Contributor info: Prof. Andy Buckley

Andy Buckley, Deepak Kar, Sukanya Sinha

SciPost Phys. Proc. 15, 006 (2024) · published 2 April 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

As no evidence for classic WIMP-based signatures of dark matter have been found at the LHC, several phenomenological studies have raised the possibility of accessing a strongly-interacting dark sector through new collider-event topologies. If dark mesons exist, their evolution and hadronization procedure are currently little constrained. They could decay promptly and result in QCD-like jet structures, even though the original decaying particles are dark sector ones; they could behave as semi-visible jets; or they could behave as completely detector-stable hadrons, in which case the final state is just the missing transverse momentum. In this contribution we will introduce a study performed to explore use of jet substructure methods to distinguish dark-sector from QCD jets in the first two scenarios, using observables in a IRC-safe linear basis, and discuss ways forward for this approach to dark-matter at the LHC.

Jack Y. Araz, Andy Buckley, Benjamin Fuks, Humberto Reyes-Gonzalez, Wolfgang Waltenberger, Sophie L. Williamson, Jamie Yellen

SciPost Phys. 14, 077 (2023) · published 20 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

To gain a comprehensive view of what the LHC tells us about physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM), it is crucial that different BSM-sensitive analyses can be combined. But in general search-analyses are not statistically orthogonal, so performing comprehensive combinations requires knowledge of the extent to which the same events co-populate multiple analyses' signal regions. We present a novel, stochastic method to determine this degree of overlap, and a graph algorithm to efficiently find the combination of signal regions with no mutual overlap that optimises expected upper limits on BSM-model cross-sections. The gain in exclusion power relative to single-analysis limits is demonstrated with models with varying degrees of complexity, ranging from simplified models to a 19-dimensional supersymmetric model.

Enrico Bothmann, Andy Buckley, Christian Gütschow, Stefan Prestel, Marek Schönherr, Peter Skands, Jeppe R. Andersen, Saptaparna Bhattacharya, Jonathan Butterworth, Gurpreet Singh Chahal, Louie Corpe, Leif Gellersen, Matthew Gignac, Stefan Höche, Deepak Kar, Frank Krauss, Jan Kretzschmar, Leif Lönnblad, Josh McFayden, Andreas Papaefstathiou, Simon Plätzer, Steffen Schumann, Michael H. Seymour, Frank Siegert, Andrzej Siódmok

SciPost Phys. Core 6, 007 (2023) · published 8 February 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Streams of event weights in particle-level Monte Carlo event generators are a convenient and immensely CPU-efficient approach to express systematic uncertainties in phenomenology calculations, providing systematic variations on the nominal prediction within a single event sample. But the lack of a common standard for labelling these variation streams across different tools has proven to be a major limitation for event-processing tools and analysers alike. Here we propose a well-defined, extensible community standard for the naming, ordering, and interpretation of weight streams that will serve as the basis for semantically correct parsing and combination of such variations in both theoretical and experimental studies.

Andy Buckley, Giuseppe Callea, Andrew J. Larkowski, Simone Marzani

SciPost Phys. Proc. 10, 001 (2022) · published 10 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

The jet colour ring is a novel colour tagger observable designed to separate the decay of a colour-singlet into two jets from a two-jet background in a different colour configuration. Simulation studies in the case of the production of a boosted Higgs boson decaying in two b-quarks and an associate electroweak boson, showed notable discriminator powers when comparing the jet colour ring performances with other observables. These results are opening a wide scenario for further studies.

A. Buckley, J. M. Butterworth, L. Corpe, M. Habedank, D. Huang, D. Yallup, M. Altakach, G. Bassman, I. Lagwankar, J. Rocamonde, H. Saunders, B. Waugh, G. Zilgalvis

SciPost Phys. Core 4, 013 (2021) · published 20 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Measurements at particle collider experiments, even if primarily aimed at understanding Standard Model processes, can have a high degree of model independence, and implicitly contain information about potential contributions from physics beyond the Standard Model. The Contur package allows users to benefit from the hundreds of measurements preserved in the Rivet library to test new models against the bank of LHC measurements to date. This method has proven to be very effective in several recent publications from the Contur team, but ultimately, for this approach to be successful, the authors believe that the Contur tool needs to be accessible to the wider high energy physics community. As such, this manual accompanies the first user-facing version: Contur v2. It describes the design choices that have been made, as well as detailing pitfalls and common issues to avoid. The authors hope that with the help of this documentation, external groups will be able to run their own Contur studies, for example when proposing a new model, or pitching a new search.

Andy Buckley, Jonathan M. Butterworth, Louie Corpe, Danping Huang, Puwen Sun

SciPost Phys. 9, 069 (2020) · published 11 November 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Quark partners with non-chiral couplings appear in several extensions of the Standard Model. They may have non-trivial generational structure to their couplings, and may be produced either in pairs via the strong and EM interactions, or singly via the new couplings of the model. Their decays often produce heavy quarks and gauge bosons, which will contribute to a variety of already-measured "Standard Model" cross-sections at the LHC. We present a study of the sensitivity of such published LHC measurements to vector-like quarks, first comparing to limits already obtained from dedicated searches, and then broadening to some so-far unstudied parameter regions.

Andy Buckley, Giuseppe Callea, Andrew J. Larkoski, Simone Marzani

SciPost Phys. 9, 026 (2020) · published 26 August 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We present a novel approach to construct a color tagger, i.e. an observable that is able to discriminate the decay of a color-singlet into two jets from a two-jet background in a different color configuration. We do this by explicitly taking the ratio of the corresponding leading-order matrix elements in the soft limit, thus obtaining an observable that is provably optimal within our approximation. We call this observable the "jet color ring" and we compare its performance to other color-sensitive observables such as jet pull and dipolarity. We also assess the performance of the jet color ring in simulations by applying it to the case of the hadronic decays of a boosted Higgs boson and of an electroweak boson.

Waleed Abdallah, Shehu AbdusSalam, Azar Ahmadov, Amine Ahriche, Gaël Alguero, Benjamin C. Allanach, Jack Y. Araz, Alexandre Arbey, Chiara Arina, Peter Athron, Emanuele Bagnaschi, Yang Bai, Michael J. Baker, Csaba Balazs, Daniele Barducci, Philip Bechtle, Aoife Bharucha, Andy Buckley, Jonathan Butterworth, Haiying Cai, Claudio Campagnari, Cari Cesarotti, Marcin Chrzaszcz, Andrea Coccaro, Eric Conte, Jonathan M. Cornell, Louie Dartmoor Corpe, Matthias Danninger, Luc Darmé, Aldo Deandrea, Nishita Desai, Barry Dillon, Caterina Doglioni, Juhi Dutta, John R. Ellis, Sebastian Ellis, Farida Fassi, Matthew Feickert, Nicolas Fernandez, Sylvain Fichet, Jernej F. Kamenik, Thomas Flacke, Benjamin Fuks, Achim Geiser, Marie-Hélène Genest, Akshay Ghalsasi, Tomas Gonzalo, Mark Goodsell, Stefania Gori, Philippe Gras, Admir Greljo, Diego Guadagnoli, Sven Heinemeyer, Lukas A. Heinrich, Jan Heisig, Deog Ki Hong, Tetiana Hryn'ova, Katri Huitu, Philip Ilten, Ahmed Ismail, Adil Jueid, Felix Kahlhoefer, Jan Kalinowski, Deepak Kar, Yevgeny Kats, Charanjit K. Khosa, Valeri Khoze, Tobias Klingl, Pyungwon Ko, Kyoungchul Kong, Wojciech Kotlarski, Michael Krämer, Sabine Kraml, Suchita Kulkarni, Anders Kvellestad, Clemens Lange, Kati Lassila-Perini, Seung J. Lee, Andre Lessa, Zhen Liu, Lara Lloret Iglesias, Jeanette M. Lorenz, Danika MacDonell, Farvah Mahmoudi, Judita Mamuzic, Andrea C. Marini, Pete Markowitz, Pablo Martinez Ruiz del Arbol, David Miller, Vasiliki Mitsou, Stefano Moretti, Marco Nardecchia, Siavash Neshatpour, Dao Thi Nhung, Per Osland, Patrick H. Owen, Orlando Panella, Alexander Pankov, Myeonghun Park, Werner Porod, Darren Price, Harrison Prosper, Are Raklev, Jürgen Reuter, Humberto Reyes-González, Thomas Rizzo, Tania Robens, Juan Rojo, Janusz A. Rosiek, Oleg Ruchayskiy, Veronica Sanz, Kai Schmidt-Hoberg, Pat Scott, Sezen Sekmen, Dipan Sengupta, Elizabeth Sexton-Kennedy, Hua-Sheng Shao, Seodong Shin, Luca Silvestrini, Ritesh Singh, Sukanya Sinha, Jory Sonneveld, Yotam Soreq, Giordon H. Stark, Tim Stefaniak, Jesse Thaler, Riccardo Torre, Emilio Torrente-Lujan, Gokhan Unel, Natascia Vignaroli, Wolfgang Waltenberger, Nicholas Wardle, Graeme Watt, Georg Weiglein, Martin J. White, Sophie L. Williamson, Jonas Wittbrodt, Lei Wu, Stefan Wunsch, Tevong You, Yang Zhang, José Zurita

SciPost Phys. 9, 022 (2020) · published 21 August 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We report on the status of efforts to improve the reinterpretation of searches and measurements at the LHC in terms of models for new physics, in the context of the LHC Reinterpretation Forum. We detail current experimental offerings in direct searches for new particles, measurements, technical implementations and Open Data, and provide a set of recommendations for further improving the presentation of LHC results in order to better enable reinterpretation in the future. We also provide a brief description of existing software reinterpretation frameworks and recent global analyses of new physics that make use of the current data.

Christian Bierlich, Andy Buckley, Jonathan Butterworth, Christian Holm Christensen, Louie Corpe, David Grellscheid, Jan Fiete Grosse-Oetringhaus, Christian Gutschow, Przemyslaw Karczmarczyk, Jochen Klein, Leif Lonnblad, Christopher Samuel Pollard, Peter Richardson, Holger Schulz, Frank Siegert

SciPost Phys. 8, 026 (2020) · published 11 February 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

First released in 2010, the Rivet library forms an important repository for analysis code, facilitating comparisons between measurements of the final state in particle collisions and theoretical calculations of those final states. We give an overview of Rivet's current design and implementation, its uptake for analysis preservation and physics results, and summarise recent developments including propagation of MC systematic-uncertainty weights, heavy-ion and $ep$ physics, and systems for detector emulation. In addition, we provide a short user guide that supplements and updates the Rivet user manual.

Andy Buckley, Deepak Kar, Karl Nordström

SciPost Phys. 8, 025 (2020) · published 10 February 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We describe the design and implementation of detector-bias emulation in the Rivet MC event analysis system. Implemented using C++ efficiency and kinematic smearing functors, it allows detector effects to be specified within an analysis routine, customised to the exact phase-space and reconstruction working points of the analysis. A set of standard detector functions for the physics objects of Runs 1 and 2 of the ATLAS and CMS experiments is also provided. Finally, as jet substructure is an important class of physics observable usually considered to require an explicit detector simulation, we demonstrate that a smearing approach, tuned to available substructure data and implemented in Rivet, can accurately reproduce jet-structure biases observed by ATLAS.