The dual quark condensate ${\Sigma }^{(n)}$ proposed recently as a new order parameter of the spontaneous breaking of the ${\mathbb{Z}}_3$ symmetry are evaluated by the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model, where $n$ are winding numbers. The Polyakov-loop extended Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model well reproduces lattice QCD data on ${\Sigma }^{(1)}$ measured very lately. The dual quark condensate ${\Sigma }^{(n)}$ at higher temperatures is sensitive to the strength of the vector-type four-quark interaction in the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model and hence a good quantity to determine the strength.

We discuss the possible enhancement of the tau lepton events, with the emphasis on the signals with three or more hadronic taus, at LHC when the left-handed stau doublet becomes light or even lighter than the right-handed one. This is the natural outcome of the supersymmetric seesaw models where the slepton doublet mass is suppressed by the effects of a large neutrino Yukawa coupling. We study a few representative parameter sets in the sneutrino coannihilation regions where the tau sneutrino is next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle and the stau coannihilation regions where the stau is next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle both of which yield the thermal neutralinolightest supersymmetric particle abundance determined by Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.

Within the framework of QCD factorization, we consider two different types of power correction effects in order to resolve the $CP$ puzzles and rate deficit problems with penguin-dominated two-body decays of $B$ mesons and color-suppressed tree-dominated ${\pi }^0{\pi }^0$ and ${\rho }^0{\pi }^0$ modes: penguin annihilation and soft corrections to the color-suppressed tree amplitude. We emphasize that the electroweak penguin solution to the $B\to K\pi$ $CP$ puzzle via new physics is irrelevant for solving the $CP$ and rate puzzles related to tree-dominated decays. While some channels, e.g. $K^{-}{\pi }^{+}$, $K^{-}{\rho }^0$, ${\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}$, ${\rho }^{\pm }{\pi }^{\mp }$ need penguin annihilation to induce the correct magnitudes and signs for their $CP$ violation, some other decays such as $B^{-}\to K^{-}{\pi }^0$, ${\pi }^{-}\eta$, $K^{-}\eta$ and ${\overline{B}}^0\to {\overline{K}}^{*0}\eta$, ${\pi }^0{\pi }^0$ require the presence of both power corrections to account for the measured $CP$ asymmetries. In general, QCD factorization predictions for the branching fractions and direct $CP$ asymmetries of $\overline{B}\to PP$, $VP$, $VV$ decays are in good agreement with experiment. The predictions of perturbaive QCD and soft-collinear effective theory are included for comparison.

In this work, we investigate the discovery potential for $Y(3940)$ by the photoproduction process $\gamma p\to Y(3940)p$. The numerical result shows that the upper (lower) limit of the total cross section for $\gamma p\to Y(3940)p$ is up to the order of 1 nb ($0.1\mu \mathrm{b}$). Additionally, the background analysis and the Dalitz plot relevant to the production of $Y(3940)$ are studied. The Dalitz plot analysis of $Y(3940)$ production indicates that the $Y(3940)$ signal can be distinguished from the background clearly. The lower limit of the number of events of $Y(3940)$ reaches up to $10/0.02{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$ for $1\times {10}^9$ collisions of $\gamma p$ by studying the invariant mass spectrum of $J/\psi \omega$. An experimental search for $Y(3940)$ by the meson photoproduction is suggested.

We study the effect that flavor-changing neutral current interactions of the top quark will have on the branching ratio of charged decays of the top quark. We have performed an integrated analysis using Tevatron and $B$-factories data and with just the further assumption that the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix is unitary, we can obtain very restrictive bounds on the strong and electroweak flavor-changing neutral current branching ratios $\mathrm{Br}(t\to qX)<4.0\times {10}^{-4}$, where $X$ is any vector boson and a sum in $q=u$, $c$ is implied.

We have analyzed the atmospheric neutrino data to study the octant of ${\theta }_{23}$ and the precision of the oscillation parameters for a large iron calorimeter detector. The iron calorimeter being a tracking detector has the ability to measure the energy and the direction of the muon with high resolution. From bending of the track in the magnetic field it can also distinguish its charge. We have generated events by Nuance and then considered only the muons (directly measurable quantities) produced in charge current interactions in our analysis. This encounters the main problem of wide resolutions of energy and baseline. The energy-angle correlated two-dimensional resolution functions are used to migrate the energy and the zenith angle of the neutrino to those of the muon. A new type of binning has been introduced to get better reflection of the oscillation pattern in ${\chi }^2$ analysis. Then the marginalization of the ${\chi }^2$ over all parameters has been carried out for neutrinos and antineutrinos separately. We find that the measurement of ${\theta }_{13}$ is possible at a significant precision with atmospheric neutrinos. The precisions of $\Delta m_{32}^2$ and ${sin}^2{\theta }_{23}$ are found $\sim 8\%$ and 38%, respectively, at 90% C.L. The discrimination of the octant as well as the deviation from maximal mixing of atmospheric neutrinos is also possible for some combinations of $({\theta }_{23},{\theta }_{13})$. We also discuss the impact of the events at near horizon on the precision studies.

The longitudinal spin transfer, $D_{LL}$, from high energy polarized protons to $\Lambda$ and $\overline{\Lambda }$ hyperons has been measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200\mathrm{GeV}$ with the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The measurements cover pseudorapidity, $\eta$, in the range $|\eta |<1.2$ and transverse momenta, $p_{\mathrm{T}}$, up to $4\mathrm{GeV}/c$. The longitudinal spin transfer is found to be $D_{LL}=-0.03\pm 0.13(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.04(\mathrm{syst})$ for inclusive $\Lambda$ and $D_{LL}=-0.12\pm 0.08(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.03(\mathrm{syst})$ for inclusive $\overline{\Lambda }$ hyperons with $⟨\eta ⟩=0.5$ and $⟨p_{\mathrm{T}}⟩=3.7\mathrm{GeV}/c$. The dependence on $\eta$ and $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ is presented.

The screening of a Coulomb field of test charge in plasma with a Bose condensate of an electrically charged scalar field is considered. It is found that the screened potential contains several different terms: one decreases as a power of distance (in contrast to the usual exponential Debye screening), and some others oscillate with an exponentially decreasing envelope. A similar phenomenon exists for fermions (Friedel oscillations), but fermionic and bosonic systems have quite different features. Several limiting cases and values of the parameters are considered and the resulting potentials are presented.

Quantum gravity in the region very near the horizon of an extreme Kerr black hole (whose angular momentum and mass are related by $J=G{M}^2$) is considered. It is shown that consistent boundary conditions exist, for which the asymptotic symmetry generators form one copy of the Virasoro algebra with central charge $c_L=\frac{12J}{\hslash }$. This implies that the near-horizon quantum states can be identified with those of (a chiral half of) a two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT). Moreover, in the extreme limit, the Frolov-Thorne vacuum state reduces to a thermal density matrix with dimensionless temperature $T_L=\frac{1}{2\pi }$ and conjugate energy given by the zero mode generator, $L_0$, of the Virasoro algebra. Assuming unitarity, the Cardy formula then gives a microscopic entropy $S_{\mathrm{micro}}=\frac{2\pi J}{\hslash }$ for the CFT, which reproduces the macroscopic Bekenstein-Hawking entropy $S_{\mathrm{macro}}=\frac{\mathrm{Area}}{4\hslash G}$. The results apply to any consistent unitary quantum theory of gravity with a Kerr solution. We accordingly conjecture that extreme Kerr black holes are holographically dual to a chiral two-dimensional conformal field theory with central charge $c_L=\frac{12J}{\hslash }$, and, in particular, that the near-extreme black hole GRS 1915+105 is approximately dual to a CFT with $c_L\sim 2\times {10}^{79}$.

We calculate numerically the emissivity and surface flux of electron-electron bremsstrahlung radiation from the surface of a bare quark star. The restricted electronic phase space due to the presence of an effective photon mass results in a strong suppression. The emissivity and surface flux are found to be substantially smaller than those found in previous work, to the point where electron-positron pair production would remain the dominant mechanism at all temperatures in the relativistic regime. As a consequence, $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ pair production remains a dominant process even at low surface temperatures $T\sim {10}^9\mathrm{K}$ as originally suggested by Usov [V. V. Usov, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 230 (1998).].

We present a new calculation of the $D\to \pi$ and $D\to K$ form factors from QCD light-cone sum rules. The $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ scheme for the $c$-quark mass is used and the input parameters are updated. The results are $f_{D\pi }^{+}(0)={0.67}_{-0.07}^{+0.10}$, $f_{DK}^{+}(0)={0.75}_{-0.08}^{+0.11}$, and $f_{D\pi }^{+}(0)/f_{DK}^{+}(0)=0.88\pm 0.05$. Combining the calculated form factors with the latest CLEO data, we obtain $|V_{cd}|=0.225\pm 0.005\pm {0.003}_{-0.012}^{+0.016}$ and $|V_{cd}|/|V_{cs}|=0.236\pm 0.006\pm 0.003\pm 0.013$ where the first and second errors are of experimental origin and the third error is due to the estimated uncertainties of our calculation. We also evaluate the form factors $f_{D\pi }^{-}$ and $f_{DK}^{-}$ and predict the slope parameters at $q^2=0$. Furthermore, calculating the form factors from the sum rules at $q^2<0$, we fit them to various parametrizations. After analytic continuation, the shape of the $D\to \pi$, $K$ form factors in the whole semileptonic region is reproduced, in a good agreement with experiment.

We propose a method for determining the mass difference between two particles, ${\tilde{l}}_1$ and ${\tilde{l}}_2$, that are nearly degenerate, with $\Delta m\equiv m_2-m_1\ll m_1$. This method applies when (a) the ${\tilde{l}}_1$ momentum can be measured, (b) ${\tilde{l}}_2$ can only decay to ${\tilde{l}}_1$, and (c) ${\tilde{l}}_1$ and ${\tilde{l}}_2$ can be produced in the decays of a common mother particle. For small $\Delta m$, ${\tilde{l}}_2$ cannot be reconstructed directly, because its decay products are too soft to be detected. Despite this, we show that the existence of ${\tilde{l}}_2$ can be established by observing the shift in the mother particle invariant-mass peak, when reconstructed from decays to ${\tilde{l}}_2$. We show that measuring this shift would allow us to extract $\Delta m$. As an example, we study supersymmetric gauge-gravity hybrid models in which ${\tilde{l}}_1$ is a metastable charged slepton next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle and ${\tilde{l}}_2$ is the next-to-lightest slepton with $\Delta m\sim 5\mathrm{GeV}$.

Recently, a class of gravitational backgrounds in $3+1$ dimensions have been proposed as holographic duals to a Lifshitz theory describing critical phenomena in $2+1$ dimensions with critical exponent $z\ge 1$. We continue our earlier work [G. Bertoldi, B. A. Burrington, and A. Peet, preceding Article, Phys. Rev. D 80, 126003 (2009).], exploring the thermodynamic properties of the “black brane” solutions with horizon topology ${\mathbb{R}}^2$. We find that the black branes satisfy the relation $\mathcal{E}=\frac{2}{2+z}Ts$ where $\mathcal{E}$ is the energy density, $T$ is the temperature, and $s$ is the entropy density. This matches the expected behavior for a $2+1$ dimensional theory with a scaling symmetry $(x_1,x_2)\to \lambda (x_1,x_2)$, $t\to {\lambda }^{z}t$.

Recently, a class of gravitational backgrounds in $3+1$ dimensions have been proposed as holographic duals to a Lifshitz theory describing critical phenomena in $2+1$ dimensions with critical exponent $z\ge 1$. We numerically explore black holes in these backgrounds for a range of values of $z$. We find drastically different behavior for $z>2$ and $z<2$. We find that for $z>2$ ($z<2$) the Lifshitz fixed point is repulsive (attractive) when going to larger radial parameter $r$. For the repulsive $z>2$ backgrounds, we find a continuous family of black holes satisfying a finite energy condition. However, for $z<2$ we find that the finite energy condition is more restrictive, and we expect only a discrete set of black hole solutions, unless some unexpected cancellations occur. For all black holes, we plot temperature $T$ as a function of horizon radius $r_0$. For $z⪅1.761$ we find that this curve develops a negative slope for certain values of $r_0$ possibly indicating a thermodynamic instability.

Determining the physical Hilbert space is often considered the most difficult but crucial part of completing the quantization of a constrained system. In such a situation it can be more economical to use effective constraint methods, which are extended here to relativistic systems as they arise for instance in quantum cosmology. By sidestepping explicit constructions of states, such tools allow one to arrive much more feasibly at results for physical observables at least in semiclassical regimes. Several questions discussed recently regarding effective equations and state properties in quantum cosmology, including the spreading of states and quantum backreaction, are addressed by the examples studied here.

QCD is expected to be in the color-flavor locking phase in high baryon density, which exhibits color superconductivity. The most fundamental topological objects in the color superconductor are non-Abelian vortices which are topologically stable color magnetic flux tubes. We present numerical solutions of the color magnetic flux tube for diverse choices of the coupling constants based on the Ginzburg-Landau Lagrangian. We also analytically study its asymptotic profiles and find that they are different from the case of usual superconductors. We propose the width of color magnetic fluxes and find that it is larger than naive expectation of the Compton wavelength of the massive gluon when the gluon mass is larger than the scalar mass.

We construct a topological charge of gauge field configurations on a fuzzy $S^2\times S^2$ by using a Dirac operator satisfying the Ginsparg-Wilson relation. The topological charge defined on the fuzzy $S^2\times S^2$ can be interpreted as a noncommutative (or matrix) generalization of the 2nd Chern character on $S^2\times S^2$. We further calculate the number of chiral zero modes of the Dirac operator in topologically nontrivial gauge configurations. Generalizations of our formulation to fuzzy $(S^2{)}^k$ are also discussed.

The most popular method to construct initial data for black-hole-binary simulations is the puncture method, in which compactified wormholes are given linear and angular momentum via the Bowen-York extrinsic curvature. When these data are evolved, they quickly approach a trumpet topology, suggesting that it would be preferable to use data that are in trumpet form from the outset. To achieve this, we extend the puncture method to allow the construction of Bowen-York trumpets, including an outline of an existence and uniqueness proof of the solutions. We construct boosted, spinning and binary Bowen-York puncture trumpets using a single-domain pseudospectral elliptic solver, and evolve the binary data and compare with standard wormhole-data results. We also show that for boosted trumpets the black-hole mass can be prescribed a priori, without recourse to the iterative procedure that is necessary for wormhole data.

We explore in detail the semiclassical environment of collapsing shells of matter, and determine the semiclassical flux measured by a variety of observers. This study is a preliminary step in a broader investigation of thermodynamic properties of the geometry of collapsing objects. Specifically, in this paper we consider spherically symmetric null and timelike collapsing shells which form an event horizon, and calculate the flux measured by observers both inside and outside the shell, and both inside and outside the event horizon, and find nontrivial results in most of the cases. Additionally, we also investigate the environment of a shell which collapses but does not form a horizon, halting at some radius larger than the Schwarzschild radius, and find that such an object generically gives rise to a pulse of radiation which is sharply peaked as it travels inwards and is reflected at the origin, and eventually emerges from the shell in a thermalized form. Our results have potential consequences in addressing questions pertaining, e.g. to black hole entropy and backreaction.