High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)

Abstract: The 1973 Kobayashi Maskawa paper proposed a compelling link between Cabibbo's flavor-mixing scheme and CP violation but, since it required the existence of six quarks at a time when the physics community was happy with only three, it received zero attention. However, two years after the paper appeared -- at which time it had received a grand total of two citations -- the charmed quark was discovered and it finally got some notice and acceptance. After this stumbling start, it subsequently emerged as the focal point of an enormous amount of experimental and theoretical research activity. In an invited talk at a KEK symposium to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the KM paper, I reviewed some of the less well known circumstances that occurred in the years preceding and following the paper's appearance.

Abstract: Low-energy experiments allow for some of the most precise measurements in particle physics, such as $g-2$. To make the most of these experiments, theory needs to match the experimental precision. Over the last decade, this meant that even in QED next-to-next-to-leading order calculations (or even more in some cases) became necessary. McMule (Monte Carlo for MUons and other LEptons) is a framework that we have developed to obtain NNLO predictions for a number of processes, such as $e\mu \to e\mu$, $ee\to ee$, and $\mu\to e\nu\bar\nu$. I will discuss some of the challenges faced when dealing with QED corrections and some possible solutions we have implemented in McMule, namely the subtraction scheme FKS$^\ell$, massification, and next-to-soft stabilisation. I will also demonstrate how to calculate the three-loop massification constant that will be required at N$^3$LO.

Abstract: A recently proposed experiment, MUonE, aims to extract the hadronic vacuum polarisation contribution to the muon g-2 from muon-electron scattering at low energy. The extrapolation requires that both experimental and theoretical uncertainties do not exceed 10 ppm. This corresponds, at least, to next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) QED corrections to $e \mu \to e \mu$. I will discuss the implementation of a Monte Carlo integrator for this process in the McMule framework arXiv:2212.06481, which provides infrared-safe differential results at said order in QED. An approximation of the MUonE setup provides some phenomenological results and sheds light on the need for beyond-NNLO corrections, which are currently under study within McMule.

Abstract: While the third run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is ongoing, the underlying theory that extends the Standard Model remains so far unknown. Left-Right Models (LRMs) introduce a new gauge sector, and can restore parity symmetry at high enough energies. If LRMs are indeed realized in nature, the mediators of the new weak force can be searched for in colliders via their direct production. We recast existing experimental bounds from LHC Run 2 on the heavy LRM gauge boson masses. As a novelty, we discuss the effect of the LRM scalar content on the total width of the new gauge bosons, obtaining model-independent bounds within the specific realizations of the LRM scalar sectors analysed here. These bounds avoid the need to detail the spectrum of the scalar sector, and apply in the general case where no discrete symmetry is enforced. Moreover, we emphasize the effect of the structure of the quark right-handed mixing matrix on the charged LRM gauge boson production at LHC. We find that $W_R$ and $Z_R$ masses are constrained to lie above $2$ TeV and $4$ TeV, respectively.

Abstract: We extend a known mass-gap equation for pure gluodynamics in global colour models (formulated in equal time quantization in Coulomb gauge) to one in which gluons split into two sets which may have different masses. If the theory is $SU(N)\times SU(M)$ with gluons in both groups having identical couplings (as suggested by Grand Unification arguments at large scales) it is immediate to see that different masses are generated for each subgroup. This global symmetry is not broken, but the split masses erase accidental symmetries that might be present due to the two couplings being the same at the large scale, such as $SU(N\times M)$ or similar. We also numerically explore a couple of low-dimensional examples of simple Lie groups, but in spite of the system having a form that would seem to allow spontaneous symmetry breaking, it is not triggered for these groups whose algebra has no ideal, and the dispersion relations for the various gluons converge to the same form.

Abstract: Anisotropic flow $i.e.$ azimuthal anisotropies in particle production are one of the important probes in characterizing the properties of the strongly interacting matter created in the relativistic heavy-ion collisions. These observables are sensitive to both the transport properties as well as the equation of state (EOS) of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) matter. We have adopted the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) in the relaxation time approximation (RTA) to describe the experimental data for harmonic flows such as elliptic flow ($v_2$), triangular flow ($v_3$), quadrangular flow ($v_4$) obtained in heavy-ion collisions at Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies. In this analysis, we have used Tsallis statistics as an initial distribution and the Tsallis Blast wave (TBW) description is used as the equilibrium distribution function while describing the evolution of the particle production in BTE. We have fitted the transverse momentum spectra, $v_2$, $v_3$, and $v_4$ of identified hadrons such as pion, kaon, and proton for Pb-Pb and Xe-Xe collisions at the LHC energies of $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV and $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.44 TeV, respectively for various centralities. Our study offers a comparative analysis between the two distinct collision systems operating at comparable collision energies. The present formulation successfully fits the experimental data for $p_T$-spectra upto $p_T$ = 8 GeV and effectively explains the anisotropic flows data upto $p_T$ = 10 GeV with a very favourable $\chi^2/ndf$. We observe that the average transverse flow velocity ($<\beta_r>$) and the kinetic freeze-out temperature ($T$) extracted in our analysis decrease as we go towards the peripheral collisions. The azimuthal modulation amplitudes ($\rho_a$) exhibit an increasing pattern as one moves from central to peripheral collisions in both the Pb-Pb and Xe-Xe nuclei interactions.

Abstract: Perturbative calculations for processes that involve heavy flavours can be performed in two approaches: the massive scheme and the massless one. The former enables one to fully account for the heavy-quark kinematics, while the latter allows one to resum potentially-large mass logarithms. Furthermore, the two schemes can be combined to take advantage of the virtues of each of them. Both massive and massless calculations can be supplemented by soft-gluon resummation. However matching between massive and massless resummed calculations is difficult, essentially because of the non-commutativity of the soft and massless limits. In this paper, we develop a formalism to combine resummed massive and massive calculations. We obtain an all-order expression that consistently resums both mass and soft logarithms to next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. We perform detailed calculations for the decay of the Higgs into a heavy-quark pair and discuss the applications of this formalism to different processes.

Abstract: We investigate semileptonic form factors of $D_{(s)}$ meson from a modified soft-wall 4-flavor holographic model. The model successfully reproduces the masses and decay constants of various mesons, including $\rho$, $K^*$, $D^*$, $D_s^*$, $a_1$, $K_1$, $f_1$, $D_1$,$D_{s1}$, $\pi$, $K$, $\eta$, $D$, and $D_s$. Moreover, we study the semileptonic decay processes $D^{+} \to (\pi, K, \eta) l^{+} \nu_{l}$ and $D_{s}^{+} \to ( K, \eta) l^{+} \nu_{l}$, associated with the vector meson exchange, as well as $D_{(s)}^{+} \to K^{} l^{+} \nu_{l}$, associated with the vector and axial vector meson exchange. The form factors $f_{+}(q^{2})$ for $D \to\pi$ and $D_{(s)}\to K$ decays agree excellently with experimental and lattice data, outperforming other theoretical approaches. The $f_{+}(q^{2})$ form factor for $D^{+} \to \eta $ is compatible with experimental data, while a slight discrepancy is observed for $D_{s}^{+} \to \eta $ at large $q^{2}$. Additionally, we predict the vector form factors $V(q^{2})$ and $A_{1}(q^{2})$ for $D \to K^{}$ and $D_{s} \to K^{}$ decays, respectively. The results agree well with other approaches and lattice data at maximum recoil ($q^{2}=0$).

Abstract: Quantum computers are expected to give major speed-ups for the simulation of quantum systems. In these conference proceedings, we discuss quantum algorithms for the simulation of perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) processes. In particular, we describe quantum circuits for simulating the colour part of the interactions of quarks and gluons. We implement our circuits on a simulated noiseless quantum computer and validate them by calculating colour factors for various examples of Feynman diagrams.

Abstract: We show that an integral assumption in DGLV radiative energy loss - the large formation time assumption - is violated at high-$p_T$ for phenomenologically relevant parameters. We further investigate the phenomenological impact of placing a new kinematic bound on the radiated gluon transverse momentum, which ensures that there are no contributions to the energy loss from regions of parameter space that violate the large formation time assumption. We find that this places a large sensitivity on the exact kinematic cutoff used, similar to the known collinear cutoff sensitivity, indicating the theoretical need for a rederivation of DGLV radiative energy with the large formation time assumption relaxed in order to make rigorous predictions. We additionally find that this large formation time cutoff dramatically reduces the size of a short pathlength correction to the DGLV radiative energy loss, which is of phenomenological interest in predicting suppression in small $p +A$ systems. We compute the phenomenological predictions utilizing this large formation time cutoff in both $p+A$ and $A+A$ collisions at the LHC, in a convolved radiative and elastic energy loss model.

Abstract: The renormalization-scale dependence of the non-factorizable virtual corrections to Higgs boson production in weak boson fusion at next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD is unusually strong, due to the peculiar nature of these corrections. To address this problem, we compute the three-loop non-factorizable contribution to this process which accounts for the running of the strong coupling constant, and show that it stabilizes the theoretical prediction.

Abstract: Domain walls (DWs) from spontaneously breaking of the discrete symmetry in approximate $Z_3$-invariant NMSSM can collapse and lead to the stochastic gravitational waves (GWs) background signals observed by PTA collaborations with the presence of some explicitly $Z_3$ breaking terms in the NMSSM effective superpotential and scalar potential. In the presence of a hidden sector, such terms may origin from the geometric superconformal breaking with holomorphic quadratic correction to frame function when the global scale-invariant superpotential is naturally embedded into the canonical superconformal supergravity models. The smallness of such mass parameters in the NMSSM may be traced back to the original superconformal invariance. Naive estimations indicate that SUSY explanation to muon $g-2$ anomaly can have tension with the constraints on SUSY by PTA data, because large SUSY contributions to $\Delta a_\mu$ in general needs relatively light superpartners while present $\Omega_{gw}^0$ can set the lower bounds for $m_{soft}$. We calculate numerically the signatures of GWs produced from the collapse of DWs and find that the observed nHZ stochastic GWs background by NANOGrav etc can indeed be explained with proper tiny values of $\chi m_{3/2}\sim 10^{-14}{\rm eV}$ for $\chi S^2$ case (and $\chi m_{3/2}\sim 10^{-10}{\rm eV}$ for $\chi H_u H_d$ case), respectively. Besides, there are still some parameter points, whose GWs spectra intersect with the NANOGrav signal region, can explain the muon $g-2$ anomaly to $1\sigma$ range.

Abstract: Collisions of cosmic ray particles with ultra-high initial energies with nuclei in the atmosphere open a wide room for appearing of the novel dynamical features for multiparticle production processes. In particular, the pion-lasing behavior driven by Bose-Einstein condensation would result in the shift to larger multiplicities and, as consequence, could provide, in general, the enhanced yield of cosmic muons. In the present work the critical value of the space charged particle density for onset of Bose-Einstein condensation of the boson (pion) wave-packets into the same wave-packet state is estimated within the model with complete multiparticle symmetrization for the energy domain corresponded to the ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR). Energy dependence of mean density of charged pions is evaluated for the cases of absent of the Bose-Einstein effects and for presence of laser-like behavior of pions. The possible influence of the Bose-Einstein condensation is discussed for the muon production in UHECR particle collisions with the atmosphere.