We report branching fractions and charge asymmetries for exclusive decays of charged and neutral B mesons to two-body final states containing a charmonium meson, $J/\psi$ or $\psi \mathrm{}\left(2S\right).$ This result is based on a $29.4{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ data sample collected at the ${\rm Y}\mathrm{}\left(4S\right)\mathrm{}$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collider.

The inclusive production of charmonium mesons in B meson decay has been studied in a 20.3 ${\mathrm{fb}}^{\mathrm{-}1}$ data set collected by the BABAR experiment operating at the ${\rm Y}\mathrm{}\left(4S\right)\mathrm{}$ resonance. Branching fractions have been measured for the inclusive production of the charmonium mesons $J/\psi ,$ $\psi \mathrm{}\left(2S\right),$ ${\chi }_{c1\mathrm{}},$ and ${\chi }_{c2\mathrm{}}.$ The branching fractions are also presented as a function of the center-of-mass momentum of the mesons and of the helicity of the $J/\psi .$

In the standard model, the charged current of the weak interaction is governed by a unitary quark mixing matrix that also leads to CP violation. Measurement of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements is essential to searches for new physics, either through the structure of the CKM matrix, or a departure from unitarity. We determine the CKM matrix element $|V_{\mathrm{cb}}|$ using a sample of $3\times {10}^6$ $B\overline{B}$ events in the CLEO detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring. We determine the yield of reconstructed $B^0\to D^{*+}\mathcal{l}\overline{\nu }$ and $B^{-}\to D^{*0}\mathcal{l}\overline{\nu }$ decays as a function of w, the boost of the $D^{*}$ in the B rest frame, and from this we obtain the differential decay rate $d\Gamma /dw.\mathrm{}$ By extrapolating $d\Gamma /dw$ to $w=1,$ the kinematic end point at which the $D^{*}$ is at rest relative to the B, we extract the product $|V_{\mathrm{cb}}|\mathcal{F}\mathrm{}\left(1\right),$ where $\mathcal{F}\mathrm{}\left(1\right)\mathrm{}$ is the form factor at $w=1.\mathrm{}$ We find $|V_{\mathrm{cb}}|\mathcal{F}\mathrm{}\left(1\right)=0.0431\mathrm{}\pm 0.0013\left(\mathrm{stat}\right)\pm 0.0018\left(\mathrm{syst}\right).\mathrm{}$ We combine $|V_{\mathrm{cb}}|\mathcal{F}\mathrm{}\left(1\right)\mathrm{}$ with theoretical results for $\mathcal{F}\mathrm{}\left(1\right)\mathrm{}$ to determine $|V_{\mathrm{cb}}|=0.0469\mathrm{}\pm 0.0014\left(\mathrm{stat}\right)\pm 0.0020\left(\mathrm{syst}\right)\pm 0.0018\left(\mathrm{theor}\right).\mathrm{}$ We also integrate the differential decay rate over w to obtain $\mathcal{B}(B^0\to D^{*+}\mathcal{l}\overline{\nu })=(6.09\mathrm{}\pm 0.19\pm 0.40)\%$ and $\mathcal{B}{(B}^{-}\to D^{*0}\mathcal{l}\overline{\nu })=(6.50\mathrm{}\pm 0.20\pm 0.43)\%.$

We present a measurement of $\mathrm{CP}$-violation parameters in the $\overrightarrow{b}s\overline{q}q$ penguin transitions $\mathrm{}(q=s,u,d)\mathrm{}$ based on a $78{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ data sample collected at the ${\rm Y}\mathrm{}\left(4S\right)\mathrm{}$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB energy-asymmetric $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collider. One neutral B meson is reconstructed in the $\phi K_S^0,$ $K^{+}{K}^{-}{K}_S^0,$ or ${\eta }^{\prime }{K}_S^0$ decay channel, and the flavor of the accompanying B meson is identified from its decay products. $\mathrm{CP}$ violation parameters for each of the three modes are obtained from the asymmetries in the distributions of the proper-time intervals between the two B decays.

We study brane embeddings in M-theory plane waves and their supersymmetry. The relation with branes in AdS backgrounds via the Penrose limit is also explored. Longitudinal planar branes originate from AdS branes while giant gravitons of AdS spaces become spherical branes which are realized as fuzzy spheres in the massive matrix theory.

We examine some general properties of a certain class of scalar field theory models containing nontopological soliton solutions in the context of brane world models with compact large extra dimensions. If a scalar field is allowed to propagate in extra space, then, in addition to the standard Kaluza-Klein type excitations, a whole new class of very massive soliton-type states can exist.

We investigate the analytic properties of finite-temperature self-energies of bosons interacting with fermions at one-loop order. A simple boson-fermion model was chosen due to its interesting features of having two distinct couplings of bosons with fermions. This leads to a quite different analytic behavior of the bosons self-energies as the external momentum $K^{\mu }{=(k}^0,\overrightarrow{k})$ approaches zero in the two possible limits. It is shown that the plasmon and Debye masses are consistently obtained at the pole of the corrected propagator even when the self-energy is analytic at the origin in the frequency-momentum space.

The Casimir effect is investigated in light-cone quantization. It is shown that for a spacelike separation of the walls enclosing the system the standard result for the pressure exerted on the walls is obtained. For walls separated in the light-cone space direction no regularization of the quantum fluctuations exists which would yield a finite pressure. The origin of this failure and its implications for other vacuum properties are discussed by analyzing the Casimir effect as seen from a moving observer approaching the speed of light. The possibility for the calculation of thermodynamic quantities in light-cone quantization via the Casimir effect is pointed out.

The supersymmetric Abelian Higgs model with N scalar fields admits multiple domain wall solutions. We perform a Callias-type index calculation to determine the number of zero modes of this soliton. We confirm that the most general domain wall has $2\left(N-1\right)$ zero modes, which can be interpreted as the positions and phases of $\left(N-1\right)$ constituent domain walls. This implies the existence of moduli for a D-string interpolating between N $D5\mathrm{}$-branes in type IIB string theory.

Recently published benchmark models have contained rather heavy superpartners. To test the robustness of this result, several benchmark models have been constructed based on theoretically well-motivated approaches, particularly string-based ones. These include variations on anomaly- and gauge-mediated models, as well as gravity mediation. The resulting spectra often have light gauginos that are produced in significant quantities at the Fermilab Tevatron collider, or will be at a 500 GeV linear collider. The signatures also provide interesting challenges for the CERN LHC. In addition, these models are capable of accounting for electroweak symmetry breaking with less severe cancellations among soft supersymmetry breaking parameters than previous benchmark models.

We discuss gravitational perturbations in the Randall-Sundrum two branes model with radius stabilization. Following the idea by Goldberger and Wise for the radius stabilization, we introduce a scalar field which has potentials localized on the branes in addition to a bulk potential. In our previous paper we discussed gravitational perturbations induced by static, spherically symmetric and nonrelativistic matter distribution on the branes under the condition that the values of the scalar field on the respective branes cannot fluctuate due to its extremely narrow brane potentials. We call this case the strong coupling limit. Our concern in this paper is to generalize our previous analysis relaxing the limitation of taking the strong coupling limit. We find that new corrections in metric perturbations due to relaxing the strong coupling limit enhance the deviation from the 4D Einstein gravity only in some exceptional cases. In the case that matter fields reside on the negative tension brane, the stabilized radion mass becomes very small when the new correction becomes large.

The consistent, local, smooth deformations of the dual formulation of linearized gravity involving a tensor field in the exotic representation of the Lorentz group with Young symmetry type $(D-3,1)$ (one column of length $D-3$ and one column of length $1)$ are systematically investigated. The rigidity of the Abelian gauge algebra is first established. We next prove a no-go theorem for interactions involving at most two derivatives of the fields.

Covariant loop gravity comes out of the canonical analysis of the Palatini action and the use of the Dirac brackets arising from dealing with the second class constraints (“simplicity” constraints). Within this framework, we underline a quantization ambiguity due to the existence of a family of possible Lorentz connections. We show the existence of a Lorentz connection generalizing the Ashtekar-Barbero connection and we loop quantize the theory showing that it leads to the usual $\mathrm{SU}\left(2\right)\mathrm{}$ loop quantum gravity and to the area spectrum given by the $\mathrm{SU}\left(2\right)\mathrm{}$ Casimir operator. This covariant point of view allows us to analyze closely the drawbacks of the $\mathrm{SU}\left(2\right)\mathrm{}$ formalism: the quantization based on the (generalized) Ashtekar-Barbero connection breaks time diffeomorphisms and physical outputs depend nontrivially on the embedding of the canonical hypersurface into the space-time manifold. On the other hand, there exists a true space-time connection, transforming properly under all diffeomorphisms. We argue that it is this connection that should be used in the definition of loop variables. However, we are still not able to complete the quantization program for this connection giving a full solution of the second class constraints at the Hilbert space level. Nevertheless, we show how a canonical quantization of the Dirac brackets at a finite number of points leads to the kinematical setting of the Barrett-Crane model, with simple spin networks and an area spectrum given by the $\mathrm{SL}(2,C)\mathrm{}$ Casimir operator.

A new approach to the description of a spin-2 particle in flat and curved spacetime is developed on the basis of the teleparallel gravity theory. We show that such an approach is in fact a true and natural framework for the Fierz representation proposed recently by Novello and Neves. More specifically, we demonstrate how the teleparallel theory fixes uniquely the structure of the Fierz tensor, discover the transparent origin of the gauge symmetry of the spin-2 model, and derive the linearized Einstein operator from the fundamental identity of the teleparallel gravity. In order to cope with the consistency problem on the curved spacetime, similarly to the usual Riemannian approach, one needs to include the nonminimal (torsion dependent) coupling terms.

We present Monte Carlo reconstruction, a new method for “inverting” observational data to constrain the form of the scalar field potential responsible for inflation. This stochastic technique is based on the flow equation formalism and has distinct advantages over reconstruction methods based on a Taylor expansion of the potential. The primary ansatz required for Monte Carlo reconstruction is simply that inflation is driven by a single scalar field. We also require a very mild slow roll constraint, which can be made arbitrarily weak since Monte Carlo reconstruction is implemented at arbitrary order in the slow roll expansion. While our method cannot evade fundamental limits on the accuracy of reconstruction, it can be simply and consistently applied to poor data sets, and it takes advantage of the attractor properties of single-field inflation models to constrain the potential outside the small region directly probed by observations. We show examples of Monte Carlo reconstruction for data sets similar to that expected from the Planck satellite, and for a hypothetical measurement with a factor of five better parameter discrimination than the Planck satellite.

Brane gas cosmology (BGC) is an approach to unifying string theory and cosmology in which matter is described by a gas of strings and branes in a dilaton gravity background. The Universe is assumed to start out with all spatial dimensions compact and small. It has previously been shown that, in this context, in the approximation of neglecting inhomogeneities and anisotropies, there is a dynamical mechanism which allows only three spatial dimensions to become large. However, previous studies do not lead to any conclusions concerning the isotropy or anisotropy of these three large spatial dimensions. Here, we generalize the equations of BGC to the anisotropic case, and find that isotropization is a natural consequence of the dynamics.

The simplest explanation for early time acceleration (inflation) and the late time acceleration indicated by recent data is that they have a common origin. We investigate another generic cosmological implication of this possibility, that the baryon asymmetry of the universe may be generated in such models. We identify several features of baryogenesis in such a universe, in which a rolling scalar field is always part of the cosmological energy budget. We also propose a concrete mechanism by which the baryon asymmetry of the universe may be generated in this context. We analyze the generic properties of and constraints on these cosmologies, and then demonstrate explicitly how a complete cosmology may develop in some specific classes of models.

We consider the properties of an ensemble of universes as function of size, where size is defined in terms of the asymptotic value of the Hubble constant (or, equivalently, the value of the cosmological constant). We assume that standard model parameters depend upon size in a manner that we have previously suggested, and provide additional motivation for that choice. Given these assumptions, it follows that universes with different sizes will have different physical properties, and we estimate, very roughly, that only if a universe has a size within a factor $\sqrt{2}$ of our own will it support life as we know it. We discuss implications of this picture for some of the basic problems of cosmology and particle physics, as well as the difficulties this point of view creates.

We evaluate new observational constraints on the two-parameter scale-dependent spectral index predicted by the running-mass inflation model by combining the latest cosmic microwave background anisotropy measurements with the recent 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey data on the matter power spectrum, with Lyman $\alpha$ forest data and finally with theoretical constraints on the reionization redshift. We find that present data still allow significant scale dependence of n, which occurs in a physically reasonable regime of parameter space.

We generalize a theorem by Khalfin, originally derived for the states $|F_1〉=|M^0〉,$ $|F_2〉=|M^0〉,$ where $M^0$ is a neutral flavored meson (e.g., $K^0$ or $B_d^0),$ by assuming $\mathrm{CPT}$ invariance. Dispensing with $\mathrm{CPT}$ invariance and allowing for an arbitrary pair of orthogonal states $|F_{1,2}〉,$ we show that any linear combinations $|P_a〉{=p}_a|F_1〉{+q}_a|F_2〉$ and $|P_b〉{=p}_b|F_1〉-q_b|F_2〉,$ if postulated to be independently propagating in time, as in the Lee-Oehme-Yang theory, must be mutually orthogonal. This implies a reciprocity relation: equality of the probabilities of the transitions $|F_1〉\leftrightarrow |F_2〉.$ Also implied is another relation involving the coefficients $p_{a,b},$ $q_{a,b},$ which can be interpreted as $\mathrm{Im}\theta =0,$ where $\theta$ is the rephasing-invariant parameter describing $\mathrm{CPT}$ violation in $M^0{M}^0$ mixing for Khalfin’s choice of $|F_{1,2}〉.$ The states $|F_{1,2}〉$ of our theorem need not form a particle-antiparticle pair, nor even be restricted to particle physics.