Abstract: Building on the legacy of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-I and II), SDSS-III is a program of four spectroscopic surveys on three scientific themes: dark energy and cosmological parameters, the history and structure of the Milky Way, and the population of giant planets around other stars. In keeping with SDSS tradition, SDSS-III will provide regular public releases of all its data, beginning with SDSS Data Release 8 (DR8), which was made public in 2011 January and includes SDSS-I and SDSS-II images and spectra reprocessed with the latest pipelines and calibrations produced for the SDSS-III investigations. This paper presents an overview of the four surveys that comprise SDSS-III. The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey will measure redshifts of 1.5 million massive galaxies and Ly alpha forest spectra of 150,000 quasars, using the baryon acoustic oscillation feature of large-scale structure to obtain percent-level determinations of the distance scale and Hubble expansion rate at z < 0.7 and at z approximate to 2.5. SEGUE-2, an already completed SDSS-III survey that is the continuation of the SDSS-II Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE), measured medium-resolution (R = lambda/lambda Delta approximate to 1800) optical spectra of 118,000 stars in a variety of target categories, probing chemical evolution, stellar kinematics and substructure, and the mass profile of the dark matter halo from the solar neighborhood to distances of 100 kpc. APOGEE, the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment, will obtain high-resolution (R approximate to 30,000), high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N >= 100 per resolution element), H-band (1.51 μm < lambda < 1.70 μm) spectra of 105 evolved, late-type stars, measuring separate abundances for similar to 15 elements per star and creating the first high-precision spectroscopic survey of all Galactic stellar populations (bulge, bar, disks, halo) with a uniform set of stellar tracers and spectral diagnostics. The Multi-object APO Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey (MARVELS) will monitor radial velocities of more than 8000 FGK stars with the sensitivity and cadence (10-40 ms(-1), similar to 24 visits per star) needed to detect giant planets with periods up to two years, providing an unprecedented data set for understanding the formation and dynamical evolution of giant planet systems. As of 2011 January, SDSS-III has obtained spectra of more than 240,000 galaxies, 29,000 z >= 2.2 quasars, and 140,000 stars, including 74,000 velocity measurements of 2580 stars for MARVELS.

Abstract: We study a model based on the dihedral group D(4) in which the dark matter is stabilized by the interplay between a remnant Z(2) symmetry, of the same spontaneously broken non-abelian group, and an auxiliary Z(2)(f) introduced to eliminate unwanted couplings in the scalar potential. In the lepton sector the model is compatible with normal hierarchy only and predicts a vanishing reactor mixing angle, theta(13) = 0. Since m(nu 1) = 0, we also have a simple prediction for the effective mass in terms of the solar angle: vertical bar m(beta beta)vertical bar = vertical bar m(nu 2)vertical bar sin(2)theta circle dot similar to 10(-3) eV. There also exists a large portion of the model parameter space where the upper bounds on lepton flavor violating processes are not violated. We incorporate quarks in the same scheme finding that a description of the CKM mixing matrix is possible and that semileptonic K and D decays mediated by flavor changing neutral currents are under control.

Abstract: A search for neutral Higgs bosons decaying to pairs of tau leptons with the ATLAS detector at the LHC is presented. The analysis is based on proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, recorded in 2010 and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb(-1). After signal selection, 276 events are observed in this data sample. The observed number of events is consistent with the total expected background of 269 +/- 36 events. Exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level are derived for the production cross section of a generic Higgs boson phi as a function of the Higgs boson mass and for A/H/h production in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) as a function of the parameters m(A) and tan beta.

Abstract: This Letter reports on a search for narrow high-mass resonances decaying into dilepton final states. The data were recorded by the ATLAS experiment in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the Large Hadron Collider and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 1.08 (1.21) fb(-1) in the e(+)e(-) (mu(+)mu(-)) channel. No statistically significant excess above the standard model expectation is observed and upper limits are set at the 95% C. L. on the cross section times branching fraction of Z' resonances and Randall-Sundrum gravitons decaying into dileptons as a function of the resonance mass. A lower mass limit of 1.83 TeV on the sequential standard model Z' boson is set. A Randall-Sundrum graviton with coupling k/(M) over bar Pl = 0.1 is excluded at 95% C. L. for masses below 1.63 TeV.

Abstract: This Letter presents the first search for a heavy particle decaying into an e(+/-)mu(-/+) final state in root s = 7 TeV pp collisions at the LHC. The data were recorded by the ATLAS detector during 2010 and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 35 pb(-1). No excess above the standard model background expectation is observed. Exclusions at 95% confidence level are placed on two representative models. In an R-parity violating supersymmetric model, tau sneutrinos with a mass below 0.75 TeV are excluded, assuming all R-parity violating couplings are zero except lambda(311)' = 0.11 and lambda(312) = 0.07. In a lepton flavor violating model, a Z'-like vector boson with masses of 0.70-1.00 TeV and corresponding cross sections times branching ratios of 0.175-0.183 pb is excluded. These results extend to higher mass R-parity violating sneutrinos and lepton flavor violating Z's than previous constraints from the Tevatron.