Abstract: We have revisited glueball mixing with the pseudoscalar mesons in the MIT bag model scheme. The calculation has been performed in the spherical cavity approximation to the bag using two different fermion propagators, the cavity and the free propagators. We obtain probabilities of mixing for the eta at the level of 0.006%-2.0%, while for the eta' one at the level of 0.6%-40%, depending on the choice of bag radius and, therefore, of the strong coupling constant. Our results differ from previous calculations. The origin of our difference stems from the treatment of the time integrations. The comparison of our calculation with experimental data, which is consistent with small eta – eta' – G mixing, implies that the pseudoscalar glueball is small, R similar to 0.5-0.6 fm and has a large mass, M-G similar to 2000-2500 MeV.

Abstract: In a sample of 467 x 10(6) B (B) over bar pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP- II collider at SLAC we have observed the decay (B) over bar (0) -> Lambda(+)(c)(p) over bar pi(0) and measured the branching fraction to be (1.94 +/- 0.17 +/- 0.14 +/- 0.50 x 10(-4), where the uncertainties are statistical, systematic, and the uncertainty on the Lambda(+)(c) -> pK(-)pi(+) branching fraction, respectively. We determine an upper limit of 1.5 x 10(-6) at 90% C.L. for the product branching fraction B((B) over bar (0) -> Sigma(+)(c) (2455)(p) over bar) x B(Lambda(+)(c) -> pK(-) pi(+)). Furthermore, we observe an enhancement at the threshold of the invariant mass of the baryon- antibaryon pair.

Abstract: We present an efficient method of reconstructing the parameters of the constrained MSSM from assumed future LHC data, applied both on their own right and in combination with the cosmological determination of the relic dark matter abundance. Focusing on the ATLAS SU3 benchmark point, we demonstrate that our simple Gaussian approximation can recover the values of its parameters remarkably well. We examine two popular noninformative priors and obtain very similar results, although when we use an informative, naturalness-motivated prior, we find some sizeable differences. We show that a further strong improvement in reconstructing the SU3 parameters can by achieved by applying additional information about the relic abundance at the level of WMAP accuracy, although the expected data from Planck will have only a very limited additional impact. Further external data may be required to break some remaining degeneracies. We argue that the method presented here is applicable to a wide class of low-energy effective supersymmetric models, as it does not require one to deal with purely experimental issues, e.g., detector performance, and has the additional advantages of computational efficiency. Furthermore, our approach allows one to distinguish the effect of the model's internal structure and of the external data on the final parameters constraints.

Abstract: Dark matter (DM) is currently searched for with a variety of detection strategies. Accelerator searches are particularly promising, but even if weakly interacting massive particles are found at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), it will be difficult to prove that they constitute the bulk of the DM in the Universe Omega(DM). We show that a significantly better reconstruction of the DM properties can be obtained with a combined analysis of LHC and direct detection data, by making a simple Ansatz on the weakly interacting massive particles local density rho(0)((chi) over bar1), i.e., by assuming that the local density scales with the cosmological relic abundance, (rho(0)((chi) over bar1)/rho(DM)) = (Omega(0)((chi) over bar1)/Omega(DM)). We demonstrate this method in an explicit example in the context of a 24-parameter supersymmetric model, with a neutralino lightest supersymmetric particle in the stau coannihilation region. Our results show that future ton-scale direct detection experiments will allow to break degeneracies in the supersymmetric parameter space and achieve a significantly better reconstruction of the neutralino composition and its relic density than with LHC data alone.

Abstract: We calculate the scattering lengths of Nambu-Goldstone bosons interacting with D mesons in a covariant formulation of chiral perturbation theory, which satisfies heavy-quark spin symmetry and analytical properties of loop amplitudes. We compare our results with previous studies performed using heavy-meson chiral perturbation theory and show that recoil corrections are sizable in most cases.