Abstract: Context. Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) are imprinted in the density field by acoustic waves travelling in the plasma of the early universe. Their fixed scale can be used as a standard ruler to study the geometry of the universe. Aims. The BAO have been previously detected using correlation functions and power spectra of the galaxy distribution. We present a new method to detect the real-space structures associated with BAO. These baryon acoustic structures are spherical shells of relatively small density contrast, surrounding high density central regions. Methods. We design a specific wavelet adapted to search for shells, and exploit the physics of the process by making use of two different mass tracers, introducing a specific statistic to detect the BAO features. We show the effect of the BAO signal in this new statistic when applied to the Lambda – cold dark matter (Lambda CDM) model, using an analytical approximation to the transfer function. We confirm the reliability and stability of our method by using cosmological N-body simulations from the MareNostrum Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai (MICE). Results. We apply our method to the detection of BAO in a galaxy sample drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We use the “main” catalogue to trace the shells, and the luminous red galaxies (LRG) as tracers of the high density central regions. Using this new method, we detect, with a high significance, that the LRG in our sample are preferentially located close to the centres of shell-like structures in the density field, with characteristics similar to those expected from BAO. We show that stacking selected shells, we can find their characteristic density profile. Conclusions. We delineate a new feature of the cosmic web, the BAO shells. As these are real spatial structures, the BAO phenomenon can be studied in detail by examining those shells.

Abstract: A search is presented for production of a heavy up-type quark (t') together with its antiparticle, assuming subsequent decay to a W boson and a b quark, t'(t) over bar' -> W(+)bW(-)(b) over bar. The search is based on 1.04 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions at root s = 7 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Data are analyzed in the lepton + jets final state, characterized by a high transverse momentum isolated electron or muon, high missing transverse momentum, and at least three jets. No significant excess of events above the background expectation is observed. A 95% C.L. lower limit of 404 GeV is set for the mass of the t' quark.

Abstract: Lepton flavor violation has been observed in neutrino oscillations. For charged lepton flavor violation decays only upper limits are known, but sizable branching ratios are expected in many neutrino mass models. High-scale models, such as the classical supersymmetric seesaw, usually predict that decays l(i) -> 3l(j) are roughly a factor alpha smaller than the corresponding decays l(i) -> l(j)gamma. Here we demonstrate that the Z(0)-penguin diagram can give an enhancement for decays l(i) -> 3l(j) in many extensions of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). We first discuss why the Z(0)-penguin is not dominant in the MSSM with seesaw and show that much larger contributions from the Z(0)-penguin are expected in general. We then demonstrate the effect numerically in two example models, namely, the supersymmetric inverse seesaw and R-parity violating supersymmetry.