The present report documents the results of Working Group 2: B, D and K decays, of the workshop on Flavor in the Era of the LHC, held at CERN from November 2005 through March 2007. With the advent of the LHC, we will be able to probe New Physics (NP) up to energy scales almost one order of magnitude larger than it has been possible with present accelerator facilities. While direct detection of new particles will be the main avenue to establish the presence of NP at the LHC, indirect searches will provide precious complementary information, since most probably it will not be possible to measure the full spectrum of new particles and their couplings through direct production. In particular, precision measurements and computations in the realm of flavor physics are expected to play a key role in constraining the unknown parameters of the Lagrangian of any NP model emerging from direct searches at the LHC. The aim of Working Group 2 was twofold: on one hand, to provide a coherent, up-to-date picture of the status of flavor physics before the start of the LHC; on the other hand, to initiate activities on the path towards integrating information on NP …

In order to efficiently perform particle simulations in systems with widely varying magnetization, we have developed a 'drift-Lorentz mover', which interpolates between full particle dynamics and drift kinetics in such a way as to preserve a physically correct gyroradius and particle drifts for both large and small ratios of the timestep to the cyclotron period. In order to extend applicability of the mover to systems with plasma frequency exceeding the cyclotron frequency - such as one may have with fully neutralized drift compression of a heavy ion beam - we have developed an implicit version of the mover. A first step in this direction, in which the polarization charge was added to the field solver, was described previously. Here we describe a fully implicit algorithm (which is analogous to the direct-implicit method for conventional particle-in-cell simulation), a stability analysis of it, its implementation in the WARP code, and several tests of the resultant code. The fully implemented version is electrostatic; we are beginning development of an electromagnetic version, and describe also the status of that effort.

We use a Lagrangian dispersion model driven by a mesoscale model with four-dimensional data assimilation to simulate the dispersion of elemental carbon (EC) over a region encompassing Mexico City and its surroundings, the study domain for the 2006 MAX-MEX experiment, which was a component of the MILAGRO campaign. The results are used to identify periods when biomass burning was likely to have had a significant impact on the concentrations of elemental carbon at two sites, T1 and T2, downwind of the city, and when emissions from the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) were likely to have been more important. They are also used to estimate the median ages of EC affecting the specific absorption of light, aABS, at 870 nm as well as to identify periods when the urban plume from the MCMA was likely to have been advected over T1 and T2. Values of aABS at T1, the nearer of the two sites to Mexico City, were smaller at night and increased rapidly after mid-morning, peaking in the mid-afternoon. The behavior is attributed to the coating of aerosols with substances such as sulfate or organic carbon during daylight hours, but such coating appears to be limited or absent at …

The program established a collaborative process with domestic industries for the purpose of sharing Navy-developed technology. Private sector businesses were educated so as to increase their awareness of the vast amount of technologies that are available, with an initial focus on technology applications that are related to the Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies (Hydrogen) Program of the U.S. Department of Energy. Specifically, the project worked to increase industry awareness of the vast technology resources available to them that have been developed with taxpayer funding. NAVSEA-Carderock and the Houston Advanced Research Center teamed with Nicholls State University to catalog NAVSEA-Carderock unclassified technologies, rated the level of readiness of the technologies and established a web based catalog of the technologies. In particular, the catalog contains technology descriptions, including testing summaries and overviews of related presentations.

We propose 'conformal supersymmetry breaking' models, which tightly relate the conformal breaking scale (i.e. R-symmetry breaking scale) and the supersymmetry breaking scale. The both scales are originated from the constant term in the superpotential through the common source of the R-symmetry breaking. We show that dynamical tuning between those mass scales significantly reduces the degree of fine-tuning necessary for generating the almost vanishing cosmological constant.

Dipole modes have been shown to be successful diagnostics for the beam position in superconducting accelerating cavities at the Free Electron Laser in Hamburg (FLASH) facility at DESY. By help of downmixing electronics the signals from the two higher order mode (HOM) couplers mounted on each cavity are monitored. The calibration, based on singular value decomposition, is more complicated than in standard position monitors. Position like signals based on this calibration are currently being in the process of being included in the control system. A second setup based on digitizing the spectrum from the HOM couplers has been used for monitoring monopole modes. The beam phase with respect to the RF has been thus monitored. The position calibration measurements and phase monitoring made at the FLASH are presented.

Through past DOE funding, the MIND Research network has funded a national consortium effort that used multi-modal neuroimaging, genetics, and clinical assessment of subjects to study schizophrenia in both first episode and persistently ill patients. Although active recruitment of research participants is complete, this consortium remains active and productive in terms of analysis of this unique multi-modal data collected on over 320 subjects.

This chapter of the report of the 'Flavour in the era of LHC' workshop discusses flavor related issues in the production and decays of heavy states at LHC, both from the experimental side and from the theoretical side. We review top quark physics and discuss flavor aspects of several extensions of the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry, little Higgs model or models with extra dimensions. This includes discovery aspects as well as measurement of several properties of these heavy states. We also present public available computational tools related to this topic.