Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Staying on top of SMEFT-likelihood analyses

  Nina Elmer, Maeve Madigan, Tilman Plehn, Nikita Schmal

  SciPost Phys. 18, 108 (2025) · published 21 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a new global SMEFT analysis of LHC data in the top sector. After updating our set of measurements, we show how public ATLAS likelihoods can be incorporated into an external global analysis and how our analysis benefits from the additional information. We find that, unlike for the Higgs and electroweak sector, the SMEFT analysis of the top sector is mostly limited by the theory uncertainties. Finally, we present the first global SFitter analysis combining the top and electroweak-Higgs sectors.

  2 citations

• 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 | Toggle abstract · 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.

• Trans-series from condensates

  Marcos Mariño, Ramon Miravitllas

  SciPost Phys. 18, 101 (2025) · published 19 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Shifman–Vainshtein–Zakharov (SVZ) sum rules provide a method to obtain trans-series expansions in many quantum field theories, in which exponentially small corrections are calculated by combining the operator product expansion with the assumption of vacuum condensates. In some solvable models, exact expressions for trans-series can be obtained from non-perturbative results, and this makes it possible to test the SVZ method by comparing its predictions to these exact trans-series. In this paper we perform such a precision test in the example of the fermion self-energy in the Gross–Neveu model. Its exact trans-series expansion can be extracted from the large $N$ solution, at the first non-trivial order in $1/N$. It is given by an infinite series of exponentially small corrections involving factorially divergent power series in the 't Hooft parameter. We show that the first two corrections are associated to two-quark and four-quark condensates, and we reproduce the corresponding power series exactly, and at all loops, by using the SVZ method. In addition, the numerical values of the condensates can be extracted from the exact result, up to order $1/N$.

  1 citation

• Scattering from an external field in quantum chromodynamics at high energies: From foundations to interdisciplinary connections

  Athanasia-Konstantina Angelopoulou, Anh Dung Le, Stéphane Munier

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 92 (2025) · published 12 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We review the factorization of the $S$-matrix elements in the context of particle scattering off an external field, which can serve as a model for the field of a large nucleus. The factorization takes the form of a convolution of light cone wave functions describing the physical incoming and outgoing states in terms of bare partons, and products of Wilson lines. The latter represent the interaction between the bare partons and the external field. Specializing to elastic scattering amplitudes of onia at very high energies, we introduce the color dipole model, which formulates the calculation of the modulus-squared of the wave functions in quantum chromodynamics with the help of a branching random walk, and the scattering amplitudes as observables on this classical stochastic process. Methods developed for general branching processes produce analytical formulas for the asymptotics of such observables, and thus enable one to derive exact large-rapidity expressions for onium-nucleus cross sections, from which electron-nucleus cross sections may be inferred.

  2 citations

• CaloDREAM – Detector response emulation via attentive flow matching

  Luigi Favaro, Ayodele Ore, Sofia Palacios Schweitzer, Tilman Plehn

  SciPost Phys. 18, 088 (2025) · published 11 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Detector simulations are an exciting application of modern generative networks. Their sparse high-dimensional data combined with the required precision poses a serious challenge. We show how combining Conditional Flow Matching with transformer elements allows us to simulate the detector phase space reliably. Namely, we use an autoregressive transformer to simulate the energy of each layer, and a vision transformer for the high-dimensional voxel distributions. We show how dimension reduction via latent diffusion allows us to train more efficiently and how diffusion networks can be evaluated faster with bespoke solvers. We showcase our framework, CaloDREAM, on datasets 2 and 3 of the CaloChallenge.

  12 citations

• Two lectures on Yang-Lee edge singularity and analytic structure of QCD equation of state

  Vladimir V. Skokov

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 91 (2025) · published 7 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These lecture notes, prepared for the 2024 XQCD PhD, provide an introduction to the analytic structure of an equation of state near a second-order phase transition and its most prominent landmark: the Yang-Lee edge singularity. In addition to discussing general properties, the notes review recent theoretical progress in locating the QCD critical point by tracking the trajectory of the Yang-Lee edge singularity.

  1 citation

• 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 | Toggle abstract · 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.

• Normalizing flows for high-dimensional detector simulations

  Florian Ernst, Luigi Favaro, Claudius Krause, Tilman Plehn, David Shih

  SciPost Phys. 18, 081 (2025) · published 5 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Whenever invertible generative networks are needed for LHC physics, normalizing flows show excellent performance. In this work, we investigate their performance for fast calorimeter shower simulations with increasing phase space dimension. We use fast and expressive coupling spline transformations applied to the CaloChallenge datasets. In addition to the base flow architecture we also employ a VAE to compress the dimensionality and train a generative network in the latent space. We evaluate our networks on several metrics, including high-level features, classifiers, and generation timing. Our findings demonstrate that invertible neural networks have competitive performance when compared to autoregressive flows, while being substantially faster during generation.

  6 citations

• Jet diffusion versus JetGPT – Modern networks for the LHC

  Anja Butter, Nathan Huetsch, Sofia Palacios Schweitzer, Tilman Plehn, Peter Sorrenson, Jonas Spinner

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 026 (2025) · published 3 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce two diffusion models and an autoregressive transformer for LHC physics simulations. Bayesian versions allow us to control the networks and capture training uncertainties. After illustrating their different density estimation methods for simple toy models, we discuss their advantages for Z plus jets event generation. While diffusion networks excel through their precision, the transformer scales best with the phase space dimensionality. Given the different training and evaluation speed, we expect LHC physics to benefit from dedicated use cases for normalizing flows, diffusion models, and autoregressive transformers.

  13 citations

• LHC EFT WG note: Basis for anomalous quartic gauge couplings

  Gauthier Durieux, Grant N. Remmen, Nicholas L. Rodd, Oscar J. P. Éboli, Maria C. Gonzalez-Garcia, Dan Kondo, Hitoshi Murayama, Risshin Okabe

  SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 6 (2025) · published 28 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this note, we give a definitive basis for the dimension-eight operators leading to quartic—but no cubic—interactions among electroweak gauge bosons. These are often called anomalous quartic gauge couplings, or aQGCs. We distinguish in particular the CP-even ones from their CP-odd counterparts.

  2 citations