Abstract: Electromagnetic dipole moments of short-lived particles are sensitive to physics within and beyond the Standard Model of particle physics but have not been accessible experimentally to date. To perform such measurements it has been proposed to exploit the spin precession of channeled particles in bent crystals at the LHC. Progress that enables the first measurement of charm baryon dipole moments is reported. In particular, the design and characterization on beam of silicon and germanium bent crystal prototypes, the optimization of the experimental setup, and advanced analysis techniques are discussed. Sensitivity studies show that first measurements of Lambda(+)(c) and Xi(+)(c) baryon dipole moments can he performed in two years of data taking with an experimental setup positioned upstream of the LHCb detector.

Abstract: Solutions to the backreaction equation in 1 + 1-dimensional semiclassical electrodynamics are obtained and analyzed when considering a time-varying homogeneous electric field initially generated by a classical electric current, coupled to either a quantized scalar field or a quantized spin-1/2 field. Particle production by way of the Schwinger effect leads to backreaction effects that modulate the electric field strength. Details of the particle production process are investigated along with the transfer of energy between the electric field and the particles. The validity of the semiclassical approximation is also investigated using a criterion previously implemented for chaotic inflation and, in an earlier form, semiclassical gravity. The criterion states that the semiclassical approximation will break down if any linearized gauge-invariant quantity constructed from solutions to the linear response equation, with finite nonsingular data, grows rapidly for some period of time. Approximations to homogeneous solutions of the linear response equation are computed and it is found that the criterion is violated when the maximum value, E-max, obtained by the electric field is of the order of the critical scale for the Schwinger effect, E-max similar to E-crit m(2)/q, where m is the mass of the quantized field and q is its electric charge. For these approximate solutions the criterion appears to be satisfied in the extreme limits qE(max)/m(2) << 1 and qE(max)/m(2) >> 1.

Abstract: We present a comprehensive study of the quark sector of 2 + 1 flavor QCD, based on a self-consistent treatment of the coupled system of Schwinger-Dyson equations for the quark propagator and the full quark-gluon vertex in the one-loop dressed approximation. The individual form factors of the quark-gluon vertex are expressed in a special tensor basis obtained from a set of gauge-invariant operators. The sole external ingredient used as input to our equations is the Landau gauge gluon propagator with 2 + 1 dynamical quark flavors, obtained from studies with Schwinger-Dyson equations, the functional renormalization group approach, and large volume lattice simulations. The appropriate renormalization procedure required in order to self-consistently accommodate external inputs stemming from other functional approaches or the lattice is discussed in detail, and the value of the gauge coupling is accurately determined at two vastly separated renormalization group scales. Our analysis establishes a clear hierarchy among the vertex form factors. We identify only three dominant ones, in agreement with previous results. The components of the quark propagator obtained from our approach are in excellent agreement with the results from Schwinger-Dyson equations, the functional renormalization group, and lattice QCD simulation, a simple benchmark observable being the chiral condensate in the chiral limit, which is computed as (245 MeV)(3). The present approach has a wide range of applications, including the self-consistent computation of bound-state properties and finite temperature and density physics, which are briefly discussed.