Search

We discuss the impact of eligible top-quark pair production differential cross-section measurements at the LHC with a collision energy of 13 TeV on the parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the proton as well as the impact of approximate next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (aN$^3$LO) QCD corrections combined with next-to-leading order (NLO) electroweak (EW) corrections on $t\bar t$ observables. We illustrate the effects on the gluon PDF at large $x$ from an optimal baseline selection of data in NNLO global fits, and show comparisons between the theory prediction for $t\bar t$ total and differential cross sections at aN$^3$LO QCD combined with NLO EW and recent measurements from the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the LHC., Comment: 13 Pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the conference proceedings of LHCP2024, the 12th Edition of the Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference, 3-7 June 2024 Boston, USA. This contribution is based on 2307.11153[hep-ph] and 2306.06166[hep-ph]

We present the application of the ACOT and S-ACOT general mass variable flavor number schemes to proton-proton collisions with particular attention to the production of final states with at least one heavy quark. Subtraction and residual heavy-quark parton distribution functions are introduced to facilitate the implementation of this scheme at higher orders in perturbative QCD. The calculation of Z-boson hadronic production with at least one $b$ jet beyond the lowest order in QCD is considered for illustration purposes., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. Contribution to the conference proceedings of DIS2024 (31st International Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scattering. Maison MINATEC, Grenoble, France, Apr 8-12, 2024) and of QCD@work2024 (International Workshop on QCD - Theory and Experiment. Trani, IT, June 18-21, 2024). This contribution is based on the work in 2410.03876 [hep-ph]. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2410.03876

We establish a simple yet general parameterization of Higgs-muon interactions within the effective field theory frameworks, including both the Higgs Effective Field Theory (HEFT) and the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). We investigate the potential of a muon collider, operating at center-of-mass energies of 3 and 10 TeV, to probe Higgs-muon interactions. All possible processes involving the direct production of multiple electroweak bosons ($W$, $Z$, and $H$) with up to five final-state particles are considered. Our findings indicate that a muon collider can achieve greater sensitivity than the high-luminosity LHC, especially considering the independence of the Higgs decay branching fraction to muons. Notably, a 10 TeV muon collider offers exceptional sensitivity to muon-Higgs interactions, surpassing the 3 TeV option. In particular, searches based on multi-Higgs production prove highly effective for probing these couplings., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We present a methodology to streamline implementation of massive-quark radiative contributions in calculations with a variable number of active partons in proton-proton collisions. The methodology introduces \textit{subtraction} and \textit{residual} heavy-quark parton distribution functions (PDFs) to implement calculations in the Aivazis-Collins-Olness-Tung (ACOT) factorization scheme and its simplified realization in various processes up to the next-to-the-next-to-leading order in the QCD coupling strength. Interpolation tables for bottom-quark subtraction and residual distributions for CT18 NLO and NNLO PDF ensembles are provided in the common LHAPDF6 format. A numerical calculation of $Z$-boson production with at least one $b$ jet at the Large Hadron Collider beyond the lowest order in QCD is considered for illustration purposes., Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, regular article

Neutrino trident production of di-lepton pairs is well recognized as a sensitive probe of both electroweak physics and physics beyond the Standard Model. Although a rare process, it could be significantly boosted by such new physics, and it also allows the electroweak theory to be tested in a new regime. We demonstrate that the forward neutrino physics program at the Large Hadron Collider offers a promising opportunity to measure for the first time, dimuon neutrino tridents with a statistical significance exceeding $5\sigma$. We present predictions for various proposed experiments and outline a specific experimental strategy to identify the signal and mitigate backgrounds, based on "reverse tracking" dimuon pairs in the FASER$\nu$2 detector. We also discuss prospects for constraining beyond Standard Model contributions to neutrino trident rates at high energies., Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures

We study the capabilities of a muon collider, at 3 and 10 TeV center-of-mass energy, of probing the interactions of the Higgs boson with the muon. We consider all the possible processes involving the direct production of EW bosons ($W,Z$ and $H$) with up to five particles in the final state. We study these processes both in the HEFT and SMEFT frameworks, assuming that the dominant BSM effects originate from the muon Yukawa sector. Our study shows that a Muon Collider has sensitivity beyond the LHC, as it not only relies on the Higgs-decay branching fraction to muons. A 10 TeV muon collider provides a unique sensitivity on muon and (multi-) Higgs interactions, significantly better than the 3 TeV option. We find searches based purely on multi-Higgs production to be particularly effective in probing these couplings., Comment: Published on JHEP

We study the phenomenology of leptophilic $Z'$ gauge bosons at the future high-energy $e^+e^-$ and $\mu^+\mu^-$ colliders, as well as at the gravitational wave observatories. The leptophilic $Z'$ model, although well-motivated, remains largely unconstrained from current low-energy and collider searches for $Z'$ masses above ${\cal O}(100~{\rm GeV})$, thus providing a unique opportunity for future lepton colliders. Taking $U(1)_{L_\alpha-L_\beta}~(\alpha,\beta=e,\mu,\tau)$ models as concrete examples, we show that future $e^+e^-$ and $\mu^+\mu^-$ colliders with multi-TeV center-of-mass energies provide unprecedented sensitivity to heavy leptophilic $Z'$ bosons. Moreover, if these $U(1)$ models are classically scale-invariant, the phase transition at the $U(1)$ symmetry-breaking scale tends to be strongly first-order with ultra-supercooling, and leads to observable stochastic gravitational wave signatures. We find that the future sensitivity of gravitational wave observatories, such as advanced LIGO-VIRGO and Cosmic Explorer, can be complementary to the collider experiments, probing higher $Z'$ masses up to ${\cal O}(10^4~{\rm TeV})$, while being consistent with naturalness and perturbativity considerations., Comment: 43 pages, 19 figures, and 4 tables

The impact of recent LHC top-quark pair production single differential cross section measurements at 13 TeV collision energy on the structure of the proton is explored. In particular, the impact of these high-precision data on the gluon and other parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the proton at intermediate and large partonic momentum fraction $x$ is analyzed. This study extends the CT18 global analysis framework to include these new data. The interplay between top-quark pair and inclusive jet production as well as other processes at the LHC, is studied. In addition, a study of the impact of scale choice on the theory description of the new 13 TeV $t\bar t$ measurements is performed., Comment: 53 pages, 26 figures, regular article. Version accepted for a publication in Phys.Rev.D

Parton distribution functions (PDFs) play a central role in calculations for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). To gain a deeper understanding of the emergence and interplay of constraints on the PDFs in the global QCD analyses, it is important to examine the relative significance and mutual compatibility of the experimental data sets included in the PDF fits. Toward this goal, we discuss the L2 sensitivity, a convenient statistical indicator for exploring the statistical pulls of individual data sets on the best-fit PDFs and identifying tensions between competing data sets. Unlike the Lagrange Multiplier method, the L2 sensitivity can be quickly computed for a range of PDFs and momentum fractions using the published Hessian error sets. We employ the L2 sensitivity as a common metric to study the relative importance of data sets in the recent ATLAS, CTEQ-TEA, MSHT, and reduced PDF4LHC21 PDF analyses at NNLO and approximate N3LO. We illustrate how this method can aid the users of PDFs to identify data sets that are important for a PDF at a given kinematic point, to study quark flavor composition and other detailed features of the PDFs, and to compare the data pulls on the PDFs for various perturbative orders and functional forms. We also address the feasibility of computing the sensitivities using Monte Carlo error PDFs. Together with the article, we present a companion interactive website with a large collection of plotted L2 sensitivities for eight recent PDF releases., Comment: 57 pages, 29 figures; supplementary material (4 pages); journal version with minor changes; online plotter of L2 sensitivities for ATLASpdf21, CT18, MSHT20 PDFs at https://metapdf.hepforge.org/L2/

Recently, the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) electroweak corrections with fermion loops to the Higgsstrahling process were computed. Here we present numerical results for polarized electron/positron beams, as well as for two input parameter schemes known as the $\alpha(0)$ and $G_\mu$ schemes. The size of the NNLO corrections strongly depends on the beam polarization, leading to an increase of the $ZH$ cross-section by 0.76% for $e^+_{\rm L} e^-_{\rm R}$ beams, and a decrease of 0.04% for $e^+_{\rm R} e^-_{\rm L}$ beams. Furthermore, inclusion of the NNLO corrections is found to significantly reduce the discrepancy between the results in the $\alpha(0)$ and $G_\mu$ schemes. Using the remaining difference, together with other methods, the theory uncertainty from missing bosonic electroweak corrections is estimated to be less than 0.3%., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures and 3 tables

In this study, we examine closely the impact of the post-CT18 LHC Drell-Yan data on parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the general CTEQ-TEA global analysis framework. We compare the two main theoretical predictions, the MCFM fixed order calculations at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) and the ResBos2 NNLO matched to $q_T$ resummation up to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (N3LL) level. We find that the overall inclusive cross sections agree well but the fiducial distributions can differ at a percent level. We mainly discuss the result of the ResBos2 resummation calculation which yields a smaller Monte-Carlo uncertainty, and a better description to the post-CT18 LHC Drell-Yan data. We find that the majority of post-CT18 LHC Drell-Yan data are consistent with the ATLAS 7 TeV $W,Z$ data, which were included in the CT18A, but not CT18, fit and increases the strange quark distribution at the small $x$ region. The noticeable exception is that the ATLAS and LHCb 8 TeV $W$ data pull $d(\bar{d})$ quark PDFs to the opposite direction with respect to the ATLAS 7 TeV $W,Z$ data. The inclusion of these post-CT18 LHC Drell-Yan data sets in the CTEQ-TEA global analysis is to update the CT18 PDFs following similar trends as CT18Z PDFs. The parton luminosities and a few phenomenological implications with the fiducial $W^\pm,Z$ and inclusive $H,t\bar{t},t\bar{t}H$ productions at the 14 TeV LHC, as examples, are presented., Comment: 36 pages, 22 figures, 3 tables

In this work, we complete our CT18qed study with the neutron's photon parton distribution function (PDF), which is essential for the nucleus scattering phenomenology. Two methods, CT18lux and CT18qed, based on the LUXqed formalism and the DGLAP evolution, respectively, to determine the neutron's photon PDF have been presented. Various low-$Q^2$ non-perturbative variations have been carefully examined, which are treated as additional uncertainties on top of those induced by quark and gluon PDFs. The impacts of the momentum sum rule as well as isospin symmetry violation have been explored, and turn out to be negligible. A detailed comparison with other neutron's photon PDF sets has been performed, which shows a great improvement in the precision and a reasonable uncertainty estimation in our results. Finally, two phenomenological implications are demonstrated with photon-initiated processes: neutrino-nucleus $W$-boson production, which is important for the near-future TeV--PeV neutrino observations, and the axion-like particle production at a high-energy muon beam-dump experiment., Comment: 38 pages, 22 figures

We present a state-of-the-art prediction for cross sections of neutrino deep inelastic scattering (DIS) from nucleon at high neutrino energies, $E_\nu$, from 100 GeV to 1000 EeV ($10^{12}$ GeV). Our calculations are based on the latest CT18 NNLO parton distribution functions (PDFs) and their associated uncertainties. In order to make predictions for the highest energies, we extrapolate the PDFs to small $x$ according to several procedures and assumptions, thus affecting the uncertainties at ultra-high $E_\nu$; we quantify the uncertainties corresponding to these choices. Similarly, we quantify the uncertainties introduced by the nuclear corrections which are required to evaluate neutrino-nuclear cross sections for neutrino telescopes. These results can be applied to currently-running astrophysical neutrino observatories, such as IceCube and KM3NeT, as well as various future experiments which have been proposed., Comment: 57 pages, 27 figures, and 2 tables

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10~TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work., Comment: 118 pages, 103 figures

We explore the sensitivity of directly testing the muon-Higgs coupling at a high-energy muon collider. This is strongly motivated if there exists new physics that is not aligned with the Standard Model Yukawa interactions which are responsible for the fermion mass generation. We illustrate a few such examples for physics beyond the Standard Model. With the accidentally small value of the muon Yukawa coupling and its subtle role in the high-energy production of multiple (vector and Higgs) bosons, we show that it is possible to measure the muon-Higgs coupling to an accuracy of ten percent for a 10 TeV muon collider and a few percent for a 30 TeV machine by utilizing the three boson production, potentially sensitive to a new physics scale about $\Lambda \sim$ 30-100 TeV., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, contribution to proceedings of 41st International Conference on High Energy physics - ICHEP2022

The question of the existence and possible magnitude of nonperturbative (often called "intrinsic") charm in the proton has long confounded attempts to cleanly isolate such a contribution in global analyses of high-energy experiments. In this letter, we show that the available (non)perturbative QCD theory and hadronic data have still not developed to a sufficient level to clearly resolve this problem. We highlight a number of challenging aspects that must be confronted in extracting nonperturbative charm in PDF fits, and in so doing, present an updated next-to-next-to-leading order CT analysis of fitted charm, CT18 FC, which we also compare to recent studies. We outline the theory developments and future data needed to make progress on this subject., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures in main Letter; includes 6 pages of Supplementary Discussion with 6 additional figures; updated following publication in PLB 843 (2023) 137975

The future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, along with its primary capacity to elucidate the nuclear structure, will offer new opportunities to probe physics beyond the Standard Model coupled to the electroweak sector. Among the best motivated examples of such new physics are new heavy neutral leptons (HNLs), which are likely to play a key role in neutrino mass generation and lepton number violation. We study the capability of the EIC to search for HNLs, which can be produced in electron-proton collisions through charged current interactions as a consequence of their mixing with light neutrinos. We find that, with the EIC design energy and integrated luminosity, one is able to probe HNLs in the mass range of 1 GeV$-100$ GeV with mixing angles down to the order of $10^{-4} - 10^{-3}$ through the prompt decay, and $10^{-6} - 10^{-4}$ via the displaced decay signatures. We also consider the invisible mode where an HNL is undetected or decaying to dark sector particles. One could potentially probe heavy HNLs for mixing angles in the window $10^{-3}-10^{-2}$, provided SM background systematics can be brought under control. These searches are complementary to other probes of HNLs, such as neutrino-less double-$\beta$ decay, meson decay, fixed-target, and high-energy collider experiments., Comment: 31 pages, 15 figures, and 4 tables

This is the Snowmass2021 Energy Frontier (EF) Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) report. It combines the EF topical group reports of EF08 (Model-specific explorations), EF09 (More general explorations), and EF10 (Dark Matter at Colliders). The report includes a general introduction to BSM motivations and the comparative prospects for proposed future experiments for a broad range of potential BSM models and signatures, including compositeness, SUSY, leptoquarks, more general new bosons and fermions, long-lived particles, dark matter, charged-lepton flavor violation, and anomaly detection., Comment: 108 pages + 38 pages references and appendix, 37 figures, Report of the Topical Group on Beyond the Standard Model Physics at Energy Frontier for Snowmass 2021. The first nine authors are the Conveners, with Contributions from the other authors

This report summarizes the work of the Energy Frontier Topical Group on EW Physics: Heavy flavor and top quark physics (EF03) of the 2021 Community Summer Study (Snowmass). It aims to highlight the physics potential of top-quark studies and heavy-flavor production processes (bottom and charm) at the HL-LHC and possible future hadron and lepton colliders and running scenarios.

We discuss heavy-flavor production at hadron colliders in recent global QCD analyses to determine parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the proton. We discuss heavy-flavor treatments in precision theory predictions at the LHC. In particular, we discuss factorization schemes in presence of heavy flavors in proton-proton collisions, as well as the impact of heavy-flavor production at the LHC on PDFs. We show results of recent updates beyond CT18, the latest global QCD analysis from the CTEQ-TEA group., Comment: 7 pages, 3 Figures, QCD@work 2022, International Workshop on QCD, Theory and Experiment, Conference Proceeding

The precise measurement of physics observables and the test of their consistency within the standard model (SM) are an invaluable approach, complemented by direct searches for new particles, to determine the existence of physics beyond the standard model (BSM). Studies of massive electroweak gauge bosons (W and Z bosons) are a promising target for indirect BSM searches, since the interactions of photons and gluons are strongly constrained by the unbroken gauge symmetries. They can be divided into two categories: (a) Fermion scattering processes mediated by s- or t-channel W/Z bosons, also known as electroweak precision measurements; and (b) multi-boson processes, which include production of two or more vector bosons in fermion-antifermion annihilation, as well as vector boson scattering (VBS) processes. The latter categories can test modifications of gauge-boson self-interactions, and the sensitivity is typically improved with increased collision energy. This report evaluates the achievable precision of a range of future experiments, which depend on the statistics of the collected data sample, the experimental and theoretical systematic uncertainties, and their correlations. In addition it presents a combined interpretation of these results, together with similar studies in the Higgs and top sector, in the Standard Model effective field theory (SMEFT) framework. This framework provides a model-independent prescription to put generic constraints on new physics and to study and combine large sets of experimental observables, assuming that the new physics scales are significantly higher than the EW scale., Comment: 55 pages; Report of the EF04 topical group for Snowmass 2021; v2: few typos corrected and references added

In global QCD fits of parton distribution functions (PDFs), a large part of the estimated uncertainty on the PDFs originates from the choices of parametric functional forms and fitting methodology. We argue that these types of uncertainties can be underestimated with common PDF ensembles in high-stake measurements at the Large Hadron Collider and Tevatron. A fruitful approach to quantify these uncertainties is to view them as arising from sampling of allowed PDF solutions in a multidimensional parametric space. This approach applies powerful insights gained in recent statistical studies of large-scale population surveys and quasi-Monte Carlo integration methods. In particular, PDF fits may be affected by the big data paradox, which stipulates that more experimental data do not automatically raise the accuracy of PDFs -- close attention to the data quality and sampling of possible PDF solutions is as essential. To test if the sampling of the PDF uncertainty of an experimental observable is truly representative of all acceptable solutions, we introduce a technique (``a hopscotch scan'') based on a combination of parameter scans and stochastic sampling. With this technique, we show that the PDF uncertainty on key LHC cross sections at 13 TeV obtained with the public NNPDF4.0 fitting code is larger than the nominal uncertainty obtained with the published NNPDF4.0 Monte-Carlo replica sets, when accounting for the likelihood distribution. On the same grounds, the uncertainties on the charm distribution at a large momentum fraction $x$ and gluon PDF at small $x$ are enlarged. In PDF ensembles obtained in the analytic minimization (Hessian) formalism, the tolerance on the PDF uncertainty must be based on sufficiently complete sampling of PDF functional forms and choices of the experiments., Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures; this version includes expanded discussion added in the journal version and detailed comparisons supplementary to the journal version

We study the dependence of the transverse mass distribution of the charged lepton and the missing energies on the parton distributions (PDFs) adapted to the $W$ boson mass measurements at the CDF and ATLAS experiments. We compare the shape variations of the distribution induced by different PDFs and find that spread of predictions from different PDF sets can be much larger than the PDF uncertainty predicted by a specific PDF set. We suggest analyzing the experimental data using up-to-date PDFs for a better understanding of the PDF uncertainties in the $W$ boson mass measurements. We further carry out a series of Lagrange multiplier scans to identify the constraints on the transverse mass distribution imposed by individual data sets in the CT18 global analysis. In the case of CDF measurement, the distribution is mostly sensitive to the $d$-quark PDFs at the intermediate $x$ region that is largely constrained by the DIS and Drell-Yan data on the deuteron target, as well as the Tevatron lepton charge asymmetry data., Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, and 3 tables

In particle collisions at energies higher than the mass scale involved, the collinear splitting becomes the dominant phenomena. Suitable descriptions of the physics in this regime include the parton distribution functions, the initial state radiations, the final state radiations and the fragmentation functions. It is of fundamental importance to formulate those functions with consistent theoretical treatments, and to provide the adequate formalism for applications, as motivated by the recent discussions of partonic scatterings at the multi-TeV energy regime. In this report, we briefly present the resummation of the final-state logarithms as fragmentation functions for the electroweak processes. As an explicit example, we study an electroweak gauge boson splitting in the process $pp\to WZj$ and demonstrate the important effects from the fragmentation., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; Contribution to Snowmass 2021

The International Linear Collider (ILC) is on the table now as a new global energy-frontier accelerator laboratory taking data in the 2030s. The ILC addresses key questions for our current understanding of particle physics. It is based on a proven accelerator technology. Its experiments will challenge the Standard Model of particle physics and will provide a new window to look beyond it. This document brings the story of the ILC up to date, emphasizing its strong physics motivation, its readiness for construction, and the opportunity it presents to the US and the global particle physics community., Comment: 356 pages, Large pdf file (40 MB) submitted to Snowmass 2021; v2 references to Snowmass contributions added, additional authors; v3 references added, some updates, additional authors

In the path towards a muon collider with center of mass energy of 10 TeV or more, a stage at 3 TeV emerges as an appealing option. Reviewing the physics potential of such muon collider is the main purpose of this document. In order to outline the progression of the physics performances across the stages, a few sensitivity projections for higher energy are also presented. There are many opportunities for probing new physics at a 3 TeV muon collider. Some of them are in common with the extensively documented physics case of the CLIC 3 TeV energy stage, and include measuring the Higgs trilinear coupling and testing the possible composite nature of the Higgs boson and of the top quark at the 20 TeV scale. Other opportunities are unique of a 3 TeV muon collider, and stem from the fact that muons are collided rather than electrons. This is exemplified by studying the potential to explore the microscopic origin of the current $g$-2 and $B$-physics anomalies, which are both related with muons., Comment: 73 pages, 28 figures; Contribution to Snowmass 2021

In this whitepaper, we consider the model of heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) as an example to explore the potential of new physics searches at the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). We propose two broad categories of search strategies depending on the HNL lifetime: direct searches for the prompt decay of HNLs with a short lifetime and displaced vertex searches for long-lived ones. After identifying the most promising signals and the corresponding backgrounds, we perform a detailed simulation to estimate the sensitivity of the EIC to HNLs, accounting for detector thresholds, resolutions, and geometric acceptance. We derive projections for the EIC reach to the HNL squared mixing angle as a function of the HNL mass under the electron flavor mixing dominance hypothesis. Our findings indicate that the EIC can provide comparable sensitivity to the existing constraints for the prompt searches, while the displaced vertex searches can cover substantial new ground for HNLs in the 1-10 GeV mass range. Our proposed strategies are generally applicable to other new physics scenarios as well and motivate additional phenomenological exploration and dedicated future searches at the EIC., Comment: Contribution to Snowmass 2021, 7 pages, 2 figures

Precision measurements of heavy-flavor hadroproduction at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have the ability to probe heavy-flavor parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the proton. Sensitivity of inclusive $B^\pm$ meson production cross section measurements at LHCb 13 TeV to the bottom-quark PDF is illustrated by using theory predictions obtained with a the S-ACOT-MPS general mass variable flavor number (GMVFN) scheme within the QCD factorization formula. This approach can easily be extended to other heavy-flavor production processes, such as $Z$ boson production in association with a bottom- or a charm-jet. The inclusion of such measurements will represent an important improvement for future global QCD analyses that aim at reducing uncertainties of heavy-flavor PDFs, provided that a consistent general mass treatment in $pp$ collisions is used. This work is related to the activities of the Snowmass topic groups EF03, and EF06., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, Contribution to: 2022 Snowmass Summer Study

A precise knowledge of the quark and gluon structure of the proton, encoded by the parton distribution functions (PDFs), is of paramount importance for the interpretation of high-energy processes at present and future lepton-hadron and hadron-hadron colliders. Motivated by recent progress in the PDF determinations carried out by the CT, MSHT, and NNPDF groups, we present an updated combination of global PDF fits: PDF4LHC21. It is based on the Monte Carlo combination of the CT18, MSHT20, and NNPDF3.1 sets followed by either its Hessian reduction or its replica compression. Extensive benchmark studies are carried out in order to disentangle the origin of the differences between the three global PDF sets. In particular, dedicated fits based on almost identical theory settings and input datasets are performed by the three groups, highlighting the role played by the respective fitting methodologies. We compare the new PDF4LHC21 combination with its predecessor, PDF4LHC15, demonstrating their good overall consistency and a modest reduction of PDF uncertainties for key LHC processes such as electroweak gauge boson production and Higgs boson production in gluon fusion. We study the phenomenological implications of PDF4LHC21 for a representative selection of inclusive, fiducial, and differential cross sections at the LHC. The PDF4LHC21 combination is made available via the LHAPDF library and provides a robust, user-friendly, and efficient method to estimate the PDF uncertainties associated to theoretical calculations for the upcoming Run III of the LHC and beyond., Comment: 87 pages, 44 figures, 11 tables

High energy collisions at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce a large number of particles along the beam collision axis, outside of the acceptance of existing LHC experiments. The proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF), to be located several hundred meters from the ATLAS interaction point and shielded by concrete and rock, will host a suite of experiments to probe Standard Model (SM) processes and search for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). In this report, we review the status of the civil engineering plans and the experiments to explore the diverse physics signals that can be uniquely probed in the forward region. FPF experiments will be sensitive to a broad range of BSM physics through searches for new particle scattering or decay signatures and deviations from SM expectations in high statistics analyses with TeV neutrinos in this low-background environment. High statistics neutrino detection will also provide valuable data for fundamental topics in perturbative and non-perturbative QCD and in weak interactions. Experiments at the FPF will enable synergies between forward particle production at the LHC and astroparticle physics to be exploited. We report here on these physics topics, on infrastructure, detector, and simulation studies, and on future directions to realize the FPF's physics potential., Comment: 429 pages, contribution to Snowmass 2021

We discuss recent CTEQ-TEA group activities after the publication of the CT18 global analysis of parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the proton. In particular, we discuss a new calculation for the photon content in the proton, termed as CT18lux and CT18qed PDFs, and the impact of novel charm- and bottom-quark production cross section measurements at HERA on the CT18 global analysis., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, EPS-HEP2021 Conference Proceedings. Contribution to the European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics 2021

The Forward Physics Facility (FPF) is a proposal to create a cavern with the space and infrastructure to support a suite of far-forward experiments at the Large Hadron Collider during the High Luminosity era. Located along the beam collision axis and shielded from the interaction point by at least 100 m of concrete and rock, the FPF will house experiments that will detect particles outside the acceptance of the existing large LHC experiments and will observe rare and exotic processes in an extremely low-background environment. In this work, we summarize the current status of plans for the FPF, including recent progress in civil engineering in identifying promising sites for the FPF and the experiments currently envisioned to realize the FPF's physics potential. We then review the many Standard Model and new physics topics that will be advanced by the FPF, including searches for long-lived particles, probes of dark matter and dark sectors, high-statistics studies of TeV neutrinos of all three flavors, aspects of perturbative and non-perturbative QCD, and high-energy astroparticle physics., Comment: revised version, accepted by Physics Reports

We review progress in the global QCD analysis by the CTEQ-TEA group since the publication of CT18 parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the proton. Specifically, we discuss comparisons of CT18 NNLO predictions with the LHC 13 TeV measurements as well as with the FNAL SeaQuest and BNL STAR data on lepton pair production. The specialized CT18X PDFs approximating saturation effects are compared with the CT18sx PDFs obtained using NLL/NLO small-$x$ resummation. Short summaries are presented for the special CT18 parton distributions with fitted charm and with lattice QCD inputs. A recent comparative analysis of the impact of deuteron nuclear effects on the parton distributions by the CTEQ-JLab and CTEQ-TEA groups is summarized., Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures

We explore the sensitivity of directly testing the muon-Higgs coupling at a high-energy muon collider. This is strongly motivated if there exists new physics that is not aligned with the Standard Model Yukawa interactions which are responsible for the fermion mass generation. We illustrate a few such examples for physics beyond the Standard Model. With the accidentally small value of the muon Yukawa coupling and its subtle role in the high-energy production of multiple (vector and Higgs) bosons, we show that it is possible to measure the muon-Higgs coupling to an accuracy of ten percent for a 10 TeV muon collider and a few percent for a 30 TeV machine by utilizing the three boson production, potentially sensitive to a new physics scale about $\Lambda \sim 30-100$ TeV., Comment: Correct the preprint number

In these proceedings, we apply the recently developed S-ACOT-MPS factorization scheme at the next-to-leading order to prompt charm production at hadron colliders. It provides a good agreement with experimental data on charm meson production measured by LHCb at 7 and 13 TeV. The low-$p_T$ data are on the margins of the theoretical error bands, emphasizing the importance of including contributions beyond the next-to-leading order., Comment: Submission to SciPost

We discuss the impact of heavy-flavor production measurements in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering at HERA on the CTEQ-TEA PDFs. In particular, we study the impact of the latest charm and bottom production measurements from the H1 and ZEUS collaborations on the gluon, and the interplay of these measurements with the data ensemble of the recent CT18 global QCD analysis., Comment: 8 Pages, 3 figures, presented at the XXVIII International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects (DIS 2021), Stony Brook University, New York, USA, 12-16 April 2021; for submission to SciPost Physics Proceedings

Recently, two photon PDF sets based on implementations of the LUX ansatz into the CT18 global analysis were released. In CT18lux, the photon PDF is calculated directly using the LUX master formula for all scales, $\mu$. In an alternative realization, CT18qed, the photon PDF is initialized at the starting scale, $\mu_0$, using the LUX formulation and evolved to higher scales $\mu(>\mu_0)$ with a combined QED+QCD kernel at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha),~\mathcal{O}(\alpha\alpha_s)$ and $\mathcal{O}(\alpha^2)$. In the small-$x$ region, the photon PDF uncertainty is mainly induced by the quark and gluon PDFs, through the perturbative DIS structure functions. In comparison, the large-$x$ photon uncertainty comes from various low-energy, nonperturbative contributions, including variations of the inelastic structure functions in the resonance and continuum regions, higher-twist and target-mass corrections, and elastic electromagnetic form factors of the proton. We take the production of doubly-charged Higgs pairs, $(H^{++}H^{--})$, as an example of scenarios beyond the Standard Model to illustrate the phenomenological implications of these photon PDFs at the LHC., Comment: Submission to SciPost

Building upon the most recent CT18 global fit, we present a new calculation of the photon content of the proton based on an application of the LUX formalism. In this work, we explore two principal variations of the LUX ansatz. In one approach, which we designate "CT18lux," the photon PDF is calculated directly using the LUX formula for all scales, $\mu$. In an alternative realization, "CT18qed," we instead initialize the photon PDF in terms of the LUX formulation at a lower scale, $\mu\! \sim\! \mu_0$, and evolve to higher scales with a combined QED+QCD kernel at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha),~\mathcal{O}(\alpha\alpha_s)$ and $\mathcal{O}(\alpha^2)$. While we find these two approaches generally agree, especially at intermediate $x$ ($10^{-3}\lesssim x\lesssim0.3$), we discuss some moderate discrepancies that can occur toward the end-point regions at very high or low $x$. We also study effects that follow from variations of the inputs to the LUX calculation originating outside the pure deeply-inelastic scattering (DIS) region, including from elastic form factors and other contributions to the photon PDF. Finally, we investigate the phenomenological implications of these photon PDFs for the LHC, including high-mass Drell-Yan, vector-boson pair, top-quark pair, and Higgs associated with vector-boson production., Comment: 45 pages, 27 figures, and 5 tables

Insight into the electroweak (EW) and Higgs sectors can be achieved through measurements of vector boson scattering (VBS) processes. The scattering of EW bosons are rare processes that are precisely predicted in the Standard Model (SM) and are closely related to the Higgs mechanism. Modifications to VBS processes are also predicted in models of physics beyond the SM (BSM), for example through changes to the Higgs boson couplings to gauge bosons and the resonant production of new particles. In this review, experimental results and theoretical developments of VBS at the Large Hadron Collider, its high luminosity upgrade, and future colliders are presented., Comment: Journal version with additional discussion and references. 56 pages (including toc and refs.), 71 image files, eight tables, and many references. VBSCan@Snowmass review

In high-energy leptonic collisions, such as at a multi-TeV muon collider, the collinear splittings of the electroweak (EW) gauge bosons and leptons are the dominant phenomena, and the scattering processes should thus be formulated in terms of the EW parton distribution functions (EW PDFs). We complete this formalism in the Standard Model to include the QCD sector and evaluate the quark and gluon PDFs inside a lepton at the double-log accuracy. The splittings of the photon and subsequently the quarks and gluons control the quark/gluon PDFs below the EW scale. The massive gauge bosons lead to substantial contributions at high scales. The jet production cross section can reach the order of a few nb (50 pb) in $e^+e^-$ ($\mu^+\mu^-$) collisions, at the TeV c.m. energies with a moderate acceptance cut, that governs the overall event shape up to about $p_T^j \sim 60$ GeV., Comment: New figure (Fig.4) added for photon-induced total hadronic cross sections at lepton colliders. This paper is published on JHEP

Ultra-peripheral collisions (UPCs) involving heavy ions and protons are the energy frontier for photon-mediated interactions. UPC photons can be used for many purposes, including probing low-$x$ gluons via photoproduction of dijets and vector mesons, probes of beyond-standard-model processes, such as those enabled by light-by-light scattering, and studies of two-photon production of the Higgs., Comment: Letter of Interest submitted to Snowmass 2021