Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Phase transitions in the early universe

  Mark Hindmarsh, Marvin Lüben, Johannes Lumma, Martin Pauly

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 24 (2021) · published 15 February 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These lecture notes are based on a course given by Mark Hindmarsh at the 24th Saalburg Summer School 2018 and written up by Marvin L\"uben, Johannes Lumma and Martin Pauly. The aim is to provide the necessary basics to understand first-order phase transitions in the early universe, to outline how they leave imprints in gravitational waves, and advertise how those gravitational waves could be detected in the future. A first-order phase transition at the electroweak scale is a prediction of many theories beyond the Standard Model, and is also motivated as an ingredient of some theories attempting to provide an explanation for the matter-antimatter asymmetry in our Universe. Starting from bosonic and fermionic statistics, we derive Boltzmann's equation and generalise to a fluid of particles with field dependent mass. We introduce the thermal effective potential for the field in its lowest order approximation, discuss the transition to the Higgs phase in the Standard Model and beyond, and compute the probability for the field to cross a potential barrier. After these preliminaries, we provide a hydrodynamical description of first-order phase transitions as it is appropriate for describing the early Universe. We thereby discuss the key quantities characterising a phase transition, and how they are imprinted in the gravitational wave power spectrum that might be detectable by the space-based gravitational wave detector LISA in the 2030s.

  106 citations

• The Gauge-Higgs legacy of the LHC run II

  Anke Biekoetter, Tyler Corbett, Tilman Plehn

  SciPost Phys. 6, 064 (2019) · published 5 June 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a global analysis of the Higgs and electroweak sector based on LHC Run II and electroweak precision observables. We show which measurements provide the leading constraints on Higgs-related operators, and how the achieved LHC precision makes it necessary to combine rate measurements with electroweak precision observables. The SFitter framework allows us to include kinematic distributions beyond pre-defined ATLAS and CMS observables, independently study correlations, and avoid Gaussian assumptions for theory uncertainties. These Run II results are a step towards a precision physics program at the LHC, interpreted in terms of effective operators.

  83 citations

• Whispers from the dark side: Confronting light new physics with NANOGrav data

  Wolfram Ratzinger, Pedro Schwaller

  SciPost Phys. 10, 047 (2021) · published 23 February 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The NANOGrav collaboration has recently observed first evidence of a grav- itational wave background (GWB) in pulsar timing data. Here we explore the possibility that this GWB is due to new physics, and show that the signal can be well fit also with peaked spectra like the ones expected from phase transitions (PTs) or from the dynamics of axion like particles (ALPs) in the early universe. We find that a good fit to the data is obtained for a very strong PT at temperatures around 1 MeV to 10 MeV. For the ALP explanation the best fit is obtained for a decay constant of F ≈ 5 × 10^17 GeV and an axion mass of 2 × 10^−13 eV. We also illustrate the ability of PTAs to constrain the parameter space of these models, and obtain limits which are already comparable to other cosmological bounds.

  79 citations

• Invertible networks or partons to detector and back again

  Marco Bellagente, Anja Butter, Gregor Kasieczka, Tilman Plehn, Armand Rousselot, Ramon Winterhalder, Lynton Ardizzone, Ullrich Köthe

  SciPost Phys. 9, 074 (2020) · published 18 November 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  For simulations where the forward and the inverse directions have a physics meaning, invertible neural networks are especially useful. A conditional INN can invert a detector simulation in terms of high-level observables, specifically for ZW production at the LHC. It allows for a per-event statistical interpretation. Next, we allow for a variable number of QCD jets. We unfold detector effects and QCD radiation to a pre-defined hard process, again with a per-event probabilistic interpretation over parton-level phase space.

  78 citations

• Exploring phase space with Neural Importance Sampling

  Enrico Bothmann, Timo Janßen, Max Knobbe, Tobias Schmale, Steffen Schumann

  SciPost Phys. 8, 069 (2020) · published 29 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a novel approach for the integration of scattering cross sections and the generation of partonic event samples in high-energy physics. We propose an importance sampling technique capable of overcoming typical deficiencies of existing approaches by incorporating neural networks. The method guarantees full phase space coverage and the exact reproduction of the desired target distribution, in our case given by the squared transition matrix element. We study the performance of the algorithm for a few representative examples, including top-quark pair production and gluon scattering into three- and four-gluon final states.

  75 citations

• Reconstructing the gluon

  Anton K. Cyrol, Jan M. Pawlowski, Alexander Rothkopf, Nicolas Wink

  SciPost Phys. 5, 065 (2018) · published 20 December 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We reconstruct the gluon spectral function in Landau gauge QCD from numerical data for the gluon propagator. The reconstruction relies on two novel ingredients: Firstly we derive analytically the low frequency asymptotics of the spectral function. Secondly we construct a functional basis from a careful consideration of the analytic properties of the gluon propagator in Landau gauge. This allows us to reliably capture the non-perturbative regime of the gluon spectrum. We also compare different reconstruction methods and discuss the respective systematic errors.

  74 citations

• Matchmakereft: automated tree-level and one-loop matching

  Adrián Carmona, Achilleas Lazopoulos, Pablo Olgoso, José Santiago

  SciPost Phys. 12, 198 (2022) · published 23 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce matchmakereft, a fully automated tool to compute the tree-level and one-loop matching of arbitrary models onto arbitrary effective theories. Matchmakereft performs an off-shell matching, using diagrammatic methods and the background field method when gauge theories are involved. The large redundancy inherent to the off-shell matching together with explicit gauge invariance offers a significant number of non-trivial checks of the results provided. These results are given in the physical basis but several intermediate results, including the matching in the Green basis before and after canonical normalization, are given for flexibility and the possibility of further cross-checks. As a non-trivial example we provide the complete matching in the Warsaw basis up to one loop of an extension of the Standard Model with a charge -1 vector-like lepton singlet. Matchmakereft has been built with generality, flexibility and efficiency in mind. These ingredients allow matchmakereft to have many applications beyond the matching between models and effective theories. Some of these applications include the one-loop renormalization of arbitrary theories (including the calculation of the one-loop renormalization group equations for arbitrary theories); the translation between different Green bases for a fixed effective theory or the check of (off-shell) linear independence of the operators in an effective theory. All these applications are performed in a fully automated way by matchmakereft.

  74 citations

• Gravitational wave probes of dark matter: challenges and opportunities

  Gianfranco Bertone, Djuna Croon, Mustafa A. Amin, Kimberly K. Boddy, Bradley J. Kavanagh, Katherine J. Mack, Priyamvada Natarajan, Toby Opferkuch, Katelin Schutz, Volodymyr Takhistov, Christoph Weniger, Tien-Tien Yu

  SciPost Phys. Core 3, 007 (2020) · published 15 October 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this white paper, we discuss the prospects for characterizing and identifying dark matter using gravitational waves, covering a wide range of dark matter candidate types and signals. We argue that present and upcoming gravitational wave probes offer unprecedented opportunities for unraveling the nature of dark matter and we identify the most urgent challenges and open problems with the aim of encouraging a strong community effort at the interface between these two exciting fields of research.

  72 citations

• How to GAN away detector effects

  Marco Bellagente, Anja Butter, Gregor Kasieczka, Tilman Plehn, Ramon Winterhalder

  SciPost Phys. 8, 070 (2020) · published 29 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  LHC analyses directly comparing data and simulated events bear the danger of using first-principle predictions only as a black-box part of event simulation. We show how simulations, for instance, of detector effects can instead be inverted using generative networks. This allows us to reconstruct parton level information from measured events. Our results illustrate how, in general, fully conditional generative networks can statistically invert Monte Carlo simulations. As a technical by-product we show how a maximum mean discrepancy loss can be staggered or cooled.

  71 citations

• The Dark Machines Anomaly Score Challenge: Benchmark Data and Model Independent Event Classification for the Large Hadron Collider

  T. Aarrestad, M. van Beekveld, M. Bona, A. Boveia, S. Caron, J. Davies, A. De Simone, C. Doglioni, J. M. Duarte, A. Farbin, H. Gupta, L. Hendriks, L. Heinrich, J. Howarth, P. Jawahar, A. Jueid, J. Lastow, A. Leinweber, J. Mamuzic, E. Merényi, A. Morandini, P. Moskvitina, C. Nellist, J. Ngadiuba, B. Ostdiek, M. Pierini, B. Ravina, R. Ruiz de Austri, S. Sekmen, M. Touranakou, M. Vaškevičiūte, R. Vilalta, J. R. Vlimant, R. Verheyen, M. White, E. Wulff, E. Wallin, K. A. Wozniak, Z. Zhang

  SciPost Phys. 12, 043 (2022) · published 28 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We describe the outcome of a data challenge conducted as part of the Dark Machines Initiative and the Les Houches 2019 workshop on Physics at TeV colliders. The challenged aims at detecting signals of new physics at the LHC using unsupervised machine learning algorithms. First, we propose how an anomaly score could be implemented to define model-independent signal regions in LHC searches. We define and describe a large benchmark dataset, consisting of >1 Billion simulated LHC events corresponding to $10~\rm{fb}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. We then review a wide range of anomaly detection and density estimation algorithms, developed in the context of the data challenge, and we measure their performance in a set of realistic analysis environments. We draw a number of useful conclusions that will aid the development of unsupervised new physics searches during the third run of the LHC, and provide our benchmark dataset for future studies at https://www.phenoMLdata.org. Code to reproduce the analysis is provided at https://github.com/bostdiek/DarkMachines-UnsupervisedChallenge.

  66 citations