Abstract: The decay of an isomeric state in the neutron-rich nucleus Cd-129 has been observed via the detection of internal conversion and Compton electrons providing first experimental information on excited states in this nucleus. The isomer was populated in the projectile fission of a U-238 beam at the Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory at RIKEN. From the measured yields of gamma-rays and internal conversion electrons, a multipolarity of E3 was tentatively assigned to the isomeric transition. A half-life of T-1/2 = 3.6(2) ms was determined for the new state which was assigned a spin of (21/2(+)), based on a comparison to shell model calculations performed using state-of-the-art realistic effective interactions.

Abstract: A search is performed for Higgs bosons produced in association with top quarks using the diphoton decay mode of the Higgs boson. Selection requirements are optimized separately for leptonic and fully hadronic final states from the top quark decays. The dataset used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.5 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and 20.3 fb(-1) at 8 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. No significant excess over the background prediction is observed and upper limits are set on the ttH production cross section. The observed exclusion upper limit at 95% confidence level is 6.7 times the predicted Standard Model cross section value. In addition, limits are set on the strength of the Yukawa coupling between the top quark and the Higgs boson, taking into account the dependence of the ttH and tH cross sections as well as the H -> gamma gamma branching fraction on the Yukawa coupling. Lower and upper limits at 95% confidence level are set at 1.3 and +8.0 times the Yukawa coupling strength in the Standard Model.

Abstract: Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at root S-NN = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 μb(-1), ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter system over the pseudorapidity interval vertical bar eta vertical bar < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT <210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-k(t) algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet “central-to-peripheral ratio,” R-CP. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. R-CP varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.

Abstract: We investigate the neutral pion photoproduction on the proton near threshold in covariant chiral perturbation theory with the explicit inclusion of A degrees of freedom. This channel is specially sensitive to chiral dynamics and the advent of very precise data from the Mainz microtron has shown the limits of the convergence of the chiral series for both the heavy baryon and the covariant approaches. We show that the inclusion of the Delta resonance substantially improves the convergence leading to a good agreement with data for a wider range of energies.

Abstract: We study the generic features of minimal gauge extensions of the Standard Model in view of recent hints of lepton-flavor non-universality in semi-leptonic b -> sl(+)l(-) and b -> cl nu decays. We classify the possible models according to the symmetry-breaking pattern and the source of flavor non-universality. We find that in viable models the SU(2)(L) factor is embedded non-trivially in the extended gauge group, and that gauge couplings should be universal, hinting to the presence of new degrees of freedom sourcing non-universality. Finally, we provide an explicit model that can explain the B-decay anomalies in a coherent way and confront it with the relevant phenomenological constraints.