Particle theory

Abstract:

We present a search for point sources of high energy neutrinos using 3.8 yr of data recorded by AMANDA-II during 2000-2006. After reconstructing muon tracks and applying selection criteria designed to optimally retain neutrino-induced events originating in the northern sky, we arrive at a sample of 6595 candidate events, predominantly from atmospheric neutrinos with primary energy 100 GeV to 8 TeV. Our search of this sample reveals no indications of a neutrino point source. We place the most stringent limits to date on E-2 neutrino fluxes from points in the northern sky, with an average upper limit of E2Φνμ+ντ≤5.2×10-11TeVcm-2s-1 on the sum of νμ and ντ fluxes, assumed equal, over the energy range from 1.9 TeV to 2.5 PeV. © 2009 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

Quantum liquids are characterized by the distinctive properties such as the low-temperature behavior of heat capacity and the spectrum of low-energy quasiparticle excitations. In particular, at low temperature, Fermi liquids exhibit the zero sound, predicted by Landau in 1957 and subsequently observed in liquid He-3. In this Letter, we ask whether such characteristic behavior is present in theories with a holographically dual description. We consider a class of gauge theories with fundamental matter fields whose holographic dual in the appropriate limit is given in terms of the Dirac-Born-Infeld action in anti-de Sitter space. We find that these systems also exhibit a sound mode at zero temperature despite having a non-Fermi-liquid behavior of the specific heat. These properties suggest that holography identifies a new type of quantum liquid which potentially could be experimentally realized in strongly correlated systems. © 2009 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

We study gauge threshold corrections for local brane models embedded in a large compact space. A large bulk volume gives important contributions to the Konishi and super-Weyl anomalies and the effective field theory analysis implies the unification scale should be enhanced in a model-independent way from M_s to R M_s. For local D3/D3 models this result is supported by the explicit string computations. In this case the scale R M_s comes from the necessity of global cancellation of RR tadpoles sourced by the local model. We also study D3/D7 models and discuss discrepancies with the effective field theory analysis. We comment on phenomenological implications for gauge coupling unification and for the GUT scale.