Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Many phases of generalized 3D instanton crystals

  Matti Jarvinen, Vadim Kaplunovsky, Jacob Sonnenschein

  SciPost Phys. 11, 018 (2021) · published 23 July 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Nuclear matter at large number of colors is necessarily in a solid phase. In particular holographic nuclear matter takes the form of a crystal of instantons of the flavor group. In this article we initiate the analysis of the three-dimensional crystal structures and the orientation patterns for the two-body potential that follows from holographic duality. The outcome of the analysis includes several unexpected results. We perform simulations of ensembles of O(10000) instantons whereby we identify the lattice structure and orientations for the different values of the weight factors of the non-Abelian orientation terms in the two-body potential. The resulting phase diagram is surprisingly complex, including a variety of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic crystals with various global orientation patterns, and various "non-Abelian" crystals where orientations have no preferred direction. The latter include variants of face-centered-cubic, hexagonal, and simple cubic crystals which may have remarkably large or small aspect ratios. The simulation results are augmented by analytic analysis of the long-distance divergences, and numerical computation of the (divergence free) energy differences between the non-Abelian crystals, which allows us to precisely determine the structure of the phase diagram.

  6 citations

• Freezing In with lepton flavored fermions

  G. D'Ambrosio, Shiuli Chatterjee, Ranjan Laha, Sudhir K Vempati

  SciPost Phys. 11, 006 (2021) · published 12 July 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Dark, chiral fermions carrying lepton flavor quantum numbers are natural candidates for freeze-in. Small couplings with the Standard Model fermions of the order of lepton Yukawas are `automatic' in the limit of Minimal Flavor Violation. In the absence of total lepton number violating interactions, particles with certain representations under the flavor group remain absolutely stable. For masses in the GeV-TeV range, the simplest model with three flavors, leads to signals at future direct detection experiments like DARWIN. Interestingly, freeze-in with a smaller flavor group such as $SU(2)$ is already being probed by XENON1T.

  3 citations

• Gravitational waves from an axion-dark photon system: A lattice study

  Wolfram Ratzinger, Pedro Schwaller, Ben A. Stefanek

  SciPost Phys. 11, 001 (2021) · published 6 July 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this work, we present a lattice study of an axion - dark photon system in the early Universe and show that the stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background produced by this system may be probed by future GW experiments across a vast range of frequencies. The numerical simulation on the lattice allows us to take into account non-linear backreaction effects and enables us to accurately predict the final relic abundance of the axion or axion-like particle (ALP) as well as its inhomogeneities, and gives a more precise prediction of the GW spectrum. Importantly, we find that the GW spectrum has more power at high momenta due to $2\rightarrow1$ processes. Furthermore, we find the degree of polarization of the peak of the GW spectrum depends on the ALP-dark photon coupling and that the polarization can be washed out or even flipped for large values thereof. In line with recent results in the literature, we find the ALP relic abundance may be suppressed by two orders of magnitude and discuss possible extensions of the model that expand the viable parameter space. Finally, we discuss the possibility to probe ultralight ALP dark matter via spectral distortions of the CMB.

  21 citations

• Fermion mass hierarchies from supersymmetric gauged flavour symmetry in 5D

  Ketan M. Patel

  SciPost Phys. 10, 154 (2021) · published 24 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A mechanism to generate realistic fermion mass hierarchies based on supersymmetric gauged $U(1)_F$ symmetry in flat five-dimensional (5D) spacetime is proposed. The fifth dimension is compactified on $S^1/Z_2$ orbifold. The standard model fermions charged under the extra abelian symmetry along with their superpartners live in the 5D bulk. Bulk masses of fermions are generated by the vacuum expectation value of $N=2$ superpartner of $U(1)_F$ gauge field, and they are proportional to $U(1)_F$ charges of respective fermions. This decides localization of fermions in the extra dimension, which in turn gives rise to exponentially suppressed Yukawa couplings in the effective 4D theory. Anomaly cancellation puts stringent constraints on the allowed $U(1)_F$ charges which leads to correlations between the masses of quarks and leptons. We perform an extensive numerical scan and obtain several solutions for anomaly-free $U(1)_F$, which describe the observed pattern of fermion masses and mixing with all the fundamental parameters of order unity. It is found that the possible existence of SM singlet neutrinos substantially improves the spectrum of solutions by offering more freedom in choosing $U(1)_F$ charges. The model predicts $Z^\prime$ boson mediating flavour violating interactions in both the quark and lepton sectors with the couplings which can be explicitly determined from the Yukawa couplings.

  3 citations

• Using machine learning to disentangle LHC signatures of Dark Matter candidates

  Charanjit Kaur Khosa, Veronica Sanz, Michael Soughton

  SciPost Phys. 10, 151 (2021) · published 22 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the prospects of characterising Dark Matter at colliders using Machine Learning (ML) techniques. We focus on the monojet and missing transverse energy (MET) channel and propose a set of benchmark models for the study: a typical WIMP Dark Matter candidate in the form of a SUSY neutralino, a pseudo-Goldstone impostor in the shape of an Axion-Like Particle, and a light Dark Matter impostor whose interactions are mediated by a heavy particle. All these benchmarks are tensioned against each other, and against the main SM background ($Z$+jets). Our analysis uses both the leading-order kinematic features as well as the information of an additional hard jet. We explore different representations of the data, from a simple event data sample with values of kinematic variables fed into a Logistic Regression algorithm or a Fully Connected Neural Network, to a transformation of the data into images related to probability distributions, fed to Deep and Convolutional Neural Networks. We also study the robustness of our method against including detector effects, dropping kinematic variables, or changing the number of events per image. In the case of signals with more combinatorial possibilities (events with more than one hard jet), the most crucial data features are selected by performing a Principal Component Analysis. We compare the performance of all these methods, and find that using the 2D images of the combined information of multiple events significantly improves the discrimination performance.

  13 citations

• A final word on FCNC-Baryogenesis from two Higgs doublets

  Wei-Shu Hou, Tanmoy Modak, Tilman Plehn

  SciPost Phys. 10, 150 (2021) · published 21 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Electroweak baryogenesis in a two-Higgs doublet model is a well-motivated and testable scenario for physics beyond the Standard Model. An attractive way of providing $CP$ violation is through flavor-changing Higgs couplings, where linking top and charm quarks is hardly constrained by flavor and $CP$-violation constraints. We show how this scenario can be conclusively tested by searching for heavy charged and neutral Higgs bosons at the LHC. While the charged Higgs signature requires a dedicated analysis, the neutral Higgs signature will be covered by a general search for same-sign top pairs.

  6 citations

• One loop verification of SMEFT Ward Identities

  Tyler Corbett, Michael Trott

  SciPost Phys. 10, 144 (2021) · published 14 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We verify Standard Model Effective Field Theory Ward identities to one loop order when background field gauge is used to quantize the theory. The results we present lay the foundation of next to leading order automatic generation of results in the SMEFT, in both the perturbative and non-perturbative expansion using the geoSMEFT formalism, and background field gauge.

  8 citations

• GANplifying event samples

  Anja Butter, Sascha Diefenbacher, Gregor Kasieczka, Benjamin Nachman, Tilman Plehn

  SciPost Phys. 10, 139 (2021) · published 10 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A critical question concerning generative networks applied to event generation in particle physics is if the generated events add statistical precision beyond the training sample. We show for a simple example with increasing dimensionality how generative networks indeed amplify the training statistics. We quantify their impact through an amplification factor or equivalent numbers of sampled events.

  56 citations

• Measuring QCD Splittings with Invertible Networks

  Sebastian Bieringer, Anja Butter, Theo Heimel, Stefan Höche, Ullrich Köthe, Tilman Plehn, Stefan T. Radev

  SciPost Phys. 10, 126 (2021) · published 2 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  QCD splittings are among the most fundamental theory concepts at the LHC. We show how they can be studied systematically with the help of invertible neural networks. These networks work with sub-jet information to extract fundamental parameters from jet samples. Our approach expands the LEP measurements of QCD Casimirs to a systematic test of QCD properties based on low-level jet observables. Starting with an toy example we study the effect of the full shower, hadronization, and detector effects in detail.

  35 citations

• A natural composite Higgs via universal boundary conditions

  Simone Blasi, Csaba Csaki, Florian Goertz

  SciPost Phys. 10, 121 (2021) · published 31 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a novel realization of a composite Higgs, which can naturally produce top partners above the current LHC bounds without increasing the tuning above 10%. The essential ingredients are softened breaking of the Higgs shift symmetry as well as maximal symmetry, which turn out to perfectly complement each other. The 5D realization of this model is particularly simple: universal UV and IR boundary conditions for the bulk fermions containing the SM fields will cure the problems of existing holographic composite Higgs models and provide a complete viable model for a naturally light Higgs without much tuning.

  8 citations