Development and implementation of the CCME Reference Method for the Canada-Wide Standard for Petroleum Hydrocarbons (PHC) in soil: a case study

Petroleum hydrocarbons have historically been analyzed by a wide variety of test methods. Interlaboratory studies have shown that standardization of both extraction and gas chromatographic analysis improved interlaboratory variability in hydrocarbon analysis. The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment has required a reference method for use with the Canada-wide standard for petroleum hydrocarbons. The process for developing and validating this method is described. This method requires the determination of 4 hydrocarbon fractions, namely, F1 (nC6 to nC10), F2 (>nC10 to nC16), F3 (>nC16 to nC34) and, F4 (nC35+), using GC-FID or gravimetry. The Tier 1 method was validated in a single laboratory study. This validated method was subjected to interlaboratory studies to determine its applicability and precision.     

Is the CNMSSM more credible than the CMSSM?

“Post-sphaleron baryogenesis”, a fresh and profound mechanism of baryogenesis accounts for the matter–antimatter asymmetry of our present universe in a framework of Pati–Salam symmetry. We attempt here to embed this mechanism in a non-SUSY SO(10) grand unified theory by reviving a novel symmetry breaking chain with Pati–Salam symmetry as an intermediate symmetry breaking step and as well to address post-sphaleron baryogenesis and neutron–antineutron oscillation in a rational manner. The Pati–Salam symmetry based on the gauge group \(\mathrm{SU}(2)_L \times \mathrm{SU}(2)_{R} \times \mathrm{SU}(4)_C\) is realized in our model at \(10^{5}\) – \(10^{6}\)  GeV and the mixing time for the neutron–antineutron oscillation process having \(\Delta B=2\) is found to be \(\tau _{n-\bar{n}} \simeq 10^{8}\) – \(10^{10}\)  s with the model parameters, which is within the reach of forthcoming experiments. Other novel features of the model include low scale right-handed \(W^{\pm }_R\) , \(Z_R\) gauge bosons, explanation for neutrino oscillation data via the gauged inverse (or extended) seesaw mechanism and most importantly TeV scale color sextet scalar particles responsible for an observable \(n\) – \(\bar{n}\) oscillation which may be accessible to LHC. We also look after gauge coupling unification and an estimation of the proton lifetime with and without the addition of color sextet scalars.     

Prospects for constrained supersymmetry at $$\sqrt{s}={33}\,\text {TeV} $$ and $$\sqrt{s}={100}\,\text {TeV} $$ proton–proton super-colliders

Successful models of pure gravity mediation (PGM) with radiative electroweak symmetry breaking can be expressed with as few as two free parameters, which can be taken as the gravitino mass and \(\tan \beta \) . These models easily support a 125–126 GeV Higgs mass at the expense of a scalar spectrum in the multi-TeV range and a much lighter wino as the lightest supersymmetric particle. In these models, it is also quite generic that the Higgs mixing mass parameter, \(\mu \) , which is determined by the minimization of the Higgs potential is also in the multi-TeV range. For \(\mu >0\) , the thermal relic density of winos is too small to account for the dark matter. The same is true for \(\mu <0\) unless the gravitino mass is of order 500 TeV. Here, we consider the origin of a multi-TeV \(\mu \) parameter arising from the breakdown of a Peccei–Quinn (PQ) symmetry. A coupling of the PQ-symmetry breaking field, \(P\) , to the MSSM Higgs doublets, naturally leads to a value of \(\mu \sim \langle P \rangle ^2 /M_P \sim {\mathcal O}(100)\) TeV and of the order that is required in PGM models. In this case, axions make up the dark matter or some fraction of the dark matter with the remainder made up from thermal or non-thermal winos. We also provide solutions to the problem of isocurvature fluctuations with axion dark matter in this context.