Abstract: Total absorption spectroscopy is used to investigate the beta-decay intensity to states above the neutron separation energy followed by gamma-ray emission in Br-87,Br-88 and Rb-94. Accurate results are obtained thanks to a careful control of systematic errors. An unexpectedly large. intensity is observed in all three cases extending well beyond the excitation energy region where neutron penetration is hindered by low neutron energy. The gamma branching as a function of excitation energy is compared to Hauser-Feshbach model calculations. For Br-87 and Br-88 the gamma branching reaches 57% and 20%, respectively, and could be explained as a nuclear structure effect. Some of the states populated in the daughter can only decay through the emission of a large orbital angular momentum neutron with a strongly reduced barrier penetrability. In the case of neutron-rich Rb-94 the observed 4.5% branching is much larger than the calculations performed with standard nuclear statistical model parameters, even after proper correction for fluctuation effects on individual transition widths. The difference can be reconciled by introducing an enhancement of 1 order of magnitude in the photon strength to neutron strength ratio. An increase in the photon strength function of such magnitude for very neutron-rich nuclei, if it proves to be correct, leads to a similar increase in the (n, gamma) cross section that would have an impact on r process abundance calculations.

Abstract: The source-free Maxwell action is invariant under electric-magnetic duality rotations in arbitrary spacetimes. This leads to a conserved classical Noether charge. We show that this conservation law is broken at the quantum level in the presence of a background classical gravitational field with a nontrivial Chern-Pontryagin invariant, in parallel with the chiral anomaly for massless Dirac fermions. Among the physical consequences, the net polarization of the quantum electromagnetic field is not conserved.

Abstract: We prove that, in any flavor transition, neutrino oscillation CP-violating asymmetries in matter have two disentangled components: (i) a CPT-odd T-invariant term, non-vanishing iff there are interactions with matter, and (ii) a T-odd CPT-invariant term, non-vanishing iff there is genuine CP violation. As function of the baseline, these two terms are distinct L-even and L-odd observables to separately test (i) matter effects sensitive to the neutrino hierarchy and (ii) genuine CP violation in the neutrino sector. For the golden nu(mu) -> nu(e) channel, the different energy distributions of the two components provide a signature of their separation. At long baselines, they show oscillations in the low and medium energy regions, with zeros at different positions and peculiar behavior around the zeros. We discover a magic energy E = (0.91 +/- 0.01) GeV at L = 1300 km with vanishing CPT-odd component and maximal genuine CP asymmetry proportional to sin delta, with delta the weak CP phase. For energies above 1.5 GeV, the sign of the CP asymmetry discriminates the neutrino hierarchy.

Abstract: This Letter describes a search for narrowly resonant new physics using a machine -learning anomaly detection procedure that does not rely on signal simulations for developing the analysis selection. Weakly supervised learning is used to train classifiers directly on data to enhance potential signals. The targeted topology is dijet events and the features used for machine learning are the masses of the two jets. The resulting analysis is essentially a three-dimensional search A -> BC, for m(A) similar to O(TeV), m(B), m(C) similar to O(100 GeV) and B, C are reconstructed as large-radius jets, without paying a penalty associated with a large trials factor in the scan of the masses of the two jets. The full run 2 root s = 13 TeV pp collision dataset of 139 fb(-1) recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is used for the search. There is no significant evidence of a localized excess in the dijet invariant mass spectrum between 1.8 and 8.2 TeV, Cross-section limits for narrow -width A, B, and C particles vary with m(A), m(B), and m(C). For example, when m(A) = 3 TeV and m(B) greater than or similar to 200 GeV, a production cross section between 1 and 5 fb is excluded at 95% confidence level, depending on m(C). For certain masses, these limits are up to 10 times more sensitive than those obtained by the inclusive dijet search. These results are complementary to the dedicated searches for the case that B and C are standard model bosons.

Abstract: The quantum numbers of the X(3872) meson are determined to be J(PC) = 1(++) based on angular correlations in B+ -> X(3872)K+ decays, where X(3872) -> pi(+) pi(-) j/psi and J/psi -> pi(+) mu(-). The data correspond to 1.0 fb(-1) of pp collisions collected by the LHCb detector. The only alternative assignment allowed by previous measurements J(PC) = 2(-+) is rejected with a confidence level equivalent to more than 8 Gaussian standard deviations using a likelihood-ratio test in the full angular phase space. This result favors exotic explanations of the X(3872) state.