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Steven A. Abel

Publications and source records attributed to Steven A. Abel.

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Colliders are not Testing Locality via Bell's Inequality nor Providing an Unconditional Proof of Entanglement

Recently there has been an increased interest in possible tests of locality via Bell's inequalities, as well as separately tests of entanglement at colliders, in particular at the LHC. These have involved various physical processes, such as $t\bar t$, or $τ^+τ^-$ production, or the decay of a Higgs boson to two vector bosons $H\to VV^*$. We argue that $\textit{none}$ of these proposals constitute a test of locality via Bell's inequality or promise unconditional observational evidence of entanglement. In all cases what is measured are the momenta of the final state particles. Using the construction proposed by Kasday (1971) in a different context, and adapted to collider scenarios by Abel, Dittmar, and Dreiner (1992), it is straightforward to construct a local hidden variable theory (LHVT) which exactly reproduces the data. This construction is only possible as the final state momenta all commute. We show that this LHVT satisfies Bell's inequality or the related CHSH inequality as appropriate for all the proposed LHC collider tests in the literature. Thus a test of locality via Bell's inequality is not possible at colliders. The LHVT is also by construction local, $\textit{i.e.}$ all correlations are separable. Thus an unconditional proof of entanglement is also inherently $\textit{not}$ possible at colliders. It can only be shown that the entanglement within the Standard Model consistently describes the data.

hep-ph

String Model Building on Quantum Annealers

We explore for the first time the direct construction of string models on quantum annealers, and investigate their efficiency and effectiveness in the model discovery process. Through a thorough comparison with traditional methods such as simulated annealing, random scans, and genetic algorithms, we highlight the potential advantages offered by quantum annealers, which in this study promised to be roughly fifty times faster than random scans and genetic algorithm and approximately four times faster than simulated annealing.

hep-th

Gaugino versus Sfermion Masses in Gauge Mediation

A well-known signature of supersymmetry breaking scenarios with ordinary gauge mediation is a universal formula governing gaugino and sfermion masses such that their ratio is of order one. On the other hand, recently studied models with direct gauge mediation predict anomalously small ratios of gaugino to scalar masses. It was argued that the smallness of gaugino masses is a consequence of being in the lowest energy state of the SUSY-breaking low energy effective theory. To increase gaugino masses one either has to move to higher metastable vacuum or alternatively remain in the original SUSY-breaking vacuum but extend the theory by introducing a lower-lying vacuum elsewhere. We follow the latter strategy and show that the ratio of gaugino to sfermion masses can be continuously varied between zero and of order one by bringing in a lower vacuum from infinity. We argue that the stability of the vacuum is directly linked to the ratio between the gaugino masses and the underlying SUSY-breaking scale, i.e. the gravitino mass.

hep-ph

Patterns of Gauge Mediation in Metastable SUSY Breaking

Supersymmetry breaking in a metastable vacuum allows one to build simple and concrete models of gauge mediation. Generation of gaugino masses requires that R-symmetry be broken in this vacuum. In general, there are two possible ways to break R-symmetry, explicitly or spontaneously. We find that the MSSM phenomenology depends crucially on how this breaking occurs in the Hidden Sector. Explicit R-symmetry breaking models can lead to fairly standard gauge mediation, but we argue that in the context of ISS-type models this only makes sense if B=0 at the mediation scale, which leads to high tan(beta). If on the other hand, R-symmetry is broken spontaneously, then R-symmetry violating soft terms tend to be suppressed with respect to R-symmetry preserving ones, and one is led to a scenario with large scalar masses. These models interpolate between standard gauge mediation and split SUSY models. We provide benchmark points for the two scenarios. They demonstrate that the specific dynamics of the Hidden Sector -- the underlying nature of supersymmetry and R-symmetry breaking -- affects considerably the mass spectrum of the MSSM, and vice versa.

hep-ph

Will the LHC Look into the Fate of the Universe?

The LHC will probe the nature of the vacuum that determines the properties of particles and the forces between them. Of particular importance is the fact that our current theories allow the Universe to be trapped in a metastable vacuum, which may decay in the distant future, changing the nature of matter. This could be the case in the Standard Model if the LHC finds the Higgs boson to be light. Supersymmetry is one favoured extension of the Standard Model which one might invoke to try to avoid such instability. However, many supersymmetric models are also condemned to vacuum decay for different reasons. The LHC will be able to distinguish between different supersymmetric models, thereby testing the stability of the vacuum, and foretelling the fate of the Universe.

hep-ph

Illuminating the Hidden Sector of String Theory by Shining Light through a Magnetic Field

Many models of physics beyond the Standard Model predict minicharged particles to which current and near future low-energy experiments are highly sensitive. Such minicharges arise generically from kinetic-mixing in theories containing at least two U(1) gauge factors. Here, we point out that the required multiple U(1) factors, the size of kinetic-mixing, and suitable matter representations to allow for a detection in the near future occur naturally in the context of string theory embeddings of the Standard Model. A detection of minicharged particles in a low energy experiment would likely be a signal of an underlying string theory and may provide a means of testing it.

hep-ph

Realistic Yukawa Couplings through Instantons in Intersecting Brane Worlds

The Yukawa couplings of the simpler models of D-branes on toroidal orientifolds suffer from the so-called ``rank one'' problem -- there is only a single non-zero mass and no mixing. We consider the one-loop contribution of E2-instantons to Yukawa couplings on intersecting D6-branes, and show that they can solve the rank one problem. In addition they have the potential to provide a geometric explanation for the hierarchies observed in the Yukawa coupling. In order to do this we provide the necessary quantities for instanton calculus in this class of background.

hep-th

Naturalised Supersymmetric Grand Unification

We construct a simple model of an SU(5) GUT with gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking from a metastable vacuum of a hidden sector. All mass parameters and hierarchies of our model are generated dynamically from retrofitting. This includes the mu-parameter and the GUT scale. However, as typical for SU(5) GUTs, proton longevity remains a problem.

hep-ph

Metastable SUSY breaking within the Standard Model

We construct a supersymmetric version of the Standard Model which contains a long-lived metastable vacuum. In this vacuum supersymmetry is broken and the electroweak symmetry is Higgsed, and we identify it with the physical ground state of the Standard Model. In our approach the metastable supersymmetry breaking (MSB) occurs directly in the SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y sector of the Standard Model; it does not require a separate MSB sector and in this way it departs from the usual lore. There is a direct link between the electroweak symmetry breaking and the supersymmetry breaking in our model, both effects are induced by the same Higgs fields. In order to generate sufficiently large gluino masses we have to have strong coupling in the Higgs sector, h >> 1. Our model results in an extremely compact low-energy effective theory at the electroweak scale with Higgs fields being very heavy, M_{Higgs} >> M_W and frozen at their vacuum expectation values.

hep-ph

SUSY breaking by a metastable ground state: Why the early Universe preferred the non-supersymmetric vacuum

Supersymmetry breaking in a metastable vacuum is re-examined in a cosmological context. It is shown that thermal effects generically drive the Universe to the metastable minimum even if it begins in the supersymmetry-preserving one. This is a generic feature of the ISS models of metastable supersymmetry breaking due to the fact that SUSY preserving vacua contain fewer light degrees of freedom than the metastable ground state at the origin. These models of metastable SUSY breaking are thus placed on an equal footing with the more usual dynamical SUSY breaking scenarios.

hep-th

Why the early Universe preferred the non-supersymmetric vacuum: Part II

It was recently shown in hep-th/0610334 that in the context of the ISS models with a metastable supersymmetry breaking vacuum, thermal effects generically drive the Universe to the metastable vacuum even if it began after inflation in the supersymmetry-preserving one. We continue this programme and specifically take into account two new effects. First is the effect of the mass-gap of the gauge degrees of freedom in the confining supersymmetry preserving vacua, and second, is the effect of the back reaction of the MSSM sector on the SUSY breaking ISS sector. It is shown that, even though the mass-gap is parametrically smaller than the <ϕ> vevs, it drastically reduces the temperature required for the Universe to be driven to the metastable vacuum: essentially any temperature larger than the supersymmetry breaking scale μis sufficient. On the other hand we also find that any reasonable transmission of SUSY breaking to the MSSM sector has no effect on the vacuum transitions to, and the stability of the SUSY breaking vacuum. We conclude that for these models the early Universe does end up in the SUSY breaking vacuum.

hep-th

Vacuum Birefringence as a Probe of Planck Scale Noncommutativity

Because of ultraviolet/infrared (UV/IR) mixing, the low energy physics of noncommutative gauge theories in the Moyal-Weyl approach seems to depend crucially on the details of the ultraviolet completion. However, motivated by recent string theory analyses, we argue that their phenomenology with a very general class of UV completions can be accurately modelled by a cutoff close to the Planck scale. In the infrared the theory tends continuously to the commutative gauge theory. If the photon contains contributions from a trace-U(1), we would observe vacuum birefringence, i.e. a polarisation dependent propagation speed, as a residual effect of the noncommutativity. Constraints on this effect require the noncommutativity scale to be close to the Planck scale.

hep-ph

Intersecting Brane Worlds at One Loop

We develop techniques for one-loop diagrams on intersecting branes. The one-loop propagator of chiral intersection states on D6 branes is calculated exactly and its finiteness is shown to be guaranteed by RR tadpole cancellation. The result is used to demonstrate the expected softening of power law running of Yukawa couplings at the string scale. We also develop methods to calculate arbitrary N-point functions at one-loop, including those without gauge bosons in the loop. These techniques are also applicable to heterotic orbifold models.

hep-th

Noncommutativity, Extra Dimensions, and Power Law Running in the Infrared

We investigate the running gauge couplings of U(N) noncommutative gauge theories with compact extra dimensions. Power law running of the trace-U(1) gauge coupling in the ultraviolet is communicated to the infrared by ultraviolet/infrared mixing, whereas the SU(N) factors run exactly as in the commutative theory. This results in theories where the experimentally excluded trace-U(1) factors decouple with a power law running of the momentum in the extreme infrared, effectively hiding them from detection.

hep-ph