Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• A massive variable flavour number scheme for the Drell-Yan process

  Rhorry Gauld

  SciPost Phys. 12, 024 (2022) · published 14 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The prediction of differential cross-sections in hadron-hadron scattering processes is typically performed in a scheme where the heavy-flavour quarks ($c, b, t$) are treated either as massless or massive partons. In this work, a method to describe the production of colour-singlet processes which combines these two approaches is presented. The core idea is that the contribution from power corrections involving the heavy-quark mass can be numerically isolated from the rest of the massive computation. These power corrections can then be combined with a massless computation (where they are absent), enabling the construction of differential cross-section predictions in a massive variable flavour number scheme. As an example, the procedure is applied to the low-mass Drell-Yan process within the LHCb fiducial region, where predictions for the rapidity and transverse-momentum distributions of the lepton pair are provided. To validate the procedure, it is shown how the $n_f$-dependent coefficient of a massless computation can be recovered from the massless limit of the massive one. This feature is also used to differentially extract the massless ${\rm N3LO}$ coefficient of the Drell-Yan process in the gluon-fusion channel.

  3 citations

• A Study of QCD Radiation in VBF Higgs Production with Vincia and Pythia

  Stefan Höche, Stephen Mrenna, Shay Payne, Christian T Preuss, Peter Skands

  SciPost Phys. 12, 010 (2022) · published 10 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We discuss and illustrate the properties of several parton-shower algorithms available in Pythia and Vincia, in the context of Higgs production via vector boson fusion (VBF). In particular, the distinctive colour topology of VBF processes allows to define observables sensitive to the coherent radiation pattern of additional jets. We study a set of such observables, using the Vincia sector-antenna shower as our main reference, and contrast it to Pythia's transverse-momentum-ordered DGLAP shower as well as Pythia's dipole-improved shower. We then investigate the robustness of these predictions as successive levels of higher-order perturbative matrix elements are incorporated, including next-to-leading-order matched and tree-level merged calculations, using Powheg Box and Sherpa respectively to generate the hard events.

  13 citations

• The one-loop tadpole in the geoSMEFT

  Tyler Corbett

  SciPost Phys. 11, 097 (2021) · published 26 November 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Making use of the geometric formulation of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory we calculate the one-loop tadpole diagrams to all orders in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory power counting. This work represents the first calculation of a one-loop amplitude beyond leading order in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory, and discusses the potential to extend this methodology to perform similar calculations of observables in the near future.

  5 citations

• Towards the renormalisation of the Standard Model effective field theory to dimension eight: Bosonic interactions I

  Mikael Chala, Guilherme Guedes, Maria Ramos, Jose Santiago

  SciPost Phys. 11, 065 (2021) · published 21 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We compute the one-loop renormalisation group running of the bosonic Standard Model effective operators to order $v^4/\Lambda^4$, with $v\sim 246$ GeV being the electroweak scale and $\Lambda$ the unknown new physics threshold. We concentrate on the effects triggered by pairs of the leading dimension-six interactions, namely those that can arise at tree level in weakly-coupled ultraviolet completions of the Standard Model. We highlight some interesting consequences, including the interplay between positivity bounds and the form of the anomalous dimensions; the non renormalisation of the $S$ and $U$ parameters; or the importance of radiative corrections to the Higgs potential for the electroweak phase transition. As a byproduct of this work, we provide a complete Green basis of operators involving only the Higgs and derivatives at dimension-eight, comprising 13 redundant interactions.

  37 citations

• Elastic photon-initiated production at the LHC: the role of hadron-hadron interactions

  Lucian A. Harland-Lang, Valery A. Khoze, Mikhail G. Ryskin

  SciPost Phys. 11, 064 (2021) · published 21 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We analyse in detail the role of additional hadron-hadron interactions in elastic photon-initiated (PI) production at the LHC, both in $pp$ and heavy ion collisions. We first demonstrate that the source of difference between our predictions and other results in the literature for PI muon pair production is dominantly due to an unphysical cut that is imposed in these latter results on the dimuon-hadron impact parameter. We in addition show that this is experimentally disfavoured by the shape of the muon kinematic distributions measured by ATLAS in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions. We then consider the theoretical uncertainty due to the survival probability for no additional hadron-hadron interactions, and in particular the role this may play in the tendency for the predicted cross sections to lie somewhat above ATLAS data on PI muon pair production, in both $pp$ and PbPb collisions. This difference is relatively mild, at the $\sim 10\%$ level, and hence a very good control over the theory is clearly required. We show that this uncertainty is very small, and it is only by taking very extreme and rather unphysical variations in the modelling of the survival factor that this tension can be removed. This underlines the basic, rather model independent, point that a significant fraction of elastic PI scattering occurs for hadron-hadron impact parameters that are simply outside the range of QCD interactions, and hence this sets a lower bound on the survival factor in any physically reasonable approach. Finally, other possible origins for this discrepancy are discussed.

  15 citations

• A somewhat random walk through nuclear and particle physics

  Thomas D. Cohen, Nicholas R. Poniatowski

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 34 (2021) · published 20 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These notes are an outgrowth of an advanced undergraduate course taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. They are intended as an introduction to various aspects of particle and nuclear physics with an emphasis on the role of symmetry. The basic philosophy is to introduce many of the fundamental ideas in nuclear and particle physics using relatively sophisticated mathematical tools -- but to do so in as a simplified a context to explain the underlying ideas. Thus, for example, the Higgs mechanism is discussed in terms of an Abelian Higgs model. The emphasis is largely, but not entirely theoretical in orientation. The goal is for readers to develop an understanding of many of the underlying issues in a relatively sophisticated way.

  1 citation

• Better latent spaces for better autoencoders

  Barry M. Dillon, Tilman Plehn, Christof Sauer, Peter Sorrenson

  SciPost Phys. 11, 061 (2021) · published 17 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Autoencoders as tools behind anomaly searches at the LHC have the structural problem that they only work in one direction, extracting jets with higher complexity but not the other way around. To address this, we derive classifiers from the latent space of (variational) autoencoders, specifically in Gaussian mixture and Dirichlet latent spaces. In particular, the Dirichlet setup solves the problem and improves both the performance and the interpretability of the networks.

  40 citations

• Dark matter, fine-tuning and $(g-2)_{\mu}$ in the pMSSM

  Melissa van Beekveld, Wim Beenakker, Marrit Schutten, Jeremy De Wit

  SciPost Phys. 11, 049 (2021) · published 7 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this paper we perform for the first time an in-depth analysis of the spectra in the phenomenological supersymmetric Standard Model that simultaneously offer an explanation for the $(g-2)_{\mu}$ discrepancy $\Delta a_{\mu}$, result in the right dark-matter relic density $\Omega_{\rm DM} h^2$ and are minimally fine-tuned. The resulting spectra may be obtained from [1]. To discuss the experimental exclusion potential for our models, we analyse the resulting LHC phenomenology as well as the sensitivity of dark-matter direct detection experiments to these spectra. We find that the latter type of experiments with sensitivity to the spin-dependent dark-matter\,--\,nucleon scattering cross section $\sigma_{\rm SD,p}$ will probe all of our found solutions.

  37 citations

• Muon Decay

  W. Fetscher

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 5, 006 (2021) · published 6 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The decay of the muon has been studied at PSI with several precision measurements: The longitudinal polarization PL(E) with the muon decay parameters ξ′, ξ′′, the Time- Reversal Invariance (TRI) conserving transverse polarization PT1(E) with the muon de- cay parameters η, η′′, the TRI violating transverse polarization PT2(E), with α′/A, β′/A and the muon decay asymmetry with Pμξ. The detailed theoretical analysis of all mea- surements of normal and inverse muon decay has led for the first time to a lower limit |g V | > 0.960 ("V − A") and upper limits for nine other possible complex couplings, espe- cially the scalar coupling |g S | < 0.550 which had not been excluded before.

  1 citation

• A theory vade mecum for PSI experiments

  G. Colangelo, F. Hagelstein, A. Signer, P. Stoffer

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 5, 005 (2021) · published 6 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This article gives a compact introduction and overview of the theory underlying the experiments described in the rest of this review.

  2 citations