Higgs boson and massive-graviton productions in association with two jets via vector-boson fusion (VBF) processes and their decays into a vector-boson pair at hadron colliders are studied. They include scalar and tensor boson production processes via weakboson fusion in quark-quark collisions, gluon fusion in quark-quark (qq), quark-gluon (qg) and gluon-gluon (gg) collisions, as well as their decays into a pair of weak bosons or virtual gluons which subsequently decay into ℓl, qq or gg. We give the helicity amplitudes explicitly for all the VBF subprocesses, and show that the VBF amplitudes dominate the exact matrix elements not only for the weak-boson fusion processes but also for all the gluon fusion processes when appropriate selection cuts are applied, such as a large rapidity separation between two jets and a slicing cut for the transverse momenta of the jets. We also show that our off-shell vector-boson current amplitudes reduce to the standard quark and gluon splitting amplitudes with appropriate gluon-polarization phases in the collinear limit. Nontrivial azimuthal angle correlations of the jets in the production and in the decay of massive spin-0 and -2 bosons are manifestly expressed as the quantum interference among different helicity states of the intermediate vector-bosons. Those correlations reflect the spin and the CP nature of the Higgs bosons and the massive gravitons.

Continuum robots have been the subject of extensive research due to their potential use in a wide range of applications. In this paper, we propose a new continuum robot with three backbones, and provide a unified analytic method for the kinematics and dynamics of a multiple-backbone continuum robot. The robot achieves actuation by independently pulling three backbones to carry out a bending motion of two-degreesof-freedom (DoF). A three-dimensional CAD model of the robot is built and the kinematical equation is established on the basis of the Euler-Bernoulli beam. The dynamical model of the continuum robot is constructed by using the Lagrange method. The simulation and the experiment's validation results show the continuum robot can exactly bend into pre-set angles in the two-dimensional space (the maximum error is less than 5% of the robot length) and can make a circular motion in three-dimensional space. The results demonstrate that the proposed analytic method for the kinematics and dynamics of a continuum robot is feasible.

A search for new physics in proton-proton collisions having final states with an electron or muon and missing transverse energy is presented. The analysis uses data collected in 2012 with the CMS detector, at an LHC center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb −1 . No significant deviation of the transverse mass distribution of the charged lepton-neutrino system from the standard model prediction is found. Mass exclusion limits of up to 3.28 TeV at 95% confidence level for a W 0 -boson with the same couplings as that of the standard model W-boson are determined. Results are also derived in the framework of split universal extra dimensions, and exclusion limits on Kaluza-Klein W ð2Þ KK states are found. The final state with large missing transverse energy also enables a search for dark matter production with a recoiling W-boson, with limits set on the mass and the production cross section of potential candidates. Finally, limits are established for a model including interference between a left-handed W 0 -boson and the standard model W-boson and for a compositeness model.

Single top quark events produced in the t channel are used to set limits on anomalous Wtb couplings and to search for top quark flavour-changing neutral current (FCNC) interactions. The data taken with the CMS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at √ s = 7 and 8 TeV correspond to integrated luminosities of 5.0 and 19.7 fb −1 , respectively. The analysis is performed using events with one muon and two or three jets. A Bayesian neural network technique is used to discriminate between the signal and backgrounds, which are observed to be consistent with the standard model prediction. The 95% confidence level (CL) exclusion limits on anomalous right-handed vector, and left-and righthanded tensor Wtb couplings are measured to be |f R V | < 0.16, |f L T | < 0.057, and −0.049 < f R T < 0.048, respectively. For the FCNC couplings κ tug and κ tcg , the 95% CL upper limits on coupling strengths are |κ tug |/Λ < 4.1 × 10 −3 TeV −1 and |κ tcg |/Λ < 1.where Λ is the scale for new physics, and correspond to upper limits on the branching fractions of 2.0 × 10 −5 and 4.1 × 10 −4 for the decays t → ug and t → cg, respectively. The CMS collaboration 26 IntroductionSingle top quark (t) production provides ways to investigate aspects of top quark physics that cannot be studied with tt events [1]. The theory of electroweak interactions predicts three mechanisms for producing single top quarks in hadron-hadron collisions. At leading order (LO), these are classified according to the virtuality of the W boson propagation in t-channel, s-channel, or associated tW production [2]. Single top quark production in all channels is directly related to the squared modulus of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element V tb . As a consequence, it provides a direct measurement of this quantity and thereby a check of the standard model (SM Collaborations. There are two complementary strategies to search for FCNC in single top quark production. A search can be performed in the s channel for resonance production through the fusion of a gluon (g) with an up (u) or charm (c) quark, as was the case in analyses by the CDF and ATLAS Collaborations. However, as pointed out by the D0 Collaboration, the s-channel production rate is proportional to the square of the FCNC coupling parameter and is therefore expected to be small [22]. On the other hand, the t-channel cross section and its corresponding kinematic properties have been measured accurately at the LHC [24][25][26], with an important feature being that the t-channel signature contains a light-quark jet produced in association with the single top quark. This light-quark jet can be used to search for deviations from the SM prediction caused by FCNC in the top quark sector. This strategy was applied by the D0 Collaboration [22], as well as in our analysis. Models that have contributions from FCNC in the production of single top quarks can have sizable deviations relative to SM predictions. Processes with FCNC vertices in the decay of the top quark are negligible. In contrast, the ...