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At least 469 records · Page 26

Hybrid simulations of collisionless ion tearing

Ion tearing in a thin collisionless neutral sheet is investigated using hybrid (particle ion, massless fluid electron) simulations in which dissipation effects are included through a model of the full electron pressure tensor in which self-consistently generated anisotropies are reduced via an isotropization time factor. The linear growth rates and ion dynamics are in qualitative agreement with linear theory and one-component simulations. The reconnection rate increases with the isotropization time.

Hesse, Michael↗

Diffusion at the magnetopause: Hybrid simulations

Electromagnetic wave generation and resulting cross-field diffusion of plasma are considered at a tangential discontinuity, which characterizes the magnetopause for northward interplanetary magnetic field. Two-dimensional hybrid (particle ions, massless fluid electrons) simulations, in which the tangential discontinuity is generated self-consistently via a stream-stream interaction, are used to show that wave growth occurs when the ambient magnetic field is predominantly perpendicular to the direction of the density gradient. Low-frequency (much less than ion gyrofrequency) waves, with amplitudes delta B/B less than or equal to 0.2 and anticorrelated density fluctuations delta n/n less than or equal to 0.6, are generated at the discontinuity, resulting in cross-field diffusion that is comparable to the Bohm rate. Both the fluctuation level and the lack of ion heating in the calculations are consistent with observations at the magnetopause. The magnitude of the diffusion is considered in the presence of numerical effects and in the context of the inferred diffusion rate at the magnetopause. The relation of the low-frequency waves and their consequences to faster growing, short-wavelength waves due to the lower hybrid drift instability is also addressed. The overall conclusion of this initial study is that diffusion due to low frequency waves is not likely to be a major effect at the magnetopause.

Winske, D.↗

Time-History Statistics of Soot Formation in A Model Gas Turbine Combustor

Soot formation is a complex dynamic and intermittent process determined by properties of the fuel, combustor design, and combustor operation. Although the major steps in soot formation (i.e., formation of precursors, inception, growth and evolution) are similar for a variety of carbonaceous fuels, applications, and operating conditions, it remains unclear when the temporal transition between these steps occurs. An engineering prediction tool coupled with computational fluid physics (CFD), therefore needs to accurately model all these complex steps. To develop such a model, we propose the time-history concept for understanding the time dependency of soot formation as a function of local properties (i.e., temperature, velocity, local fuel air ratio, etc.). We continue our previous work with modeling the DLR aero-combustor [1] with our updated in-house CFD code, Open National Combustion Code (OpenNCC), that now includes a Multiple Time-Scale Flamelet Progress Variable approach and a the semi-empirical two-equation soot model. We injected massless tracer particles upstream of the injector region of the combustor to collect time-history statistics of the solution variables. The correlations between the collected statistics with respect to the experimental soot volume fraction data showed that time-history effect of certain flow variables, including turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), and multiple species is indeed important for soot formation. We then conducted a time-history based correlation analysis to determine the key species and the concentration ranges critical for soot formation (C6H5-based nucleation, acetylene-based surface growth, and oxidation with OH and O2). Based on the time-history correlation coefficient (THCC) analysis, we propose possible modifications to improve the current two-equation model.

LES↗

Search for gluino mediated bottom- and top-squark production in multijet final states in pp collisions at 8 TeV

A search for supersymmetry is presented based on events with large missing transverse energy, no isolated electron or muon, and at least three jets with one or more identified as a bottom-quark jet. A simultaneous examination is performed of the numbers of events in exclusive bins of the scalar sum of jet transverse momentum values, missing transverse energy, and bottom-quark jet multiplicity. The sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.4 inverse femtobarns, consists of proton-proton collision data recorded at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2012. The observed numbers of events are found to be consistent with the standard model expectation, which is evaluated with control samples in data. The results are interpreted in the context of two simplified supersymmetric scenarios in which gluino pair production is followed by the decay of each gluino to an undetected lightest supersymmetric particle and either a bottom or top quark-antiquark pair, characteristic of gluino mediated bottom- or top-squark production. Using the production cross section calculated to next-to-leading-order plus next-to-leading-logarithm accuracy, and in the limit of a massless lightest supersymmetric particle, we exclude gluinos with masses below 1170 GeV and 1020 GeV for the two scenarios, respectively.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Probing the Berry curvature and Fermi arcs of a Weyl circuit

The Weyl particle is the massless fermionic cousin of the photon. While no fundamental Weyl particles have been identified, they arise in condensed matter and metamaterial systems, where their spinor nature imposes topological constraints on low-energy dispersion and surface properties. Here we demonstrate a topological circuit with Weyl dispersion at low momentum, realizing a 3D lattice that behaves as a half-flux Hofstadter model in all principal planes. The circuit platform provides access to the complete complex-valued spin texture of all bulk and surface states, thereby revealing not only the presence of Weyl points and the Fermi arcs that connect their surface projections, but also the Berry curvature distribution through the Brillouin zone and the associated quantized chiral charge of the Weyl points. Furthermore, this work opens a path to exploration of interacting Weyl physics in superconducting circuits, as well as studies of how manifold topology impacts band topology in three dimensions.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Massive and massless spin-2 scattering and asymptotic superluminality

We constrain theories of a massive spin-2 particle coupled to a massless spin-2 particle by demanding the absence of a time advance in eikonal scattering. This is an S-matrix consideration that leads to model-independent constraints on the cubic vertices present in the theory. Of the possible cubic vertices for the two spin-2 particles, the requirement of subluminality leaves a particular linear combination of cubic vertices of the Einstein-Hilbert type. Either the cubic vertices must appear in this combination or new physics must enter at a scale parametrically the same as the mass of the massive spin-2 field, modulo some standard caveats. These conclusions imply that there is a one-parameter family of ghost-free bimetric theories of gravity that are consistent with subluminal scattering. When both particles couple to additional matter, subluminality places additional constraints on the matter couplings. We lastly reproduce these constraints by considering classical scattering off of a shockwave background in the ghost-free bimetric theory.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Worldline construction of a covariant chiral kinetic theory

Here, we discuss a novel worldline framework for computations of the chiral magnetic effect (CME) in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. Starting from the fermion determinant in the QCD effective action, we show explicitly how its real part can be expressed as a supersymmetric worldline action of spinning, colored, Grassmannian particles in background fields. Restricting ourselves for simplicity to spinning particles, we demonstrate how their constrained Hamiltonian dynamics arises for both massless and massive particles. In a semiclassical limit, this gives rise to the covariant generalization of the Bargmann-Michel-Telegdi equation; the derivation of the corresponding Wong equations for colored particles is straightforward. In a previous paper [N. Mueller and R. Venugopalan, arXiv:1701.03331.], we outlined how Berry’s phase arises in a nonrelativistic adiabatic limit for massive particles. We extend the discussion here to systems with a finite chemical potential. We discuss a path integral formulation of the relative phase in the fermion determinant that places it on the same footing as the real part. We construct the corresponding anomalous worldline axial-vector current and show in detail how the chiral anomaly appears. Our work provides a systematic framework for a relativistic kinetic theory of chiral fermions in the fluctuating topological backgrounds that generate the CME in a deconfined quark-gluon plasma. Finally, we outline some further applications of this framework in many-body systems.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Search for electroweak production of charginos and neutralinos at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV in final states containing hadronic decays of WW, WZ, or WH and missing transverse momentum

This Letter presents a search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos via electroweak interactions. The results are based on data from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected with the CMS detector at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb -1 . The search considers final states with large missing transverse momentum and pairs of hadronically decaying bosons WW, WZ, and WH, where H is the Higgs boson. These bosons are identified using novel algorithms. No significant excess of events is observed relative to the expectations from the standard model. Limits at the 95% confidence level are placed on the cross section for production of mass-degenerate wino-like supersymmetric particles $\widetilde{χ}_1^±$ and $\widetilde{χ}_2^0$, and mass-degenerate higgsino-like supersymmetric particles $\widetilde{χ}_1^±$, $\widetilde{χ}_2^0$, and $\widetilde{χ}_3^0$. In the limit of a nearly-massless lightest supersymmetric particle $\widetilde{χ}_1^0$, wino-like particles with masses up to 870 and 960 GeV are excluded in the cases of $\widetilde{χ}_2^0$→Z$\widetilde{χ}_1^0$ and $\widetilde{χ}_2^0$→$\widetilde{χ}_1^0$, respectively, and higgsino-like particles are excluded between 300 and 650 GeV.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Search for supersymmetry in events with four or more leptons in s = 8 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

CERN-LHC. Results from a search for supersymmetry in events with four or more leptons including electrons, muons and taus are presented. The analysis uses a data sample corresponding to 20.3 fb^{-1} of proton-proton collisions delivered by the Large Hadron Collider at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Signal regions are designed to target supersymmetric scenarios that can be either enriched in or depleted of events involving the production of a Z boson. No significant deviations are observed in data from Standard Model predictions and results are used to set upper limits on the event yields from processes beyond the Standard Model. Exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on the masses of relevant supersymmetric particles are obtained. In R-parity-violating simplified models with decays of the lightest supersymmetric particle to electrons and muons, limits of 1350 GeV and 750 GeV are placed on gluino and chargino masses, respectively. In R-parity-conserving simplified models with heavy neutralinos decaying to a massless lightest supersymmetric particle, heavy neutralino masses up to 620 GeV are excluded. Limits are also placed on other supersymmetric scenarios.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Black hole perturbations of massive and partially massless spin-2 fields in (anti) de Sitter spacetime

We provide a systematic and comprehensive derivation of the linearized dynamics of massive and partially massless spin-2 particles in a Schwarzschild (anti) de Sitter black hole background, in four and higher spacetime dimensions. In particular, we show how to obtain the quadratic actions for the propagating modes and recast the resulting equations of motion in a Schrödinger-like form. In the case of partially massless fields in Schwarzschild de Sitter spacetime, we study the isospectrality between modes of different parity. In particular, we prove isospectrality analytically for modes with multipole number L = 1 in four spacetime dimensions, providing the explicit form of the underlying symmetry. We show that isospectrality between partially massless modes of different parity is broken in higher-dimensional Schwarzschild de Sitter spacetimes.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

The coset construction for particles of arbitrary spin

When a Poincaré-invariant system spontaneously breaks continuous internal symmetries, Goldstones’ theorem demands the existence of massless, spin-zero excitations in a one-to-one correspondence with the broken symmetry generators. When a system spontaneously breaks Poincaré symmetry, however, the kinds of excitations that satisfy Goldstone’s theorem can be quite unusual. In particular, they may have any spin and need not be particles or even quasiparticles. The standard coset construction used to formulate effective actions of Goldstones, however, is rather restrictive and is incapable of generating the full spectrum of possibilities allowed by Goldstone’s theorem. We propose a (partial) remedy to this problem by postulating a novel coset construction for systems that spontaneously break Poincaré symmetry. This new construction is capable of generating effective actions with a wide range of Goldstone excitations — including fermionic degrees of freedom — even when all symmetries are bosonic. To demonstrate its utility, we focus on constructing effective actions for point particles of various spins. We recover the known result that a particle of spin s requires an \( \mathcal{N} \) = 2 s supersymmetric worldline reparameterization gauge symmetry, which we implement at the level of the coset construction. In the process, we discover that massless particles require a novel kind of inverse Higgs constraint that bears some resemblance to the dynamical inverse Higgs constraints that appear in certain fermi liquid effective field theories. We then consider particles that, in addition to quantum spin, have finite spatial extent and are free to rotate. We derive a novel action for such particles and find a ‘spin-orbital’ coupling between the intrinsic quantum spin and the physical-rotation degrees of freedom.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Search for dark photons in decays of Higgs bosons produced in association with Z bosons in proton-proton collisions at s $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

A search is presented for a Higgs boson that is produced in association with a Z boson and that decays to an undetected particle together with an isolated photon. The search is performed by the CMS Collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb$^{-1}$ recorded at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No significant excess of events above the expectation from the standard model background is found. The results are interpreted in the context of a theoretical model in which the undetected particle is a massless dark photon. An upper limit is set on the product of the cross section for associated Higgs and Z boson production and the branching fraction for such a Higgs boson decay, as a function of the Higgs boson mass. For a mass of 125 GeV, assuming the standard model production cross section, this corresponds to an observed (expected) upper limit on this branching fraction of 4.6 (3.6)% at 95% confidence level. These are the first limits on Higgs boson decays to final states that include an undetected massless dark photon.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Search for dark photons in Higgs boson production via vector boson fusion in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} $ = 13 TeV

A search is presented for a Higgs boson that is produced via vector boson fusion and that decays to an undetected particle and an isolated photon. The search is performed by the CMS collaboration at the LHC, using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 130 fb$^{−1}$, recorded at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV in 2016–2018. No significant excess of events above the expectation from the standard model background is found. The results are interpreted in the context of a theoretical model in which the undetected particle is a massless dark photon. An upper limit is set on the product of the cross section for production via vector boson fusion and the branching fraction for such a Higgs boson decay, as a function of the Higgs boson mass. For a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV, assuming the standard model production rates, the observed (expected) 95% confidence level upper limit on the branching fraction is 3.5 (2.8)%. This is the first search for such decays in the vector boson fusion channel. Combination with a previous search for Higgs bosons produced in association with a Z boson results in an observed (expected) upper limit on the branching fraction of 2.9 (2.1)% at 95% confidence level.[graphic not available: see fulltext]

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

AdS field theory from conformal field theory

We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a Conformal Field Theory to have a description in terms of a perturbative Effective Field Theory in AdS. The first two conditions are well-known: the existence of a perturbative ‘1/N’ expansion and an approximate Fock space of states generated by a finite number of low-dimension operators. We add a third condition, that the Mellin amplitudes of the CFT correlators must be well- approximated by functions that are bounded by a polynomial at infinity in Mellin space, or in other words, that the Mellin amplitudes have an effective theory-type expansion. We explain the relationship between our conditions and unitarity, and provide an analogy with scattering amplitudes that becomes exact in the flat space limit of AdS. The analysis also yields a simple connection between conformal blocks and AdS diagrams, providing a new calculational tool very much in the spirit of the S-Matrix program. We also begin to explore the potential pathologies associated with higher spin fields in AdS by generalizing Weinberg’s soft theorems to AdS/CFT. The AdS analog of Weinberg’s argument constrains the interactions of conserved currents in CFTs, but there are potential loopholes that are unavailable to theories of massless higher spin particles in flat spacetime.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Search for supersymmetry in events with at least three electrons or muons, jets, and missing transverse momentum in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s}=13 $ TeV

A search for new physics is carried out in events with at least three electrons or muons in any combination, jets, and missing transverse momentum. Results are based on the sample of proton-proton collision data produced by the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and collected by the CMS experiment in 2016. The data sample analyzed corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb$^{−1}$. Events are classified according to the number of b jets, missing transverse momentum, hadronic transverse momentum, and the invariant mass of same-flavor dilepton pairs with opposite charge. No significant excess above the expected standard model background is observed. Exclusion limits at 95% confidence level are computed for four different supersymmetric simplified models with pair production of gluinos or third-generation squarks. In the model with gluino pair production, with subsequent decays into a top quark-antiquark pair and a neutralino, gluinos with masses smaller than 1610 GeV are excluded for a massless lightest supersymmetric particle. In the case of bottom squark pair production, the bottom squark masses are excluded up to 840 GeV for charginos lighter than 200 GeV. For a simplified model of heavy top squark pair production, the $ {\tilde{\mathrm{t}}}_2 $ mass is excluded up to 720, 780, or 710 GeV for models with an exclusive $ {\tilde{\mathrm{t}}}_2\to {\tilde{\mathrm{t}}}_1\mathrm{H} $ decay, an exclusive $ {\tilde{\mathrm{t}}}_2\to {\tilde{\mathrm{t}}}_1\mathrm{Z} $ decay, or an equally probable mix of those two decays. In order to provide a simplified version of the analysis for easier interpretation, a small set of aggregate signal regions also has been defined, providing a compromise between simplicity and analysis sensitivity.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Search for direct top squark pair production in events with one lepton, jets, and missing transverse momentum at 13 TeV with the CMS experiment

A search for direct top squark pair production is presented. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC during 2016, 2017, and 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb$^{−1}$. The search is carried out using events with a single isolated electron or muon, multiple jets, and large transverse momentum imbalance. The observed data are consistent with the expectations from standard model processes. Exclusions are set in the context of simplified top squark pair production models. Depending on the model, exclusion limits at 95% confidence level for top squark masses up to 1.2 TeV are set for a massless lightest supersymmetric particle, assumed to be the neutralino. For models with top squark masses of 1 TeV, neutralino masses up to 600 GeV are excluded.[graphic not available: see fulltext]

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

\( \mathcal{N} \) = 2 supersymmetric partially massless fields and other exotic non-unitary superconformal representations

We find and classify the simplest \( \mathcal{N} \) = 2 SUSY multiplets on AdS 4 which contain partially massless fields. We do this by studying representations of the \( \mathcal{N} \) = 2, d = 3 superconformal algebra of the boundary, including new shortening conditions that arise in the non-unitary regime. Unlike the \( \mathcal{N} \) = 1 case, the simplest \( \mathcal{N} \) = 2 multiplet containing a partially massless spin-2 is short, containing several exotic fields. More generally, we argue that \( \mathcal{N} \) = 2 supersymmetry allows for short multiplets that contain partially massless spin- s particles of depth t = s – 2.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗