No Arabic abstract
We trace the origin of the concept which was named by the High Energy Physics Community The Cabibbo angle
We discuss some aspects of the relation between dualities and gauge symmetries. Both of these ideas are of course multi-faceted, and we confine ourselves to making two points. Both points are about dualities in string theory, and both have the flavour that two dual theories are closer in content than you might think. For both points, we adopt a simple conception of a duality as an isomorphism between theories: more precisely, as appropriate bijections between the two theories sets of states and sets of quantities. The first point (Section 3) is that this conception of duality meshes with two dual theories being gauge related in the general philosophical sense of being physically equivalent. For a string duality, such as T-duality and gauge/gravity duality, this means taking such features as the radius of a compact dimension, and the dimensionality of spacetime, to be gauge. The second point (Sections 4, 5 and 6) is much more specific. We give a result about gauge/gravity duality that shows its relation to gauge symmetries (in the physical sense of symmetry transformations that are spacetime-dependent) to be subtler than you might expect. For gauge theories, you might expect that the duality bijections relate only gauge-invariant quantities and states, in the sense that gauge symmetries in one theory will be unrelated to any symmetries in the other theory. This may be so in general; and indeed, it is suggested by discussions of Polchinski and Horowitz. But we show that in gauge/gravity duality, each of a certain class of gauge symmetries in the gravity/bulk theory, viz. diffeomorphisms, is related by the duality to a position-dependent symmetry of the gauge/boundary theory.
Precision experimental tests of the Standard Model of particle physics (SM) are one of our best hopes for discovering what new physics lies beyond the SM (BSM). Key in the search for new physics is the connection between theory and experiment. Forging this connection for searches involving low-energy hadronic or nuclear environments requires the use of a non-perturbative theoretical tool, lattice QCD. We present two recent lattice QCD calculations by the CalLat collaboration relevant for new physics searches: the nucleon axial coupling, $g_A$, whose precise value as predicted by the SM could help point to new physics contributions to the so-called neutron lifetime puzzle, and hadronic matrix elements of short-ranged operators relevant for neutrinoless double beta decay searches.
Pions were predicted by H. Yukawa as force carriers of the inter-nucleon forces, and were detected in 1947. Today they are known to be bound states of quarks and anti-quarks of the two lightest flavours. They satisfy Bose statistics, and are the lightest particles of the strong interaction spectrum. Determination of the parameters of the Standard Model, including the masses of the lightest quarks, has only recently reached high precision on the lattice. Pions are also known to be pseudo-Goldstone bosons of spontaneously broken approximate axial-vector symmetries, and a probe of their properties and interactions at high precision tests our knowledge of the strong interactions. While also being a probe of the solution of the strong interactions on the computer, which is known as lattice gauge theory. Despite their long history, there are significant experimental and theoretical challenges in determining their properties at high precision. Examples include the lifetime of the neutral pion, and the status of their masses and decay widths in effective field theories. Pion-pion scattering has been studied for several decades using general methods of field theory such as dispersion relations based on analyticity, unitarity and crossing. Knowledge from these theoretical methods are used to confront high precision experimental data, and to analyze them to extract information on their scattering and phase shift parameters. This knowledge is crucial for estimating the Standard Model contributions to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, which is being probed at Fermilab in ongoing experiments. Other sensitive tests include the rare decay of the eta meson into three pions, which represents an isospin violating decay. The present article briefly reviews these important developments.
We review the literature on possible violations of the superposition principle for electromagnetic fields in vacuum from the earliest studies until the emergence of renormalized QED at the end of the 1940s. The exposition covers experimental work on photon-photon scattering and the propagation of light in external electromagnetic fields and relevant theoretical work on nonlinear electrodynamic theories (Born-Infeld theory and QED) until the year 1949. To enrich the picture, pieces of reminiscences from a number of (theoretical) physicists on their work in this field are collected and included or appended.
We review the recent measurements of the rare pion decays: Pi+ -> Pi0 e+ Nu [pion beta, Pi_(e3), or Pi_beta decay], radiative decay Pi+ -> e+ Nu Gamma [Pi_(e2Gamma) or RPD], and Pi+ -> e+ Nu [Pi_(e2)] decay, as well as the radiative muon decay, Mu -> e Nu Nu-bar Gamma, their theoretical implications, and prospects for further improvement.