No Arabic abstract
General relativity (GR) is the current description of gravity in modern physics. One of the cornerstones of GR, as well as Newtons theory of gravity, is the weak equivalence principle (WEP), stating that the trajectory of a freely falling test body is independent of its internal structure and composition. WEP is known to be valid for the normal matter with a high precision. However, due to the rarity of antimatter and weakness of the gravitational forces, the WEP has never been confirmed for antimatter. The current direct bounds on the ratio between the gravitational and inertial masses of the antihydrogen do not rule out a repulsive nature for the antimatter gravity. Here we establish an indirect bound of 0.13% on the difference between the gravitational and inertial masses of the positron (antielectron) from the analysis of synchrotron losses at the Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP). This serves as a confirmation of the conventional gravitational properties of antimatter without common assumptions such as, e.g., coupling of gravity to virtual particles, dynamics of distant astrophysical sources and the nature of absolute gravitational potentials.
The bottom quark forward-backward asymmetry ($A_{FB}^b$) data at LEP exhibits a long-standing discrepancy with the standard model prediction. We propose a novel method to probe the $Zbbar{b}$ interactions through $ggto Zh$ production at the LHC, which is sensitive to the axial-vector component of the $Zbbar{b}$ couplings. We demonstrate that the $Zh$ data collected at the 13 TeV LHC can already resolve the apparent degeneracy of the anomalous $Zbbar{b}$ couplings implied by the LEP precision electroweak measurements, with a strong dependence on the observed distribution of the $Z$ boson transverse momentum. We also show the potential of the HL-LHC to either verify or exclude the anomalous $Zbbar{b}$ couplings observed at LEP through measuring the $Zh$ production rate at the HL-LHC, and this conclusion is not sensitive to possible new physics contribution induced by top quark or Higgs boson anomalous couplings in the loop.
We introduce a set of CMSSM benchmark scenarios that take into account the constraints from LEP, Tevatron, $b to s gamma$, $g_mu - 2$ and cosmology. The benchmark points are chosen to span the range of different generic possibilities, including focus-point models, points where coannihilation effects on the relic density are important, and points with rapid relic annihilation via direct-channel Higgs poles, as well as points with smaller sparticle masses. We make initial estimates of the physics reaches of different accelerators, including the LHC, and $e^+ e^-$ colliders in the sub- and multi-TeV ranges. We stress the complementarity of hadron and lepton colliders, with the latter favoured for non-strongly-interacting particles and precision measurements.
Recent results on measurements of the strong coupling $alpha_S$ from LEP are reported. These include analyses of the 4-jet rate using the Durham or Cambridge algorithm, of hadronic $Z^0$ decays with hard final state photon radiation, of scaling violations of the fragmentation function, of the longitudinal cross section, of the $Z^0$ lineshape and of hadronic $tau$ lepton decays.
We discuss NMSSM scenarios in which the lightest Higgs boson $h_1$ is consistent with the small LEP excess at about 98 GeV in $e^+e^- to Zh$ with $hto banti b$ and the heavier Higgs boson $h_2$ has the primary features of the LHC Higgs-like signals at 125 GeV, including an enhanced $gammagamma$ rate. Verification or falsification of the 98 GeV $h_1$ may be possible at the LHC during the 14 TeV run. The detection of the other NMSSM Higgs bosons at the LHC and future colliders is also discussed, as well as dark matter properties of the scenario under consideration.
Axion-like particles (ALPs), relatively light (pseudo-)scalars coupled to two gauge bosons, are a common feature of many extensions of the Standard Model. Up to now there has been a gap in the sensitivity to such particles in the MeV to 10 GeV range. In this note we show that LEP data on $Ztogammagamma$ decays provides significant constraints in this range (and indeed up to the $Z$-mass). We also discuss the sensitivities of LHC and future colliders. Particularly the LHC shows promising sensitivity in searching for a pseudo-scalar with $4 lesssim m_a lesssim 60$ GeV in the channel $pp to 3 gamma$ with $m_{3gamma}approx m_{Z}$.