The last night of freedom : consumerism, deviance and the ‘stag party’

This article offers an ethnographic examination of the stag party phenomenon in the UK. Stag parties have become socially expected as a rite of passage, pre-marriage celebration for men that usually involves excessive alcohol consumption and engagement in deviant, potentially harmful, behaviour. These events produce a shift in time and space, and together with group expectations for celebration, increase the impetus for excessive consumption. Our contention is that excessive consumption of alcohol and deviant behaviour that often takes place are partially rooted in commercial ideology which has become firmly embedded in the attitudes of young British men

Ramsey interference in a multilevel quantum system

We report Ramsey interference in the excitonic population of a negatively charged quantum dot measured in resonant fluorescence. Our experiments show that the decay time of the Ramsey interference is limited by the spectral width of the transition. Applying a vertical magnetic field induces Zeeman split transitions that can be addressed by changing the laser detuning to reveal two-, three-, and four-level system behavior. We show that under finite field the phase-sensitive control of two optical pulses from a single laser can be used to prepare both population and spin states simultaneously. We also demonstrate the coherent optical manipulation of a trapped spin in a quantum dot in a Faraday geometry magnetic field

Implications of large dimuon CP asymmetry in B_{d,s} decays on minimal flavor violation with low tan beta

The D0 collaboration has recently announced evidence for a dimuon CP asymmetry in B_{d,s} decays of order one percent. If confirmed, this asymmetry requires new physics. We argue that for minimally flavor violating (MFV) new physics, and at low tan beta=v_u/v_d, there are only two four-quark operators (Q_{2,3}) that can provide the required CP violating effect. The scale of such new physics must lie below 260 GeV sqrt{tan beta}. The effect is universal in the B_s and B_d systems, leading to S_{psi K}~sin(2beta)-0.15 and S_{psi phi}~0.25. The effects on epsilon_K and on electric dipole moments are negligible. The most plausible mechanism is tree-level scalar exchange. MFV supersymmetry with low tan beta will be excluded. Finally, we explain how a pattern of deviations from the Standard Model predictions for S_{psi phi}, S_{psi K} and epsilon_K can be used to test MFV and, if MFV holds, to probe its structure in detail.Comment: 11 pages. v2: References adde

Complete resummation of chirally-enhanced loop-effects in the MSSM with non-minimal sources of flavor-violation

In this article we present the complete resummation of the leading chirally-enhanced corrections stemming from gluino-squark, chargino-sfermion and neutralino-sfermion loops in the MSSM with non-minimal sources of flavor-violation. We compute the finite renormalization of fermion masses and the CKM matrix induced by chirality-flipping self-energies. In the decoupling limit Msusy>>v, which is an excellent approximation to the full theory, we give analytic results for the effective gaugino(higgsino)-fermion-sfermion and the Higgs-fermion-fermion vertices. Using these vertices as effective Feynman rules, all leading chirally-enhanced corrections can consistently be included into perturbative calculations of Feynman amplitudes. We also give a generalized parametrization for the bare CKM matrix which extends the classic Wolfenstein parametrization to the case of complex parameters lambda and A.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures; typos correcte

Lexicographic cones and the ordered projective tensor product

We introduce lexicographic cones, a method of assigning an ordered vector space \Lex(S) to a poset $S$, generalising the standard lexicographic cone. These lexicographic cones are then used to prove that the projective tensor cone of two arbitrary cones is a cone, and to find a new characterisation of finite-dimensional vector lattices.Comment: 8 page

CP Violation in Supersymmetry with Effective Minimal Flavour Violation

We analyze CP violation in supersymmetry with Effective Minimal Flavour Violation, as recently proposed in arXiv:1011.0730. Unlike the case of standard Minimal Flavour Violation, we show that all the phases allowed by the flavour symmetry can be sizable without violating existing Electric Dipole Moment constraints, thus solving the SUSY CP problem. The EDMs at one and two loops are precisely analyzed as well as their correlations with the expected CP asymmetries in B physics.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures. v2: Discussion in section 2 extended, conclusions unchanged. Matches published versio

Realistic Standard Model Fermion Mass Relations in Generalized Minimal Supergravity (GmSUGRA)

Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) usually predict wrong Standard Model (SM) fermion mass relation m_e/m_{\mu} = m_d/m_s toward low energies. To solve this problem, we consider the Generalized Minimal Supergravity (GmSUGRA) models, which are GUTs with gravity mediated supersymmetry breaking and higher dimensional operators. Introducing non-renormalizable terms in the super- and K\"ahler potentials, we can obtain the correct SM fermion mass relations in the SU(5) model with GUT Higgs fields in the {\bf 24} and {\bf 75} representations, and in the SO(10) model. In the latter case the gauge symmetry is broken down to SU(3)_C X SU(2)_L X SU(2)_R X U(1)_{B-L}, to flipped SU(5)X U(1)_X, or to SU(3)_C X SU(2)_L X U(1)_1 X U(1)_2. Especially, for the first time we generate the realistic SM fermion mass relation in GUTs by considering the high-dimensional operators in the K\"ahler potential.Comment: JHEP style, 29 pages, no figure,references adde

Polynomials, Riemann surfaces, and reconstructing missing-energy events

We consider the problem of reconstructing energies, momenta, and masses in collider events with missing energy, along with the complications introduced by combinatorial ambiguities and measurement errors. Typically, one reconstructs more than one value and we show how the wrong values may be correlated with the right ones. The problem has a natural formulation in terms of the theory of Riemann surfaces. We discuss examples including top quark decays in the Standard Model (relevant for top quark mass measurements and tests of spin correlation), cascade decays in models of new physics containing dark matter candidates, decays of third-generation leptoquarks in composite models of electroweak symmetry breaking, and Higgs boson decay into two tau leptons.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures; version accepted for publication, with discussion of Higgs to tau tau deca

Quantum photonics hybrid integration platform

Fundamental to integrated photonic quantum computing is an on-chip method for routing and modulating quantum light emission. We demonstrate a hybrid integration platform consisting of arbitrarily designed waveguide circuits and single-photon sources. InAs quantum dots (QD) embedded in GaAs are bonded to a SiON waveguide chip such that the QD emission is coupled to the waveguide mode. The waveguides are SiON core embedded in a SiO2 cladding. A tuneable Mach Zehnder interferometer (MZI) modulates the emission between two output ports and can act as a path-encoded qubit preparation device. The single-photon nature of the emission was verified using the on-chip MZI as a beamsplitter in a Hanbury Brown and Twiss measurement.E.M. and T.M. acknowledge support by the Marie Curie Actions within the Seventh Framework Programme for Research of the European Commission, under the Initial Training Network PICQUE (Grant No. 608062). F.F. acknowledges support from both the EPSRC and Toshiba Research Europe Ltd., Cambridge. J.L. acknowledges support from both the EPSRC CDT in Photonic Systems Development and Toshiba Research Europe Ltd., Cambridge. The authors acknowledge funding from the EPSRC for the MBE system used in the production of the QD samples.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from AIP via http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.493502

Liberalism, lack and living the dream : re-considering youth, consumer sovereignty and the attractions of night-time leisure in Magaluf

Much of the academic literature on alcohol-based leisure focuses on the pleasures of hedonism and youthful cultural exploration in environments free from the prescriptions, pressures and routines of everyday life. In this article – in which we present data from our ongoing ethnographic research exploring the experiences and attitudes of young British tourists in the Spanish resort of Magaluf on the island of Majorca – we argue that the standard liberal social-scientific image of youth leisure is naive and misrepresents its variegated reality. Our research indicates that many young British tourists gain little contentment from their holiday in the sun. Rather than embarking on a leisure experience composed of boundless freedom, choice, indulgence, excess and that is indicative of personal consumer sovereignty, many of our interviewees could identify the regimented and commodified nature of alcohol-based tourism. Rather than satisfaction, they felt an imprecise dissatisfaction. Drawing upon elements of psychoanalytic theory, we argue that underneath our interviewees’ accounts of drunkenness and promiscuity lies an obdurate but imprecise sense of lack. Yet, it is precisely this absence which only recharges their motivation to do more of the same the year after in similar destinations, thus confirming the presence, power and domination of consumer sovereignty