Higgs spin determination in the WW channel and beyond
After the discovery of the 126 GeV resonance at the LHC, the determination of its features, including its spin, is a very important ongoing task. In order to distinguish the two most likely spin hypotheses, spin-0 or spin-2, we study the phenomenology of a light Higgs-like spin-2 resonance produced in different gluon-fusion and vector-boson-fusion processes at the LHC. Starting from an effective model for the interaction of a spin-2 particle with the SM gauge bosons, we calculate cross sections and differential distributions within the Monte Carlo program Vbfnlo. We find that with specific model parameters such a spin-2 resonance can mimic SM Higgs rates and transverse-momentum distributions in $$\gamma \gamma , WW$$γγ,WW, and $$ZZ$$ZZ decays, whereas several distributions allow to separate spin-2 from spin-0, independently of the spin-2 model parameters.

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: 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: 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: Gravitational collapse of small scale structure as the origin of the Lyman alpha forest
abstract: If gravitational clustering is a hierarchical process, the present large-scale structure of the galaxy distribution implies that structures on smaller scales must have formed at high redshift. We simulate the formation of small-scale structure (average cell mass: (delta) bar m(sub b) = 10(sup 4.2) solar mass) and the evolution of photoionized gas, in the specific case of the CDM + Lambda model. The photoionized gas has a natural minimal scale of collapse, the Jeans scale (m(sub b,J) is approximately equal to 10(exp 9) solar mass). We find that low column density (N(sub HI) is less than or equal to 10(exp 14)/sq cm) lines originate in regions resembling Zel'dovich pancakes, where gas with overdensities in the range 3-30 is enclosed by two shocks but is typically reexpanding at approximately the Hubble velocity. However, higher column density lines stem from more overdense regions where the shocked gas is cooling. We show that this model can probably account for the observed number of lines, their distribution in column density and b-parameters, as well as the cloud physical sizes as observed in gravitationally lensed quasars. We find a redshift evolution that is too steep; however, this may be due to insufficient dynamical range in the simulation or because the specific model is incorrect. The model predicts that high signal-to-noise observations should find systematic deviations from Voigt profiles, mainly in the form of broad wings in the line profiles, and that a fluctuating Gunn-Peterson effect will be detected, which can be modeled as a superposition of weak lines with a wide range of b-parameters.

title: The thermal history of the intergalactic medium
abstract: At redshifts z≳2, most of the baryons reside in the smooth intergalactic medium which is responsible for the low column density Lyα forest. This photoheated gas follows a tight temperature–density relation which introduces a cut-off in the distribution of widths of the Lyα absorption lines (b-parameters) as a function of column density. We have measured this cut-off in a sample of nine high-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio quasar spectra and determined the thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium in the redshift range 2.0–4.5. At a redshift z∼3, the temperature at the mean density shows a peak and the gas becomes nearly isothermal. We interpret this as evidence for the reionization of He ii.

title: Lower redshift analogues of the sources of reionization
abstract: Known populations of QSOs appear to fall short of producing the ionizing flux required for re-ionizing the universe. The alternative, galaxies as sources of ionizing photons, suffers from the problem that known types of galaxies are almost completely opaque to ionizing photons. For reionization to happen, either large numbers of (largely undiscovered) sources are required, or the known populations of galaxies need to have had a much larger escape fraction for ionizing radiation in the past. We discuss recent discoveries of faint z ∼ 3 Lyman α emitters with asymmetric, extended Lyα emission regions, which apparently are related to interacting galaxies. The unusually shaped Lyα line profiles and the underlying stellar populations of these objects suggest the presence of damaged gaseous halos, infall of gas, tidal or stripped stellar features and young populations of hot stars that would all be conducive to the release of ionizing radiation into intergalactic space. As galaxy interactions and mergers increase with redshift, these effects can only become more important at earlier times, and so these interacting z ∼ 3 objects may be late, lower redshift analogues of the sources of reionization.Known populations of QSOs appear to fall short of producing the ionizing flux required for re-ionizing the universe. The alternative, galaxies as sources of ionizing photons, suffers from the problem that known types of galaxies are almost completely opaque to ionizing photons. For reionization to happen, either large numbers of (largely undiscovered) sources are required, or the known populations of galaxies need to have had a much larger escape fraction for ionizing radiation in the past. We discuss recent discoveries of faint z ∼ 3 Lyman α emitters with asymmetric, extended Lyα emission regions, which apparently are related to interacting galaxies. The unusually shaped Lyα line profiles and the underlying stellar populations of these objects suggest the presence of damaged gaseous halos, infall of gas, tidal or stripped stellar features and young populations of hot stars that would all be conducive to the release of ionizing radiation into intergalactic space. As galaxy interactions and mergers increa...

title: The Observed Probability Distribution Function, Power Spectrum, and Correlation Function of the Transmitted Flux in the Lyα Forest*
abstract: A sample of eight quasars observed at high resolution and signal-to-noise ratio is used to determine the transmitted flux probability distribution function (TFPDF), and the power spectrum and correlation function of the transmitted flux in the Lyα forest, in three redshift bins centered at z = 2.41, 3.00, and 3.89. All the results are presented in tabular form, with full error covariance matrices, to allow for comparisons with any numerical simulations and with other data sets. The observations are compared with a numerical simulation of the Lyα forest of a ΛCDM model with Ω = 0.4, known to agree with other large-scale structure observational constraints. There is excellent agreement for the TFPDF if the mean transmitted flux is adjusted to match the observations. A small difference between the observed and predicted TFPDF is found at high fluxes and low redshift, which may be due to the uncertain effects of fitting the spectral continuum. Using the numerical simulation, we show how the flux power spectrum can be used to recover the initial power spectrum of density fluctuations. From our sample of eight quasars, we measure the amplitude of the mass power spectrum to correspond to a linear variance per unit ln k of Δ(k) = 0.72 ± 0.09 at k = 0.04(km s-1)-1 and z = 3, and the slope of the power spectrum near the same k to be np = -2.55 ± 0.10 (statistical error bars). The results are statistically consistent with those of Croft et al., although our value for the rms fluctuation is lower by a factor of 0.75. For the ΛCDM model we use, the implied primordial slope is n = 0.93 ± 0.10, and the normalization is σ8 = 0.68 + 1.16(0.95 - n) ± 0.04.

title: THE LYMAN ALPHA FOREST FROM GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE IN THE CDM + Λ MODEL
abstract: We use an Eulerian hydrodynamic cosmological simulation to model the Lyα forest in a spatially flat, COBE normalized, cold dark matter model with Ω = 0.4, and find that the intergalactic, photoionized gas is predicted to collapse into sheet-like and filamentary structures which give rise to absorption lines having similar characteristics as the observed Lyα forest. A typical filament is ∼ 1h Mpc long with thickness ∼ 50 − 100h kpc (in proper units), and baryonic mass ∼ 10h M⊙. In comparison our nominal numerical resolution is (2.5, 9)h kpc (in the two simulations we perform) with true resolution, perhaps a factor of 2.5 worse than this; the nominal mass resolution is (10, 10)M⊙ in gas for the two simulations. The gas temperature increases with time as structures with larger velocities collapse gravitationally. We show that the predicted distributions of column densities, b-parameters and equivalent widths of the Lyα forest clouds agree with the observed ones, and that their evolution is consistent with our model, if the ionizing background has (as expected from our simulations) an approximately constant intensity between z = 2 and z = 4. The new method of identifying lines as contiguous regions in the spectrum below a fixed flux threshold is suggested to analyze the absorption lines, given that the Lyα spectra arise from a continuous density field of neutral hydrogen rather than discrete clouds. We also predict the distribution of transmitted flux and its correlation along a spectrum and on parallel spectra, and the He II flux decrement as a function of redshift. We predict a correlation length of ∼ 80h kpc perpendicular to the line of sight for features in the Lyman alpha forest. 1 Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540 2 Peyton Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 3, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 4 Hubble Fellow