Physics at the LHC Run-2 and Beyond

These lecture notes discuss methods, recent results and future prospects in proton-proton physics at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: Lecture notes from the 2016 European School of High-Energy Physics, 15-28 June 2016, Skeikampen, Norway (61 pages, 56 figures

Hadronic B Decays to Charmless Final States and to J/psi K*

Preliminary results from the BABAR experiment on charmless B decays to charged pions or kaons, and the measurement of the B -> J/psi K* decay amplitudes are presented. The data sample, collected at the asymmetric-energy B-factory PEP-II at SLAC, comprises a total number of 22.7 million Y(4S) decays, corresponding to an integrated on-resonance luminosity of approximately 21 fb-1. We measure the following CP-averaged branching fractions: BR(B -> pi+pi-) = (4.1 +- 1.0(stat) +- 0.7(sys))xE-6 BR(B -> K+pi-) = (16.7 +- 1.6(stat) +1.2-1.7(sys))xE-6 and an upper limit of BR(B -> K+K-) < 2.5xE-6, at 90% confidence limit. The measurement of the J/psi K* decay amplitudes results in R_\perp = 0.160 +- 0.032(stat) +- 0.036(sys), and reveals a dominant longitudinal component. The phase of the longitudinal amplitude shows evidence for non-vanishing final state interaction.Comment: 13 pages, 8 postscript figures, submitted to Proceedings for BCP

Moriond Electroweak and Unified Theories 2016 - Experimental Summary

Summary of the experimental results presented at the 51st edition of the Moriond Electroweak and Unified Theories conference held in March 2016 at La Thuile, Italy.Comment: Proceedings of Moriond EW & UT 2016 (42 pages, 43 figures

FUNDING THE RESEARCH FOR THE EXPANDING ROLE OF THE FOOD DISTRIBUTION INDUSTRY

The keynoter discusses the funding process for government sponsored food distribution research and points out favorable and unfavorable factors affecting the future of research in this area. Recommendations to strengthen future efforts are also made.Marketing,

Evaluation of \alpha (M^2_Z) and (g-2)_\mu

This talk summarizes the recent development in the evaluation of the leading order hadronic contributions to the running of the QED fine structure constant \alpha(s), at $s=M_{\rm Z}^2$, and to the anomalous magnetic moments of the muon $(g-2)_\mu$. The accuracy of the theoretical prediction of these observables is limited by the uncertainties on the hadronic contributions. Significant improvement has been achieved in a series of new analyses which is presented historically in three steps: (I), use of $\tau$ spectral functions in addition to e^+e^- cross sections, (II), extended use of perturbative QCD and (III), application of QCD sum rule techniques. The most precise values obtained are: $\Delta\alpha_{had} (M_2^Z) =(276.3\pm1.6)\times10^{-4}$, yielding $\alpha^{-1}(M_{\rm Z}^2)=128.933\pm0.021$, and $a_\mu^{\rm had}=(692.4\pm6.2)\times 10^{-10}$ with which one finds for the complete Standard Model prediction $a_\mu^{\rm SM}=(11 659 159.6\pm6.7)\times10^{-10}$. For the electron $(g-2)_e$, the hadronic contribution is $a_e^{\rm had}=(187.5\pm1.8)\times 10^{-14}$.Comment: 9 pages, Talk given at the ICHEP'98 Conference, Vancouver, Canada, July 23-29, 199

Expansion of the almost sure spectrum in the weak disorder regime

The spectrum of random ergodic Schr\"odinger-type operators is almost surely a deterministic subset of the real line. The random operator can be considered as a perturbation of a periodic one. As soon as the disorder is switched on via a global coupling constant, the spectrum expands. We estimate how much the spectrum expands at its bottom for operators on $\ell^2(\mathbb Z^d)$

Reply to: ''Improved Determination of the CKM Angle alpha from B -> pipi decays''

In reply to hep-ph/0701204 we demonstrate why the arguments made therein do not address the criticism exposed in hep-ph/0607246 on the fundamental shortcomings of the Bayesian approach when it comes to the extraction of parameters of Nature from experimental data. As for the isospin analysis and the CKM angle alpha it is shown that the use of uniform priors for the observed quantities in the Explicit Solution parametrization is equivalent to a frequentist construction resulting from a change of variables, and thus relies neither on prior PDFs nor on Bayes' theorem. This procedure provides in this particular case results that are similar to the Confidence Level approach, but the treatment of mirror solutions remains incorrect and it is far from being general. In a second part it is shown that important differences subsist between the Bayesian and frequentist approaches, when following the proposal of hep-ph/0701204 and inserting additional information on the hadronic amplitudes beyond isospin invariance. In particular the frequentist result preserves the exact degeneracy that is expected from the remaining symmetries of the problem while the Bayesian procedure does not. Moreover, in the Bayesian approach reducing inference to the 68% or 95% credible interval is a misconception of the meaning of the posterior PDF, which in turn implies that the significant dependence of the latter to the chosen parametrization cannot be viewed as a minor effect, contrary to the claim in hep-ph/0701204.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Fig. 1 corrected (wrong file

Localization for random Schrödinger operators with low density potentials.

We prove that, for a density of disorder $\rho$ small enough, a certain class of discrete random Schrödinger operators on $\Z^d$ with diluted potentials exhibits a Lifschitz behaviour from the bottom of the spectrum up to energies at a distance of the order $\rho^\alpha$ from the bottom of the spectrum, with $\alpha>2(d+1)/d$. This leads to localization for the energies in this zone for these low density models. The same results hold for operators on the continuous, and in particular, with Bernoulli or Poisson random potential