Lattice Monte Carlo calculations for unitary fermions in a finite box
We perform lattice Monte Carlo simulations for up to 66 unitary fermions in a finite box using a highly improved lattice action for nonrelativistic spin 1/2 fermions. We obtain a value of $0.366^{+0.016}_{-0.011}$ for the Bertsch parameter, defined as the energy of the unitary Fermi gas measured in units of the free gas energy in the thermodynamic limit. In addition, for up to four unitary fermions, we compute the spectrum of the lattice theory by exact diagonalization of the transfer matrix projected onto irreducible representations of the octahedral group for small to moderate size lattices, providing an independent check of our few-body simulation results. We compare our exact numerical and simulation results for the spectrum to benchmark studies of other research groups, as well as perform an extended analysis of our lattice action improvement scheme, including an analysis of the errors associated with higher partial waves and finite temporal discretization.

title: Conformality Lost
abstract: We consider zero-temperature transitions from conformal to non-conformal phases in quantum theories. We argue that there are three generic mechanisms for the loss of conformality in any number of dimensions: (i) fixed point goes to zero coupling, (ii) fixed point runs off to infinite coupling, or (iii) an IR fixed point annihilates with a UV fixed point and they both disappear into the complex plane. We give both relativistic and non-relativistic examples of the last case in various dimensions and show that the critical behavior of the mass gap behaves similarly to the correlation length in the finite temperature Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition in two dimensions, ξ ∼ exp(c/|T − Tc|). We speculate that the chiral phase transition in QCD at large number of fermion flavors belongs to this universality class, and attempt to identify the UV fixed point that annihilates with the Banks-Zaks fixed point at the lower end of the conformal window.

title: Background electromagnetic fields and nonrelativistic QED matching: Scalar case
abstract: The low-energy structure of hadrons can be described systematically using effective field theory, and the parameters of the effective theory can be determined from lattice QCD computations. Recent work, however, points to inconsistencies between the background field method in lattice QCD and effective field theory matching conditions. We show that the background field problem necessitates inclusion of operators related by equations of motion. In the presence of time-dependent electromagnetic fields, for example, such operators modify Green's functions, thereby complicating the isolation of hadronic parameters which enter on-shell scattering amplitudes. The particularly simple case of a scalar hadron coupled to uniform electromagnetic fields is investigated in detail. At the level of the relativistic effective theory, operators related by equations of motion are demonstrated to be innocuous. The same result does not hold in the non-relativistic effective theory, and inconsistencies in matching are resolved by carefully treating operators related by equations of motion. As uniform external fields potentially allow for surface terms, the problem is additionally analyzed on a torus where such terms are absent. Finite-size corrections are derived for charged scalar correlation functions in uniform electric fields as a useful byproduct.

title: Extended study for unitary fermions on a lattice using the cumulant expansion technique
abstract: A recently developed lattice method for large numbers of strongly interacting nonrelativistic fermions exhibits a heavy tail in the distributions of correlators for large Euclidean time {\tau} and large number of fermions N, which only allows the measurement of ground state energies for a limited number of fermions using standard techniques. In such cases, it is suggested that measuring the log of the correlator is more efficient, and a cumulant expansion of this quantity can be exactly related to the correlation function. The cumulant expansion technique allows us to determine the ground state energies of up to 66 unpolarized unitary fermions on lattices as large as 72$\times$14^3, and up to 70 unpolarized unitary fermions trapped in a harmonic potential on lattices as large as 72$\times$64^3. We have also improved our lattice action with a Galilean invariant form for the four-fermion interaction, which results in predictive volume scaling of the lowest energy of three fermions in a periodic box and in good agreement of our results for N \leq 6 trapped unitary fermions with those from other benchmark calculations.

title: Listening to Noise
abstract: We show how sign problems in simulations of many-body systems can manifest themselves in the form of heavy-tailed correlator distributions, similar to what is seen in electron propagation through disordered media. We propose an alternative statistical approach for extracting ground state energies in such systems, illustrating the method with a toy model and with lattice data for unitary fermions and for baryons in QCD.

title: Large Nc volume reduction and chiral random matrix theory
abstract: Motivated by recent progress on the understanding of the Eguchi-Kawai (EK) volume equivalence and growing interest in conformal window, we simultaneously use the large-Nc volume reduction and Chiral Random Matrix Theory (chRMT) to study the chiral symmetry breaking of four dimensional SU(Nc) gauge theory with adjoint fermions in the large Nc limit. Although some cares are required because the chRMT limit and 't Hooft limit are not compatible in general, we show that the breakdown of the chiral symmetry can be detected in large-Nc gauge theories. As a first step, we mainly focus on the quenched approximation to establish the methodology. We first confirm that heavy adjoint fermions, introduced as the center symmetry preserver, work as expected and thanks to them the volume reduction holds. Using massless overlap fermion as a probe, we then calculate the low-lying Dirac spectrum for fermion in the adjoint representation to compare to that of chRMT, and find that chiral symmetry is indeed broken in the quenched theory.

title: Singlino-driven electroweak baryogenesis in the next-to-MSSM
abstract: We explore a new possibility of electroweak baryogenesis in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model. In this model, a strong first-order electroweak phase transition can be achieved due to the additional singlet Higgs field. The new impact of its superpartner (singlino) on the baryon asymmetry is investigated by employing the closed-time-path formalism. We find that the CP violating source term fueled by the singlino could be large enough to generate the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe without any conflicts with the current constraints from the non-observation of the thallium, neutron and mercury electric dipole moments.

title: VI Photometry of Globular Clusters NGC 6293 and NGC 6541: The Formation of the Metal-poor Inner Halo Globular Clusters*
abstract: We present VI photometry of the metal-poor inner halo globular clusters NGC 6293 and NGC 6541 using the WFPC2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Our color-magnitude diagrams of the clusters show well-defined blue horizontal-branch populations, consistent with their low metallicities and old ages. NGC 6293 appears to have blue straggler stars in the cluster's central region. We discuss the interstellar reddening and the distance modulus of NGC 6293 and NGC 6541 and obtain E(B - V) = 0.40 and (m - M)0 = 14.61 for NGC 6293 and E(B - V) = 0.14 and (m - M)0 = 14.19 for NGC 6541. Our results confirm that NGC 6293 and NGC 6541 are clearly located in the Galaxy's central regions (RGC ≤ 3 kpc). We also discuss the differential reddening across NGC 6293. The interstellar reddening value of NGC 6293 appears to vary by ΔE(B - V) ≈ 0.02-0.04 mag within our small field of view. The most notable result of our study is that the inner halo clusters NGC 6293 and NGC 6541 essentially have the same ages as M92, confirming the previous result from the HST NIC3 observations of NGC 6287.

title: Color-octet mechanism in the inclusive D-wave charmonium productions in B decays
abstract: The inclusive D-wave charmonium production rates in B decays are considered in the Bodwin-Braaten-Lepage (BBL) approach. We find that the color-octet subprocesses B → cc(3S1(8) or 3PJ(80) + s, d, followed by the transition cc(3S1(8), or 3PJ(8)) → 3DJ, strongly dominate over any other subprocess, due to the large Wilson coefficient for the ΔB = 1 effective lagrangian. Assuming that the numerical values of the matrix elements 〈0|O3DJ(3S1(8))|0〉 and 〈0|O3DJ(3PJ(8))|0〉 are the same order of magnitudes with the 〈0|Oψ′ (3S1(8))|0〉, we find that the 1,3D2 can be observed B-factories.

title: Dark energy, inflation and the cosmic coincidence problem
abstract: We show that holographic dark energy could explain why the current dark energy density is so small, if there was an inflation with a sufficient expansion in the early universe. It is also suggested that an inflation with the number of e-folds N ≃ 65 may solve the cosmic coincidence problem in this context. Assuming the inflation and the power-law acceleration phase today we obtain approximate formulas for the event horizon size of the universe and dark energy density as functions of time. A simple numerical study exploiting the formula well reproduces the observed evolution of dark energy. This nontrivial match between the theory and the observational data supports both inflation and holographic dark energy models.

title: Study of jet shapes in inclusive jet production in pp collisions at sqrt[s]=7 TeV using the ATLAS detector
abstract: Jet shapes have been measured in inclusive jet production in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV using 3 pb^{-1} of data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. Jets are reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with transverse momentum 30 GeV < pT < 600 GeV and rapidity in the region |y| < 2.8. The data are corrected for detector effects and compared to several leading-order QCD matrix elements plus parton shower Monte Carlo predictions, including different sets of parameters tuned to model fragmentation processes and underlying event contributions in the final state. The measured jets become narrower with increasing jet transverse momentum and the jet shapes present a moderate jet rapidity dependence. Within QCD, the data test a variety of perturbative and non-perturbative effects. In particular, the data show sensitivity to the details of the parton shower, fragmentation, and underlying event models in the Monte Carlo generators. For an appropriate choice of the parameters used in these models, the data are well described.