Search

Interest in searches for heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) at the LHC has increased considerably in the past few years. In the minimal scenario, HNLs are produced and decay via their mixing with active neutrinos in the Standard Model (SM) spectrum. However, many SM extensions with HNLs have been discussed in the literature, which sometimes change expectations for LHC sensitivities drastically. In the NRSMEFT, one extends the SM effective field theory with operators including SM singlet fermions, which allows to study HNL phenomenology in a "model independent" way. In this paper, we study the sensitivity of ATLAS to HNLs in the NRSMEFT for four-fermion operators with a single HNL. These operators might dominate both production and decay of HNLs, and we find that new physics scales in excess of 20 TeV could be probed at the high-luminosity LHC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we accomplish the complete one-loop matching of the type-I seesaw model onto the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT), by integrating out three heavy Majorana neutrinos with the functional approach. It turns out that only 31 dimension-six operators (barring flavor structures and Hermitian conjugates) in the Warsaw basis of the SMEFT can be obtained, and most of them appear at the one-loop level. The Wilson coefficients of these 31 dimension-six operators are computed up to O (M−2) with M being the mass scale of heavy Majorana neutrinos. As the effects of heavy Majorana neutrinos are encoded in the Wilson coefficients of these higher-dimensional operators, a complete one-loop matching is useful to explore the low-energy phenomenological consequences of the type-I seesaw model. In addition, the threshold corrections to the couplings in the Standard Model and to the coefficient of the dimension-five operator are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yukawa-type interactions between heavy Dirac fermions and a scalar field are a common ingredient in various extensions of the Standard Model. Despite of that, the non-relativistic limit of the scalar Yukawa theory has not yet been studied in full generality in a rigorous and model-independent way. In this paper we intend to fill this gap by initiating a series of investigations that make use of modern effective field theory (EFT) techniques. In particular, we aim at constructing suitable non-relativistic and potential non-relativistic EFTs of Yukawa interactions (denoted as NRY and pNRY respectively) in close analogy to the well known and phenomenologically successful non-relativistic QCD (NRQCD) and potential non-relativistic QCD (pNRQCD). The phenomenological motivation for our study lies in the possibility to explain the existing cosmological observations by introducing heavy fermionic dark matter particles that interact with each other by exchanging a light scalar mediator. A systematic study of this compelling scenario in the framework of non-relativistic EFTs (NREFTs) constitutes the main novelty of our approach as compared to the existing studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The axion is much lighter than all other degrees of freedom introduced by the Peccei-Quinn mechanism to solve the strong CP problem. It is therefore natural to use an effective field theory (EFT) to describe its interactions. Loop processes calculated in the EFT may however explicitly depend on the ultraviolet cutoff. In general, the UV cutoff is not uniquely defined, but the dimensionful couplings suggest to identify it with the Peccei-Quinn symmetry-breaking scale. An example are K+ → π+ + a decays that will soon be tested to improved precision in NA62 and KOTO and whose amplitude is dominated by the term logarithmically dependent on the cutoff. In this paper, we critically examine the adequacy of using such a naive EFT approach to study loop processes by comparing EFT calculations with ones performed in complete QCD axion models. In DFSZ models, for example, the cutoff is found to be set by additional Higgs degrees of freedom and to therefore be much closer to the electroweak scale than to the Peccei-Quinn scale. In fact, there are non-trivial requirements on axion models where the cutoff scale of loop processes is close to the Peccei-Quinn scale, such that the naive EFT result is reproduced. This suggests that the existence of a suitable UV embedding may impose restrictions on axion EFTs. We provide an explicit construction of a model with suitable fermion couplings and find promising prospects for NA62 and IAXO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we systematically consider the baryon (B) and lepton (L) number violating dinucleon to dilepton decays (pp → ℓ+ℓ′+, pn → ℓ + ν ¯ ′ , nn → ν ¯ ν ¯ ′ ) with ∆B = ∆L = −2 in the framework of effective field theory. We start by constructing a basis of dimension-12 (dim-12) operators mediating such processes in the low energy effective field theory (LEFT) below the electroweak scale. Then we consider their standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) completions upwards and their chiral realizations in baryon chiral perturbation theory (BχPT) downwards. We work to the first nontrivial orders in each effective field theory, collect along the way the matching conditions, and express the decay rates in terms of the Wilson coefficients associated with the dim-12 operators in the SMEFT and the low energy constants pertinent to BχPT. We find the current experimental limits push the associated new physics scale larger than 1 − 3 TeV, which is still accessible to the future collider searches. Through weak isospin symmetry, we find the current experimental limits on the partial lifetime of transitions pp → ℓ+ℓ′+, pn → ℓ + ν ¯ ′ imply stronger limits on nn → ν ¯ ν ¯ ′ than their existing lower bounds, which are improved by 2−3 orders of magnitude. Furthermore, assuming charged mode transitions are also dominantly generated by the similar dim-12 SMEFT interactions, the experimental limits on pp → e+e+, e+μ+, μ+μ+ lead to stronger limits on pn → ℓ α + ν ¯ β with α, β = e, μ than their existing bounds. Conversely, the same assumptions help us to set a lower bound on the lifetime of the experimentally unsearched mode pp → e+τ+ from that of pn → e + ν ¯ τ , i.e., Γ pp → e + τ + − 1 ≳ 2 × 10 34 yr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the impact of extra radiation on predictions of pp → t t ¯ X , X = h / W ± / Z processes within the dimension-6 SMEFT framework. While full next-to-leading order calculations are of course preferred, they are not always practical, and so it is useful to be able to capture the impacts of extra radiation using leading-order matrix elements matched to the parton shower and merged. While a matched/merged leading-order calculation for t t ¯ X is not expected to reproduce the next-to-leading order inclusive cross section precisely, we show that it does capture the relative impact of the EFT effects by considering the ratio of matched SMEFT inclusive cross sections to Standard Model values, σ SMEFT t t ¯ X + j / σ SM t t ¯ X + j ≡ μ . Furthermore, we compare leading order calculations with and without extra radiation and find several cases, such as the effect of the operator φ † i D ↔ μ φ t ¯ γ μ t on t t ¯ h and t t ¯ W , for which the relative cross section prediction increases by more than 10% — significantly larger than the uncertainty derived by varying the input scales in the calculation, including the additional scales required for matching and merging. Being leading order at heart, matching and merging can be applied to all operators and processes relevant to pp → t t ¯ X , X = h / W ± / Z + jet , is computationally fast and not susceptible to negative weights. Therefore, it is a useful approach in t t ¯ X + jet studies where complete next-to-leading order results are currently unavailable or unwieldy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-energy effective field theories (EFT) encode information about the physics at high energies — i.e., the high-energy theory (HET). To extract this information the EFT and the HET have to be matched to each other. At the one-loop level, general results for the matching of renormalizable operators have already been obtained in the literature. In the present paper, we take a step towards a better understanding of renormalizable operator matching at the two-loop level: focusing on the diagrammatic method, we discuss in detail the various contributions to two-loop matching conditions and compare different approaches to derive them. Moreover, we discuss which observables are best suited for the derivation of matching conditions. As a concrete application, we calculate the O α t α s and O α t 2 matching conditions of the scalar four-point couplings between the Standard Model (SM) and the Two-Higgs-Doublet Model (THDM) as well as the THDM and the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We use the derived formulas to improve the prediction of the SM-like Higgs mass in the MSSM using the THDM as EFT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze interactions between dark matter and standard model particles with spin one mediators in an effective field theory framework. In this paper, we are considering dark particles masses in the range from a few MeV to the mass of the Z boson. We use bounds from different experiments: Z invisible decay width, relic density, direct detection experiments, and indirect detection limits from the search of gamma-ray emissions and positron fluxes. We obtain solutions corresponding to operators with antisymmetric tensor mediators that fulfill all those requirements within our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The XENON1T collaboration recently reported the excess of events from recoil electrons, possibly giving an insight into new area beyond the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. We try to explain this excess by considering effective interactions between the sterile neutrinos and the SM particles. In this paper, we present an effective model based on one-particle-irreducible interaction vertices at low energies that are induced from the SM gauge symmetric four-fermion operators at high energies. The effective interaction strength is constrained by the SM precision measurements, astrophysical and cosmological observations. We introduce a novel effective electromagnetic interaction between sterile neutrinos and SM neutrinos, which can successfully explain the XENON1T event rate through inelastic scattering of the sterile neutrino dark matter from Xenon electrons. We find that sterile neutrinos with masses around 90 keV and specific effective coupling can fit well with the XENON1T data where the best fit points preserving DM constraints and possibly describe the anomalies in other experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discrepancy between the measured value and the Standard Model prediction of the muon anomalous magnetic moment is one of the most important issues in the particle physics. It is known that introducing a mediator boson X with the μτ lepton flavor violating (LFV) couplings is one good solution to explain the discrepancy, due to the τ mass enhancement in the one-loop correction. In this paper, we study the signal of this model, i.e. the same-sign leptons, in the Belle II experiment, assuming the flavor-diagonal couplings are suppressed. We show that the Belle II experiment is highly sensitive to the scenario in the mediator mass range of O(1–10) GeV, using the e+e−→ μ±τ∓X → μ±μ±τ∓τ∓ process induced by the X. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixing of axion fields is widely used to generate EFTs with phenomenologically advantageous features, such as hierarchies between axion couplings to different gauge fields and/or large effective field ranges. While these features are strongly constrained by periodicity for models with only a single axion, mixing has been used in the literature (sometimes incorrectly) to try to evade some of these constraints. In this paper, we ask whether it is possible to use axion mixing to generate an EFT of axions that evades these constraints by flowing to a theory of a non-compact scalar in the IR. We conclude that as long as the light axion is exactly massless, it will inherit the periodicity and associated constraints of the UV theory. However, by giving the light axion a mass, we can relax these constraints with effects proportional to the axion mass squared, including non-quantized couplings and the realignment of monodromy to a light axion with a larger field range. To show this, we consider various examples of axions mixing with other axions or with non-compact scalar fields, and work in a basis where coupling quantization is manifest. This basis makes it clear that in the case where an axion is eaten through the Higgs or Stückelberg mechanism, the light axion does not have a large effective field range, in contrast to some recent claims in the literature. Additionally, we relate our results about axion EFTs to a well-known fact about gauge theory: that QFTs with compact gauge groups in the UV flow to QFTs with compact gauge groups in the IR, and make this correspondence precise in the 2+1 dimensional case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At low energies, the strong interaction is governed by the Goldstone bosons associated with the spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, which can be systematically described by chiral perturbation theory. In this paper, we apply this theory to study the θ-vacuum energy density and hence the QCD axion potential up to next-to-leading order with N non-degenerate quark masses. By setting N = 3, we then derive the axion mass, self-coupling, topological susceptibility and the normalized fourth cumulant both analytically and numerically, taking the strong isospin breaking effects into account. In addition, the model-independent part of the axion-photon coupling, which is important for axion search experiments, is also extracted from the chiral Lagrangian supplemented with the anomalous terms up to O p 6 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first paper of our systematic efforts on lepton number violating (LNV) hadronic decays in the effective field theory approach. These decays provide information complementary to popular nuclear neutrinoless double-β (0νββ) decay in that they can probe LNV interactions involving heavier quarks and charged leptons. We may call them hadronic 0νββ decays in short, though β refers to all charged leptons. In this work we investigate the decays K±→ π∓l±l± that arise from short-distance or contact interactions involving four quark fields and two charged lepton fields, which have canonical dimension nine (dim-9) at leading order in low energy effective field theory (LEFT). We make a complete analysis on the basis of all dim-9 operators that violate lepton number by two units, and compute their one-loop QCD renormalization effects. We match these effective interactions in LEFT to those in chiral perturbation theory (χPT) for pseudoscalar mesons, and determine the resulting hadronic low energy constants (LECs) by chiral symmetry and lattice results in the literature. The obtained decay rate is general in that all physics at and above the electroweak scale is completely parameterized by the relevant Wilson coefficients in LEFT and hadronic LECs in χPT. Assuming the standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) is the appropriate effective field theory between some new physics scale and the electroweak scale, we match our LEFT results to SMEFT whose leading effective interactions arise from LNV dim-7 operators. This connection to SMEFT simplifies significantly the interaction structures entering in the kaon decays, and we employ the current experimental bounds to set constraints on the relevant Wilson coefficients in SMEFT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a companion paper [1], we show that operator bases for general effective field theories are controlled by the conformal algebra. Equations of motion and integration by parts identities can be systematically treated by organizing operators into irreducible representations of the conformal group. In the present work, we use this result to study the standard model effective field theory (SM EFT), determining the content and number of higher dimension operators up to dimension 12, for an arbitrary number of fermion generations. We find additional operators to those that have appeared in the literature at dimension 7 (specifically in the case of more than one fermion generation) and at dimension 8. (The title sequence is the total number of independent operators in the SM EFT with one fermion generation, including hermitian conjugates, ordered in mass dimension, starting at dimension 5.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colored fermionic partners of the top quark are well-known signatures of the Composite Higgs scenario and for this reason they have been and will be subject of an intensive experimental study at the LHC. Performing an assessment of the theoretical implications of this experimental effort is the goal of the present paper. We proceed by analyzing a set of simple benchmark models, characterized by simple two-dimensional parameter spaces where the results of the searches are conveniently visualized and their impact quantified. We only draw exclusion contours, in the hypothesis of no signal, but of course our formalism could equally well be used to report discoveries in a theoretically useful format. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is not only conceivable but likely that the spectrum of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) is non-degenerate. The lightest non-SM particle may reside close enough to the electroweak scale that it can be kinematically probed at high-energy experiments and on account of this, it must be included as an infrared (IR) degree of freedom (DOF) along with the SM ones. The rest of the non-SM particles are heavy enough to be directly experimentally inaccessible and can be integrated out. Now, to capture the effects of the complete theory, one must take into account the higher dimensional operators constituted of the SM DOFs and the minimal extension. This construction, BSMEFT, is in the same spirit as SMEFT but now with extra IR DOFs. Constructing a BSMEFT is in general the first step after establishing experimental evidence for a new particle. We have investigated three different scenarios where the SM is extended by additional (i) uncolored, (ii) colored particles, and (iii) abelian gauge symmetries. For each such scenario, we have included the most-anticipated and phenomenologically motivated models to demonstrate the concept of BSMEFT. In this paper, we have provided the full EFT Lagrangian for each such model up to mass dimension 6. We have also identified the CP, baryon (B), and lepton (L) number violating effective operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rare kaon decays with missing energy, K → π+Emiss, have received considerable attention because their rates can be calculated quite precisely within the standard model (SM), where the missing energy is carried away by an undetected neutrino- antineutrino pair. Beyond the SM, clean theoretical predictions can also be made regarding these processes. One such prediction is the so-called Grossman-Nir (GN) bound, which states that the branching fractions of the KL and K+ modes must satisfy the relation ℬ K L → π 0 + E miss < ∼ 4.3 ℬ K + → π + + E miss and applies within and beyond the SM, as long as the hadronic transitions change isospin by ∆I = 1/2. In this paper we extend the study of these modes to include new-physics scenarios where the missing energy is due to unobserved lepton-number-violating neutrino pairs, invisible light new scalars, or pairs of such scalars. The new interactions are assumed to arise above the electroweak scale and described by an effective field theory. We explore the possibility of violating the GN bound through ∆I = 3/2 contributions to the K → π transitions within these scenarios and find that large violations are only possible in the case where the missing energy is due to an invisible light new scalar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If dark matter (DM) is a fermion and its interactions with the standard model particles are mediated by pseudoscalar particles, the tree-level amplitude for the DM-nucleon elastic scattering is suppressed by the momentum transfer in the non-relativistic limit. At the loop level, on the other hand, the spin-independent contribution to the cross section appears without such suppression. Thus, the loop corrections are essential to discuss the sensitivities of the direct detection experiments for the model prediction. The one-loop corrections were investigated in the previous works. However, the two-loop diagrams give the leading order contribution to the DM-gluon effective operator χ¯χGμναGαμν and have not been correctly evaluated yet. Moreover, some interaction terms which affect the scattering cross section were overlooked. In this paper, we show the cross section obtained by the improved analysis and discuss the region where the cross section becomes large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the near future, fundamental interactions at high-energy scales may be most efficiently studied via precision measurements at low energies. A universal language to assemble and interpret precision measurements is the so-called SMEFT, which is an effective field theory (EFT) where the Standard Model (SM) Lagrangian is extended by higher-dimensional operators. In this paper we investigate the possible impact of the DUNE neutrino experiment on constraining the SMEFT. The unprecedented neutrino flux offers an opportunity to greatly improve the current limits via precision measurements of the trident production and neutrino scattering off electrons and nuclei in the DUNE near detector. We quantify the DUNE sensitivity to dimension-6 operators in the SMEFT Lagrangian, and find that in some cases operators suppressed by an O30 TeV scale can be probed. We also compare the DUNE reach to that of future experiments involving atomic parity violation and polarization asymmetry in electron scattering, which are sensitive to an overlapping set of SMEFT parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]