Probing Contact Interactions at High Energy Lepton Colliders

Fermion compositeness and other new physics can be signalled by the presence of a strong four-fermion contact interaction. Here we present a study of $\ell\ell qq$ and $\ell\ell\ell'\ell'$ contact interactions using the reactions: $\ell^+ \ell^- \to \ell'^+\ell'^-,b\bar b, c\bar c$ at future $e^+e^-$ linear colliders with $\sqrt s=0.5-5$ TeV and $\mu^+\mu^-$ colliders with $\sqrt s=0.5,4$ TeV. We find that very large compositeness scales can be probed at these machines and that the use of polarized beams can unravel their underlying helicity structure.Comment: 12 pg, to appear in the {\it Proceedings of the 1996 DPF/DPB Summer Study on New Directions for High Energy Physics - Snowmass96}, Snowmass, CO, 25 June - 12 July, 199

Seesaw Spectroscopy at Colliders

A low-scale neutrino seesaw may be probed or even reconstructed at colliders provided that supersymmetry is at the weak scale and the LSP is a sterile sneutrino. Because the neutrino Yukawa couplings are small, the NLSP is typically long-lived and thus a significant fraction of colored or charged NLSPs may stop in the detector material before decaying to the LSP and a charged lepton, gauge boson, or Higgs. For two-body NLSP decays, the energy spectrum of the visible decay product exhibits a monochromatic line for each sterile sneutrino which can be used to extract the sterile sneutrino masses and some or all entries of the neutrino Yukawa matrix modulo phases. Similar methods can be used to extract these parameters from the Dalitz plot in the case of three-body NLSP decays. Assuming that the sterile sneutrino and neutrino are roughly degenerate, one can confirm the existence of a neutrino seesaw by comparing these measured parameters to the observed active neutrino masses and mixing angles. Seesaw spectroscopy can also provide genuinely new information such as the value of $\theta_{13}$, the nature of the neutrino mass hierarchy, and the presence of CP conservation in the neutrino sector. We introduce a weak-scale theory of leptogenesis that can be directly tested by these techniques.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

TRACTABLE DATA-FLOW ANALYSIS FOR DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

Automated behavior analysis is a valuable technique in the development and maintainence of distributed systems. In this paper, we present a tractable dataflow analysis technique for the detection of unreachable states and actions in distributed systems. The technique follows an approximate approach described by Reif and Smolka, but delivers a more accurate result in assessing unreachable states and actions. The higher accuracy is achieved by the use of two concepts: action dependency and history sets. Although the technique, does not exhaustively detect all possible errors, it detects nontrivial errors with a worst-case complexity quadratic to the system size. It can be automated and applied to systems with arbitrary loops and nondeterministic structures. The technique thus provides practical and tractable behavior analysis for preliminary designs of distributed systems. This makes it an ideal candidate for an interactive checker in software development tools. The technique is illustrated with case studies of a pump control system and an erroneous distributed program. Results from a prototype implementation are presented

Using molecular mechanics to predict bulk material properties of fibronectin fibers

The structural proteins of the extracellular matrix (ECM) form fibers with finely tuned mechanical properties matched to the time scales of cell traction forces. Several proteins such as fibronectin (Fn) and fibrin undergo molecular conformational changes that extend the proteins and are believed to be a major contributor to the extensibility of bulk fibers. The dynamics of these conformational changes have been thoroughly explored since the advent of single molecule force spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations but remarkably, these data have not been rigorously applied to the understanding of the time dependent mechanics of bulk ECM fibers. Using measurements of protein density within fibers, we have examined the influence of dynamic molecular conformational changes and the intermolecular arrangement of Fn within fibers on the bulk mechanical properties of Fn fibers. Fibers were simulated as molecular strands with architectures that promote either equal or disparate molecular loading under conditions of constant extension rate. Measurements of protein concentration within micron scale fibers using deep ultraviolet transmission microscopy allowed the simulations to be scaled appropriately for comparison to in vitro measurements of fiber mechanics as well as providing estimates of fiber porosity and water content, suggesting Fn fibers are approximately 75% solute. Comparing the properties predicted by single molecule measurements to in vitro measurements of Fn fibers showed that domain unfolding is sufficient to predict the high extensibility and nonlinear stiffness of Fn fibers with surprising accuracy, with disparately loaded fibers providing the best fit to experiment. This work shows the promise of this microstructural modeling approach for understanding Fn fiber properties, which is generally applicable to other ECM fibers, and could be further expanded to tissue scale by incorporating these simulated fibers into three dimensional network models

A simplified model of the source channel of the Leksell Gamma Knife(R)^(R): testing multisource configurations with PENELOPE

A simplification of the source channel geometry of the Leksell Gamma Knife$^{\circledR}$, recently proposed by the authors and checked for a single source configuration (Al-Dweri et al 2004), has been used to calculate the dose distributions along the $x$, $y$ and $z$ axes in a water phantom with a diameter of 160~mm, for different configurations of the Gamma Knife including 201, 150 and 102 unplugged sources. The code PENELOPE (v. 2001) has been used to perform the Monte Carlo simulations. In addition, the output factors for the 14, 8 and 4~mm helmets have been calculated. The results found for the dose profiles show a qualitatively good agreement with previous ones obtained with EGS4 and PENELOPE (v. 2000) codes and with the predictions of GammaPlan$^{\circledR}$. The output factors obtained with our model agree within the statistical uncertainties with those calculated with the same Monte Carlo codes and with those measured with different techniques. Owing to the accuracy of the results obtained and to the reduction in the computational time with respect to full geometry simulations (larger than a factor 15), this simplified model opens the possibility to use Monte Carlo tools for planning purposes in the Gamma Knife$^{\circledR}$.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 5 table

Supergravity Computations without Gravity Complications

The conformal compensator formalism is a convenient and versatile representation of supergravity (SUGRA) obtained by gauge fixing conformal SUGRA. Unfortunately, practical calculations often require cumbersome manipulations of component field terms involving the full gravity multiplet. In this paper, we derive an alternative gauge fixing for conformal SUGRA which decouples these gravity complications from SUGRA computations. This yields a simplified tree-level action for the matter fields in SUGRA which can be expressed compactly in terms of superfields and a modified conformal compensator. Phenomenologically relevant quantities such as the scalar potential and fermion mass matrix are then straightforwardly obtained by expanding the action in superspace.Comment: 10 pages; v2: references update