Publications

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Precision physics with the proton spectrometer and diffractive physics measurements from CMS

Cristophe Royon

SciPost Phys. Proc. 15, 030 (2024) · published 3 April 2024 | · pdf

We describe recent results from CMS and TOTEM on hard diffraction, diffractive jets and jet gap jet events. We also give the first sensitivities and limits on quartic anomalous couplings and axion-like particles at high mass using the LHC as a $\gamma \gamma$ collider. The predicted sensitivities with 300 fb$^{-1}$ are better by two or three orders of magnitude compared to the more standard methods at the LHC without measuring intact protons after collision.
2B or not 2B, a study of bottom-quark-philic semi-visible jets

Deepak Kar, Wandile Nzuza, Sukanya Sinha

SciPost Phys. Core 7, 071 (2024) · published 13 November 2024 | · pdf

Semi-visible jets arise in strongly interacting dark sectors, resulting in jets overlapping with the missing transverse momentum direction. The implementation of semi-visible jets is done using the Pythia Hidden Valley module to mimic the QCD sector showering in so-called dark shower. In this work, only heavy flavour Standard Model quarks are considered in dark shower, resulting in a much less ambiguous collider signature of semi-visible jets compared to the democratic production of all five quark flavours in dark shower. The constraints from available searches on this signature are presented, and it is shown the signal reconstruction can be improved by using variable-radius jets. Finally a search strategy is suggested.
Trials factor for semi-supervised NN classifiers in searches for narrow resonances at the LHC

Benjamin Lieberman, Salah-Eddine Dahbi, Andreas Crivellin, Finn Stevenson, Nidhi Tripathi, Mukesh Kumar, Bruce Mellado

SciPost Phys. Core 7, 073 (2024) · published 13 November 2024 | · pdf

To mitigate the model dependencies of searches for new narrow resonances at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), semi-supervised Neural Networks (NNs) can be used. Unlike fully supervised classifiers these models introduce an additional look-elsewhere effect in the process of optimising thresholds on the response distribution. We perform a frequentist study to quantify this effect, in the form of a trials factor. As an example, we consider simulated $Z\gamma$ data to perform narrow resonance searches using semi-supervised NN classifiers. The results from this analysis provide substantiation that the look-elsewhere effect induced by the semi-supervised NN is under control.
Modelling the underlying event in photon-initiated processes

Jonathan Butterworth, Ilkka Helenius, Juan Jose Juan Castella, Bradley Pattengale, Shahzad Sanjrani, Matthew Wing

SciPost Phys. 17, 158 (2024) · published 9 December 2024 | · pdf

Modelling the underlying event in high-energy hadronic collisions is important for physics at colliders. This includes lepton colliders, where low-virtuality photons accompanying the lepton beam(s) may develop hadronic structure. Similarly, photon-induced collisions also occur in proton or heavy-ion beam experiments. While the underlying event in proton-proton collisions has been the subject of much study at the LHC, studies of hadronic-photon-induced underlying event are now of increasing interest in light of planned future lepton and lepton-hadron colliders, as well as the photon-induced processes in ultra-peripheral collisions at the LHC. Here we present an investigation of the underlying event in photon-initiated processes, starting from the Pythia models used to describe LHC and Tevatron data, and revisiting HERA and LEP2 data. While no single tune describes all the data with different beam configurations, we find that a good agreement can still be found within the same model by adjusting the relevant parameters separately for $\gamma\gamma$, $\gamma p$ and $pp$. This suggests that the basic model of multiparton interaction implemented in Pythia can be applied for different beam configurations. Furthermore, we find that a reasonable agreement for $\gamma\gamma$ and $\gamma p$ data, and for $pp$ data at an LHC reference energy, can be found within a single parametrization, but $pp$ collisions would prefer a stronger energy dependence, leading to too many multiparton interactions in lower energy photon-induced collisions. On this basis, we make some recommendations for simulations of photon-induced processes, such as $\gamma \gamma$ events at the LHC or FCC and $ep$ or $eA$ collisions at the EIC, and suggest possibilities for improvements in the modelling.
ALPs and HNLs at LHC and muon colliders: Uncovering new couplings and signals

Marta Burgos Marcos, Arturo de Giorgi, Luca Merlo, Jean-Loup Tastet

SciPost Phys. 18, 084 (2025) · published 7 March 2025 | · pdf

Axion-like particles (ALPs) and heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) are two well-motivated classes of particles beyond the Standard Model. It is intriguing to explore the new detection opportunities that may arise if both particle types coexist. Part of the authors already investigated this scenario in a previous publication, within a simplified model containing an ALP and a single HNL, identifying particularly promising processes that could be searched for at the LHC. In this paper, we first consider the same setup with a broader range of both production processes and final states, both at the High-Luminosity LHC and at a future muon collider. Subsequently, we expand it to the more realistic scenario with at least two HNLs, necessary to describe the active neutrino masses. Different phenomenological signals are expected and we examine the complexities that emerge in this setup. This study paves the way for dedicated analysis at (forthcoming) colliders, potentially pinpointing the dynamics of ALPs and HNLs.
Two-loop gradient-flow renormalization of scalar QCD

Janosh Borgulat, Nils Felten, Robert V. Harlander, Jonas T. Kohnen

SciPost Phys. Core 8, 032 (2025) · published 21 March 2025 | · pdf

The gradient-flow formalism is applied to a non-Abelian gauge theory with scalar and fermionic particles, dubbed "scalar QCD". It is shown that the flowed scalar quark requires a field renormalization, albeit only beyond the one-loop level. A pseudo-physical, flow-time dependent renormalization scheme is defined, and the corresponding renormalization constant is evaluated at the two-loop level. We also calculate the gluon action density as well as the condensates of the scalar and the fermionic quark at three-loop level in this theory. The results validate the consistency of the gradient-flow formalism in this theory and provide a further step towards applying the gradient-flow formalism to the full Standard Model.
Systematically constructing the likelihood for boosted $H\to gg$ decays

Andrew J. Larkoski

SciPost Phys. 18, 130 (2025) · published 17 April 2025 | · pdf

We study the binary discrimination problem of identification of boosted $H\to gg$ decays from massive QCD jets in a systematic expansion in the strong coupling. Though this decay mode of the Higgs is unlikely to be discovered at the LHC, we analytically demonstrate several features of the likelihood ratio for this problem through explicit analysis of signal and background matrix elements. Through leading-order, we prove that by imposing a constraint on the jet mass and measuring the energy fraction of the softer subjet an improvement of signal to background ratio that is independent of the kinematics of the jets at high boosts can be obtained, and is approximately equal to the inverse of the strong coupling evaluated at the Higgs mass. At next-to-leading order, we construct a powerful discrimination observable through a sort of anomaly detection approach by simply inverting the next-to-leading order $H\to gg$ matrix element with soft gluon emission, which is naturally infrared and collinear safe. Our analytic conclusions are validated in simulated data from all-purpose event generators and subsequent parton showering and demonstrate that the signal-to-background ratio can be improved by a factor of several hundred at high, but accessible, jet energies at the LHC.
Identifying the quantum properties of hadronic resonances using machine learning

Jakub Filipek, Shih-Chieh Hsu, John Kruper, Kirtimaan Mohan, Benjamin Nachman

SciPost Phys. Core 8, 039 (2025) · published 28 April 2025 | · pdf

With the great promise of deep learning, discoveries of new particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may be imminent. Following the discovery of a new Beyond the Standard model particle in an all-hadronic channel, deep learning can also be used to identify its quantum numbers. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) using jet-images can significantly improve upon existing techniques to identify the quantum chromodynamic (QCD) ('color') as well as the spin of a two-prong resonance using its substructure. Additionally, jet-images are useful in determining what information in the jet radiation pattern is useful for classification, which could inspire future taggers. These techniques improve the categorization of new particles and are an important addition to the growing jet substructure toolkit, for searches and measurements at the LHC now and in the future.
Monopole breaking of Chern-Weil symmetries

Eduardo García-Valdecasas, Matthew Reece, Motoo Suzuki

SciPost Phys. 18, 162 (2025) · published 20 May 2025 | · pdf

Gauge theories in $d$ dimensions with a nontrivial fundamental group admit a $(d-3)$-form magnetic symmetry and a $(d-5)$-form instantonic symmetry. These are examples of Chern-Weil symmetries, with conserved currents built out of the gauge field strength, which can only be explicitly broken through violations of the Bianchi identity. For U(1) gauge theory, it is clear that magnetic monopoles violate not only the $(d-3)$-form magnetic symmetry but also lower-form symmetries like the instantonic symmetry. It is also known that an improved instanton number symmetry current, which is conserved, can be constructed in the case that the magnetic monopole admits a dyonic excitation. We study the generalization to other gauge groups, showing that magnetic monopoles also violate instantonic symmetries for nonabelian groups like PSU($n$), and that dyon modes can restore such symmetries. Furthermore, we show that in many (but not all) examples where a gauge group $G$ is Higgsed to a gauge group $H$, the structure of monopoles and dyons emerging from the Higgsing process explicitly breaks the instantonic symmetries of $H$ to those of $G$. The meaning of explicit breaking of a $(d-5)$-form symmetry is clearest for $d > 4$, but these results also extend to $d = 4$, where the breaking is interpreted as an obstruction to coupling the theory to a background axion field.
Cosmology of the companion-axion model: Dark matter, gravitational waves, and primordial black holes

Zhe Chen, Archil Kobakhidze, Ciaran O'Hare, Zachary S. C. Picker, Giovanni Pierobon

SciPost Phys. 18, 175 (2025) · published 4 June 2025 | · pdf

The companion-axion model introduces a second QCD axion to rescue the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong-CP problem from the effects of colored gravitational instantons. As in single-axion models, the two axions predicted by the companion-axion model are attractive candidates for dark matter. The model is defined by two free parameters, the scales of the two axions' symmetry breaking, so we can classify production scenarios in terms of the relative sizes of these two scales with respect to the scale of inflation. We study the cosmological production of companion-axion dark matter in order to predict windows of preferred axion masses, and calculate the relative abundances of the two particles. Additionally, we show that the presence of a second axion solves the cosmological domain wall problem automatically in the scenarios in which one or both of the axions are post-inflationary. We also suggest unique cosmological signatures of the companion-axion model, such as the production of a $\sim$10 nHz gravitational wave background, and $\sim 100\,M_\odot$ primordial black holes.

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