Flavor symmetries à la Froggatt-Nielsen provide a compelling way to explain the hierarchies of fermionic masses and mixing angles in the Yukawa sector. In supersymmetric (SUSY) extensions of the Standard Model where the mediation of SUSY breaking occurs at scales larger than the breaking of flavor, this symmetry must be respected not only by the Yukawas of the superpotential but also by the soft-b

In two-Higgs-doublet models with exact Z2 symmetry, putting mh ≃ 125 GeV at the alignment limit, the following limits on the heavy scalar masses are obtained from the conditions of unitarity and stability of the scalar potential: mH, mA, mH+ < 1 TeV and 1/8 < tan β < 8. The constraints from b → sγ and neutral meson mass differences, when superimposed on the unitarity constraints, put a tighter low

We show that the 2.4σ signal of the leptonic flavor violating (LFV) Higgs boson decay h→μτ, as observed by the CMS Collaboration recently, can be explained by a certain class of two-Higgs doublet models that allow controllable flavor-changing neutral current with a minimal number of free parameters. We postulate that (i) the alignment limit is maintained, which means the lightest neutral scalar (h

We present an approach to describe the phase matching of high harmonics emitted by laser driven atoms in a nonperturbative regime, for which the atomic response displays an intrinsic intensity-dependent phase. We show that the traditional phase-matching conditions involving conservation of wave vectors should be modified by taking into account the gradient of this atomic phase. We investigate vari

Normative reasons are of constant importance to us as agents trying to navigate through life. For this reason it is natural and vital to ask philosophical questions about reasons and the normative realm. This thesis explores various issues concerning reasons and normativity. The thesis consists of five free-standingpapers and an extended introduction. The aim of the extended introduction is not me

In this article we will discuss the basic calculational concepts to simulate particle physics events at high energy colliders. We will mainly focus on the physics in hadron colliders and particularly on the simulation of the perturbative parts, where we will in turn focus on the next-to-leading order QCD corrections.

A new scheme for calculating the electronic structure of crystals, based on the CNDO (complete neglect of differential overlap) approximation, is used to calculate the potential energy surfaces of diamond. Elastic properties such as the stiffness constants, the angular dependences of the anisotropy factor of Young's modulus, the Poisson ratios, and the Debye temperature are investigated on the bas

The chemical bonding in a series of nickel mixed oxides, namely Li2NiO2, Na2NiO2, tetragonal and orthorhombic La2NiO4 for Ni(II), LiNiO2, NaNiO2, LaNiO3 for Ni(III), BaNiO3 for Ni(IV) and LaNiO2, 'LaSrNiO3' for Ni(I), is investigated from the results of electronic structure calculations, including both band structure and local properties, i.e. atomic charges, covalent bond orders and atomic valenc