Search

We present a model selection framework for the extraction of the CKM matrix element $|V_{cb}|$ from exclusive $B \to D^* l \nu$ decays. By framing the truncation of the Boyd-Grinstein-Lebed (BGL) parameterization as a model selection task, we apply the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) to choose the optimal truncation order. We demonstrate the performance of our approach through a comprehensive toy study, comparing it to the Nested Hypothesis Test (NHT) method used in previous analyses. Our results show that the AIC-based approach produces unbiased estimates of $|V_{cb}|$, albeit with some issues of undercoverage. We further investigate the impact of unitarity constraints and explore model averaging using the Global AIC (gAIC) approach, which produced unbiased results with correct coverage properties. Our findings suggest that model selection techniques based on information criteria and model averaging offer a promising path towards more reliable $|V_{cb}|$ determinations., Comment: Presented at the 42nd International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP)

This letter presents the measurement of the energy-dependent neutrino-nucleon cross section in tungsten and the differential flux of muon neutrinos and anti-neutrinos. The analysis is performed using proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of $13.6 \, {\rm TeV}$ and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $(65.6 \pm 1.4) \, \mathrm{fb^{-1}}$. Using the active electronic components of the FASER detector, $338.1 \pm 21.0$ charged current muon neutrino interaction events are identified, with backgrounds from other processes subtracted. We unfold the neutrino events into a fiducial volume corresponding to the sensitive regions of the FASER detector and interpret the results in two ways: We use the expected neutrino flux to measure the cross section, and we use the predicted cross section to measure the neutrino flux. Both results are presented in six bins of neutrino energy, achieving the first differential measurement in the TeV range. The observed distributions align with Standard Model predictions. Using this differential data, we extract the contributions of neutrinos from pion and kaon decays.

In this paper we study the bounds that can be inferred on New Physics couplings to heavy sterile neutrinos $N$ from the recent measurements performed by the Belle collaboration of the angular analysis of $B\to D^*\ell\bar\nu_\ell$ decays, with $\ell=e,\mu$. Indeed, a sterile neutrino $N$ may lead to competing $B\to D^*\ell\bar N$ decays and Belle might have measured an incoherent sum of these two independent channels. After reviewing the theoretical formalism required to describe this phenomenon in full generality, we first perform a bump hunt in the $M_{\rm miss}^2$ Belle distribution to search for evidences of an additional massive neutrino. We found in such a way a small hint at $M_{\rm miss}^2 \sim (350\ {\rm MeV})^2$. However, the Belle angular analysis is sensitive to $N$ masses up to $\mathcal{O}$(50 MeV), preventing us to further inspect this hint. Nevertheless, we study the potential impact of this additional channel in the allowed mass range on the measured angular distributions and extract model-independent bounds on the new-physics couplings which could mediate such an interaction. In particular, in the mass window here inspected, we obtain the most stringent bounds for vector and left-handed scalar operators to date., Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. Matching published version to appear on JHEP

The first FASER search for a light, long-lived particle decaying into a pair of photons is reported. The search uses LHC proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s}=13.6~\text{TeV}$ collected in 2022 and 2023, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $57.7\text{fb}^{-1}$. A model with axion-like particles (ALPs) dominantly coupled to weak gauge bosons is the primary target. Signal events are characterised by high-energy deposits in the electromagnetic calorimeter and no signal in the veto scintillators. One event is observed, compared to a background expectation of $0.44 \pm 0.39$ events, which is entirely dominated by neutrino interactions. World-leading constraints on ALPs are obtained for masses up to $300~\text{MeV}$ and couplings to the Standard Model W gauge boson, $g_{aWW}$, around $10^{-4}$ GeV$^{-1}$, testing a previously unexplored region of parameter space. Other new particle models that lead to the same experimental signature, including ALPs coupled to gluons or photons, U(1)$_B$ gauge bosons, up-philic scalars, and a Type-I two-Higgs doublet model, are also considered for interpretation, and new constraints on previously viable parameter space are presented in this paper., Comment: 37 pages, 22 figures

We explore the prospects of measurements of spectral moments of inclusive charm decays with BESIII. The rich and uniquely clean data set of charm mesons and baryons at BESIII offers a unique laboratory to study the evolution of Heavy Quark Expansion (HQE) parameters across different charm hadron species and to shed light on the interplay between heavy quark dynamics and light quark effects. The HQE in terms of inverse powers of the heavy meson mass is well-established in beauty decays, however due to the lighter charm mass its applicability to charm remains an open question. To date no determination of the HQE parameters, the kinetic energy, chromomagnetic moment and Darwin terms, has been attempted. A particular important role here is given to the Darwin and weak annihilation operators, whose values are important to predict lifetimes of heavy hadrons. Using a fast simulation for the BESIII detector response and predictions for spectral moments, we investigate the sensitivity to HQE parameters with today's and possible future data sets. In addition, we discuss the theory challenges for the HQE in charm and the experimental limitations. We further investigate the sensitivity of determining the CKM matrix element $|V_{cs}|$ with inclusive semileptonic charm decays.

This paper presents the first results of the study of high-energy electron and muon neutrino charged-current interactions in the FASER$\nu$ emulsion/tungsten detector of the FASER experiment at the LHC. A subset of the FASER$\nu$ volume, which corresponds to a target mass of 128.6~kg, was exposed to neutrinos from the LHC $pp$ collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 13.6~TeV and an integrated luminosity of 9.5 fb$^{-1}$. Applying stringent selections requiring electrons with reconstructed energy above 200~GeV, four electron neutrino interaction candidate events are observed with an expected background of $0.025^{+0.015}_{-0.010}$, leading to a statistical significance of 5.2$\sigma$. This is the first direct observation of electron neutrino interactions at a particle collider. Eight muon neutrino interaction candidate events are also detected, with an expected background of $0.22^{+0.09}_{-0.07}$, leading to a statistical significance of 5.7$\sigma$. The signal events include neutrinos with energies in the TeV range, the highest-energy electron and muon neutrinos ever detected from an artificial source. The energy-independent part of the interaction cross section per nucleon is measured over an energy range of 560--1740 GeV (520--1760 GeV) for $\nu_e$ ($\nu_{\mu}$) to be $(1.2_{-0.7}^{+0.8}) \times 10^{-38}~\mathrm{cm}^{2}\,\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$ ($(0.5\pm0.2) \times 10^{-38}~\mathrm{cm}^{2}\,\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$), consistent with Standard Model predictions. These are the first measurements of neutrino interaction cross sections in those energy ranges.

The Forward Search Experiment (FASER) at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has recently directly detected the first collider neutrinos. Neutrinos play an important role in all FASER analyses, either as signal or background, and it is therefore essential to understand the neutrino event rates. In this study, we update previous simulations and present prescriptions for theoretical predictions of neutrino fluxes and cross sections, together with their associated uncertainties. With these results, we discuss the potential for possible measurements that could be carried out in the coming years with the FASER neutrino data to be collected in LHC Run 3 and Run 4., Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures

In this article, we review the current status of $B$-mixing and $b$-hadron lifetimes both from experimental and theoretical points of view. Furthermore, we discuss the phenomenological potential of these observables for deepening our understanding of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and for indirect searches for effects beyond the Standard Model (SM). In addition, we present new updated SM predictions for the mixing observables $\Delta M_{d,s}$, $\Delta \Gamma_{d,s}$ and $a_{fs}^{d,s}$. We conclude with an outlook on future prospects for theoretical and experimental improvements., Comment: Invited review for EPJST. 26 pages, 26 figures, 6 tables, 306 references

It is long known that interference effects play an important role in understanding the shape of the $\pi^+\pi^-$ spectrum of resonances near the threshold. In this manuscript we investigate the role of the $\rho-\omega$ interference in the study of semileptonic $B \to \pi^+ \pi^- \ell \bar \nu_\ell$ decays. We determine for the first time the strong phase between $B \to \rho^0 \ell \bar \nu_\ell$ and $B \to \omega \ell \bar \nu_\ell$ from a recent Belle measurement of the $m_{\pi\pi}$ spectrum of $B \to \pi^+ \pi^- \ell \bar \nu_\ell$. We find $ \phi_{\rho-\omega} = \left( -46_{-67}^{+155} \right)\unicode{xb0}$ and extract the branching fraction of $\mathcal{B}(B \to \rho^0 \ell \bar \nu_\ell) = \left(1.41_{-0.38}^{+0.49} \right) \times 10^{-4} $. In addition, we set a limit on the $S$-wave component within a mass window ranging from $2 m_\pi$ to $1.02 \, \mathrm{GeV}$ of $ 0.51 \times 10^{-4} \,\, \mathrm{at} \, \, 90\% \, \mathrm{CL} $. We also determine the absolute value of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element of $|V_{ub}|_{\rho-\omega} = \left( 3.03^{+0.49}_{-0.44} \right) \times 10^{-3}$, which takes into account the $\rho-\omega$ interference., Comment: 13 pages, 16 figures

We derive the $\Lambda_b \to \Lambda_c$ form factors for the Standard Model and beyond at second order in Heavy Quark Effective Theory (HQET), applying the recently-proposed Residual Chiral Expansion (RCE) to reduce the set of unknown subsubleading hadronic functions to a single, highly-constrained function, that is fully determined by hadron mass parameters at zero recoil. We fit a form factor parametrization based on these results to all available Lattice QCD (LQCD) predictions and experimental data. We find that the constrained and predictive structure of the form factors under the RCE is in excellent agreement with LQCD predictions and experimental data, as well as prior HQET-based fits., Comment: 37 pages, 5 figures, 10 tables

We propose novel methods to determine the $\Upsilon(4S)\to B^+B^-$ and $\Upsilon(4S)\to B^0\bar B^0$ decay rates. The precision to which they and their ratio are known yields at present a limiting uncertainty around $2\%$ in measurements of absolute $B$ decay rates, and thus in a variety of applications, such as precision determinations of elements of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix and flavor symmetry relations. The new methods we propose are based in one case on exploiting the $\Upsilon(5S)$ data sets, in the other case on the different average number of charged tracks in $B^\pm$ and $B^0$ decays. We estimate future sensitivities using these methods and discuss possible measurements of $f_d / f_u$ at the (HL-)LHC., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures

We report the first direct observation of neutrino interactions at a particle collider experiment. Neutrino candidate events are identified in a 13.6 TeV center-of-mass energy $pp$ collision data set of 35.4 fb${}^{-1}$ using the active electronic components of the FASER detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The candidates are required to have a track propagating through the entire length of the FASER detector and be consistent with a muon neutrino charged-current interaction. We infer $153^{+12}_{-13}$ neutrino interactions with a significance of 16 standard deviations above the background-only hypothesis. These events are consistent with the characteristics expected from neutrino interactions in terms of secondary particle production and spatial distribution, and they imply the observation of both neutrinos and anti-neutrinos with an incident neutrino energy of significantly above 200 GeV., Comment: Submitted to PRL on March 24 2023

The $\tau$ polarization in semileptonic $B$ decays provides probes of new physics complementary to decay rate distributions of the three-body final state. Prior calculations for inclusive decays used a definition for the polarization axis that is different from the choice used in calculations (and the only measurement) for exclusive channels. To compare inclusive and exclusive predictions, we calculate the $\tau$ polarization in inclusive $B\to X\tau\bar\nu$ using the same choice as in the exclusive decays, and construct a sum rule relating the inclusive $\tau$ polarization to a weighted sum of exclusive decay polarizations. We use this relation, experimental data, and theoretical predictions for the decays to the lightest charm or up-type hadrons to make predictions for excited channels., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

In this work, we present a neural approach to reconstructing rooted tree graphs describing hierarchical interactions, using a novel representation we term the Lowest Common Ancestor Generations (LCAG) matrix. This compact formulation is equivalent to the adjacency matrix, but enables learning a tree's structure from its leaves alone without the prior assumptions required if using the adjacency matrix directly. Employing the LCAG therefore enables the first end-to-end trainable solution which learns the hierarchical structure of varying tree sizes directly, using only the terminal tree leaves to do so. In the case of high-energy particle physics, a particle decay forms a hierarchical tree structure of which only the final products can be observed experimentally, and the large combinatorial space of possible trees makes an analytic solution intractable. We demonstrate the use of the LCAG as a target in the task of predicting simulated particle physics decay structures using both a Transformer encoder and a Neural Relational Inference encoder Graph Neural Network. With this approach, we are able to correctly predict the LCAG purely from leaf features for a maximum tree-depth of $8$ in $92.5\%$ of cases for trees up to $6$ leaves (including) and $59.7\%$ for trees up to $10$ in our simulated dataset., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, accepted in Machine Learning: Science and Technology

FASER, the ForwArd Search ExpeRiment, is an experiment dedicated to searching for light, extremely weakly-interacting particles at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Such particles may be produced in the very forward direction of the LHC's high-energy collisions and then decay to visible particles inside the FASER detector, which is placed 480 m downstream of the ATLAS interaction point, aligned with the beam collisions axis. FASER also includes a sub-detector, FASER$\nu$, designed to detect neutrinos produced in the LHC collisions and to study their properties. In this paper, each component of the FASER detector is described in detail, as well as the installation of the experiment system and its commissioning using cosmic-rays collected in September 2021 and during the LHC pilot beam test carried out in October 2021. FASER will start taking LHC collision data in 2022, and will run throughout LHC Run 3., Comment: 92 pages, 72 Figures

Belle II is an experiment operating at the intensity frontier. Over the next decades, it will record the decay of billions of bottom mesons, charm hadrons, and tau leptons produced in 10 GeV electron-positron collisions at the SuperKEKB high-luminosity collider at KEK. These data, collected in low-background and kinematically known conditions, will allow us to measure hundreds of parameters that test the standard model (SM) and probe for the existence of new particles, at mass scales orders of magnitudes higher than those studied at the energy frontier. We project our sensitivities for measurements that are of primary relevance and where Belle II will be unique or world leading for data corresponding to 1 to 50 ab$^{-1}$. Belle II will uniquely probe non-SM contributions in sensitive $b \to q\bar q s$ decays and charmless $b \to q\bar q d(u)$ decays, semileptonic $b \to s \nu \bar\nu$ and $s \tau^+ \tau^-$ decays, fully leptonic $b \to \ell \nu$ decays, and select $c \to u$ processes. Belle II will lead exploration of non-SM physics in $b \to c \tau \nu$ and $b \to s \gamma$ decays and will most precisely determine the quark-mixing parameters $|V_{ub}|$ and $|V_{cb}|$. Belle II will measure many parameters in $\tau$ physics to precisions that will be world leading for the foreseeable future, including the electric and magnetic dipole moments, branching fractions for charged-lepton-flavor-violating decays, and quantities that test lepton-flavor universality. Belle II will perform unique searches for dark-sector particles with masses in the MeV-GeV range. We will also pursue a broad spectroscopy program for conventional and multiquark $c \bar c$ and $b \bar b$ states and provide essential inputs to sharpen the interpretation of muon magnetic-anomaly results. Our exploration of uncharted regions of non-SM parameter space with high precision will reveal non-SM particles or set stringent constraints on their existence, guiding future endeavors., Comment: 49 pages, 15 figures. Submitted to the Proceedings of the US Community Study on the Future of Particle Physics (Snowmass 2021)

We investigate the asymptotic distribution of the profile likelihood ratio (PLR) when constraining effective field theories (EFTs) and show that Wilks' theorem is often violated, meaning that we should not assume the PLR to follow a $\chi^2$-distribution. We derive the correct asymptotic distributions when either one or two real EFT couplings modulate observable cross sections with a purely linear or quadratic dependence. We then discover that when both the linear and quadratic terms contribute, the PLR distribution does not have a simple form. In this case we provide a partly-numerical solution for the one-parameter case. Using a novel approach, we find that the constants which define our asymptotic distributions may be obtained experimentally using a profile of the Asimov likelihood contour. Our results may be immediately used to obtain the correct coverage when deriving real-world EFT constraints using the PLR as a test-statistic., Comment: 57 pages, 31 Figures

Normalizing the recent LHCb measurement of $\Lambda_b \to \Lambda_c \tau \bar\nu$ to the standard model (SM) prediction for the $\Lambda_b \to \Lambda_c \mu \bar\nu$ rate, instead of a LEP measurement, provides a more consistent comparison with the SM prediction for the lepton flavor universality ratio $R(\Lambda_c)$. This modestly increases $R(\Lambda_c)$ compared to the quoted LHCb result, such that it no longer hints at a suppression compared to the SM, which would be hard to accommodate in new physics scenarios that enhance $R(D^{(*)})$. We point out that the fraction of excited states in inclusive semileptonic $\Lambda_b$ decay may be significantly greater than the corresponding fraction in $B$ decays. Possible implications are speculated upon., Comment: 3 pages

We postulate a supplemental power counting within the heavy quark effective theory, that results in a small, highly-constrained set of second-order power corrections, compared to the standard approach. We determine all $\bar{B} \to D^{(*)}$ form factors, both within and beyond the standard model to $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s/m_{c,b}, 1/m_{c,b}^2)$, under truncation by this power counting. We show that the second-order power corrections to the zero-recoil normalization of the $\bar{B} \to D^{(*)} l \nu$ matrix elements ($l = e$, $\mu$, $\tau$) are fully determined by hadron mass parameters, and are in good agreement with lattice QCD (LQCD) predictions. We develop a parametrization of these form factors under the postulated truncation, that achieves excellent fits to the available LQCD predictions and experimental data, and we provide precise updated predictions for the $\bar{B} \to D^{(*)} \tau \bar\nu$ decay rates, lepton flavor universality violation ratios $R(D^{(*)})$, and the CKM matrix element $|V_{cb}|$. We point out some apparent errors in prior literature concerning the $\mathcal{O}(1/m_cm_b)$ corrections, and note a tension between commonly-used simplified dispersive bounds and current data., Comment: 85 pages, 11 figures, 19 tables; published version; minor typos corrected

We present the first determination of $V_{cb}$ from inclusive $B\to X_c \ell \bar\nu_\ell$ using moments of the dilepton invariant mass, $q^2$. These moments are reparametrization invariant quantities and depend on a reduced set of non-perturbative parameters. This reduced opens a new path to extract these parameters up to $1/m_b^4$ purely from data and thereby reducing the uncertainty on $V_{cb}$. In this paper, we present our first determination of $V_{cb}$ using this method. Combining the recent measurements of $q^2$ moments by Belle and Belle II, our default fit gives $|V_{cb}| = (41.69\pm 0.63)\cdot 10^{-3}$. This results presents an important independent cross check of, and is consistent with, the previous state-of-the-art inclusive determinations using lepton energy and hadronic invariant mass moments.

FASER is a new experiment designed to search for new light weakly-interacting long-lived particles (LLPs) and study high-energy neutrino interactions in the very forward region of the LHC collisions at CERN. The experimental apparatus is situated 480 m downstream of the ATLAS interaction-point aligned with the beam collision axis. The FASER detector includes four identical tracker stations constructed from silicon microstrip detectors. Three of the tracker stations form a tracking spectrometer, and enable FASER to detect the decay products of LLPs decaying inside the apparatus, whereas the fourth station is used for the neutrino analysis. The spectrometer has been installed in the LHC complex since March 2021, while the fourth station is not yet installed. FASER will start physics data taking when the LHC resumes operation in early 2022. This paper describes the design, construction and testing of the tracking spectrometer, including the associated components such as the mechanics, readout electronics, power supplies and cooling system.

The FASER experiment is a new small and inexpensive experiment that is placed 480 meters downstream of the ATLAS experiment at the CERN LHC. FASER is designed to capture decays of new long-lived particles, produced outside of the ATLAS detector acceptance. These rare particles can decay in the FASER detector together with about 500-1000 Hz of other particles originating from the ATLAS interaction point. A very high efficiency trigger and data acquisition system is required to ensure that the physics events of interest will be recorded. This paper describes the trigger and data acquisition system of the FASER experiment and presents performance results of the system acquired during initial commissioning.

The statistical models used to derive the results of experimental analyses are of incredible scientific value and are essential information for analysis preservation and reuse. In this paper, we make the scientific case for systematically publishing the full statistical models and discuss the technical developments that make this practical. By means of a variety of physics cases -- including parton distribution functions, Higgs boson measurements, effective field theory interpretations, direct searches for new physics, heavy flavor physics, direct dark matter detection, world averages, and beyond the Standard Model global fits -- we illustrate how detailed information on the statistical modelling can enhance the short- and long-term impact of experimental results., Comment: 60 pages, 15 figures

FASER$\nu$ at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is designed to directly detect collider neutrinos for the first time and study their cross sections at TeV energies, where no such measurements currently exist. In 2018, a pilot detector employing emulsion films was installed in the far-forward region of ATLAS, 480 m from the interaction point, and collected 12.2 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. We describe the analysis of this pilot run data and the observation of the first neutrino interaction candidates at the LHC. This milestone paves the way for high-energy neutrino measurements at current and future colliders., Comment: Auxiliary materials are available at https://faser.web.cern.ch/fasernu-first-neutrino-interaction-candidates

We revisit the experimental and theoretical status of $B \to \rho l \bar{\nu}$ and $B \to \omega l \bar{\nu}$ decays. We perform a combined fit of averaged spectra from Belle and Babar measurements with prior light cone sum rule calculations, in order to obtain more precise predictions over the full $q^2$ range. The extracted values of $|V_{ub}|$ from these combined fits exhibit smaller uncertainty compared to previous extractions from $B \to \rho l \bar{\nu}$ and $B \to \omega l \bar{\nu}$ decays and the central values are found to be smaller than values extracted from $B \to \pi l \nu$ or inclusive measurements. We use our fit results to obtain more precise predictions in and beyond the Standard Model for the lepton universality ratios $R(\rho)$ and $R(\omega)$, as well as several angular observables that are sensitive to the full $q^2$ distribution, such as the longitudinal polarization of the vector meson, the $\tau$ polarization, and its forward-backward asymmetry., Comment: Fixes and clarifies sign convention of tau polarization in Table V

The study of lepton flavor universality violation (LFUV) in semitauonic $b$-hadron decays has become increasingly important in light of longstanding anomalies in their measured branching fractions, and the very large datasets anticipated from the LHC and Belle II. In this review, we undertake a comprehensive survey of the experimental environments and methodologies for semitauonic LFUV measurements at the $B$-factories and LHCb, along with a concise overview of the theoretical foundations and predictions for a wide range of semileptonic decay observables. We proceed to examine the future prospects to control systematic uncertainties down to the percent level, matching the precision of Standard Model (SM) predictions. Furthermore, we discuss new perspectives and caveats on combinations of the LFUV data and revisit the world averages for the ${\cal R}(D^{(*)})$ ratios. Here we demonstrate that different treatments for the correlations of uncertainties from $D^{**}$ excited states can vary the current $3\sigma$ tension with the SM within a $1\sigma$ range. Prior experimental overestimates of $D^{**}\tau\nu$ contributions may further exacerbate this. The precision of future measurements is also estimated; their power to exploit full differential information, and solutions to the inherent difficulties in self-consistent new physics interpretations of LFUV observables, are briefly explored., Comment: Published version plus an additional subsection on the new R(Lc) results