Abstract: Recently, the Belle Collaboration reported the first measurements of the tau(-) -> nu(tau)pi(-) e(+) e(-) branching fraction and the spectrum of the pion-dielectron system. In an analysis previous to Belle's results, we evaluated this branching fraction which turned out to be compatible with that reported by Belle, although with a large uncertainty. This is the motivation to seek for improvement on our previous evaluation of tau(-) -> nu(tau)pi(-) l(+) l(-) decays (l = e, mu). In this paper we improve our calculation of the WP-gamma* vertex by including flavor-symmetry breaking effects in the framework of the resonance chiral theory. We impose QCD short-distance behavior to constrain most parameters and data on the pi(-) e(+) e(-) spectrum reported by the Belle Collaboration to fix the remaining free ones. As a result, improved predictions for the branching ratios and hadronic/leptonic spectra are reported, which are in good agreement with observations. Analogous calculations for the strangeness-changing tau(-) -> nu(tau) K- l(+) l(-) transitions are reported for the first time. Albeit one expects the m(pi mu+ mu- )spectrum to be measured in Belle-II and the observables with l = e can be improved, it is rather unlikely that the K channels can be measured due to the suppression factor vertical bar V-ud/V-us vertical bar(2) = 0.05.

Abstract: We establish improved upper limits on branching fractions for B-0 decays to final states where the decay products are purely invisible (i.e., no observable final state particles) and for final states where the only visible product is a photon. Within the Standard Model, these decays have branching fractions that are below the current experimental sensitivity, but various models of physics beyond the Standard Model predict significant contributions for these channels. Using 471 x 10(6) B (B) over bar pairs collected at the Upsilon(4S) resonance by the BABAR experiment at the PEP-II e(+)e(-) storage ring at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, we establish upper limits at the 90% confidence level of 2.4 x 10(-5) for the branching fraction of B-0 -> invisible and 1.7 x 10(-5) for the branching fraction of B-0 -> invisible + gamma.

Abstract: In this work, we use the results from Higgs searches in the gamma gamma and tau tau decay channels at LHC and indirect bounds as BR (B -> X-s gamma) to constrain the parameter space of a generic minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) Higgs sector. In particular, we include the latest CMS results that look for additional Higgs states with masses up to 1 TeV. We show that the tau tau channel is the best and most accurate tool in the hunt for new Higgs states beyond the standard model. We obtain that present experimental results rule out additional neutral Higgs bosons in a generic MSSM below 300 GeV for any value of tan beta and, for instance, values of tan beta above 30 are only possible for Higgs masses above 600 GeV. ATLAS stored data have the potential to render this bound obsolete in the near future.

Abstract: The low energy neutrino factory has been proposed as a very sensitive setup for future searches for CP violation and matter effects. Here we study how its performance is affected when the experimental specifications of the setup are varied. Most notably, we have considered the addition of the “platinum'' nu(mu) -> nu(e) channel. We find that, while theoretically the extra channel provides very useful complementary information and helps to lift degeneracies, its practical usefulness is lost when considering realistic background levels. Conversely, an increase in statistics in the ”golden'' nu(mu) -> nu(e) channel and, to some extent, an improvement in the energy resolution, lead to an important increase in the performance of the facility, given the rich energy dependence of the "golden'' channel at these energies. We show that a low energy neutrino factory with a baseline of 1300 km, muon energy of 4.5 GeV, and either a 20 kton totally active scintillating detector or 100 kton liquid argon detector, can have outstanding sensitivity to the neutrino oscillation parameters theta(13), delta, and the mass hierarchy. For our estimated exposure of 2: 8 x 10(23) kton x decays per muon polarity, the low energy neutrino factory has sensitivity to theta(13) and delta for sin(2)(2 theta(13)) > 10(-4) and to the mass hierarchy for sin(2)(2 theta(13)) > 10(-3)

Abstract: In the framework of effective field theories with prominent helicity-0 and helicity-1 fields coupled to each other via a dimension-3 operator, we study the dynamics of inflation driven by the helicity-0 mode, with a given potential energy, as well as the evolution of cosmological perturbations, influenced by the presence of a mixing term between both helicities. In this scenario, the temporal component of the helicity-1 mode is an auxiliary field and can be integrated out in terms of the time derivative of the helicity-0 mode, so that the background dynamics effectively reduces to that in single-field inflation modulated by a parameter beta associated to the coupling between helicity-0 and helicity-1 modes. We discuss the evolution of a longitudinal scalar perturbation psi and an inflaton fluctuation delta phi, and we explicitly show that a particular combination of these two, which corresponds to an isocurvature mode, is subject to exponential suppression by the vector mass comparable to the Hubble expansion rate during inflation. Furthermore, we find that the effective single-field description corrected by beta also holds for the power spectrum of curvature perturbations generated during inflation. We compute the standard inflationary observables such as the scalar spectral index n(s), and the tensorto-scalar ratio r and confront several inflaton potentials with the recent observational data provided by Planck 2018. Our results show that the coupling between helicity-0 and helicity-1 modes can lead to a smaller value of the tensor-to-scalar ratio especially for small-field inflationary models, so our scenario exhibits even better compatibility with the current observational data.