Abstract: Severe space weather produced by disturbed conditions on the Sun results in harmful effects both for humans in space and in high-latitude flights, and for technological systems such as spacecraft or communications. Also, geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) flowing on long ground-based conductors, such as power networks, potentially threaten critical infrastructures on Earth. The first step in developing an alarm system against GICs is to forecast them. This is a challenging task given the highly non-linear dependencies of the response of the magnetosphere to these perturbations. In the last few years, modern machine-learning models have shown to be very good at predicting magnetic activity indices. However, such complex models are on the one hand difficult to tune, and on the other hand they are known to bring along potentially large prediction uncertainties which are generally difficult to estimate. In this work we aim at predicting the SYM-H index characterizing geomagnetic storms multiple-hour ahead, using public interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) data from the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point and SYM-H data. We implement a type of machine-learning model called long short-term memory (LSTM) network. Our scope is to estimate the prediction uncertainties coming from a deep-learning model in the context of forecasting the SYM-H index. These uncertainties will be essential to set reliable alarm thresholds. The resulting uncertainties turn out to be sizable at the critical stages of the geomagnetic storms. Our methodology includes as well an efficient optimization of important hyper-parameters of the LSTM network and robustness tests.

Abstract: We analyze the long time behavior of a discrete time quantum walk subject to decoherence with a strong spatial dependence, acting on one half of the lattice. We show that, except for limiting cases on the decoherence parameter, the quantum walk at late times behaves sub-ballistically, meaning that the characteristic features of the quantum walk are not completely spoiled. Contrarily to expectations, the asymptotic behavior is non Markovian, and depends on the amount of decoherence. This feature can be clearly shown on the long time value of the Generalized Chiral Distribution (GCD).

Abstract: The violation of CP symmetry between matter and antimatter in the neutral K and B meson systems is well established, with a high degree of consistency between all available experimental measurements and with the Standard Model of particle physics. On the basis of the up-to-now-unbroken CPT symmetry, the violation of CP symmetry strongly suggests that the behavior of these particles under weak interactions must also be asymmetric under time reversal T. Many searches for T violation have been performed and proposed using different observables and experimental approaches. These include T-odd observables, such as triple products in weak decays, and genuine observables, such as permanent electric dipole moments of nondegenerate stationary states and the breaking of the reciprocity relation. We discuss the conceptual basis of the required exchange of initial and final states with unstable particles, using quantum entanglement and the decay as a filtering measurement, for the case of neutral B and K mesons. Using this method, the BaBar experiment at SLAC has clearly observed T violation in B mesons.

Abstract: The product of the A(b)(0) ((B) over bar (0)) differential production cross-section and the branching fraction of the decay A(b)(0)-> J/psi pK(-) ((B) over bar (0)-> J/psi p (K) over bar*(892)(0)) is measured as a function of the beauty hadron transverse momentum, p(T), and rapidity, y. The kinematic region of the measurements is p(T) <20 GeV/c and 2.0 < y < 4.5. The measurements use a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3fb(-1) collected by the LHCb detector in pp collisions at centre-of-mass energies root s=7 TeV in 2011 and root s=8 TeV in 2012. Based on previous LHCb results of the fragmentation fraction ratio, f(Ab0)/f(d), the branching fraction of the decay A(b)(0)-> J/psi pK(-) is measured to be B(A(b)(0)-> J/psi pK(-))=(3.17 +/- 0.04 +/- 0.07 +/- 0.34(-0.28)(+0.45))x10(-4) where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic, the third is due to the uncertainty on the branching fraction of the decay (B) over bar (0)-> J/psi p (K) over bar*(892)(0), and the fourth is due to the knowledge of f(Ab0)/f(d). The sum of the asymmetries in the production and decay between A(b)(0) and (A) over bar (0)(b) is also measured as a function of p(T) and y. The previously published branching fraction of A(b)(0)-> J/psi p pi(-), relative to that of A(b)(0)-> J/psi pK(-), is updated. The branching fractions of A(b)(0)-> P-c(+)(-> J/psi p)K- are determined.

Abstract: We examine in detail a recent work (D. Gulmez, U. G. Meibner and J. A. Oller, Eur. Phys. J. C, 77: 460 (2017)), where improvements to make rho rho scattering relativistically covariant are made. The paper has the remarkable conclusion that the J=2 state disappears with a potential which is much more attractive than for J=0, where a bound state is found. We trace this abnormal conclusion to the fact that an “on-shell” factorization of the potential is done in a region where this potential is singular and develops a large discontinuous and unphysical imaginary part. A method is developed, evaluating the loops with full rho propagators, and we show that they do not develop singularities and do not have an imaginary part below threshold. With this result for the loops we define an effective potential, which when used with the Bethe-Salpeter equation provides a state with J=2 around the energy of the f(2)(1270). In addition, the coupling of the state to is evaluated and we find that this coupling and the T matrix around the energy of the bound state are remarkably similar to those obtained with a drastic approximation used previously, in which the q(2) terms of the propagators of the exchanged rho mesons are dropped, once the cut-off in the rho rho loop function is tuned to reproduce the bound state at the same energy.