PANDA Collaboration(Singh, B. P. et al), Diaz, J., & Ortiz, A. (2015). Experimental access to Transition Distribution Amplitudes with the PANDA experiment at FAIR. Eur. Phys. J. A, 51(8), 107–19pp.
Abstract: Baryon-to-meson Transition Distribution Amplitudes (TDAs) encoding valuable new information on hadron structure appear as building blocks in the collinear factorized description for several types of hard exclusive reactions. In this paper, we address the possibility of accessing nucleon-to-pion (pi N) TDAs from (p) over barp -> e(+)e(-)pi(0) reaction with the future PANDA detector at the FAIR facility. At high center-of-mass energy and high invariant mass squared of the lepton pair q(2), the amplitude of the signal channel (p) over barp -> e(+)e(-)pi(0) admits a QCD factorized description in terms of pi N TDAs and nucleon Distribution Amplitudes (DAs) in the forward aid backward kinematic regimes. Assuming the validity of this factorized description, we perform feasibility studies for measuring (p) over barp -> e(+)e(-)pi(0) with the PANDA detector. Detailed simulations on signal reconstruction efficiency as well as on rejection of the most severe background channel, i.e. (p) over barp -> pi(+)pi(-)pi(0) were performed for the center-of-mass energy squared s = 5 GeV2 and s = 10 GeV2, in the kinematic regions 3.0 < q(2) < 4.3 GeV2 and 5 < q(2) < 9 GeV2, respectively, with a neutral pion scattered in the forward or backward cone vertical bar cos theta(pi 0)vertical bar > 0.5 in the proton-antiproton center-of-mass frame. Results of the simulation show that the particle identification capabilities of the PANDA detector will allow to achieve a background rejection factor of 5 . 10(7) (1 . 10(7)) at low (high) q(2) for s = 5 GeV2, and of 1 . 10(8) (6 . 10(6)) at low (high) q(2) for s = 10 GeV2, while keeping the signal reconstruction efficiency at around 40%. At both energies, a clean lepton signal can be reconstructed with the expected statistics corresponding to 2 of integrated luminosity. The cross sections obtained from the simulations are used to show that a test of QCD collinear factorization can be done at the lowest order by measuring scaling laws and angular distributions. The future measurement of the signal channel cross section with PANDA will provide a new test of the perturbative QCD description of a novel class of hard exclusive reactions and will open the possibility of experimentally accessing pi N TDAs.
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Aristizabal Sierra, D., Staub, F., & Vicente, A. (2015). Shedding light on the b -> s anomalies with a dark sector. Phys. Rev. D, 92(1), 015001–11pp.
Abstract: The LHCb Collaboration has recently reported on some anomalies in b -> s transitions. In addition to discrepancies with the Standard Model (SM) predictions in some angular observables and branching ratios, an intriguing hint for lepton universality violation was found. Here we propose a simple model that extends the SM with a dark sector charged under an additional U(1) gauge symmetry. The spontaneous breaking of this symmetry gives rise to a massive Z' boson, which communicates the SM particles with a valid dark matter candidate, while solving the b -> s anomalies with contributions to the relevant observables.
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Aristizabal Sierra, D., Degee, A., Dorame, L., & Hirsch, M. (2015). Systematic classification of two-loop realizations of the Weinberg operator. J. High Energy Phys., 03(3), 040–41pp.
Abstract: We systematically analyze the d = 5 Weinberg operator at 2-loop order. Using a diagrammatic approach, we identify two different interesting categories of neutrino mass models: (i) Genuine 2-loop models for which both, tree-level and 1-loop contributions, are guaranteed to be absent. And (ii) finite 2-loop diagrams, which correspond to the 1-loop generation of some particular vertex appearing in a given 1-loop neutrino mass model, thus being effectively 2-loop. From the large list of all possible 2-loop diagrams, the vast majority are infinite corrections to lower order neutrino mass models and only a moderately small number of diagrams fall into these two interesting classes. Moreover, all diagrams in class (i) are just variations of three basic diagrams, with examples discussed in the literature before. Similarly, we also show that class (ii) diagrams consists of only variations of these three plus two more basic diagrams. Finally, we show how our results can be consistently and readily used in order to construct two-loop neutrino mass models.
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NEXT Collaboration(Serra, L. et al), Sorel, M., Alvarez, V., Carcel, S., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Diaz, J., et al. (2015). An improved measurement of electron-ion recombination in high-pressure xenon gas. J. Instrum., 10, P03025–21pp.
Abstract: We report on results obtained with the NEXT-DEMO prototype of the NEXT-100 high-pressure xenon gas time projection chamber (TPC), filled with pure xenon gas at 10 bar pressure and exposed to an alpha decay calibration source. Compared to our previous measurements with alpha particles, an upgraded detector and improved analysis techniques have been used. We measure event-by-event correlated fluctuations between ionization and scintillation due to electronion recombination in the gas, with correlation coefficients between -0.80 and -0.56 depending on the drift field conditions. By combining the two signals, we obtain a 2.8% FWHM energy resolution for 5.49 MeV alpha particles and a measurement of the optical gain of the electroluminescent TPC. The improved energy resolution also allows us to measure the specific activity of the radon in the gas due to natural impurities. Finally, we measure the average ratio of excited to ionized atoms produced in the xenon gas by alpha particles to be 0.561 +/- 0.045, translating into an average energy to produce a primary scintillation photon of W-ex = (39.2 +/- 3.2) eV.
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Sekihara, T., & Oset, E. (2015). Investigating the nature of light scalar mesons with semileptonic decays of D mesons. Phys. Rev. D, 92(5), 054038–17pp.
Abstract: We study the semileptonic decays of D-s(+), D+, and D-0 mesons into the light scalar mesons [f(0)(500), K-0(*)(800), f(0)(980), and a(0)(980)] and the light vector mesons [rho(770), omega(782), K-*(892), and phi(1020)]. With the help of a chiral unitarity approach in coupled channels, we compute the branching fractions for scalar meson processes of the semileptonic D decays in a simple way. Using current known values of the branching fractions, we make predictions for the branching fractions of the semileptonic decay modes with other scalar and vector mesons. Furthermore, we calculate the pi(+)pi(-), pi eta, pi K, and K+K- invariant mass distributions in the semileptonic decays of D mesons, which will help us clarify the nature of the light scalar mesons.
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