Abstract: In this Letter, we study the impact of the inclusion of the recently measured beta decay properties of the Tc-102;104;105;106;107, Mo-105, and Nb-101 nuclei in an updated calculation of the antineutrino energy spectra of the four fissible isotopes U-235,U-238 and Pu-239,Pu-241. These actinides are the main contributors to the fission processes in pressurized water reactors. The beta feeding probabilities of the above-mentioned Tc, Mo, and Nb isotopes have been found to play a major role in the gamma component of the decay heat of Pu-239, solving a large part of the gamma discrepancy in the 4-3000 s range. They have been measured by using the total absorption technique, insensitive to the pandemonium effect. The calculations are performed by using the information available nowadays in the nuclear databases, summing all the contributions of the beta decay branches of the fission products. Our results provide a new prediction of the antineutrino energy spectra of U-235, Pu-239,Pu-241, and, in particular, U-238 for which no measurement has been published yet. We conclude that new total absorption technique measurements are mandatory to improve the reliability of the predicted spectra.

Abstract: This Letter presents a search for magnetic monopoles with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider using an integrated luminosity of 2.0 fb(-1) of pp collisions recorded at a center-of-mass energy root s = 7 TeV. No event is found in the signal region, leading to an upper limit on the production cross section at 95% confidence level of 1.6/epsilon fb for Dirac magnetic monopoles with the minimum unit magnetic charge and with mass between 200 GeV and 1500 GeV, where epsilon is the monopole reconstruction efficiency. The efficiency epsilon is high and uniform in the fiducial region given by pseudorapidity vertical bar eta vertical bar < 1: 37 and transverse kinetic energy 600-700<E-kin sin theta< 1400 GeV. The minimum value of 700 GeV is for monopoles of mass 200 GeV, whereas the minimum value of 600 GeV is applicable for higher mass monopoles. Therefore, the upper limit on the production cross section at 95% confidence level is 2 fb in this fiducial region. Assuming the kinematic distributions from Drell-Yan pair production of spin-1= 2 Dirac magnetic monopoles, the efficiency is in the range 1%-10%, leading to an upper limit on the cross section at 95% confidence level that varies from 145 fb to 16 fb for monopoles with mass between 200 GeV and 1200 GeV. This limit is weaker than the fiducial limit because most of these monopoles lie outside the fiducial region.

Abstract: We study the effects of feebly or nonannihilating weakly interacting dark matter (DM) particles on stars that live in DM environments denser than that of our Sun. We find that the energy transport mechanism induced by DM particles can produce unusual conditions in the cores of main sequence stars, with effects which can potentially be used to probe DM properties. We find that solar mass stars placed in DM densities of rho(chi) >= 10(2) GeV/cm(3) are sensitive to spin-dependent scattering cross section sigma(SD) >= 10(-37) cm(2) and a DM particle mass as low as m(chi) = 5 GeV, accessing a parameter range weakly constrained by current direct detection experiments.

Abstract: We report an indirect search for nonstandard model physics using the flavor-changing neutral current decays B -> K-(*)mu(+)mu(-). We reconstruct the decays and measure their angular distributions, as a function of q(2) = M(mu mu)(2)c(2), where M-mu μis the dimuon mass, in p (P) over bar collisions at root s = 1.96 Tev using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 6.8 fb(-1). The transverse polarization asymmetry A(T)((2)) and the time-reversal-odd charge-and-parity asymmetry A(im) are measured for the first time, together with the K* longitudinal polarization fraction F-L and the muon forward-backward asymmetry A(FB) for the decays B-0 -> K*(0)mu(+)mu(-) and B -> K*(+)mu(+)mu(-). The B -> K*mu(+)mu(-) forward-backward asymmetry in the most sensitive kinematic regime, 1 <= q(2) < 6 GeV2/c(2), is measured to be A(FB) 0.29(-0.23)(+0.20) (stat) +/- 0.07 (syst), the most precise result to date. No deviations from the standard model predictions are observed.

Abstract: A search for the Higgs boson has been performed in the H -> WW(*()) -> l+vl-(v) over bar channel (l = e/mu) with an integrated luminosity of 2.05 fb(-1) of pp collisions at root s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No significant excess of events over the expected background is observed and limits on the Higgs boson production cross section are derived for a Higgs boson mass in the range 110 GeV< m(H) < 300 GeV. The observations exclude the presence of a standard model Higgs boson with a mass 145 < m(H) < 206 GeV at 95% confidence level.