Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• What's anomalous in LHC jets?

  Thorsten Buss, Barry M. Dillon, Thorben Finke, Michael Krämer, Alessandro Morandini, Alexander Mück, Ivan Oleksiyuk, Tilman Plehn

  SciPost Phys. 15, 168 (2023) · published 17 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Searches for anomalies are a significant motivation for the LHC and help define key analysis steps, including triggers. We discuss specific examples how LHC anomalies can be defined through probability density estimates, evaluated in a physics space or in an appropriate neural network latent space, and discuss the model-dependence in choosing an appropriate data parameterisation. We illustrate this for classical k-means clustering, a Dirichlet variational autoencoder, and invertible neural networks. For two especially challenging scenarios of jets from a dark sector we evaluate the strengths and limitations of each method.

  13 citations

• Optimal mass variables for semivisible jets

  Kevin Pedro, Prasanth Shyamsundar

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 067 (2023) · published 17 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Strongly coupled hidden sector theories predict collider production of invisible, composite dark matter candidates mixed with standard model hadrons in the form of semivisible jets. Classical mass reconstruction techniques may not be optimal for these unusual topologies, in which the missing transverse momentum comes from massive particles and has a nontrivial relationship to the visible jet momentum. We apply the artificial event variable network, a semisupervised, interpretable machine learning technique that uses an information bottleneck, to derive superior mass reconstruction functions for several cases of resonant semivisible jet production. We demonstrate that the technique can extrapolate to unknown signal model parameter values. We further demonstrate the viability of conducting an actual search for new physics using this method, by applying the learned functions to standard model background events from quantum chromodynamics.

  4 citations

• Phases of cold holographic QCD: Baryons, pions and rho mesons

  Nicolas Kovensky, Aaron Poole, Andreas Schmitt

  SciPost Phys. 15, 162 (2023) · published 13 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We improve the holographic description of isospin-asymmetric baryonic matter within the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model by accounting for a realistic pion mass, computing the pion condensate dynamically, and including rho meson condensation by allowing the gauge field in the bulk to be anisotropic. This description takes into account the coexistence of baryonic matter with pion and rho meson condensates. Our main result is the zero-temperature phase diagram in the plane of baryon and isospin chemical potentials. We find that the effective pion mass in the baryonic medium increases with baryon density and that, as a consequence, there is no pion condensation in neutron-star matter. Our improved description also predicts that baryons are disfavored at low baryon chemical potentials even for arbitrarily large isospin chemical potential. Instead, rho meson condensation sets in on top of the pion condensate at an isospin chemical potential of about $9.4 m_\pi$. We further observe a highly non-monotonic phase boundary regarding the disappearance of pion condensation.

  13 citations

• Two-loop QCD corrections for three-photon production at hadron colliders

  Samuel Abreu, Giuseppe De Laurentis, Harald Ita, Maximillian Klinkert, Ben Page, Vasily Sotnikov

  SciPost Phys. 15, 157 (2023) · published 12 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We complete the computation of the two-loop helicity amplitudes for the production of three photons at hadron colliders, including all contributions beyond the leading-color approximation. We reconstruct the analytic form of the amplitudes from numerical finite-field samples obtained with the numerical unitarity method. This method requires as input surface terms for all relevant five-point non-planar integral topologies, which we obtain by solving the associated syzygy problem in embedding space. The numerical samples are used to constrain compact spinor-helicity ansätze, which are optimized by taking advantage of the known one-loop analytic structure. We make our analytic results available in a public C++ library, which is suitable for immediate phenomenological applications. We estimate that the inclusion of the subleading-color contributions will decrease the size of the two-loop corrections by about 30% to 50%, and the NNLO cross sections by a few percent, compared to the results in the leading-color approximation.

  20 citations

• On the quark spectral function in QCD

  Jan Horak, Jan M. Pawlowski, Nicolas Wink

  SciPost Phys. 15, 149 (2023) · published 10 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We calculate the spectral function of light quark flavours in 2+1 flavour vacuum QCD in the isospin-symmetric approximation. We employ spectral Dyson-Schwinger equations and compute the non-perturbative quark propagator directly in real-time, using recent spectral reconstruction results from Gaussian process regression of gluon propagator data in 2+1 flavour lattice QCD. Our results feature a pole-like peak structure at time-like momenta larger than the propagator's gapping scale as well as a negative scattering continuum, which we exploit assuming an analytic pole-tail split during the iterative solution. The computation is augmented with a general discussion of the impact of the quark-gluon vertex and the gluon propagator on the analytic structure of the quark propagator. In particular, we investigate under which conditions the quark propagator shows unphysical complex poles. Our results offer a wide range of applications, encompassing the ab-initio calculation of transport as well as resonance properties in QCD.

  13 citations

• GRIFFIN: A C++ library for electroweak radiative corrections in fermion scattering and decay processes

  Lisong Chen, Ayres Freitas

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 18 (2023) · published 10 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This paper describes a modular framework for the description of electroweak scattering and decay processes, including but not limited to Z-resonance physics. The framework consistently combines a complex-pole expansion near an s-channel resonance with a regular fixed-order perturbative description away from the resonance in a manifestly gauge-invariant scheme. Leading vertex correction contributions are encapsulated in form factors that can be predicted or treated as numerical fit parameters. This framework has been implemented in the publicly available object-oriented C++ library GRIFFIN. Version 1.0 of this library provides Standard Model predictions for the IR-subtracted matrix elements for the process $f\bar{f} \to f'\bar{f}'$ with full NNLO and leading higher-order contributions on the Z-resonance, and with NLO corrections off-resonance. The library can straightforwardly be extended to include higher-order corrections, should they become available, or predictions for new physics models. It can be interfaced with Monte-Carlo programs to account for QED and QCD initial-state and final-state radiation.

  2 citations

• Codebase release 1.0 for GRIFFIN

  Lisong Chen, Ayres Freitas

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 18-r1.0 (2023) · published 10 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · src

  This paper describes a modular framework for the description of electroweak scattering and decay processes, including but not limited to Z-resonance physics. The framework consistently combines a complex-pole expansion near an s-channel resonance with a regular fixed-order perturbative description away from the resonance in a manifestly gauge-invariant scheme. Leading vertex correction contributions are encapsulated in form factors that can be predicted or treated as numerical fit parameters. This framework has been implemented in the publicly available object-oriented C++ library GRIFFIN. Version 1.0 of this library provides Standard Model predictions for the IR-subtracted matrix elements for the process $f\bar{f} \to f'\bar{f}'$ with full NNLO and leading higher-order contributions on the Z-resonance, and with NLO corrections off-resonance. The library can straightforwardly be extended to include higher-order corrections, should they become available, or predictions for new physics models. It can be interfaced with Monte-Carlo programs to account for QED and QCD initial-state and final-state radiation.

  1 citation

• Towards the one loop IR/UV dictionary in the SMEFT: One loop generated operators from new scalars and fermions

  Guilherme Guedes, Pablo Olgoso, José Santiago

  SciPost Phys. 15, 143 (2023) · published 6 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Effective field theories offer a rationale to classify new physics models based on the size of their contribution to the effective Lagrangian, and therefore to experimental observables. A complete classification can be obtained, at a fixed order in perturbation theory, in the form of IR/UV dictionaries. We report on the first step towards the calculation of the one loop, dimension 6 IR/UV dictionary in the SMEFT. We consider dimension-six operators in the SMEFT that cannot be generated at tree level in weakly coupled extensions of the Standard Model. This includes operators with three gauge field strength tensors, operators with two field strength tensors and two scalar fields and dipole operators. We provide a complete classification of renormalizable extensions of the Standard Model with new scalar and fermion fields that contribute to these operators at one loop order, together with their explicit contribution. Our results are encoded in a Mathematica package called SOLD (SMEFT One Loop Dictionary), which includes further functionalities to facilitate the calculation of the complete tree level and one loop matching of any relevant model via an automated interface to matchmakereft. All operators in our list are indeed generated at the one loop order in the extensions considered with the exception of CP-violating ones with three field-strength tensors.

  19 citations

• MadNIS - Neural multi-channel importance sampling

  Theo Heimel, Ramon Winterhalder, Anja Butter, Joshua Isaacson, Claudius Krause, Fabio Maltoni, Olivier Mattelaer, Tilman Plehn

  SciPost Phys. 15, 141 (2023) · published 6 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Theory predictions for the LHC require precise numerical phase-space integration and generation of unweighted events. We combine machine-learned multi-channel weights with a normalizing flow for importance sampling, to improve classical methods for numerical integration. We develop an efficient bi-directional setup based on an invertible network, combining online and buffered training for potentially expensive integrands. We illustrate our method for the Drell-Yan process with an additional narrow resonance.

  29 citations

• EPiC-GAN: Equivariant point cloud generation for particle jets

  Erik Buhmann, Gregor Kasieczka, Jesse Thaler

  SciPost Phys. 15, 130 (2023) · published 3 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  With the vast data-collecting capabilities of current and future high-energy collider experiments, there is an increasing demand for computationally efficient simulations. Generative machine learning models enable fast event generation, yet so far these approaches are largely constrained to fixed data structures and rigid detector geometries. In this paper, we introduce EPiC-GAN - equivariant point cloud generative adversarial network - which can produce point clouds of variable multiplicity. This flexible framework is based on deep sets and is well suited for simulating sprays of particles called jets. The generator and discriminator utilize multiple EPiC layers with an interpretable global latent vector. Crucially, the EPiC layers do not rely on pairwise information sharing between particles, which leads to a significant speed-up over graph- and transformer-based approaches with more complex relation diagrams. We demonstrate that EPiC-GAN scales well to large particle multiplicities and achieves high generation fidelity on benchmark jet generation tasks.

  37 citations