Abstract: Chiral potentials are derived for the interactions between Goldstone bosons and pseudo-scalar charmed mesons up to next-to-next-to-leading order in a covariant chiral effective field theory with explicit vector charmed-meson degrees of freedom. Using the extended-on-mass-shell scheme, we demonstrate that the ultraviolet divergences and the so-called power counting breaking terms can be properly absorbed by the low-energy constants of the chiral Lagrangians. We calculate the scattering lengths by unitarizing the one-loop potentials and fit them to the data extracted from lattice QCD. The obtained results are compared to the ones without an explicit contribution of vector charmed mesons given previously. It is found that the difference is negligible for 5-wave scattering in the threshold region. This validates the use of D-*-less one-loop potentials in the study of the pertinent scattering lengths. We search for dynamically generated open-charm states with J(P) = 0(+) as poles of the 5-matrix on various Riemann sheets. The trajectories of those poles for varying pion masses are presented as well.

Abstract: High-precision measurements by the ATLAS Collaboration are presented of inclusive W+ -> l(+) nu, W- -> l(-) (nu) over bar and Z/gamma* -> ll (l = e, mu) Drell-Yan production cross sections at the LHC. The data were collected in proton-proton collisions at root s = 7 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 4.6 fb(-1). Differential W+ and W- cross sections are measured in a lepton pseudorapidity range vertical bar eta(l)vertical bar < 2.5. Differential Z/gamma* cross sections are measured as a function of the absolute dilepton rapidity, for vertical bar y(ll)vertical bar < 3.6, for three intervals of dilepton mass, m(ll), extending from 46 to 150 GeV. The integrated and differential electron- and muon-channel cross sections are combined and compared to theoretical predictions using recent sets of parton distribution functions. The data, together with the final inclusive e(+/-) p scattering cross-section data from H1 and ZEUS, are interpreted in a next-to-next-to-leading-order QCD analysis, and a new set of parton distribution functions, ATLAS-epWZ16, is obtained. The ratio of strange-to-light sea-quark densities in the proton is determined more accurately than in previous determinations based on collider data only, and is established to be close to unity in the sensitivity range of the data. A new measurement of the CKM matrix element vertical bar V-cs vertical bar is also provided.

Abstract: Wormholes are hypothetical shortcuts in space-time that in general relativity unavoidably violate all of the pointwise energy conditions. In this paper, we consider several wormhole spacetimes that, as opposed to the standard designer procedure frequently employed in the literature, arise directly from gravitational actions including additional terms resulting from contractions of the Ricci tensor with the metric, and which are formulated assuming independence between metric and connection (Palatini approach). We reinterpret such wormhole solutions under the prism of General Relativity and study the matter sources that thread them. We discuss the size of violation of the energy conditions in different cases and how this is related to the same spacetimes when viewed from the modified gravity side.

Abstract: The combination charge conjugation-parity-time reversal (CPT) is a fundamental symmetry in our current understanding of nature. As such, testing CPT violation is a strongly motivated path to explore new physics. In this paper we study CPT violation in the neutrino sector, giving for the first time a bound, for a fundamental particle, in the CPT violating particle-antiparticle gravitational mass difference. We argue that cosmology is nowadays the only data sensitive to CPT violation for the neutrino-antineutrino mass splitting and we use the latest data release from Planck combined with the current baryonic-acoustic-oscillation measurement to perform a full cosmological analysis. To show the potential of the future experiments we also show the results for Euclid, a next generation large scale structure experiment.

Abstract: This paper presents single lepton and dilepton kinematic distributions measured in dileptonic t(t)over-bar events produced in 20.2 fb(-1) of root s = 8 TeV pp collisions recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. Both absolute and normalised differential cross-sections are measured, using events with an opposite-charge e μpair and one or two b-tagged jets. The cross-sections are measured in a fiducial region corresponding to the detector acceptance for leptons, and are compared to the predictions from a variety of Monte Carlo event generators, as well as fixed-order QCD calculations, exploring the sensitivity of the cross-sections to the gluon parton distribution function. Some of the distributions are also sensitive to the top quark pole mass; a combined fit of NLO fixed-order predictions to all the measured distributions yields a top quark mass value of m(t)(pole) = 173.2 +/- 0.9 +/- 0.8 +/- 1.2 GeV, where the three uncertainties arise from data statistics, experimental systematics, and theoretical sources.