Standard Model Higgs boson searches with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider

The investigation of the mechanism responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking is one of the most important tasks of the scientific program of the Large Hadron Collider. The experimental results on the search of the Standard Model Higgs boson with 1 to 2 fb^-1 of proton proton collision data at sqrt s=7 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector are presented and discussed. No significant excess of events is found with respect to the expectations from Standard Model processes, and the production of a Higgs boson is excluded at 95% Confidence Level for the mass regions 144-232, 256-282 and 296-466 GeV.Comment: Proceedings of the Lepton Photon 2011 Conference, to appear in "Pramana - journal of phsyics". 11 pages, 13 figure

Walking Technicolor and Electroweak Radiative Corrections

We examine the effect of walking technicolor dynamics on the electroweak $S$ parameter and contrast it with the effect of QCD-like technicolor dynamics. Our main tools are the operator product expansion for the high-momentum behavior of the electroweak gauge boson vacuum polarizations and the analyticity of these polarizations which relate their low and high momentum behaviors. We show that whereas in large QCD-like technicolor models $S$ is large and positive, in walking technicolor models a negative contribution is emphasized, related to the large anomalous dimension of the technifermion condensate. Thus in walking technicolor $S$ is determined by a large cancellation of two competing effects. This may result in much smaller values of $S$ than in QCD-like technicolor, although considerable uncertainties are involved. We conclude that it is impossible to rule out walking technicolor based on the present experimental limits on $S$ and the present theoretical technology.Comment: 22 pages (4 figures, available upon request

The chiral logs of the K -> pi pi amplitude

I calculate the leading logarithmic contributions up to two-loop order of the octet part of the K -> pi pi amplitude. This sector of the weak chiral Lagrangian is believed to be the main source of the enhancement of the I=0 relative to the I=2 K -> pi pi amplitude, the so-called Delta I = 1/2 rule. I discuss the procedure of chiral extrapolations of lattice data specific to K -> pi pi decays and study the implication of the present calculation on these numerically. The latter reinforces the fact that one has to expect a large enhancement of the I=0 part of the amplitude due to re-scattering effects between the three mesons.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, uses axodra

Electroweak Corrections in Technicolor Reconsidered

Radiative corrections to electroweak parameters in technicolor theories may be evaluated by one of two techniques: either one estimates spectral function integrals using scaled QCD data, or one uses naive dimensional analysis with a chiral Lagrangian. The former yields corrections to electroweak parameters proportional to the number of flavors and the number of colors, while the latter is proportional to the number of flavors squared and is independent of the number of colors. We attempt to resolve this apparent contradiction by showing that the spectrum of technicolor one obtains by scaling QCD data to high energies is unlikely to resemble that of an actual technicolor theory. The resonances are likely to be much lighter than naively supposed and the radiative corrections to electroweak parameters may by much larger. We also argue that much less is known about the spectrum and the radiative corrections in technicolor than was previously believed.Comment: 17 pages (which incl 3 figures), BUHEP-92-25 HUTP-92/A033, text uses harvmac, figures use picte

Nonlocal Yang-Mills

We present a very simple and explicit procedure for nonlocalizing the action of any theory which can be formulated perturbatively. When the resulting nonlocal field theory is quantized using the functional formalism --- with unit measure factor --- its Green's functions are finite to all orders. The construction also ensures perturbative unitarity to all orders for scalars with nonderivative interactions, however, decoupling is lost at one loop when vector and tensor quanta are present. Decoupling can be restored (again, to all orders) if a suitable measure factor exists. We compute the required measure factor for pure Yang-Mills at order $g^2$ and then use it to evaluate the vacuum polarization at one loop. A peculiar feature of our regularization scheme is that the on-shell tree amplitudes are completely unaffected. This implies that the nonlocal field theory can be viewed as a highly noncanonical quantization of the original, local field equations.Comment: 38 pages, figures available upon request. No macro neede

String Balls at the LHC and Beyond

In string theory, black holes have a minimum mass below which they transition into highly excited long and jagged strings --- ``string balls''. These are the stringy progenitors of black holes; because they are lighter, in theories of TeV-gravity, they may be more accessible to the LHC or the VLHC. They share some of the characteristics of black holes, such as large production cross sections. Furthermore, they evaporate thermally at the Hagedorn temperature and give rise to high-multiplicity events containing hard primary photons and charged leptons, which have negligible standard-model background.Comment: 7 page

Low-energy sum rules and large-NcN_c consistency conditions

The large-$N_c$ consistency conditions for axial vector and isovector magnetic couplings of pions to baryons are discussed from the point of view of low-energy current-algebra sum rules (Adler-Weisberger, Cabibbo-Radicati). In particular, we show how the result that ratios of axial vector and isovector magnetic coupling constants get corrections only at the order $1/N_c^2$ follows from the $N_c$-counting of appropriate cross sections. This counting is performed using various approaches at the quark and hadronic level. Other implications of our method are also presented.Comment: 25 p. (REVTEX, Feynman.tex for figures

Technicolor Theories with Negative S

We show that the pseudo Nambu--Goldstone boson contribution to the Peskin--Takeuchi electroweak parameter $S$ can be negative in a class of technicolor theories. This negative contribution can be large enough to cancel the positive techni-hadron contribution, showing that electroweak precision tests alone cannot be used to rule out technicolor as the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking.Comment: (LBL-32893, UCB-PTH 92/34, 10 pages; we added a discussion of uncertainties, fine-tuning, and SU(2) asymptotic freedom; the conclusions are unchanged.

In-medium chiral perturbation theory beyond the mean-field approximation

An explicit expression of the generating functional of two-flavor low-energy QCD with external sources in the presence of non-vanishing nucleon densities has been derived recently [1]. Within this approach we derive power counting rules for the calculation of in-medium pion properties. We develop the so-called standard rules for residual nucleon energies of the order of the pion mass and a modified scheme (non-standard counting) for vanishing residual nucleon energies. We also establish the different scales for the range of applicability of this perturbative expansion, which are \sqrt{6}\pi f_\pi\simeq 0.7 GeV for the standard and 6\pi^2 f_\pi^2/2m_N\simeq 0.27 GeV for non-standard counting, respectively. We have performed a systematic analysis of n-point in-medium Green functions up to and including next-to-leading order when the standard rules apply. These include the in-medium contributions to quark condensates, pion propagators, pion masses and couplings of the axial-vector, vector and pseudoscalar currents to pions. In particular, we find a mass shift for negatively charged pions in heavy nuclei that agrees with recent determinations from deeply bound pionic Pb-207. We have also established the absence of in-medium renormalization in the \pi^0 \to \gamma\gamma decay amplitude up to the same order. The study of \pi\pi scattering requires the use of the non-standard counting and the calculation is done at leading order. Even at that order we establish new contributions not considered so far. We also point towards further possible improvements of this scheme and touch upon its relation to more conventional many-body approaches.Comment: 40 pages, 12 figures, version to appear in Ann. Phy

The Dichotomous Nucleon: Some Radical Conjectures for the Large Nc Limit

We discuss some problems with the large Nc approximation for nucleons which arise if the axial coupling of the nucleon to pions is large, g_A \sim Nc. While g_A \sim Nc in non-relativistic quark and Skyrme models, it has been suggested that Skyrmions may collapse to a small size, r \sim 1/f_pi \sim Lambda_QCD^{-1}/sqrt(Nc). (This is also the typical scale over which the string vertex moves in a string vertex model of the baryon.) We concentrate on the case of two flavors, where we suggest that to construct a nucleon with a small axial coupling, that most quarks are bound into colored diquark pairs, which have zero spin and isospin. For odd Nc, this leaves one unpaired quark, which carries the spin and isospin of the nucleon. If the unpaired quark is in a spatial wavefunction orthogonal to the wavefunctions of the scalar diquarks, then up to logarithms of Nc, the unpaired quark only costs an energy \sim Lambda_QCD. This naturally gives g_A \sim 1 and has other attractive features. In nature, the wavefunctions of the paired and unpaired quarks might only be approximately orthogonal; then g_A depends weakly upon Nc. This dichotomy in wave functions could arise if the unpaired quark orbits at a size which is parametrically large in comparison to that of the diquarks. We discuss possible tests of these ideas from numerical simulations on the lattice, for two flavors and three and five colors; the extension of our ideas to more than three or more flavors is not obvious, though.Comment: Published version in Nucl. Phys.