Measuring supersymmetry with heavy scalars
Supersymmetry with heavy scalars is a model where, at the LHC we have to rely on rate measurements to determine the parameters of the underlying new physics. For this example we show how to combine rate measurements with kinematic endpoints properly, taking into account statistical, systematic and theoretical uncertainties. Provided we observe a sizeable number of events, the LHC should be able to determine many model parameters with small enough error bars to, for example, test unification patterns.

title: Complete one-loop calculation of the T-violating D-parameter in neutron decay in the MSSM
abstract: We investigate the violation of time reversal invariance in the decay of the free neutron in the framework of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). The coefficient of the triple product of the neutron spin and the momenta of electron and neutrino, the so-called D parameter, is computed at one-loop order including all diagrams. We find that D is mainly sensitive to the trilinear A coupling in the squark sector and to the phase of the coefficient $\mu$ which mixes the two Higgs superfields. The maximal MSSM contribution using parameters still allowed by experiment is however at $D \approx 10^{-7}$, while QED final state interactions give a value of $D_{\mathrm {fsi}} = - 2.3 \cdot 10^{-5}$. Explicit expressions for all relevant diagrams are given in an appendix.

title: Di-boson and Tri-boson production at the LHC
abstract: The status of di-boson and tri-boson production is shortly review. Using the VBFNLO and the LOOPSIM package, approximated results at NNLO QCD are given for WZ production. Results for waa + jet at NLO QCD are also shown.

title: Helmholtz Alliance Linear Collider Forum
abstract: Supersymmetric scenarios with a very weakly interacting lightest superpartner (LSP) - like the gravitino or axino - naturally give rise to a long-lived next-to-LSP (NLSP). If the NLSP is a charged slepton it leaves a very distinct signature in a collider experiment. At the ILC/CLIC it will be possible to capture a significant fraction of the produced charged sleptons and observe their decays. These decays potentially reveal the nature of the LSP and thus provide a unique possibility to measure the properties of a very weakly interacting LSP which otherwise is most likely hidden from any other observation, like direct or indirect dark matter searches. We review the proposals that have been made to measure the LSP properties at the ILC/CLIC and compare its potential to the capability of the LHC.

title: NLO QCD corrections to $W^\pm Z\gamma$ production with leptonic decays
abstract: We present a computation of the O(alpha_s) QCD corrections to W^\pm Z \gamma production at the Large Hadron Collider. The photon is considered as real, and we include full leptonic decays for the W and Z bosons. Based on the structure of the VBFNLO program package, we obtain numerical results through a fully flexible Monte Carlo program, which allows to implement general cuts and distributions of the final-state particles. The NLO QCD corrections are sizable and strongly exceed the theory error obtained by a scale variation of the leading-order result. Also, the shapes of relevant observables are significantly altered.

title: Physics beyond the standard model: supersymmetry
abstract: This collection of studies on new physics at the LHC constitutes the report of the supersymmetry working group at the Workshop 'Physics at TeV Colliders', Les Houches, France, 2007. They cover the wide spectrum of phenomenology in the LHC era, from alternative models and signatures to the extraction of relevant observables, the study of the MSSM parameter space and finally to the interplay of LHC observations with additional data expected on a similar time scale. The special feature of this collection is that while not each of the studies is explicitly performed together by theoretical and experimental LHC physicists, all of them were inspired by and discussed in this particular environment.

title: High-redshift Metals. II. Probing Reionization Galaxies with Low-ionization Absorption Lines at Redshift Six
abstract: We present a survey for low-ionization metal absorption line systems toward 17 QSOs at redshifts z_(em) = 5.8-6.4. Nine of our objects were observed at high resolution with either Keck/HIRES or Magellan/MIKE, and the remainder at moderate resolution with Keck/ESI. The survey spans 5.3 5.3 in the number density of highly ionized systems traced by C IV. The low-ionization systems at z ~ 6 span a similar range of velocity widths as lower-redshift sub-DLAs but have significantly weaker lines at a given width. This may imply that the mass-metallicity relation of the host galaxies evolves toward lower metallicities at higher redshifts. These systems lack strong Si IV and C IV, which are common among lower-redshift DLAs and sub-DLAs. This is consistent, however, with a similar decrease in the metallicity of the low- and high-ionization phases, and does not necessarily indicate a lack of nearby, highly ionized gas. The high number density of low-ionization systems at z ~ 6 suggests that we may be detecting galaxies below the current limits of i-dropout and Lyα emission galaxy surveys. These systems may therefore be the first direct probes of the "typical" galaxies responsible for hydrogen reionization.

title: Metallicity of the Intergalactic Medium Using Pixel Statistics. II. The Distribution of Metals as Traced by C IV
abstract: We measure the distribution of carbon in the intergalactic medium as a function of redshift z and overdensity δ. Using a hydrodynamical simulation to link the H I absorption to the density and temperature of the absorbing gas, and a model for the UV background radiation, we convert ratios of C IV to H I pixel optical depths into carbon abundances. For the median metallicity this technique was described and tested in Paper I of this series. Here we generalize it to reconstruct the full probability distribution of the carbon abundance and apply it to 19 high-quality quasar absorption spectra. We find that the carbon abundance is spatially highly inhomogeneous and is well described by a lognormal distribution for fixed δ and z. Using data in the range log δ = -0.5-1.8 and z = 1.8-4.1, and a renormalized version of the 2001 Haardt & Madau model for the UV background radiation from galaxies and quasars, we measure a median metallicity of [C/H] = -3.47 + 0.08(z - 3) + 0.65(log δ - 0.5) and a lognormal scatter of σ([C/H]) = 0.76 + 0.02(z - 3) - 0.23(log δ - 0.5). Thus, we find significant trends with overdensity but no evidence for evolution. These measurements imply that gas in this density range accounts for a cosmic carbon abundance of [C/H] = -2.80 ± 0.13 (ΩC ≈ 2 × 10-7), with no evidence for evolution. The dominant source of systematic error is the spectral shape of the UV background, with harder spectra yielding higher carbon abundances. While the systematic errors due to uncertainties in the spectral hardness may exceed the quoted statistical errors for δ < 10, we stress that UV backgrounds that differ significantly from our fiducial model give unphysical results. The measured lognormal scatter is strictly independent of the spectral shape, provided the background radiation is uniform. We also present measurements of the C III/C IV ratio (which rule out temperatures high enough for collisional ionization to be important for the observed C IV) and of the evolution of the effective Lyα optical depth.

title: Direct integration and non-perturbative effects in matrix models
abstract: We show how direct integration can be used to solve the closed amplitudes of multicut matrix models with polynomial potentials. In the case of the cubic matrix model, we give explicit expressions for the ring of nonholomorphic modular objects that are needed to express all closed matrix model amplitudes. This allows us to integrate the holomorphic anomaly equation up to holomorphic modular terms that we fix by the gap condition up to genus four. There is an onedimensional submanifold of the moduli space in which the spectral curve becomes the Seiberg-Witten curve and the ring reduces to the nonholomorphic modular ring of the group Γ(2). On that submanifold, the gap conditions completely fix the holomorphic ambiguity and the model can be solved explicitly to very high genus. We use these results to make precision tests of the connection between the large order behavior of the 1/N expansion and nonperturbative effects due to instantons. Finally, we argue that a full understanding of the large genus asymptotics in the multicut case requires a new class of nonperturbative sectors in the matrix model.

title: Expansion and Collapse in the Cosmic Web
abstract: We study the kinematics of the gaseous cosmic web at high redshift using Lyα forest absorption in multiple QSO sight lines. Observations of the projected velocity shifts between Lyα absorbers common to the lines of sight to a gravitationally lensed QSO and three more widely separated QSO pairs are used to directly measure the expansion of the cosmic web in units of the Hubble velocity, as a function of redshift and spatial scale. The lines of sight used span a redshift range from about 2 to 4.5 and represent transverse scales from the subkiloparsec range to about 300 h physical kpc. Using a simple analytic model and a cosmological hydrodynamic simulation, we constrain the underlying three-dimensional distribution of expansion velocities from the observed line-of-sight distribution of velocity shear across the plane of the sky. The shape of the shear distribution and its width (14.9 km s-1 rms for a physical transverse separation of 61 h kpc at z = 2, 30.0 km s-1 for 261 h kpc at z = 3.6) are found to be in good agreement with the IGM undergoing large-scale motions dominated by the Hubble flow, making this one of the most direct observations possible of the expansion of the universe. However, modeling the Lyα clouds with a simple expanding pancake model, the average expansion velocity of the gaseous structures causing the Lyα forest in the lower redshift (z ~ 2) smaller separation (61 kpc) sample appears about 20% lower than the local Hubble expansion velocity. In order to understand the observed velocity distribution further we investigated the statistical distribution of expansion velocities in cosmological Lyα forest simulations. The mean expansion velocity in the (z ~ 2, separation ~ 60 kpc) simulation is indeed somewhat smaller than the Hubble velocity, as found in the real data. We interpret this finding as tentative evidence for some Lyα forest clouds breaking away from the Hubble flow and undergoing the early stages of gravitational collapse. However, the distribution of velocities is highly skewed, and the majority of Lyα forest clouds at all redshifts from 2 to 3.8 expand with super-Hubble velocities, typically about 5%-20% faster than the Hubble flow. This behavior is explained if most Lyα forest clouds in the column density range typically detectable are expanding filaments that stretch and drain into more massive nodes. The significant difference seen in the velocity distributions between the high- and low-redshift samples may conceivably reflect actual peculiar deceleration, the differences in spatial scale, or our selecting higher densities at lower redshift for a given detection threshold for Lyα forest lines. We also investigate the alternative possibility that the velocity structure of the general Lyα forest could have an entirely different, local origin, as expected if the Lyα forest were produced or at least significantly modified by galactic feedback, e.g., winds from star-forming galaxies at high redshift. However, we find no evidence that the observed distribution of velocity shear is significantly influenced by processes other than Hubble expansion and gravitational instability. To avoid overly disturbing the IGM, galactic winds may be old and/or limp by the time we observe them in the Lyα forest, or they may occupy only an insignificant volume fraction of the IGM. We briefly discuss the observational evidence usually presented in favor of an IGM afflicted by high-redshift extragalactic superwinds and find much of it ambiguous. During the hierarchical buildup of structure, galaxies are expected to spill parts of their interstellar medium and to heat and stir the IGM in ways that make it hard to disentangle this gravitational process from the effects of winds.

title: The Metal Contents of Very Low Column Density Lyman-alpha Clouds: Implications for the Origin of Heavy Elements in the Intergalactic Medium
abstract: We investigate the metal contents of Lyman-alpha clouds at 2.2 10^14.5 cm-2. This result rules out the suggestion that a generation of Population III stars could have polluted the entire universe to a (nearly) uniform metallicity level of [C/H]=-2.5. Cosmological simulations involving gas hydrodynamics indicate that Lyman-alpha absorption with N(HI)>10^14.5 cm-2 mostly occur in the filamentary gaseous regions surrounding and connecting collapsed objects, while those with N(HI) 10^14.5 cm-2 (i.e., gas in the filaments) were probably prodcued in situ by Pop II stars, in the sense that they were either made by stars within the clouds or were ejected from nearby star-forming galaxies. Within this context, clouds with N(HI)<10^14 cm-2 (i.e., gas in void regions) may only have e experienced pollution from Pop III stars.