Theory and phenomenology of two-higgs-doublet models

We discuss theoretical and phenomenological aspects of two-Higgs-doublet extensions of the Standard Model. In general, these extensions have scalar mediated flavour changing neutral currents which are strongly constrained by experiment. Various strategies are discussed to control these flavour changing scalar currents and their phenomenological consequences are analysed. In particular, scenarios with natural flavour conservation are investigated, including the so-called type I and type II models as well as lepton-specific and inert models. Type III models are then discussed, where scalar flavour changing neutral currents are present at tree level, but are suppressed by either a specific ansatz for the Yukawa couplings or by the introduction of family symmetries leading to a natural suppression mechanism. We also consider the phenomenology of charged scalars in these models. Next we turn to the role of symmetries in the scalar sector. We discuss the six symmetry-constrained scalar potentials and their extension into the fermion sector. The vacuum structure of the scalar potential is analysed, including a study of the vacuum stability conditions on the potential and the renormalization-group improvement of these conditions is also presented. The stability of the tree level minimum of the scalar potential in connection with electric charge conservation and its behaviour under CP is analysed. The question of CP violation is addressed in detail, including the cases of explicit CP violation and spontaneous CP violation. We present a detailed study of weak basis invariants which are odd under CP. These invariants allow for the possibility of studying the CP properties of any two-Higgs-doublet model in an arbitrary Higgs basis. A careful study of spontaneous CP violation is presented, including an analysis of the conditions which have to be satisfied in order for a vacuum to violate CP. We present minimal models of CP violation where the vacuum phase is sufficient to generate a complex CKM matrix, which is at present a requirement for any realistic model of spontaneous CP violation.

25 kV bipolar solid-state Marx generator for industrial food applications

The preliminary results from a bipolar industrial solidstate based Marx generator, developed for the food industry, capable of delivering 25 kV/250 A positive and negative pulses with 12 kW average power, are presented and discussed. This modular topology uses only four controlled switches per cell, 27 cells in total that can be charged up to 1000V each, the two extra cells are used for droop compensation. The triggering signals for all the switches are generated by a FPGA. Considering that biomaterials are similar to resistive type loads, experimental results from this new bipolar 25 kV modulator into resistive loads are presented and discussed.

Angular distributions in t(t)over-barH(H -> b(b)over-bar) reconstructed events at the LHC

The associated production of a Higgs boson and a top-quark pair, t (t) over barH, in proton-proton collisions is addressed in this paper for a center of mass energy of 13 TeV at the LHC. Dileptonic final states of t (t) over barH events with two oppositely charged leptons and four jets from the decays t -> bW(+) -> bl(+)v(l), (t) over bar -> (b) over barW(-) -> (b) over barl(-)(v) over bar (l) and h -> b (b) over bar are used. Signal events, generated with MadGraph5_aMC@NLO, are fully reconstructed by applying a kinematic fit. New angular distributions of the decay products as well as angular asymmetries are explored in order to improve discrimination of t (t) over barH signal events over the dominant irreducible background contribution, t (t) over barb (b) over bar. Even after the full kinematic fit reconstruction of the events, the proposed angular distributions and asymmetries are still quite different in the t (t) over barH signal and the dominant background (t (t) over barb (b) over bar).

New textures for the lepton mass matrices

We study predictive textures for the lepton mass matrices in which the charged-lepton mass matrix has either four or five zero matrix elements while the neutrino Majorana mass matrix has, respectively, either four or three zero matrix elements. We find that all the viable textures of these two kinds share many predictions: the neutrino mass spectrum is inverted, the sum of the light-neutrino masses is close to 0.1 eV, the Dirac phase delta in the lepton mixing matrix is close to either 0 or pi, and the mass term responsible for neutrinoless double-beta decay lies in between 12 and 22 meV. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license.

Confronting predictive texture zeros in lepton mass matrices with current data

Several popular Ansatze of lepton mass matrices that contain texture zeros are confronted with current neutrino observational data. We perform a systematic chi(2) analysis in a wide class of schemes, considering arbitrary Hermitian charged-lepton mass matrices and symmetric mass matrices for Majorana neutrinos or Hermitian mass matrices for Dirac neutrinos. Our study reveals that several patterns are still consistent with all the observations at the 68.27% confidence level, while some others are disfavored or excluded by the experimental data. The well-known Frampton-Glashow-Marfatia two-zero textures, hybrid textures, and parallel structures (among others) are considered.