Abstract: We analyze the impact of QCD corrections on limits derived from neutrinoless double beta decay (0 nu beta beta ). As demonstrated previously, the effect of the color mismatch arising from loops with gluons linking the quarks from different color-singlet currents participating in the effective operators has a dramatic impact on the predictions for some particular Wilson coefficients. Here, we consider all possible contributions from heavy particle exchange, i.e. the so-called short-range mechanism of 0 nu beta beta decay. All high-scale models (HSM) in this class match at some scale around a similar to few TeV with the corresponding effective theory, containing a certain set of effective dimension-9 operators. Many of these HSM receive contributions from more than one of the basic operators and we calculate limits on these models using the latest experimental data. We also show with one nontrivial example, how to derive limits on more complicated models, in which many different Feynman diagrams contribute to 0 nu beta beta decay, using our general method.

Abstract: A measurement of the production cross section for two isolated photons in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of root s = 8 TeV is presented. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 20.2 fb(-1) recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The measurement considers photons with pseudorapidities satisfying vertical bar eta(gamma)vertical bar< 1.37 or 1.56 <vertical bar eta(gamma)vertical bar< 2.37 and transverse energies of respectively E-T,1(gamma) > 40 GeV and E-T,2(gamma) > 30 GeV for the two leading photons ordered in transverse energy produced in the interaction. The background due to hadronic jets and electrons is subtracted using data-driven techniques. The fiducial cross sections are corrected for detector effects and measured differentially as a function of six kinematic observables. The measured cross section integrated within the fiducial volume is 16.8 +/- 0.8 pb. The data are compared to fixed-order QCD calculations at next-to-leading-order and next-to-next-to-leading-order accuracy as well as next-to-leading-order computations including resummation of initial-state gluon radiation at next-to-next-to-leading logarithm or matched to a parton shower, with relative uncertainties varying from 5% to 20%.

Abstract: We study the single electron spectra from D- and B-meson semileptonic decays in Au + Au collisions at root s(NN) = 200, 62.4, and 19.2 GeV by employing the parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) transport approach that has been shown to reasonably describe the charm dynamics at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and Large Hadron Collider energies on a microscopic level. In this approach the initial charm and bottom quarks are produced by using the PYTHIA event generator which is tuned to reproduce the fixed-order next-to-leading logarithm calculations for charm and bottom production. The produced charm and bottom quarks interact with off-shell (massive) partons in the quark-gluon plasma with scattering cross sections which are calculated in the dynamical quasiparticle model that is matched to reproduce the equation of state of the partonic system above the deconfinement temperature T-c. At energy densities close to the critical energy density (approximate to 0.5 GeV/fm(3)) the charm and bottom quarks are hadronized intoD and B mesons through either coalescence or fragmentation. After hadronization the D and B mesons interact with the light hadrons by employing the scattering cross sections from an effective Lagrangian. The final D and B mesons then produce single electrons through semileptonic decay. We find that the PHSD approach well describes the nuclear modification factor R-AA and elliptic flow upsilon(2) of single electrons in d + Au and Au + Au collisions at root s(NN) = 200 GeV and the elliptic flow in Au + Au reactions at root s(NN) = 62.4 GeV from the PHENIX Collaboration, however, the large RAA at root s(NN) = 62.4 GeV is not described at all. Furthermore, we make predictions for the RAA of D mesons and of single electrons at the lower energy of root s(NN) = 19.2 GeV. Additionally, the medium modification of the azimuthal angle phi between a heavy quark and a heavy antiquark is studied. We find that the transverse flow enhances the azimuthal angular distributions close to phi = 0 because the heavy flavors strongly interact with nuclear medium in relativistic heavy-ion collisions and almost flow with the bulk matter.

Abstract: Heavy vectorlike quarks with electric charge Q = 2/3 (also called heavy tops) appear naturally in many extensions of the Standard Model. Although these typically predict the existence of further particles below the TeV scale, direct searches for heavy tops have been performed assuming that they decay only into SM particles. The aim of this paper is to overcome this situation. We consider the most constraining experimental LHC searches for vectorlike quarks, including analyses of the 36 fb(-1) of data collected in the latest run at 13 TeV of center of mass energy, as well as searches sensitive to heavy tops decaying into a new scalar, S. Combining all these, we derive bounds for arbitrary values of the heavy top branching ratios. A simple code that automatizes this process is also provided. At the physics level, we demonstrate that bounds on heavy tops are not inevitably weaker in the presence of new light scalars. We find that heavy tops with masses below similar to 900 GeV are excluded by direct searches, independently of whether they decay into Zt, Ht, Wb or St (with S giving either missing energy of bottom quarks) or into any combination of them.

Abstract: The B+ -> D*K--(+)pi(+) decay potentially provides an excellent way to investigate charm meson spectroscopy. The decay is searched for in a sample of proton-proton collision data collected with the LHCb detector at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3 fb(-1). A clear signal is observed, and the ratio of its branching fraction to that of the B+ -> D*(-)pi(+)pi(+) normalization channel is measured to be beta(B+ -> D*K--(+)pi(+))/beta(B+ -> D*(-)pi(+)pi(+)) = (6.39 +/- 0.27 +/- 0.48) x 10(-2); where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. This is the first observation of the B+ -> D*K--(+)pi(+) decay.