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Barenboim, G., Park, W. I., & Kinney, W. H. (2016). Eternal hilltop inflation. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 05(5), 030–15pp.
Abstract: We consider eternal inflation in hilltop-type inflation models, favored by current data, in which the scalar field in inflation rolls off of a local maximum of the potential. Unlike chaotic or plateau-type inflation models, in hilltop inflation the region of field space which supports eternal inflation is finite, and the expansion rate H-EI during eternal inflation is almost exactly the same as the expansion rate H-* during slow roll inflation. Therefore, in any given Hubble volume, there is a finite and calculable expectation value for the lifetime of the “eternal” inflation phase, during which quantum flucutations dominate over classical field evolution. We show that despite this, inflation in hilltop models is nonetheless eternal in the sense that the volume of the spacetime at any finite time is exponentially dominated by regions which continue to inflate. This is true regardless of the energy scale of inflation, and eternal inflation is supported for inflation at arbitrarily low energy scale.
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Albaladejo, M., Fernandez-Soler, P., & Nieves, J. (2016). Z(c)(3900): confronting theory and lattice simulations. Eur. Phys. J. C, 76(10), 573–9pp.
Abstract: We consider a recent T -matrix analysis by Albaladejo et al. (Phys Lett B 755: 337, 2016), which accounts for the J/psi pi and D*(D) over bar coupled-channels dynamics, and which successfully describes the experimental information concerning the recently discovered Z(c)(3900)(+/-). Within such scheme, the data can be similarly well described in two different scenarios, where Z(c)(3900) is either a resonance or a virtual state. To shed light into the nature of this state, we apply this formalism in a finite box with the aim of comparing with recent Lattice QCD (LQCD) simulations. We see that the energy levels obtained for both scenarios agree well with those obtained in the single-volume LQCD simulation reported in Prelovsek et al. (Phys Rev D 91: 014504, 2015), thus making it difficult to disentangle the two possibilities. We also study the volume dependence of the energy levels obtained with our formalism and suggest that LQCD simulations performed at several volumes could help in discerning the actual nature of the intriguing Z(c)(3900) state.
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Donini, A., & Marimon, S. G. (2016). Micro-orbits in a many-brane model and deviations from Newton's 1/r(2) law. Eur. Phys. J. C, 76(12), 696–21pp.
Abstract: We consider a five-dimensional model with geometry M = M-4 x S-1, with compactification radius R. The Standard Model particles are localized on a brane located at y = 0, with identical branes localized at different points in the extra dimension. Objects located on our brane can orbit around objects located on a brane at a distance d = y/R, with an orbit and a period significantly different from the standard Newtonian ones. We study the kinematical properties of the orbits, finding that it is possible to distinguish one motion from the other in a large region of the initial conditions parameter space. This is a warm-up to study if a SM-like mass distribution on one (or more) distant brane(s) may represent a possible dark matter candidate. After using the same technique to the study of orbits of objects lying on the same brane (d = 0), we apply this method to the detection of generic deviations from the inverse-square Newton law. We propose a possible experimental setup to look for departures from Newtonian motion in the micro-world, finding that an order of magnitude improvement on present bounds can be attained at the 95% CL under reasonable assumptions.
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de Florian, D., Sborlini, G. F. R., & Rodrigo, G. (2016). Two-loop QED corrections to the Altarelli-Parisi splitting functions. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 056–16pp.
Abstract: We compute the two-loop QED corrections to the Altarelli-Parisi (AP) splitting functions by using a deconstructive algorithmic Abelianization of the well-known NLO QCD corrections. We present explicit results for the full set of splitting kernels in a basis that includes the leptonic distribution functions that, starting from this order in the QED coupling, couple to the partonic densities. Finally, we perform a phenomenological analysis of the impact of these corrections in the splitting functions.
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Cervantes, D., Fioresi, R., Lledo, M. A., & Nadal, F. A. (2016). Quantum Twistors. P-Adic Num., 8(1), 2–30.
Abstract: We compute explicitly a star product on the Minkowski space whose Poisson bracket is quadratic. This star product corresponds to a deformation of the conformal spacetime, whose big cell is the Minkowski spacetime. The description of Minkowski space is made in the twistor formalism and the quantization follows by substituting the classical conformal group by a quantum group.
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Hiller Blin, A. N., Ledwig, T., & Vicente Vacas, M. J. (2016). Delta(1232) resonance in the (gamma)over-right-arrowp -> p pi(0) reaction at threshold. Phys. Rev. D, 93(9), 094018–19pp.
Abstract: We calculate the neutral pion photoproduction on the proton near threshold in covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory, including the Delta(1232) resonance as an explicit degree of freedom, up to chiral order p(7/2) in the delta counting. We compare our results with recent low-energy data from the Mainz Microtron for angular distributions and photon asymmetries. The convergence of the chiral series of the covariant approach is found to improve substantially with the inclusion of the Delta(1232) resonance.
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Gomis, P., & Perez, A. (2016). Decoherence effects in the Stern-Gerlach experiment using matrix Wigner functions. Phys. Rev. A, 94(1), 012103–11pp.
Abstract: We analyze the Stern-Gerlach experiment in phase space with the help of the matrix Wigner function, which includes the spin degree of freedom. Such analysis allows for an intuitive visualization of the quantum dynamics of the device. We include the interaction with the environment, as described by the Caldeira-Leggett model. The diagonal terms of the matrix provide us with information about the two components of the state that arise from interaction with the magnetic field gradient. In particular, from the marginals of these components, we obtain an analytical formula for the position and momentum probability distributions in the presence of decoherence that shows a diffusive behavior for large values of the decoherence parameter. These features limit the dynamics of the present model. We also observe the decay of the nondiagonal terms with time and use this fact to quantify the amount of decoherence from the norm of those terms in phase space. From here, we can define a decoherence time scale, which differs from previous results that make use of the same model. We analyze a typical experiment and show that, for that setup, the decoherence time is much smaller than the characteristic time scale for the separation of the two beams, implying that they can be described as an incoherent mixture of atoms traveling in the up and down directions with opposite values of the spin projection. Therefore, entanglement is quickly destroyed in the setup we analyzed.
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Di Molfetta, G., & Perez, A. (2016). Quantum walks as simulators of neutrino oscillations in a vacuum and matter. New J. Phys., 18, 103038–8pp.
Abstract: We analyze the simulation of Dirac neutrino oscillations using quantum walks, both in a vacuum and in matter. We show that this simulation, in the continuum limit, reproduces a set of coupled Dirac equations that describe neutrino flavor oscillations, and we make use of this to establish a connection with neutrino phenomenology, thus allowing one to fix the parameters of the simulation for a given neutrino experiment. We also analyze how matter effects for neutrino propagation can be simulated in the quantum walk. In this way, important features, such as the MSW effect, can be incorporated. Thus, the simulation of neutrino oscillations with the help of quantum walks might be useful to illustrate these effects in extreme conditions, such as the solar interior or supernovae.
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Gonzalez-Alonso, M., Pich, A., & Rodriguez-Sanchez, A. (2016). Updated determination of chiral couplings and vacuum condensates from hadronic tau decay data. Phys. Rev. D, 94(1), 014017–14pp.
Abstract: We analyze the lowest spectral moments of the left-right two-point correlation function, using all known short-distance constraints and the recently updated ALEPH V – A spectral function from tau decays. This information is used to determine the low-energy couplings L-10 and C-87 of chiral perturbation theory and the lowest-dimensional contributions to the operator product expansion of the left-right correlator. A detailed statistical analysis is implemented to assess the theoretical uncertainties, including violations of quark-hadron duality.
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Botella, F. J., Branco, G. C., Nebot, M., & Rebelo, M. N. (2016). Flavour-changing Higgs couplings in a class of two Higgs doublet models. Eur. Phys. J. C, 76(3), 161–17pp.
Abstract: We analyse various flavour-changing processes like t -> hu, hc, h -> t e, tau μas well as hadronic decays h -> bs, bd, in the framework of a class of two Higgs doublet models where there are flavour-changing neutral scalar currents at tree level. These models have the remarkable feature of having these flavour-violating couplings entirely determined by the CKM and PMNS matrices as well as tan beta. The flavour structure of these scalar currents results from a symmetry of the Lagrangian and therefore it is natural and stable under the renormalisation group. We show that in some of the models the rates of the above flavour-changing processes can reach the discovery level at the LHC at 13 TeV even taking into account the stringent bounds on low energy processes, in particular μ-> e gamma.
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