The XENON100 and CRESST experiments will directly test the inelastic dark matter explanation for DAMA’s $8.9\sigma$ anomaly. This article discusses how predictions for direct detection experiments depend on uncertainties in quenching factor measurements, the dark matter interaction with the standard model, and the halo velocity distribution. When these uncertainties are accounted for, an order of magnitude variation is found in the number of expected events at CRESST and XENON100.

Dyson-Schwinger equations for the $U(n)\times U(n)$ symmetric matrix sigma model reformulated with two auxiliary fields in a background breaking the symmetry to $U(n)$ are studied in the so-called bare vertex approximation. A large $n$ solution is constructed under the supplementary assumption so that the scalar components are much heavier than the pseudoscalars. The renormalizability of the solution is investigated by explicit construction of the counterterms.

The color neutral two-flavor superconducting phase of cold and dense quark matter is studied in the presence of constant magnetic fields and at moderate baryon densities. In the first part of the paper, a two-flavor effective Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model consisting of a chiral symmetry breaking ($\chi \mathrm{SB}$) mass gap ${\sigma }_B$, a color superconducting (CSC) mass gap ${\Delta }_B$ and a color chemical potential ${\mu }_8$ is introduced in the presence of a rotated $U(1)$ magnetic field $\tilde{\mathbf{B}}$. To study the phenomenon of magnetic catalysis in the presence of strong magnetic fields, the gap equations corresponding to ${\sigma }_B$ and ${\Delta }_B$, as well as ${\mu }_8$ are solved in the lowest Landau level approximation. In the second part of the paper, a detailed numerical analysis is performed to explore the effect of any arbitrary magnetic field on the above mass gaps and the color chemical potential. The structure of the $\chi \mathrm{SB}$ and CSC phases is also presented in the ${\mu }_c\mathrm{\text{−}}\tilde{e}B$ plane, and the effect of ${\mu }_8$ on the phase structure of the model is explored. As it turns out, whereas the transition from the $\chi \mathrm{SB}$ to CSC phase is of first order, nonvanishing ${\mu }_8$ affects essentially the second order phase transition from CSC to the normal phase.

We study the $1/N$ expansion in noncommutative quantum mechanics for the anharmonic and Coulombian potentials. The expansion for the anharmonic oscillator presented good convergence properties, but for the Coulombian potential, we found a divergent large $N$ expansion when using the usual noncommutative generalization of the potential. We proposed a modified version of the noncommutative Coulombian potential which provides a well-behaved $1/N$ expansion.

Ringholes are space-time tunnelings connecting two asymptotically flat regions by means of a throat with the topology of a torus. This paper considers the processes of semiclassical thermal emission from ringholes and the accretion of dark energy onto them by adapting the results previously obtained for wormholes to toroidal topology. It is shown that at or near the throat the ringholes can be characterized as a mixture of two thermal sources, one at positive temperature and the other at negative temperature which, respectively, emit usual black body radiation and phantomlike radiation, leading after completion of thermal emission to two possible limiting situations, one similar to a wormhole in that it behaves just like a diverging lens, and the other similar to a black hole in that it behaves only as a converging lens. These two limiting situations, though described at rather diverging sizes, are also the final consequences from the accretion processes of quintessential and phantom vacuum energies. Finally, a brief discussion is added on the ringhole thermodynamics and its associated laws which are nothing but the extension to toroidal geometry from the thermodynamic laws which were recently established for wormholes.

Using the Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon equations, we investigate the trajectories of a spinning particle starting near $r_{\mathrm{ph}}^{(-)}$ in a Kerr field and moving with the velocity close to the velocity of light ($r_{\mathrm{ph}}^{(-)}$ is the Boyer-Lindquist radial coordinate of the counter-rotation circular photon orbits). First, as a partial case of these trajectories, we consider the equatorial circular orbit with $r=r_{\mathrm{ph}}^{(-)}$. This orbit is described by the solution that is common for the rigorous Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon equations and their linear spin approximation. Then different cases of the nonequatorial motions are computed and illustrated by the typical figures. All these orbits exhibit the effects of the significant gravitational repulsion that are caused by the spin-gravity interaction. Possible applications in astrophysics are discussed.

We present solutions of the Nambu-Goto equation for test strings in a shape of toroidal spiral in five-dimensional spacetimes. In particular, we show that stationary toroidal spirals exist around the five-dimensional Myers-Perry black holes. We also show the existence of innermost stationary toroidal spirals around the five-dimensional black holes like geodesic particles orbiting around four-dimensional black holes.

We solve the quantum constraint equations of the Lemaître-Tolman-Bondi model in a semiclassical approximation in which an expansion is performed with respect to the Planck length. We recover in this way the standard expression for the Hawking temperature as well as its first quantum gravitational correction. We then interpret this correction in terms of the one-loop trace anomaly of the energy-momentum tensor and thereby make contact with earlier work on quantum black holes.

The high-lying mesons in the light quark sector previously obtained from the partial wave analysis of the proton-antiproton annihilation in flight at 1.9–2.4 GeV region at CERN reveal a very high degree of degeneracy. This degeneracy can be explained as due to an effective restoration of both $SU(2{)}_L\times SU(2{)}_R$ and $U(1{)}_A$ symmetries combined with a principal quantum number $\sim n+J$. In this case there must be chiral partners for the highest spin states in the 2 and 2.3 GeV bands presently missing in the data. Here we reanalyze the Crystal Barrel data and show an indication for existence of the missing $4^{-+}$ state around 2 GeV. This result calls for further experimental search of the missing states both in the proton-antiproton annihilation and in the production reactions.

We present next-to-leading order QCD corrections to production of two $W$ bosons in hadronic collisions in the extra dimension Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos, and Dvali model. Invariant mass and rapidity distributions are obtained to order ${\alpha }_s$ in QCD by taking into account all the parton level subprocesses. The computation is organized using the Monte Carlo based method of phase space slicing. We estimate the impact of the QCD corrections on various observables and find that they are significant. We present some results for a 10 TeV LHC, but most of the results presented here are for 14 TeV LHC. We also show the reduction in factorization scale uncertainty when $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_s)$ effects are included.

We embed the S-MSSM—a singlet extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model with an explicit $\mu$-term and supersymmetric mass term—in a gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking scheme. We find that by absolving the singlet of its responsibility for solving the $\mu$-problem, we are instead able to solve the little hierarchy problem. Specifically, we find that even with a minimal embedding of the S-MSSM into a gauge-mediated scheme, we can easily raise the lightest Higgs mass above 114 GeV, while keeping top squarks below the TeV scale, maintaining perturbative unification of the gauge couplings, and without tuning the other parameters of the model.

We apply the resummed version of the Lüscher formula to analyze finite volume corrections to the mass of the nucleon and of heavy mesons. We show that by applying the subthreshold expansion of the scattering amplitudes one can express the finite volume corrections in terms of only a few physical observables and the size of the box. In the case of the nucleon, the available information about the quark mass dependence of these physical quantities is discussed and used to assess the finite volume corrections to the nucleon mass as a function of the quark mass including a detailed analysis of the remaining uncertainties. For heavy mesons, the Lüscher formula is derived both fully relativistically and in a nonrelativistic approximation and a first attempt at a numerical analysis is made.

We present results of meson and baryon spectroscopy using the Chirally Improved Dirac operator on lattices of size ${16}^3\times 32$ with two mass-degenerate light sea quarks. Three ensembles with pion masses of 322(5), 470(4), and 525(7) MeV and lattice spacings close to 0.15 fm are investigated. Results for ground and excited states for several channels are given, including spin two mesons and hadrons with strange valence quarks. The analysis of the states is done with the variational method, including two kinds of Gaussian sources and derivative sources. We obtain several ground states fairly precisely and find radial excitations in various channels. Excited baryon results seem to suffer from finite size effects, in particular, at small pion masses. We discuss the possible appearance of scattering states, considering masses and eigenvectors. Partially quenched results in the scalar channel suggest the presence of a 2-particle state, however, in most channels we cannot identify them. Where available, we compare our results to results of quenched simulations using the same action.

We study the possible existence of chiral partners in the spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ sector of the baryon spectrum. We consider a quartet scheme where four spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ baryons, $P_{33}$, $D_{33}$, $D_{13}$, and $P_{13}$, group into higher-dimensional chiral multiplets $(1,\frac{1}{2})\oplus (\frac{1}{2},1)$ with a mirror assignment. With an effective $SU(2{)}_R\times SU(2{)}_L$ Lagrangian, we derive constraints imposed by chiral symmetry together with the mirror assignment on the masses and coupling constants of the quartet. Using the effective Lagrangian, we try to find a set of baryons suitable for the chiral quartet. It turns out that two cases reasonably agree with the mass pattern of the quartet: ($\Delta (1600)$, $\Delta (1940)$, $N(1520)$, $N(1720)$) and ($\Delta (1920)$, $\Delta (1940)$, $N(2080)$, $N(1900)$).

Wrapped branes in string compactifications introduce a monodromy that extends the field range of individual closed-string axions to beyond the Planck scale. Furthermore, approximate shift symmetries of the system naturally control corrections to the axion potential. This suggests a general mechanism for chaotic inflation driven by monodromy-extended closed-string axions. We systematically analyze this possibility and show that the mechanism is compatible with moduli stabilization and can be realized in many types of compactifications, including warped Calabi-Yau manifolds and more general Ricci-curved spaces. In this broad class of models, the potential is linear in the canonical inflaton field, predicting a tensor to scalar ratio $r\approx 0.07$ accessible to upcoming cosmic microwave background observations.

An alternative version of Hamiltonian formalism for higher-derivative theories is proposed. As compared with the standard Ostrogradski approach, it has the following advantages: (i) The Lagrangian, when expressed in terms of new variables, yields proper equations of motion; no additional Lagrange multipliers are necessary. (ii) The Legendre transformation can be performed in a straightforward way, provided the Lagrangian is nonsingular in the Ostrogradski sense. The generalizations to singular Lagrangians as well as field theory are presented.

The recent developments of high intensity ultrashort laser pulses have raised the hopes of observing Schwinger vacuum pair production which is one of the important nonperturbative phenomena in QED. The quantitative analysis of realistic high intensity laser pulses is vital for understanding the effect of the field parameters on the momentum spectrum of the produced particles. In this study, we analyze chirped laser pulses with a subcycle structure, and investigate the effects of the chirp parameter on the momentum spectrum of the produced particles. The combined effect of the chirp and carrier phase of the laser pulse is also analyzed. These effects are qualitatively explained by investigating the turning-point structure of the potential within the framework of the complex WKB scattering approach to pair production.

We have systematically computed the generators of the symmetries arising in Poincaré gauge theory formulation of gravity, both in $2+1$ and $3+1$ dimensions. This was done using a completely Lagrangian approach. The results are expected to be valid in any dimensions, as seen through lifting the results of the $2+1$ dimensional example into the $3+1$ dimensional one.

We study the consequences of some possible modifications of the phase space structure of general relativity imposed by breaking, in the simplest manner, the full diffeomorphism invariance but retaining the time foliation preserving diffeomorphisms. We examine the different sectors in phase space that satisfy the new structure of constraints. For some sectors we find an infinite tower of constraints. In spite of that, we also show that these sectors allow for solutions, among them some well-known families of black hole and cosmologies which fulfill all the constraints. We raise some physical concerns on the consequences of an absolute Galilean time, on the thermodynamical pathologies of such models, and on their unusual vacuum structure.

We construct a new exact solution to the 5D Einstein equations describing a rotating black ring with a single angular momentum surrounded by two Kaluza-Klein bubbles. The solution is generated by two-soliton Bäcklund transformation. Its physical properties are computed and analyzed. The corresponding static solution, the rotating black string, and the boosted black string are reproduced as limits.