Underlying Event measurements in pp collisions at $ \sqrt {s} = 0.9 $ and 7 TeV with the ALICE experiment at the LHC
A bstractWe present measurements of Underlying Event observables in pp collisions at $ \sqrt {s} = 0.9 $ and 7TeV. The analysis is performed as a function of the highest charged-particle transverse momentum pT,LT in the event. Different regions are defined with respect to the azimuthal direction of the leading (highest transverse momentum) track: Toward, Transverse and Away. The Toward and Away regions collect the fragmentation products of the hardest partonic interaction. The Transverse region is expected to be most sensitive to the Underlying Event activity. The study is performed with charged particles above three different pT thresholds: 0.15, 0.5 and 1.0 GeV/c. In the Transverse region we observe an increase in the multiplicity of a factor 2–3 between the lower and higher collision energies, depending on the track pT threshold considered. Data are compared to Pythia 6.4, Pythia 8.1 and Phojet. On average, all models considered underestimate the multiplicity and summed pT in the Transverse region by about 10–30%.

title: Commissioning of the ALICE-PHOS trigger
abstract: The Photon Spectrometer (PHOS) of the ALICE experiment at LHC is a high-resolution electromagnetic calorimeter dedicated to the precise measurement of direct photon and neutral meson yields in p+p and Pb+Pb collisions at mid-rapidity in a pT range up to 100 GeV/c. A multi-level trigger system selects events of interest and reduces the overall data flow. PHOS generates two triggers: i) the Level 0 (L0) trigger for high luminosity p+p runs acting mainly as a spectrometer trigger and for selecting high pT photons in Pb+Pb and in p+p collisions; ii) the Level1 (L1) trigger corresponds to a more sophisticated shower analysis which refines the pT selection. The algorithms perform a pulse-shape analysis of the oversampled Avalanche Photo Diode (APD) signal followed by a sliding-window cluster finder. Both triggers are implemented in the firmware which, since SRAM-based FPGAs are used, can be changed on-line between runs. The trigger system was commissioned by cosmic rays and particles from interactions. The status of the trigger system and first results will be presented.

title: Holographic renormalization in no-boundary quantum cosmology
abstract: Recent results of Hartle-Hawking wave functions on asymptotic dS boundaries show non-normalizability, while the bulk origin is not clear. This paper attempts to addresse this problem by studying (Kerr-)dS_3 cosmology in Einstein gravity deformed by a minimally coupled scalar field. Various saddle-point contributions exp[i(saddle-point action)] to the Hartle-Hawking wave functions are computed with mini-superspace formalism. The saddle-point actions are first obtained in the spacetime bulks by direct computation, then on the asymptotic dS boundary by holographic renormalization. It is found that the imaginary part of the saddle-point actions, as functions of scalar field deformation, are generally bounded in the bulk, but can diverge to -infty on the boundary. This can probably be a source of the scalar field-related non-normalizability of the boundary Hartle-Hawking wave functions. For Kerr-dS_3 cosmology, some saddle-point actions have imaginary parts diverging to -infty both in the bulk and on the boundary, when the boundary T^2 is stretched to infinitely long. This can be an origin of non-normalizability of the boundary Hartle-Hawking wave functions related to temperature divergence. Finally the holographic renormalization is extended to scalar-deformed dS_{d+1} (d>= 3) cosmologies for the imaginary part of the saddle-point actions. The result is tested on a 5d example, and saddle points leading to divergent contribution to the boundary Hartle-Hawking wave function are shown to exist.

title: Tetraquarks, hadronic molecules, meson-meson scattering and disconnected contributions in lattice QCD
abstract: There are generally two types of Wick contractions in lattice QCD calculations of a correlation function: connected and disconnected ones. The disconnected contribution is difficult to calculate and noisy, thus it is often neglected. In the context of studying tetraquarks, hadronic molecules, and mesonmeson scattering, we show that whenever there are both connected and singly disconnected contractions, the singly disconnected part gives the leading order contribution, and thus should never be neglected. As an explicit example, we show that information about the scalar mesons sigma, f(0)(980), a(0)(980), and kappa will be lost when neglecting the disconnected contributions.

title: Rephasing Invariance and Hierarchy of the CKM Matrix
abstract: We identified a set of four rephasing invariant parameters of the CKM matrix. They are found to exhibit hierarchies in powers of λ 2 , from λ 2 to λ 8 . It is shown that, at the present level of accuracy, only the first three parameters are needed to fit all available data on flavor physics.

title: Wormholes in vacuum Brans-Dicke theory
abstract: We present a Euclidean wormhole solution in vacuum Brans-Dicke theory, which is different from that obtained by Accetta et al. This wormhole appears to have the feature that its throat dimension increases linearly with Euclidean cosmic time, although this increase may not be measurable. It also requires a negative Brans-Dicke parameterω.

title: Scaling of Yukawa Couplings and Quark Flavor Mixings in the UED Model
abstract: The evolution properties of Yukawa couplings and quark mixings are performed for the one-loop renormalization group equations in the Universal Extra Dimension (UED) model. It is found that the UED model has a substantial effect on the scaling of the fermion masses, including both quark and lepton sectors, whilst the radiative effects on the unitarity triangle is not a sensitive test in this model. Also, for this model, the renormalization invariants $R_{13}$ and $R_{23}$ describe the correlation between the mixing angles and mass ratios to a good approximation, with a variation of the order of $\lambda^4$ and $\lambda^5$ under energy scaling respectively.