Abstract: We analyze oriented event-shapes in the context of Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (SCET) and in fixed-order perturbation theory. Oriented event-shapes are distributions of event-shape variables which are differential on the angle theta(T) that the thrust axis forms with the electron-positron beam. We show that at any order in perturbation theory and for any event shape, only two angular structures can appear: F-0 = 3/8 (1+cos(2) theta(T)) and F-1 = (1 – 3 cos(2) theta(T)). When integrating over theta(T) to recover the more familiar event-shape distributions, only F-0 survives. The validity of our proof goes beyond perturbation theory, and hence only these two structures are present at the hadron level. The proof also carries over massive particles. Using SCET techniques we show that singular terms can only arise in the F-0 term. Since only the hard function is sensitive to the orientation of the thrust axis, this statement applies also for recoil-sensitive variables such as Jet Broadening. We show how to carry out resummation of the singular terms at (NLL)-L-3 for Thrust, Heavy-Jet Mass, the sum of the Hemisphere Masses and C-parameter by using existing computations in SCET. We also compute the fixed-order distributions for these event-shapes at O(alpha(S)) analytically and at O(alpha(2)(S)) with the program Event2.

Abstract: We consider a non-perturbative formulation of an SU(2) massive gauge theory on a space-time lattice, which is also a discretised gauged non-linear chiral model. The lattice model is shown to have an exactly conserved global SU(2) symmetry. If a scaling region for the lattice model exists and the lightest degrees of freedom are spin one vector particles with the same quantum numbers as the conserved current, we argue that the most general effective theory describing their low-energy dynamics must be a massive gauge theory. We present results of a exploratory numerical simulation of the model and find indications for the presence of a scaling region where both a triplet vector and a scalar remain light.

Abstract: Detection of high-energy neutrinos from distant astrophysical sources will open a new window on the Universe. The detection principle exploits the measurement of Cherenkov light emitted by charged particles resulting from neutrino interactions in the matter containing the telescope. A novel multi-PMT digital optical module (DOM) was developed to contain 31 3-inch photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). In order to maximize the detector sensitivity, each PMT will be surrounded by an expansion cone which collects photons that would otherwise miss the photocathode. Results for various angles of incidence with respect to the PMT surface indicate an increase in collection efficiency by 30% on average for angles up to 45 degrees with respect to the perpendicular. Ray-tracing calculations could reproduce the measurements, allowing to estimate an increase in the overall photocathode sensitivity, integrated over all angles of incidence, by 27% (for a single PMT). Prototype DOMs, being built by the KM3NeT consortium, will be equipped with these expansion cones.