavy quarks and large glueball mass), using a ladder approximation to a lattice Bethe-Salpeter equation, diproton-like bound states are found in the $I=1$ isospin sector, with asymptotic masses $-6\ln \kappa$ and binding energies of order ${\kappa }^2$. By isospin symmetry, for each diproton there is also a dineutron bound state with the same mass and binding energy. The dominant two-baryon interaction is an energy-independent spatial range-one potential with an $\mathcal{O}({\kappa }^2)$ strength. There is also an attraction arising from gauge field correlations associated with six overlapping bonds, but it is subdominant. The overall range-one potential results from a quark-antiquark exchange with no meson exchange interpretation (wrong spin indices). The repulsive or attractive nature of the interaction does depend on the isospin and spin of the two-baryon states. A novel representation in term of permanents is obtained for the spin, isospin interaction between the baryons, which is valid for any isospin sector.