Chern Simons Theory and the volume of 3-manifolds
We give some applications of the Chern Simons gauge theory to the study of the set ${\rm vol}(N,G)$ of volumes of all representations $\rho\co\pi_1N\to G$, where $N$ is a closed oriented three-manifold and $G$ is either ${\rm Iso}_e\t{\rm SL_2(\R)}$, the isometry group of the Seifert geometry, or ${\rm Iso}_+{\Hi}^3$, the orientation preserving isometry group of the hyperbolic 3-space. We focus on three natural questions: 
(1) How to find non-zero values in ${\rm vol}(N, G)$? or weakly how to find non-zero elements in ${\rm vol}(\t N, G)$ for some finite cover $\t N$ of $N$? 
(2) Do these volumes satisfy the covering property in the sense of Thurston? 
(3) What kind of topological information is enclosed in the elements of ${\rm vol}(N, G)$? 
We determine ${\rm vol}(N, G)$ when $N$ supports the Seifert geometry, and we find some non-zero values in ${\rm vol}(N,G)$ for certain 3-manifolds with non-trivial geometric decomposition for either $G={\rm Iso}_+{\Hi}^3$ or ${\rm Iso}_e\t{\rm SL_2(\R)}$. Moreover we will show that unlike the Gromov simplicial volume, these non-zero elements carry the gluing information between the geometric pieces of $N$. 
For a large class 3-manifolds $N$, including all rational homology 3-spheres, we prove that $N$ has a positive Gromov simplicial volume iff it admits a finite covering $\t N$ with ${\rm vol}(\t N,{\rm Iso}_+{\Hi}^3)\ne \{0\}$. On the other hand, among such class, there are some $N$ with positive simplicial volume but ${\rm vol}(N,{\rm Iso}_+{\Hi}^3)=\{0\}$, yielding a negative answer to question (2) for hyperbolic volume.

title: Heavy fragment radioactivity of Pu-238: Si and Mg emission
abstract: In addition to its two known hadronic decay modes\char22{}alpha decay (half-life 88 yr) and spontaneous fission (5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{10}$ yr)\char22{}we have found that $^{238}\mathrm{Pu}$ also decays by emission of a Mg nucleus (\ensuremath{\sim}2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{18}$ yr) and by emission of a Si nucleus (\ensuremath{\sim}6\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{17}$ yr). This extends to four (the other two being $^{14}\mathrm{C}$ emission and Ne emission) the number of known modes of decay by emission of a fragment of mass between that of an alpha particle and that resulting from fission. The branching ratios relative to alpha decay are the lowest yet observed: \ensuremath{\sim}6\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}17}$ for Mg emission and 1.4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}16}$ for Si emission.

title: Unified Field Theory and Principle of Representation Invariance
abstract: The main objectives of this article are to postulate a new principle of representation invariance (PRI), and to refine the unified field model of four interactions, derived using the principle of interaction dynamics (PID). Intuitively, PID takes the variation of the action functional under energy-momentum conservation constraint, and PRI requires that physical laws be independent of representations of the gauge groups. One important outcome of this unified field model is a natural duality between the interacting fields (g,A,Wa,Sk), corresponding to graviton, photon, intermediate vector bosons W± and Z and gluons, and the adjoint bosonic fields $(\varPhi_{\mu}, \phi^{0}, \phi^{a}_{w}, \phi^{k}_{s})$. This duality predicts two Higgs particles of similar mass with one due to weak interaction and the other due to strong interaction. The unified field model can be naturally decoupled to study individual interactions, leading to (1) modified Einstein equations, giving rise to a unified theory for dark matter and dark energy (Ma and Wang  Ser A. 34(2):335–366, 2014), (2) three levels of strong interaction potentials for quark, nucleon/hadron, and atom respectively (Ma and Wang in Duality theory of strong interaction, 2012), and (3) two weak interaction potentials (Ma and Wang in Duality theory of weak interaction, 2012). These potential/force formulas offer a clear mechanism for both quark confinement and asymptotic freedom—a longstanding problem in particle physics (Ma and Wang in Duality theory of strong interaction, 2012).

title: Cosmological information in weak lensing peaks
abstract: Recent studies have shown that the number counts of convergence peaks N(kappa) in weak lensing (WL) maps, expected from large forthcoming surveys, can be a useful probe of cosmology. We follow up on this finding, and use a suite of WL convergence maps, obtained from ray-tracing N-body simulations, to study (i) the physical origin of WL peaks with different heights, and (ii) whether the peaks contain information beyond the convergence power spectrum P_ell. In agreement with earlier work, we find that high peaks (with amplitudes >~ 3.5 sigma, where sigma is the r.m.s. of the convergence kappa) are typically dominated by a single massive halo. In contrast, medium-height peaks (~0.5-1.5 sigma) cannot be attributed to a single collapsed dark matter halo, and are instead created by the projection of multiple (typically, 4-8) halos along the line of sight, and by random galaxy shape noise. Nevertheless, these peaks dominate the sensitivity to the cosmological parameters w, sigma_8, and Omega_m. We find that the peak height distribution and its dependence on cosmology differ significantly from predictions in a Gaussian random field. We directly compute the marginalized errors on w, sigma_8, and Omega_m from the N(kappa) + P_ell combination, including redshift tomography with source galaxies at z_s=1 and z_s=2. We find that the N(kappa) + P_ell combination has approximately twice the cosmological sensitivity compared to P_ell alone. These results demonstrate that N(kappa) contains non-Gaussian information complementary to the power spectrum.

title: Novel inclusive search for the Higgs boson in the four-lepton final state at CDF
abstract: An inclusive search for the standard model Higgs boson using the four-lepton final state in proton-antiproton collisions produced by the Tevatron at s√=1.96  TeV is conducted. The data are recorded by the CDF II detector and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 9.7  fb−1. Three distinct Higgs decay modes, namely ZZ, WW, and ττ, are simultaneously probed. Nine potential signal events are selected and found to be consistent with the background expectation. We set a 95% credibility limit on the production cross section times the branching ratio and subsequent decay to the four-lepton final state for hypothetical Higgs boson masses between 120  GeV/c2 and 300  GeV/c2.

title: Nonequilibrium Phenomena in Quantum Field Theory: From Linear Response to Dynamical Renormalization Group
abstract: This thesis is devoted to studying aspects of real-time nonequilibrium dynamics in quantum field theory by implementing an initial value formulation of quantum field theory. The main focus is on the linear relaxation of mean fields and quantum kinetics in nonequilibrium multiparticle quantum systems with potential applications to ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, cosmological phase transitions and condensed matter systems. We first study the damping of fermion mean fields in a fermion-scalar plasma with a view towards understanding baryon transport phenomena during electroweak baryogenesis. Secondly, we apply and extend the renormalization group method to study nonequilibrium dynamics with the goals of constructing a quantum kinetic description that goes beyond usual Boltzmann kinetics and understanding anomalous relaxation associated with infrared phenomena. The final part of this thesis presents a real-time kinetic analysis of direct photon production from a quark-gluon plasma created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. We show that the direct photon yield is significantly enhanced by the lowest order energy-nonconserving processes originated in the transient lifetime of the quark-gluon plasma.

title: Combination of the top-quark mass measurements from the Tevatron collider
abstract: We thank the Fermilab staff and technical staffs of the 
participating institutions for their vital contributions and 
acknowledge support from the DOE and NSF (USA), ARC 
(Australia), CNPq, FAPERJ, FAPESP, and FUNDUNESP 
(Brazil), NSERC (Canada), NSC, CAS, and CNSF 
(China), Colciencias (Colombia), MSMT and GACR 
(Czech Republic), the Academy of Finland, CEA, and 
CNRS/IN2P3 (France), BMBF and DFG (Germany), 
DAE and DST (India), SFI (Ireland), INFN (Italy), 
MEXT (Japan), the Korean World Class University 
Program and NRF (Korea), CONACyT (Mexico), FOM 
(Netherlands), MON, NRC KI, and RFBR (Russia), the 
Slovak R&D Agency, the Ministerio de Ciencia e 
Innovacio´n, and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010 
(Spain), The Swedish Research Council (Sweden), SNSF 
(Switzerland), STFC and the Royal Society (United 
Kingdom), and the A. P. Sloan Foundation (USA).