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1. Study of neutron beta decay with the Nab experiment

   https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202430305001  

   Baeßler, Stefan; Acharya, Himal; Alarcon, Ricardo; Broussard, Leah J; Bowler, Michael; Bowman, David; Choi, Jin Ha; Christie, Love; Chupp, Tim; Clymer, Skylar; et al (January 2024, EPJ Web of Conferences)

   Hüsken, N; Danilkin, I; Hagelstein, F (Ed.)

   The current three sigma tension in the unitarity test of the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix is a notable problem with the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. A long-standing goal of the study of free neutron beta decay is to better determine the CKM elementV_udthrough measurements of the neutron lifetime and a decay correlation parameter. The Nab collaboration intends to measurea, the neutrino-electron correlation, with accuracy sufficient for a competitive evaluation ofV_udbased on neutron decay data alone. This paper gives a status report and an outlook. 

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2. Semileptonic form factors for $$B\rightarrow D^*\ell \nu $$ at nonzero recoil from $$2+1$$-flavor lattice QCD: Fermilab Lattice and MILC Collaborations

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-10984-9  

   Bazavov, A.; DeTar, C. E.; Du, D.; El-Khadra, A. X.; Gámiz, E.; Gelzer, Z.; Gottlieb, S.; Heller, U. M.; Kronfeld, A. S.; Laiho, J.; et al (December 2022, The European Physical Journal C)

   Abstract We present the first unquenched lattice-QCD calculation of the form factors for the decay$$B\rightarrow D^*\ell \nu $$ $B\to D^{\ast }\ell \nu$at nonzero recoil. Our analysis includes 15 MILC ensembles with$$N_f=2+1$$ $N_f=2+1$flavors of asqtad sea quarks, with a strange quark mass close to its physical mass. The lattice spacings range from$$a\approx 0.15$$ $a\approx 0.15$fm down to 0.045 fm, while the ratio between the light- and the strange-quark masses ranges from 0.05 to 0.4. The valencebandcquarks are treated using the Wilson-clover action with the Fermilab interpretation, whereas the light sector employs asqtad staggered fermions. We extrapolate our results to the physical point in the continuum limit using rooted staggered heavy-light meson chiral perturbation theory. Then we apply a model-independent parametrization to extend the form factors to the full kinematic range. With this parametrization we perform a joint lattice-QCD/experiment fit using several experimental datasets to determine the CKM matrix element$$|V_{cb}|$$ $|V_{\mathrm{cb}}|$. We obtain$$\left| V_{cb}\right| = (38.40 \pm 0.68_{\text {th}} \pm 0.34_{\text {exp}} \pm 0.18_{\text {EM}})\times 10^{-3}$$ $\left(V_{\mathrm{cb}}\right)=(38.40\pm 0.{68}_{\text{th}}\pm 0.{34}_{\text{exp}}\pm 0.{18}_{\text{EM}})\times {10}^{-3}$. The first error is theoretical, the second comes from experiment and the last one includes electromagnetic and electroweak uncertainties, with an overall$$\chi ^2\text {/dof} = 126/84$$ ${\chi }^2\text{/dof}=126/84$, which illustrates the tensions between the experimental data sets, and between theory and experiment. This result is in agreement with previous exclusive determinations, but the tension with the inclusive determination remains. Finally, we integrate the differential decay rate obtained solely from lattice data to predict$$R(D^*) = 0.265 \pm 0.013$$ $R\left(D^{\ast }\right)=0.265\pm 0.013$, which confirms the current tension between theory and experiment. 

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3. Laboratory Study of the Cameron Bands, the First Negative Bands, and Fourth Positive Bands in the Middle Ultraviolet 180–280 nm by Electron Impact Upon CO

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JE006602  

   Lee, Rena A.; Ajello, Joseph M.; Malone, Charles P.; Evans, J. Scott; Veibell, Victoir; Holsclaw, Gregory M.; McClintock, William E.; Hoskins, Alan C.; Jain, Sonal; Gérard, Jean‐Claude; et al (January 2021, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets)

   Abstract We have analyzed medium‐resolution (full width at half maximum, FWHM = 1.2 nm), Middle UltraViolet (MUV; 180–280 nm) laboratory emission spectra of carbon monoxide (CO) excited by electron impact at 15, 20, 40, 50, and 100 eV under single‐scattering conditions at 300 K. The MUV emission spectra at 100 eV contain the Cameron Bands (CB) CO(a³Π → X¹Σ⁺), the fourth positive group (4PG) CO(A¹Π → X¹Σ⁺), and the first negative group (1NG) CO⁺(B²Σ⁺→ X²Σ) from direct excitation and cascading‐induced emission of an optically thin CO gas. We have determined vibrational intensities and emission cross sections for these systems, important for modeling UV observations of the atmospheres of Mars and Venus. We have also measured the CB “glow” profile about the electron beam of the long‐lived CO (a³Π) state and determined its average metastable lifetime of 3 ± 1 ms. Optically allowed cascading from a host of triplet states has been found to be the dominant excitation process contributing to the CB emission cross section at 15 eV, most strongly by the d³Δ and a'³Σ⁺electronic states. We normalized the CB emission cross section at 15 eV electron impact energy by multilinear regression (MLR) analysis to the blended 15 eV MUV spectrum over the spectral range of 180–280 nm, based on the 4PG emission cross section at 15 eV that we have previously measured (Ajello et al., 2019,https://doi.org/10.1029/2018ja026308). We find the CB total emission cross section at 15 eV to be 7.7 × 10⁻¹⁷ cm². 

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4. Mesoscale models for effective elastic properties of carbon-black/ultra-high-molecular-weight-polyethylene nanocomposites

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijengsci.2024.104159  

   Buklovskiy, Stanislav; Miroshnichenko, Kateryna; Tsukrov, Igor; Thomson, Rebecca J; Solberg, Peder C; Van_Citters, Douglas W (December 2024, International Journal of Engineering Science)

   In this paper, we apply mesoscale numerical modeling to predict the effective elastic properties of conductive carbon-black/ultra-high-molecular-weight-polyethylene nanocomposites. The models are based on X-ray microcomputed tomography images. The images show that for the considered range of carbon additive weight fractions, the conductive carbon black (CB) particles are distributed around the ultra-high-molecular-weight-polyethylene (UHMWPE) granules forming a carbon-containing layer of a thickness on the order of 1-2 𝜇𝜇𝜇𝜇. Finite element models of representative volume elements (RVE), incorporating the CB-containing layer, are developed. The RVEs are generated based on the size and shape statistics extracted from processed microcomputed tomography images with further incorporation of the CB-containing layer by a custom image processing code. The layer is modeled analytically as a 2-phase composite consisting of spherical CB inclusions distributed in the UHMWPE matrix. Elastic moduli predicted in the models are compared to experimental data. Results show that the numerical simulations predict effective elastic moduli within the confidence intervals of the experimental measurements up to 7.5 wt % of CB inclusions. 

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5. Electroweak flavour unification

   https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP09(2022)193  

   Davighi, Joe; Tooby-Smith, Joseph (September 2022, Journal of High Energy Physics)

   A bstract We propose that the electroweak and flavour quantum numbers of the Standard Model (SM) could be unified at high energies in an SU(4) × Sp(6) L × Sp(6) R anomaly-free gauge model. All the SM fermions are packaged into two fundamental fields, Ψ L ∼ ( 4 , 6 , 1 ) and Ψ R ∼ ( 4 , 1 , 6 ), thereby explaining the origin of three families of fermions. The SM Higgs, being electroweakly charged, necessarily becomes charged also under flavour when embedded in the UV model. It is therefore natural for its vacuum expectation value to couple only to the third family. The other components of the UV Higgs fields are presumed heavy. Extra scalars are needed to break this symmetry down to the SM, which can proceed via ‘flavour-deconstructed’ gauge groups; for instance, we propose a pattern Sp(6) L → $$ {\prod}_{i=1}^3\mathrm{SU}{(2)}_{L,i}\to \mathrm{SU}{(2)}_L $$ ∏ i = 1 3 SU 2 L , i → SU 2 L for the left-handed factor. When the heavy Higgs components are integrated out, realistic quark Yukawa couplings with in-built hierarchies are naturally generated without any further ingredients, if we assume the various symmetry breaking scalars condense at different scales. The CKM matrix that we compute is not a generic unitary matrix, but it can precisely fit the observed values. 

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