Search

The physics programme of the MEG II experiment can be extended with the search for new invisible particles produced in rare muon decays. The hunt for such elusive signals requires accurate simulations to characterise the detector response and estimate the experimental sensitivity. This work presents an improved simulation of muon decay in MEG II, based on McMule and Geant4., Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, contribution to PM2021, version accepted for publication

We consider a system of $N$ bosons, in the two-dimensional unit torus. We assume particles to interact through a repulsive two-body potential, with a scattering length that is exponentially small in $N$ (Gross-Pitaevskii regime). In this setting, we establish the validity of the predictions of Bogoliubov theory, determining the ground state energy of the Hamilton operator and its low-energy excitation spectrum, up to errors that vanish in the limit $N \to \infty$., 51 pages, typos corrected

We explore a novel mechanism to restrict TeV-scale leptoquark interactions and render the proton exactly stable to all orders in the effective field theory expansion. A scalar condensate breaks a lepton-flavoured $\mathrm{U}(1)_X$ gauge symmetry in the ultraviolet and generates neutrino masses, leaving a discrete $\mathbb{Z}_9$ or $\mathbb{Z}_{18}$ gauge symmetry in the infrared, forbidding $\Delta B = 1$ processes. This provides an elegant framework to address the flavour anomalies and can be adapted to many other new-physics models. The $ \mathrm{U}(1)_X $ can emerge from a gauge-flavour unified $ \mathrm{SU}(12) \times \mathrm{SU}(2) \times \mathrm{SU}(2) $ theory at even higher energies., Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables. v2: published version

Isolated photons at hadron colliders are defined by permitting only a limited amount of hadronic energy inside a fixed-size cone around the candidate photon direction. This isolation criterion admits contributions from collinear photon radiation off QCD partons and from parton-to-photon fragmentation processes. We compute the NNLO QCD corrections to isolated photon and photon-plus-jet production, including these two contributions. Our newly derived results allow us to reproduce the isolation prescription used in the experimental measurements, performing detailed comparisons with data from the LHC experiments. We quantify the impact of different photon isolation prescriptions, including no isolation at all, on photon-plus-jet cross sections and discuss possible measurements of the photon fragmentation functions at hadron colliders., 42 pages, 19 figures, one table, journal version, four ancillary data files with the NNLO predictions enclosed

In this paper we calculate analytically the perturbative matching coefficients for unpolarized quark and gluon Transverse-Momentum-Dependent (TMD) Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) and Fragmentation Functions (FFs) through Next-to-Next-to-Next-to-Leading Order (N$^3$LO) in QCD. The N$^3$LO TMD PDFs are calculated by solving a system of differential equation of Feynman and phase space integrals. The TMD FFs are obtained by analytic continuation from space-like quantities to time-like quantities, taking into account the probability interpretation of TMD PDFs and FFs properly. The coefficient functions for TMD FFs exhibit double logarithmic enhancement at small momentum fraction $z$. We resum such logarithmic terms to the third order in the expansion of $\alpha_s$. Our results constitute important ingredients for precision determination of TMD PDFs and FFs in current and future experiments., Comment: references added

This review focuses on novel astrophysical probes of dark matter at galactic and sub-galactic scales. After reviewing classical tests of cold dark matter (CDM) in galaxy formation, we discuss them in light of recent results from increasingly detailed simulations and observations, and then shift our attention to more recent, less explored tests in the context of the most popular and most studied dark matter scenarios alternative to CDM. Among them, there are warm dark matter (WDM) scenarios, arising, for example, from sterile neutrinos, as well as self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) scenarios , mixed models that combine WDM and SIDM, and Bose–Einstein condensate/fuzzy dark matter scenarios (FDM/BECDM) originating from ultra-light bosons such as axions. The hypothesis that primordial black holes constitute all or most of the dark matter is also revisited in light of the LIGO/Virgo discovery of massive black holes together with very recent constraints from the internal structure of nearby ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. The important role of baryonic physics in the interpretation of various probes of dark matter, especially how it affects the ability to infer dark matter properties from observational diagnostics, is emphasized and reviewed. The effect of baryons blurs, in many cases, the underlying differences in the properties of dark matter halos arising in various dark matter models. Nevertheless, baryons can potentially be a useful tracer of such differences, for instance during the earliest phases of star formation in the lowest mass galaxies. New promising probes which will be delivered by future gravitational wave experiments are discussed, such as the occurrence rate of gravitational wave signals from merging intermediate mass black holes in dwarf galaxies tracing the inner structure of dark halos. Recent observational discoveries and analysis methods, such as the tentative detection of dark subhalos through the analysis of stellar tidal streams in the Milky Way halo, and the prospects of gravitational lensing analysis to directly detect dark substructure down to the relevant small scales, are also illustrated.

Axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) are well-motivated low-energy relics of high-energy extensions of the Standard Model, which interact with the known particles through higher-dimensional operators suppressed by the mass scale $\Lambda$ of the new-physics sector. Starting from the most general dimension-5 interactions, we discuss in detail the evolution of the ALP couplings from the new-physics scale to energies at and below the scale of electroweak symmetry breaking. We derive the relevant anomalous dimensions at two-loop order in gauge couplings and one-loop order in Yukawa interactions, carefully considering the treatment of a redundant operator involving an ALP coupling to the Higgs current. We account for one-loop (and partially two-loop) matching contributions at the weak scale, including in particular flavor-changing effects. The relations between different equivalent forms of the effective Lagrangian are discussed in detail. We also construct the effective chiral Lagrangian for an ALP interacting with photons and light pseudoscalar mesons, pointing out important differences with the corresponding Lagrangian for the QCD axion., Comment: 44 pages and 9 figures

The "Cabibbo Angle Anomaly" (CAA) originates from the disagreement between the CKM elements $V_{ud}$ and $V_{us}$ extracted from superallowed beta and kaon decays, respectively, once compared via CKM unitarity. It points towards new physics with a significance of up to $4\,\sigma$, depending on the theoretical input used, and can be explained through modified $W$ couplings to leptons. In this context, vector-like leptons (VLLs) are prime candidates for a corresponding UV completion since they can affect $W\ell\nu$ couplings at tree-level, such that this modification can have the dominant phenomenological impact. In order to consistently asses the agreement with the data, a global fit is necessary which we perform for gauge-invariant dimension-6 operators and all patterns obtained for the six possible representations (under the SM gauge group) of VLLs. We find that even in the lepton flavour universal case, including the measurements of the CKM elements $V_{us}$ and $V_{ud}$ into the electroweak fit has a relevant impact, shifting the best fit point significantly. Concerning the VLLs we discuss the bounds from charged lepton flavour violating processes and observe that a single representation cannot describe experimental data significantly better than the SM hypothesis. However, allowing for several representations of VLLs at the same time, we find that the simple scenario in which $N$ couples to electrons via the Higgs and $\Sigma_1$ couples to muons not only explains the CAA but also improves the rest of the electroweak fit in such a way that its best fit point is preferred by more than $4\,\sigma$ with respect to the SM., Comment: Version accepted for publication in JHEP, 34 pages, 9 figures, 7 tables, typos corrected

We present calculations of Higgs boson production via gluon-gluon fusion in association with one or two additional jets at next-to-leading order in QCD. The calculation of H+jet is exact in the treatment of the top-quark mass, whereas for the H+2 jets calculation the two-loop virtual amplitudes are approximated via a reweighting with leading-order mass effects, while keeping all top-quark mass effects in the real radiation contributions. For H+jet production, this study extends a previous calculation, revealing an error in the previous results. For total and differential cross sections, we present new results and compare the QCD corrections with the infinite top-mass limit, for which we find a strikingly good agreement if all amplitudes are rescaled by the leading-order mass dependence., Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures

The production of dark matter particles from confining dark sectors may lead to many novel experimental signatures. Depending on the details of the theory, dark quark production in proton-proton collisions could result in semivisible jets of particles: collimated sprays of dark hadrons of which only some are detectable by particle collider experiments. The experimental signature is characterised by the presence of reconstructed missing momentum collinear with the visible components of the jets. This complex topology is sensitive to detector inefficiencies and mis-reconstruction that generate artificial missing momentum. With this work, we propose a signal-agnostic strategy to reject ordinary jets and identify semivisible jets via anomaly detection techniques. A deep neural autoencoder network with jet substructure variables as input proves highly useful for analyzing anomalous jets. The study focuses on the semivisible jet signature; however, the technique can apply to any new physics model that predicts signatures with anomalous jets from non-SM particles., 17 pages, 10 figures

As is the case for all light coloured Standard Model particles, also photons and charged leptons appear as constituents in ultrarelativistic hadron beams, and admit a parton density function (PDF). It has been shown recently that the photon PDF can be given in terms of the structure functions and form factors for electron-proton scattering. The same holds for lepton PDFs. In the present work we set up a calculation of the lepton PDFs at next-to-leading order, using the same data input needed in the photon case. A precise knowledge of the lepton densities allows us to study lepton-initiated processes even at a hadron collider, with all possible combinations of same-charge, opposite-charge, same-flavour, different-flavour leptons and leptons-quarks, most of which cannot be realized in any other foreseeable experiment. The lepton densities in the proton are extremely small, so that their contribution to Standard Model processes is generally shadowed by processes initiated by coloured partons. We will show, however, that there are cases where these processes can be relevant, giving rise to rare Standard Model signatures and to new production channels, that can enlarge the discovery potential of New Physics at the LHC and future high energy colliders with hadrons in the initial state., Comment: 43 pages, 14 figures. In V2 we have included a class of subleading O(alpha^2) contributions to the lepton PDFs and motivated this choice. Data in the LHAPDF files have been updated accordingly (see info file). V2 is identical to the published version

In this paper, we present results at next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD for photon pair production in association with two jets via vector boson scattering within the Standard Model (SM), and also in an effective field theory framework with anomalous gauge coupling effects via bosonic dimension-6 and 8 operators. We observe that, com- pared to other processes in the class of two electroweak (EW) vector boson production in association with two jets, more exclusive cuts are needed in order to suppress the SM QCD-induced background channel. As expected, the NLO QCD corrections reduce the scale uncertainties considerably. Using a well-motivated dynamical scale choice, we find moderate K -factors for the EW-induced process while the QCD-induced channel receives much larger corrections. Furthermore, we observe that applying a cut of Δϕj2γ1cut, FC and IR acknowledge nancial support by the Generalitat Valenciana, Spanish Gov- ernment and ERDF funds from the European Commission (Grants No. RYC-2014-16061, SEJI-2017/2017/019, FPA2017-84543-P, FPA2017-84445-P, and SEV-2014-0398). The research of MK is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) un- der grant number 200020-175595. The work of LDN is funded by the Vietnam Na- tional Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under grant number 103.01-2017.78.

We present a calculation of the NLO QCD corrections to the loop-induced production of a photon pair through gluon fusion, including massive top quarks at two loops, where the two-loop integrals are calculated numerically. Matching the fixed-order NLO results to a threshold expansion, we obtain accurate results around the top quark pair production threshold. We analyse how the top quark threshold corrections affect distributions of the photon pair invariant mass and comment on the possibility of determining the top quark mass from precision measurements of the diphoton invariant mass spectrum., Comment: Version 2: figure 6 added; version published in JHEP

The theoretical description of photon production at particle colliders combines direct photon radiation and fragmentation processes, which can not be separated from each other for definitions of photon isolation used in experimental measurements. The theoretical description of these processes must account for collinear parton-photon configurations, retaining the dependence on the photon momentum fraction, and includes the parton-to-photon fragmentation functions. We extend the antenna subtraction method to include photon fragmentation processes up to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD. Collinear photon radiation is handled using newly introduced fragmentation antenna functions and associated phase space mappings. We derive the integrated forms of the fragmentation antenna functions and describe their interplay with the mass factorisation of the photon fragmentation functions. The construction principles of antenna subtraction terms up to NNLO for identified photons are outlined, thereby enabling the application of the method to different photon production processes at colliders., 47 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, two ancillary files with the expressions for the NNLO fragmentation antenna functions enclosed, typos corrected, journal version

The rare three-body decay of a Higgs boson to a lepton-antilepton pair and a photon is starting to become experimentally accessible at the LHC. We investigate how higher-order QCD corrections to the dominant gluon-fusion production process impact on the fiducial cross sections in this specific Higgs decay mode for electrons and muons. Corrections up to NNLO QCD are found to be sizeable. They are generally uniform in kinematical variables related to the Higgs boson, but display several distinctive features in the kinematics of its individual decay products., 14 pages, 5 figures

Modern microscopy techniques are developing towards high-resolution imaging, and tremendous progress has been made in past decades; however, the imaging of individual biological macromolecules at atomic resolution using short-wavelength radiation such as electrons or X-rays has not yet been achieved. The construction of free-electron lasers in many countries around the world arises from the desire to develop new imaging techniques by employing coherent radiation to image individual macromolecules. This work deals with coherent imaging and related phase retrieval techniques, with an emphasis on their application in the imaging of individual biological macromolecules.

We consider ZZ production in hadronic collisions and present state-of-the-art predictions in QCD perturbation theory matched to parton showers. Next-to-next-to-leading order corrections to the quark-initiated channel are combined with parton showers using the MiNNLOPS method, while next-to-leading order corrections to the loop-induced gluon fusion channel are matched using the Powheg method. Their combination, dubbed nNNLO+PS, constitutes the best theoretical description of ZZ events to date. Spin correlations, interferences and off-shell effects are included by calculating the full process pp → ℓ+ℓ−ℓ(′)+ℓ(′)−. We show the crucial impact of higher-order corrections for both quark- and gluon-initiated processes as well as the relevance of the parton shower in certain kinematical regimes. Our predictions are in very good agreement with recent LHC data.

The characterization of spacial and timing resolution of the novel Trench Isolated LGAD (TI-LGAD) technology is presented. This technology has been developed at FBK with the goal of achieving 4D pixels, where an accurate position resolution is combined in a single device with the precise timing determination for Minimum Ionizing Particles (MIPs). In the TI-LGAD technology, the pixelated LGAD pads are separated by physical trenches etched in the silicon. This technology can reduce the interpixel dead area, mitigating the fill factor problem. The TI-RD50 production studied in this work is the first one of pixelated TI-LGADs. The characterization was performed using a scanning TCT setup with an infrared laser and a90Sr source setup.