High-pT particle correlations in pp collisions at LHC/ALICE*
Two-particle correlation triggered by high-pT particles allows us to study hard scattering phenomena when full jet reconstruction is challenging. An analysis of the first ALICE pp data where charged and neutral particles isolated or not are used as trigger particles is presented. The two-particle correlation between the trigger (t) and the associate (a) particles is studied as a function of the imbalance parameter and interpreted in terms of the jet fragmentation function.

title: Two particle correlations: A probe of the LHC QCD medium
abstract: The properties of γ-jet pairs emitted in heavy-ion collisions provide an accurate mean to perform a tomographic measurement of the medium created in the collision through the study of the medium modified jet properties. The idea is to measure the distribution of hadrons emitted on the opposite side of the direct photon. The feasibility of such measurements is studied by applying the approach on the simulation data, we have demonstrated that this method allows us to measure, with a good approximation, both the jet fragmentation and the back-to-back azimuthal alignment of the direct photon and the jet. Comparing these two observables measured in pp collisions with the ones measured in AA collisions reveals the modifications induced by the medium on the jet structure and consequently allows us to infer the medium properties. In this contribution, we discuss a first attempt of such measurements applied to real proton-proton data from the ALICE experiment.

title: Photon — jet correlations measurement with ALICE at LHC: a feasibility study in proton-proton collisions
abstract: The feasibility to measure the imbalance distribution between direct isolated photons and charged hadrons is discussed within the context of the ALICE experiment at LHC. The case of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt s $ TeV is studied with Monte-Carlo simulations. Performances for prompt photon identification and rejection of the π0 decay photons are presented. Such a measurement will offer the possibilty to probe the medium formed in AA collisions with jets of energies below 50 GeV, which cannot be reconstructed in the heavy-ion environment.

title: Topological Charge in Two Flavors QCD with Optimal Domain-Wall Fermion
abstract: We measure the topological charge of the gauge configurations generated by lattice simulations of 2 flavors QCD on a $ 16^3 \times 32 $ lattice, with Optimal Domain-Wall Fermion (ODWF) at $ N_s = 16 $ and plaquette gauge action at $ \beta = 5.90 $. Using the Adaptive Thick-Restart Lanczos algorithm, we project the low-lying modes of the 4D effective Dirac operator of ODWF, and obtain the topological charge and topological susceptibility. Our result of topological susceptibility agrees with the sea-quark mass dependence predicted by the chiral perturbation theory, and provides a determination of the chiral condensate.

title: Topological susceptibility in two flavors lattice QCD with the optimal domain-wall fermion
abstract: We determine the topological susceptibility of the gauge configurations generated by lattice simulations using two flavors of optimal domain-wall fermion on the 16 3 × 32 lattice with length 16 in the fifth dimension, at the lattice spacing a ≃ 0.1 fm . Using the adaptive thick-restart Lanczos algorithm, we project the low-lying eigenmodes of the overlap Dirac operator, and obtain the topological charge of each configuration, for eight ensembles with pion masses in the range 220–550 MeV. From the topological charge, we compute the topological susceptibility and the second normalized cumulant. Our result of the topological susceptibility agrees with the sea-quark mass dependence predicted by the chiral perturbation theory and provides a determination of the chiral condensate, Σ MS ¯ ( 2 GeV ) = [ 259 ( 6 ) ( 7 ) MeV ] 3 , and the pion decay constant F π = 92 ( 12 ) ( 2 ) MeV .

title: The Dependence of Subhalo Abundance on Halo Concentration
abstract: Hierarchical structure formation implies that the number of subhalos within a dark matter halo depends not only on halo mass, but also on the formation history of the halo. This dependence on the formation history, which is highly correlated with halo concentration, can account for the super-Poissonian scatter in subhalo occupation at a fixed halo mass that has been previously measured in simulations. Here we propose a model to predict the subhalo abundance function for individual host halos that incorporates both halo mass and concentration. We combine results of cosmological simulations with a new suite of zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-mass halos to calibrate our model. We show that the model can successfully reproduce the mean and the scatter of subhalo occupation in these simulations. The implications of this correlation between subhalo abundance and halo concentration are further investigated. We also discuss cases in which inferences about halo properties can be affected if this correlation between subhalo abundance and halo concentration is ignored; in these cases, our model would give a more accurate inference. We propose that with future deep surveys, satellite occupation in the low-mass regime can be used to verify the existence of halo assembly bias.

title: Lattice QCD with Optimal Domain-Wall Fermion: Light Meson Spectroscopy
abstract: We perform lattice simulations of two flavors QCD using the optimal domain-wall fermion, in which the chiral symmetry is preserved to a good precision ($ m_{res} \sim 0.3 $ MeV) on the $ 16^3 \times 32 $ lattice ($ L \sim 2 $ fm) with inverse lattice spacing $ a^{-1} \sim 1.8 $ GeV, and $ N_s = 16 $ in the fifth dimension, for eight sea quark masses corresponding to the pion masses in the range 210-500 MeV. We present our first results of the mass and the decay constant of the pseudoscalar meson, which are in good agreement with the next-to-leading order chiral perturbation theory for $ M_\pi < 450 $ MeV, and from which we determine the low-energy constants $ f $, $ \Sigma $, $ \bar{l}_3 $ and $ \bar{l}_4 $. At the physical pion mass $ M_{\pi} = 135$ MeV, we obtain the pion decay constant $f_\pi =133(1)(2)$ MeV, and the average up and down quark mass $m_{ud}^{\bar{\rm MS}}(\mathrm{2 GeV})=4.09(7)(11)$ MeV, where the first error is statistical, and the second error is systematic due to the truncation of the higher order corrections and the uncertainty in the determination of the lattice spacing. Furthermore, we also obtain the chiral condensate $ \Sigma^{\bar{{\mathrm{MS}}}}(2 GeV) = [250(4)(7) MeV]^3 $.

title: Sussing merger trees: the Merger Trees Comparison Project
abstract: Merger trees follow the growth and merger of dark-matter haloes over cosmic history. As well as giving important insights into the growth of cosmic structure in their own right, they provide an essential backbone to semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. This paper is the first in a series to arise from the Sussing Merger Trees Workshop in which 10 different tree-building algorithms were applied to the same set of halo catalogues and their results compared. Although many of these codes were similar in nature, all algorithms produced distinct results. Our main conclusions are that a useful merger-tree code should possess the following features: (i) the use of particle IDs to match haloes between snapshots; (ii) the ability to skip at least one, and preferably more, snapshots in order to recover subhaloes that are temporarily lost during merging; (iii) the ability to cope with (and ideally smooth out) large, temporary fluctuations in halo mass. Finally, to enable different groups to communicate effectively, we defined a common terminology that we used when discussing merger trees and we encourage others to adopt the same language. We also specified a minimal output format to record the results.