Abstract: We present new global fits of the constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (cMSSM), including LHC 1/fb integrated luminosity SUSY exclusion limits, recent LHC 5/fb constraints on the mass of the Higgs boson and XENON100 direct detection data. Our analysis fully takes into account astrophysical and hadronic uncertainties that enter the analysis when translating direct detection limits into constraints on the cMSSM parameter space. We provide results for both a Bayesian and a Frequentist statistical analysis. We find that LHC 2011 constraints in combination with XENON100 data can rule out a significant portion of the cMSSM parameter space. Our results further emphasise the complementarity of collider experiments and direct detection searches in constraining extensions of Standard Model physics. The LHC 2011 exclusion limit strongly impacts on low-mass regions of cMSSM parameter space, such as the stau co-annihilation region, while direct detection data can rule out regions of high SUSY masses, such as the Focus-Point region, which is unreachable for the LHC in the near future. We show that, in addition to XENON100 data, the experimental constraint on the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon plays a dominant role in disfavouring large scalar and gaugino masses. We find that, should the LHC 2011 excess hinting towards a Higgs boson at 126 GeV be confirmed, currently favoured regions of the cMSSM parameter space will be robustly ruled out from both a Bayesian and a profile likelihood statistical perspective.

Abstract: The high-spin structure of the nucleus Pd-104 was studied through the Zr-96(C-13,5n) reaction at incident energies of 51 and 58MeV, using the Euroball IV gamma-ray spectrometer in conjunction with the DIAMANT charged-particle array. Several new medium- and high-spin bands were revealed. The already known positive-parity yrast and the negative-parity cascades were extended up to E-x similar to 13, similar to 11, and similar to 9 MeV with I-pi = (26(+)), I-pi = (23(-)), and (20(-)), respectively. The deduced band structures were compared with Woods-Saxon total Routhian surface (TRS) calculations. In addition, non-yrast low-lying positive-parity bands were identified, which were assigned to soft gamma-vibrational excitations.

Abstract: We measure the acoustic scale from the angular power spectra of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) Data Release 8 imaging catalog that includes 872, 921 galaxies over similar to 10,000 deg(2) between 0.45 < z < 0.65. The extensive spectroscopic training set of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey luminous galaxies allows precise estimates of the true redshift distributions of galaxies in our imaging catalog. Utilizing the redshift distribution information, we build templates and fit to the power spectra of the data, which are measured in our companion paper, to derive the location of Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) while marginalizing over many free parameters to exclude nearly all of the non-BAO signal. We derive the ratio of the angular diameter distance to the sound horizon scale D-A(z)/r(s) = 9.212(-0.404)(+0.416) at z = 0.54, and therefore D-A(z) = 1411 +/- 65 Mpc at z = 0.54; the result is fairly independent of assumptions on the underlying cosmology. Our measurement of angular diameter distance D-A(z) is 1.4 sigma higher than what is expected for the concordance Lambda CDM, in accordance to the trend of other spectroscopic BAO measurements for z greater than or similar to 0.35. We report constraints on cosmological parameters from our measurement in combination with the WMAP7 data and the previous spectroscopic BAO measurements of SDSS and WiggleZ. We refer to our companion papers (Ho et al.; de Putter et al.) for investigations on information of the full power spectrum.