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Cirigliano, V., Falkowski, A., Gonzalez-Alonso, M., & Rodriguez-Sanchez, A. (2019). Hadronic tau Decays as New Physics Probes in the LHC Era. Phys. Rev. Lett., 122(22), 221801–7pp.
Abstract: We analyze the sensitivity of hadronic tau decays to nonstandard interactions within the model-independent framework of the standard model effective field theory. Both exclusive and inclusive decays are studied, using the latest lattice data and QCD dispersion relations. We show that there are enough theoretically clean channels to disentangle all the effective couplings contributing to these decays, with the tau -> pi pi nu(tau) channel representing an unexpected powerful new physics probe. We find that the ratios of nonstandard couplings to the Fermi constant are bound at the subpercent level. These bounds are complementary to the ones from electroweak precision observables and pp -> tau nu(tau) measurements at the LHC. The combination of tau decay and LHC data puts tighter constraints on lepton universality violation in the gauge boson-lepton vertex corrections.
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Morales, A. I., Algora, A., Molina, F., & Rubio, B. (2014). Half-Life Systematics across the N=126 Shell Closure: Role of First-Forbidden Transitions in the beta Decay of Heavy Neutron-Rich Nuclei. Phys. Rev. Lett., 113(2), 022702–5pp.
Abstract: This Letter reports on a systematic study of beta-decay half-lives of neutron-rich nuclei around doubly magic Pb-208. The lifetimes of the 126-neutron shell isotone Pt-204 and the neighboring Ir200-202, Pt-203, Au-204 are presented together with other 19 half-lives measured during the “stopped beam” campaign of the rare isotope investigations at GSI collaboration. The results constrain the main nuclear theories used in calculations of r-process nucleosynthesis. Predictions based on a statistical macroscopic description of the first-forbidden beta strength reveal significant deviations for most of the nuclei with N < 126. In contrast, theories including a fully microscopic treatment of allowed and first-forbidden transitions reproduce more satisfactorily the trend in the measured half-lives for the nuclei in this region, where the r-process pathway passes through during beta decay back to stability.
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Agullo, I., Navarro-Salas, J., Olmo, G. J., & Parker, L. (2010). Hawking Radiation by Kerr Black Holes and Conformal Symmetry. Phys. Rev. Lett., 105(21), 211305–4pp.
Abstract: The exponential blueshift associated with the event horizon of a black hole makes conformal symmetry play a fundamental role in accounting for its thermal properties. Using a derivation based on two-point functions, we show that the full spectrum of thermal radiation of scalar particles by Kerr black holes can be explicitly derived on the basis of a conformal symmetry arising in the wave equation near the horizon. The simplicity of our approach emphasizes the depth of the connection between conformal symmetry and black hole radiance.
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Gessner, M., & Smerzi, A. (2023). Hierarchies of Frequentist Bounds for Quantum Metrology: From Cramer-Rao to Barankin. Phys. Rev. Lett., 130(26), 260801–6pp.
Abstract: We derive lower bounds on the variance of estimators in quantum metrology by choosing test observables that define constraints on the unbiasedness of the estimator. The quantum bounds are obtained by analytical optimization over all possible quantum measurements and estimators that satisfy the given constraints. We obtain hierarchies of increasingly tight bounds that include the quantum Cramer-Rao bound at the lowest order. In the opposite limit, the quantum Barankin bound is the variance of the locally best unbiased estimator in quantum metrology. Our results reveal generalizations of the quantum Fisher information that are able to avoid regularity conditions and identify threshold behavior in quantum measurements with mixed states, caused by finite data.
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Zanon, I. et al, Domingo-Pardo, C., & Gadea, A. (2023). High-Precision Spectroscopy of O-20 Benchmarking Ab Initio Calculations in Light Nuclei. Phys. Rev. Lett., 131(26), 262501–7pp.
Abstract: The excited states of unstable O-20 were investigated via.-ray spectroscopy following the O-19(d, p)O-20 reaction at 8 AMeV. By exploiting the Doppler shift attenuation method, the lifetimes of the 2(2)(+) and 3(1)(+) states were firmly established. From the gamma-ray branching and E2/M1 mixing ratios for transitions deexciting the 2(2)(+) and 3(1)(+) states, the B(E2) and B(M1) were determined. Various chiral effective field theory Hamiltonians, describing the nuclear properties beyond ground states, along with a standard USDB interaction, were compared with the experimentally obtained data. Such a comparison for a large set of gamma-ray transition probabilities with the valence space in medium similarity renormalization group ab initio calculations was performed for the first time in a nucleus far from stability. It was shown that the ab initio approaches using chiral effective field theory forces are challenged by detailed high-precision spectroscopic properties of nuclei. The reduced transition probabilities were found to be a very constraining test of the performance of the ab initio models.
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