QGP tomography with photon tagged jets in ALICE
γ+jet events provide a tomographic measurement of the medium formed in heavy ion collisions at LHC energies. Tagging events with a well identified high pT direct photon and measuring the correlation distribution of hadrons emitted oppositely to the photon in ALICE, allows us to determine, with a good approximation, both the jet fragmentation function 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 will reveal the modifications of the jet structure induced by the medium formed in AA collisions and consequently will infer the medium properties.

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: ALICE EMCal Physics Performance Report

title: High-pT particle correlations in pp collisions at LHC/ALICE*
abstract: 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: Hard Probes in CMS
abstract: This paper reviews recent experimental results on hard probes in heavy-ion collisions from the CMS Collaboration. These studies include various energy loss phenomena (jet nuclear modification factors, tagged b-quark jets, di-jet and photon-jet energy imbalance); observables characterizing jet properties like jet fragmentation function and jet shapes; and measurements of high-pT charged hadrons from jet fragmentation (nuclear modification factors up to 100 GeV/c. All of the presented results utilize the high statistics PbPb data, about 150 μb−1, collected in late 2011 at the LHC.

title: Alignment of the ALICE inner tracking system with cosmic-ray tracks
abstract: ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment devoted to investigating the strongly interacting matter created in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC energies. The ALICE ITS, Inner Tracking System, consists of six cylindrical layers of silicon detectors with three different technologies; in the outward direction: two layers of pixel detectors, two layers each of drift, and strip detectors. The number of parameters to be determined in the spatial alignment of the 2198 sensor modules of the ITS is about 13,000. The target alignment precision is well below 10 mu m in some cases (pixels). The sources of alignment information include survey measurements, and the reconstructed tracks from cosmic rays and from proton-proton collisions. The main track-based alignment method uses the Millepede global approach. An iterative local method was developed and used as well. We present the results obtained for the ITS alignment using about 10(5) charged tracks from cosmic rays that have been collected during summer 2008, with the ALICE solenoidal magnet switched off.

title: Connecting Direct Dark Matter Detection Experiments to Cosmologically Motivated Halo Models
abstract: Several direct detection experiments, including recently CDMS-II, have reported signals consistent with 5 to 10 GeV dark matter (DM) that appear to be in tension with null results from XENON and LUX experiments; these indicate a careful review of the theoretical basis, including the galactic DM velocity distribution function (VDF). We establish a VDF parameter space from DM-only cosmological simulations and illustrate that seemingly contradictory experimental results can be made consistent within this parameter space. Future experimental limits should be reported after they are marginalized over a range of VDF parameters.

title: GPU-Based Conjugate Gradient Solver for Lattice QCD with Domain-Wall Fermions
abstract: We present the first GPU-based conjugate gradient (CG) solver for lattice QCD with domain-wall fermions (DWF). It is well-known that CG is the most time-consuming part in the Hybrid Monte Carlo simulation of unquenched lattice QCD, which becomes even more computational demanding for lattice QCD with exact chiral symmetry. We have designed a CG solver for the general 5-dimensional DWF operator on NVIDIA CUDA architecture with mixed-precision, using the defect correction as well as the reliable updates algorithms. We optimize our computation by even-odd preconditioning in the 4D space-time lattice, plus several innovative techniques for CUDA kernels. For NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285/480, our CG solver attains 180/233 Gflops (sustained).

title: Leading effect of CP violation with four generations
abstract: In the standard model with a fourth generation of quarks, we study the relation between the Jarlskog invariants and the triangle areas in the $4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}4$ Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. To identify the leading effects that may probe the $CP$ violation in processes involving quarks, we invoke small mass and small angle expansions, and show that these leading effects are enhanced considerably compared to the three-generation case by the large masses of fourth-generation quarks. We discuss the leading effect in several cases, in particular, the possibility of large $CP$ violation in $b\ensuremath{\rightarrow}s$ processes, which echoes the heightened recent interest because of experimental hints.

title: Halo-to-halo Similarity and Scatter in the Velocity Distribution of Dark Matter
abstract: We examine the velocity distribution function (VDF) in dark matter halos from Milky Way to cluster mass scales. We identify an empirical model for the VDF with a wider peak and a steeper tail than a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, and discuss physical explanations. We quantify sources of scatter in the VDF of cosmological halos and their implication for direct detection of dark matter. Given modern simulations and observations, we find that the most significant uncertainty in the VDF of the Milky Way arises from the unknown radial position of the solar system relative to the dark matter halo scale radius.

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 $.