Abstract: The MoEDAL experiment is designed to search for magnetic monopoles and other highly-ionising particles produced in high-energy collisions at the LHC. The largely passive MoEDAL detector, deployed at Interaction Point 8 on the LHC ring, relies on two dedicated direct detection techniques. The first technique is based on stacks of nuclear-track detectors with surface area similar to 18 m(2), sensitive to particle ionisation exceeding a high threshold. These detectors are analysed offline by optical scanning microscopes. The second technique is based on the trapping of charged particles in an array of roughly 800 kg of aluminium samples. These samples are monitored offline for the presence of trapped magnetic charge at a remote superconducting magnetometer facility. We present here the results of a search for magnetic monopoles using a 160 kg prototype MoEDAL trapping detector exposed to 8TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC, for an integrated luminosity of 0.75 fb(-1). No magnetic charge exceeding 0.5g(D) (where g(D) is the Dirac magnetic charge) is measured in any of the exposed samples, allowing limits to be placed on monopole production in the mass range 100 GeV <= m <= 3500 GeV. Model-independent cross-section limits are presented in fiducial regions of monopole energy and direction for 1g(D) <= vertical bar g vertical bar <= 6g(D), and model-dependent cross-section limits are obtained for Drell-Yan pair production of spin-1/2 and spin-0 monopoles for 1g(D) <= vertical bar g vertical bar <= 4g(D). Under the assumption of Drell-Yan cross sections, mass limits are derived for vertical bar g vertical bar = 2g(D) and vertical bar g vertical bar = 3g(D) for the first time at the LHC, surpassing the results from previous collider experiments.

Abstract: A search for the B-0 -> K+K- decay is performed using pp-collision data collected by LHCb. The data set corresponds to integrated luminosities of 1.0 and 2.0 fb(-1) at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, respectively. This decay is observed for the first time, with a significance of more than 5 standard deviations. The analysis also results in an improved measurement of the branching fraction for the B-s(0) -> pi(+)pi(-) decay. The measured branching fractions are B(B-0 -> K+K-) = (7.80 +/- 1.27 +/- 0.81 +/- 0.21) x 10(-8) and B(B-s(0) -> pi(+)p(-)) = (6.91 +/- 0.54 +/- 0.63 +/- 0.19 +/- 0.40) x 10(-7). The first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic, the third is due to the uncertainty on the B-0 -> K+pi(-) branching fraction used as a normalization. For the B-s(0) mode, the fourth accounts for the uncertainty on the ratio of the probabilities for b quarks to hadronize into B-s(0) and B-0 mesons.

Abstract: The hidden-charm pentaquark P-c(4450) observed recently by the LHCb collaboration may be of molecular nature, as advocated by some unitary approaches that also predict pentaquark partners in the strangeness S = -1 sector. In this work we argue that a hidden-charm strange pentaquark could be seen from the decay of the Lambda b, just as in the case of the non-strange P-c(4450), but looking into the J/psi eta Lambda decay mode and forming the invariant mass spectrum of J/psi Lambda pairs. In the model presented here, which assumes a standard weak decay topology and incorporates the hadronization process and final-state interaction effects, we find the J/psi eta Lambda final states to be populated with similar strength as the J/psi K- p states employed for the observation of the non-strange pentaquark. This makes the Lambda b -> J/psi eta Lambda decay to be an interesting process to observe a possible strange partner of the P-c(4450). We study the dependence of the J/psi Lambda mass spectra on various model ingredients and on the unknown properties of the strange pentaquark.

Abstract: An invertible field transformation is such that the old field variables correspond one-to-one to the new variables. As such, one may think that two systems that are related by an invertible transformation are physically equivalent. However, if the transformation depends on field derivatives, the equivalence between the two systems is nontrivial due to the appearance of higher derivative terms in the equations of motion. To address this problem, we prove the following theorem on the relation between an invertible transformation and Euler-Lagrange equations: If the field transformation is invertible, then any solution of the original set of Euler-Lagrange equations is mapped to a solution of the new set of Euler-Lagrange equations, and vice versa. We also present applications of the theorem to scalar-tensor theories.

Abstract: Recent experiments on eta -> 3 pi decays have provided an extremely precise knowledge of the amplitudes across the Dalitz region which represent stringent constraints on theoretical descriptions. We reconsider an approach in which the low-energy chiral expansion is assumed to be optimally convergent in an unphysical region surrounding the Adler zero, and the amplitude in the physical region is uniquely deduced by an analyticity-based extrapolation using the Khuri-Treiman dispersive formalism. We present an extension of the usual formalism which implements the leading inelastic effects from the K (K) over bar channel in the final-state pi pi interaction as well as in the initial-state eta pi interaction. The constructed amplitude has an enlarged region of validity and accounts in a realistic way for the influence of the two light scalar resonances f(0)(980) and a(0)(980) in the dispersive integrals. It is shown that the effect of these resonances in the low-energy region of the eta -> 3 pi decay is not negligible, in particular for the 3 pi(0) mode, and improves the description of the energy variation across the Dalitz plot. Some remarks are made on the scale dependence and the value of the double quark mass ratio Q.