Campanario, F., & Kubocz, M. (2013). Higgs-boson production in association with three jets via gluon fusion at the LHC: Gluonic contributions. Phys. Rev. D, 88(5), 054021–5pp.
Abstract: Higgs production in association with three jets via gluon fusion is an important channel for the measurement of the CP properties of the Higgs particle at the LHC. In this paper, we go beyond the heavy top effective theory approximation and include at LO the full mass dependence of the top- and bottom-quark contributions. We consider the dominant subchannel gg -> Hggg which involves the manipulation of massive rank-5 hexagon integrals. Furthermore, we present results for several differential distributions and show deviations from the effective theory as large as 100% at high p(T) for light Higgs masses.
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Campanario, F., Kerner, M., Ninh, L. D., & Zeppenfeld, D. (2013). WZ production in association with two jets at next-to-leading order in QCD. Phys. Rev. Lett., 111(5), 052003–4pp.
Abstract: We report on the calculation of W-+/- Zjj production with leptonic decays at hadron-hadron colliders at next-to-leading order in QCD. These processes are important both to test the quartic gauge couplings of the standard model and because they constitute relevant backgrounds to beyond standard model physics searches. Our results show that the next-to-leading order corrections reduce significantly the scale uncertainties and have a nontrivial phase space dependence.
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Campanario, F., Figy, T. M., Platzer, S., & Sjodahl, M. (2013). Electroweak Higgs Boson Plus Three Jet Production at Next-to-Leading-Order QCD. Phys. Rev. Lett., 111(21), 211802–4pp.
Abstract: We calculate next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections to electroweak Higgs boson plus three jet production. Both vector boson fusion (VBF) and Higgs-strahlung type contributions are included along with all interferences. The calculation is implemented within the MATCHBOX NLO framework of the HERWIG++ event generator.
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Cabrera, M. E., Casas, J. A., & Ruiz de Austri, R. (2013). The health of SUSY after the Higgs discovery and the XENON100 data. J. High Energy Phys., 07(7), 182–47pp.
Abstract: We analyze the implications for the status and prospects of supersymmetry of the Higgs discovery and the last XENON data. We focus mainly, but not only, on the CMSSM and NUHM models. Using a Bayesian approach we determine the distribution of probability in the parameter space of these scenarios. This shows that, most probably, they are now beyond the LHC reach. This negative chances increase further (at more than 95% c.l.) if one includes dark matter constraints in the analysis, in particular the last XENON100 data. However, the models would be probed completely by XENON1T. The mass of the LSP neutralino gets essentially fixed around 1TeV. We do not incorporate ad hoc measures of the fine-tuning to penalize unnatural possibilities: such penalization arises automatically from the careful Bayesian analysis itself, and allows to scan the whole parameter space. In this way, we can explain and resolve the apparent discrepancies between the previous results in the literature. Although SUSY has become hard to detect at LHC, this does not necessarily mean that is very fine-tuned. We use Bayesian techniques to show the experimental Higgs mass is at similar to 2 sigma off the CMSSM or NUHM expectation. This is substantial but not dramatic. Although the CMSSM or the NUHM are unlikely to show up at the LHC, they are still interesting and plausible models after the Higgs observation; and, if they are true, the chances of discovering them in future dark matter experiments are quite high.
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Cabello, J., Torres-Espallardo, I., Gillam, J. E., & Rafecas, M. (2013). PET Reconstruction From Truncated Projections Using Total-Variation Regularization for Hadron Therapy Monitoring. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 60(5), 3364–3372.
Abstract: Hadron therapy exploits the properties of ion beams to treat tumors by maximizing the dose released to the target and sparing healthy tissue. With hadron beams, the dose distribution shows a relatively low entrance dose which rises sharply at the end of the range, providing the characteristic Bragg peak that drops quickly thereafter. It is of critical importance in order not to damage surrounding healthy tissues and/or avoid targeting underdosage to know where the delivered dose profile ends-the location of the Bragg peak. During hadron therapy, short-lived beta(+)-emitters are produced along the beam path, their distribution being correlated with the delivered dose. Following positron annihilation, two photons are emitted, which can be detected using a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner. The low yield of emitters, their short half-life, and the wash out from the target region make the use of PET, even only a few minutes after hadron irradiation, a challenging application. In-beam PET represents a potential candidate to estimate the distribution of beta(+)-emitters during or immediately after irradiation, at the cost of truncation effects and degraded image quality due to the partial rings required of the PET scanner. Time-of-flight (ToF) information can potentially be used to compensate for truncation effects and to enhance image contrast. However, the highly demanding timing performance required in ToF-PET makes this option costly. Alternatively, the use of maximum-a-posteriori-expectation-maximization (MAP-EM), including total variation (TV) in the cost function, produces images with low noise, while preserving spatial resolution. In this paper, we compare data reconstructed with maximum-likelihood-expectation-maximization (ML-EM) and MAP-EM using TV as prior, and the impact of including ToF information, from data acquired with a complete and a partial-ring PET scanner, of simulated hadron beams interacting with a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) target. The results show that MAP-EM, in the absence of ToF information, produces lower noise images and more similar data compared to the simulated beta(+) distributions than ML-EM with ToF information in the order of 200-600 ps. The investigation is extended to the combination of MAP-EM and ToF information to study the limit of performance using both approaches.
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Bueno, P., Galli, P., Meessen, P., & Ortin, T. (2013). Black holes and equivariant charge vectors in N=2, d=4 supergravity. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 010–51pp.
Abstract: We extend previous investigations on the construction of extremal supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric solutions in the H-FGK formalism to unconventional solutions with anharmonic terms. We show how the use of fake charge vectors equivariant under duality transformations simplifies and clarifies the task of identification of the attractors of the theory.
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Brown, J. M. C., Gillam, J. E., Paganin, D. M., & Dimmock, M. R. (2013). Laplacian Erosion: An Image Deblurring Technique for Multi-Plane Gamma-Cameras. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 60(5), 3333–3342.
Abstract: Laplacian Erosion, an image deblurring technique for multi-plane Gamma-cameras, has been developed and tested for planar imaging using a GEANT4 Monte Carlo model of the Pixelated Emission Detector for RadioisOtopes (PEDRO) as a test platform. A contrast and Derenzo-like phantom composed of I-125 were both employed to investigate the dependence of detection plane and pinhole geometry on the performance of Laplacian Erosion. Three different pinhole geometries were tested. It was found that, for the test system, the performance of Laplacian Erosion was inversely proportional to the detection plane offset, and directly proportional to the pinhole diameter. All tested pinhole geometries saw a reduction in the level of image blurring associated with the pinhole geometry. However, the reduction in image blurring came at the cost of signal to noise ratio in the image. The application of Laplacian Erosion was shown to reduce the level of image blurring associated with pinhole geometry and improve recovered image quality in multi-plane Gamma-cameras for the targeted radiotracer I-125.
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Bross, A., Wands, R., Bayes, R., Laing, A., Soler, F. J. P., Cervera-Villanueva, A., et al. (2013). Toroidal magnetized iron neutrino detector for a neutrino factory. Phys. Rev. Spec. Top.-Accel. Beams, 16(8), 081002–16pp.
Abstract: A neutrino factory has unparalleled physics reach for the discovery and measurement of CP violation in the neutrino sector. A far detector for a neutrino factory must have good charge identification with excellent background rejection and a large mass. An elegant solution is to construct a magnetized iron neutrino detector (MIND) along the lines of MINOS, where iron plates provide a toroidal magnetic field and scintillator planes provide 3D space points. In this paper, the current status of a simulation of a toroidal MIND for a neutrino factory is discussed in light of the recent measurements of large theta(13). The response and performance using the 10 GeV neutrino factory configuration are presented. It is shown that this setup has equivalent delta(CP) reach to a MIND with a dipole field and is sensitive to the discovery of CP violation over 85% of the values of delta(CP).
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Bozorgnia, N., Herrero-Garcia, J., Schwetz, T., & Zupan, J. (2013). Halo-independent methods for inelastic dark matter scattering. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 049–15pp.
Abstract: We present halo-independent methods to analyze the results of dark matter direct detection experiments assuming inelastic scattering. We focus on the annual modulation signal reported by DAMA/LIBRA and present three different halo-independent tests. First, we compare it to the upper limit on the unmodulated rate from XENON100 using (a) the trivial requirement that the amplitude of the annual modulation has to be smaller than the bound on the unmodulated rate, and (b) a bound on the annual modulation amplitude based on an expansion in the Earth's velocity. The third test uses the special predictions of the signal shape for inelastic scattering and allows for an internal consistency check of the data without referring to any astrophysics. We conclude that a strong conflict between DAMA/LIBRA and XENON100 in the framework of spin-independent inelastic scattering can be established independently of the local properties of the dark matter halo.
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Bottoni, S., Benzoni, G., Leoni, S., Montanari, D., Bracco, A., Vigezzi, E., et al. (2013). Reaction dynamics and gamma spectroscopy of Ne isotoopes by the heavy ion reaction Ne-22+Pb-208. Acta Phys. Pol. B, 44(3), 457–461.
Abstract: The heavy ion reaction Ne-22+Pb-208 at 128 MeV beam energy has been studied using the PRISMA-CLARA experimental setup at Legnaro National Laboratories. Aim of the experiment is the measurement of elastic, inelastic and one nucleon transfer cross sections. The data are presented in parallel with similar results for the unstable Ne-24 nucleus, using existing data from the reaction Ne-24+Pb-208 at 182 MeV (measured at SPIRAL with the VAMOS-EXOGAM setup). A comparison with angular distributions obtained by semiclassical and DWBA predictions for the quadrupole deformation parameter is also discussed. In particular, the DWBA analysis allowed to determine the beta(C)(2) charge deformation parameter both in Ne-22 and Ne-24.
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