Abstract: The IceCube experiment has recently reported the observation of 28 high-energy (> 30 TeV) neutrino events, separated into 21 showers and 7 muon tracks, consistent with an extraterrestrial origin. In this Letter, we compute the compatibility of such an observation with possible combinations of neutrino flavors with relative proportion (alpha(e:)alpha(mu):alpha tau)(circle plus). Although the 7: 21 track-to-shower ratio is naively favored for the canonical (1:1:1)(circle plus) at Earth, this is not true once the atmospheric muon and neutrino backgrounds are properly accounted for. We find that, for an astrophysical neutrino E-2 energy spectrum, (1:1:1)(circle plus). at Earth is disfavored at 81% C. L. If this proportion does not change, 6 more years of data would be needed to exclude (1:1:1)(circle plus) at Earth at 3 sigma C.L. Indeed, with the recently released 3-yr data, that flavor composition is excluded at 92% C. L. The best fit is obtained for (1:0:0)(circle plus). at Earth, which cannot be achieved from any flavor ratio at sources with averaged oscillations during propagation. If confirmed, this result would suggest either a misunderstanding of the expected background events or a misidentification of tracks as showers, or even more compellingly, some exotic physics which deviates from the standard scenario.

Abstract: A measurement of event-plane correlations involving two or three event planes of different order is presented as a function of centrality for 7 μb(-1) Pb + Pb collision data at v root s(NN) = 2.76 TeV, recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Fourteen correlators are measured using a standard event-plane method and a scalar-product method, and the latter method is found to give a systematically larger correlation signal. Several different trends in the centrality dependence of these correlators are observed. These trends are not reproduced by predictions based on the Glauber model, which includes only the correlations from the collision geometry in the initial state. Calculations that include the final-state collective dynamics are able to describe qualitatively, and in some cases also quantitatively, the centrality dependence of the measured correlators. These observations suggest that both the fluctuations in the initial geometry and the nonlinear mixing between different harmonics in the final state are important for creating these correlations in momentum space.

Abstract: Evidence is presented for the baryonic B meson decay (B) over bar (0) -> (B) over bar (0)Lambda(Lambda) over bar based on a data sample of 471 x 10(6) B (B) over bar pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric e(+)e(-) collider located at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The branching fraction is determined to be B((B) over bar (0) -> (B) over bar (0)Lambda(Lambda) over bar) = (9.8(-2.6)(+2.9) +/- 1.9) x 10(-6), corresponding to a significance of 3.4 standard deviations including additive systematic uncertainties. A search for the related baryonic B meson decay (B) over bar (0) -> D-0 Sigma(0)(Lambda) over bar (0) with Sigma(0) -> Lambda gamma is performed and an upper limit B((B)over bar>(0) -> D-0 Sigma(0)(Lambda) over bar + (B)over bar>(0) -> D-0 Lambda(Sigma) over bar (0)) < 3.1 x 10(-5) is determined at 90% confidence level.

Abstract: A measurement of the B-s(0) -> J/psi phi decay parameters, updated to include flavor tagging is reported using 4.9 fb(-1) of integrated luminosity collected by the ATLAS detector from root s = 7 TeV pp collisions recorded in 2011 at the LHC. The values measured for the physical parameters are phi(s) = 0.12 +/- 0.25(stat) +/- 0.05(syst) rad Delta Gamma(s) = 0.053 +/- 0.021(stat) +/- 0.010(syst) ps(-1) Gamma(s) = 0.677 +/- 0.007(stat) +/- 0.004(syst) ps(-1) vertical bar A(parallel to)(0)vertical bar(2) = 0.220 +/- 0.008(stat) +/- 0.009(syst) vertical bar A(0)(0)vertical bar(2) = 0.529 +/- 0.006(stat) +/- 0.012(syst) delta(perpendicular to) = 3.89 +/- 0.47(stat) +/- 0.11(syst) rad where the parameter Delta Gamma(s) is constrained to be positive. The S-wave contribution was measured and found to be compatible with zero. Results for phi(s) and Delta Gamma(s) are also presented as 68% and 95% likelihood contours, which show agreement with the Standard Model expectations.

Abstract: Inflation is the leading theory to describe elegantly the initial conditions that led to structure formation in our Universe. In this paper, we present a novel phenomenological fit to the Planck, WMAP polarization (WP) and the BICEP2 data sets using an alternative parametrization. Instead of starting from inflationary potentials and computing the inflationary observables, we use a phenomenological parametrization due to Mukhanov, describing inflation by an effective equation of state, in terms of the number of e-folds and two phenomenological parameters alpha and beta. Within such a parametrization, which captures the different inflationary models in a model-independent way, the values of the scalar spectral index n(s), its running and the tensor-to-scalar ratio r are predicted, given a set of parameters (alpha, beta). We perform a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis of these parameters, and we show that the combined analysis of Planck and WP data favors the Starobinsky and Higgs inflation scenarios. Assuming that the BICEP2 signal is not entirely due to foregrounds, the addition of this last data set prefers instead the phi(2) chaotic models. The constraint we get from Planck and WP data alone on the derived tensor-to-scalar ratio is r < 0.18 at 95% C.L., value which is consistent with the one quoted from the BICEP2 Collaboration analysis, r = 0.16(-0.05)(+0-06), after foreground subtraction. This is not necessarily at odds with the 2 sigma tension found between Planck and BICEP2 measurements when analyzing data in terms of the usual n(s) and r parameters, given that the parametrization used here, for the preferred value n(s) similar or equal to 0.96, allows only for a restricted parameter space in the usual (n(s), r) plane.