High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)

Abstract: Net-charge, net-strangeness and net-baryon number fluctuations measured in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions may reveal details and insights into the quark-hadron transition, hadrochemical freeze-out and possibly aid in the search of the QCD critical point. By controlling the collision energy, some current and upcoming heavy-ion facilities aim to study high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions in the finite net-baryon density regime where the effects of rapid global rotation are also expected to be strong for the peripheral collisions. We discuss the ratios of conserved number susceptibilities that are experimentally measurable via products of the moments of the corresponding distributions and compute the relevant theoretical results in the framework of a rotating hadron resonance gas (rHRG) model.

Abstract: In this work we introduce the concept of Cartan-Polyakov loops, a special subset of Polyakov loops in the fundamental representation of the $\mathrm{SU}(N_c)$ group, with charges $k=1,\ldots,(N_c-1)/2$. They constitute a sufficient set of independent degrees of freedom to parametrize the thermal Wilson line. Using properties of the characteristic polynomial of the thermal Wilson line, we write a non-Cartan-Polyakov loop charge decomposing formula. This formalism allows one to readily build effective models of quarks and gluons with an arbitrary number of colors. We apply it to the Polyakov$-$Nambu$-$Jona-Lasinio model and to an effective glue model, in the mean field approximation, showing how to directly extend these models to higher values of $N_c$.

Abstract: Properties of high-density strong-interaction matter of relevance for astrophysical scenarios that involve neutron stars are discussed. It is argued that theoretical and experimental insights from the small baryo-chemical potential ($\mu_B$) and high-temperature regions of the QCD phase diagram can guide realistic model building at high density, as this regime is currently not accessible to first-principles numerical calculations of the QCD partition function. Special attention is payed to the chiral properties of high-density matter and the nature of a possible first-order chiral phase transition. In this transition hadronic parity-partners, in particular baryons, become spectrally degenerate with finite (pole) masses, as expected from general insight into the mass generation in QCD. Possible signals in heavy-ion dielectron production at beam energies of a few GeV are discussed. Based on evidence for an emergent "chiral spin symmetry" above the pseudo-critical chiral transition temperature at small $\mu_B$, speculations on the physical state of dense hadronic matter beyond the chiral phase transition are presented.

Abstract: The spectrum of the $c qq$ baryons contains a few states whose nature is not clearly a three-quark composite and which might have a sizable baryon-meson component. Examples include the $\Sigma_c(2800)$ or the $\Lambda_c(2940)$. Here we explore the spectrum of two-body systems composed of a light, octet baryon and a charmed meson (or antimeson) within a simple contact-range theory in which the couplings are saturated by light-meson exchanges. This results in the prediction of a series of composite anticharmed pentaquarks ($\bar{c} q qqq $) and singly-charmed baryons ($c \bar{q} qqq $). Among the later we find $J=\tfrac{1}{2}$ $\Xi D$ and $J=\tfrac{3}{2}$ $\Xi D^*$ bound states with masses matching those of the recently observed $\Omega_c(3185)$ and $\Omega_c(3327)$ baryons.

Abstract: Inspired by the observation of a resonant state $X(6600)$ of fully charm tetraquark by the CMS experiment of LHCb Collaboration in double $J/\psi $ decay channel, we perform a systematical study of all configurations of fully heavy pentaquarks $P_{Q_{1}Q_{2}Q_{3}Q_{{4}}\bar{Q_{5}}}$ ($Q_{i}=c,b,$ $i=1,2,3,4,5$) in their ground states in unified framework of MIT bag model. The color-spin wavefunctions of pentaquarks, classified via Young tableau and presented in terms of the Young-Yamanouchi bases, are used to compute masses and magnetic moments of fully heavy pentaquarks via numerical variational method, predicting a set of masses ranging from $8.229$ GeV for the $P_{cccc\bar{c}}$ to $24.770$ GeV for the $P_{bbbb\bar{b}}$.Combining with computed masses of fully heavy mesons and baryons, we find that masses of fully heavy hadrons(mesons, baryons, tetraquarks and pentaquarks) with identical flavor rise almost linearly with the number of valence quarks in hadrons, being consistent with the heavy quark symmetry in the heavy-quark limit.

Abstract: We construct a contact interaction model for the $\eta$ and $\eta'$ mesons in the SDE-BSE approach to QCD and compute several static properties of these mesons and their transition form factors. We find that this model gives an excellent description of the $\eta$ and $\eta'$ static properties, namely their masses, decay width and decay constants. However, a contact interaction disagrees with experimental data for $Q^2$ greater than 2 GeV$^2$, and produces transition form factors in conflict with perturbative QCD prediction. This is not surpring and the reasons for this are explained

Abstract: We present an alternative to reweighting techniques for modifying distributions to account for a desired change in an underlying conditional distribution, as is often needed to correct for mis-modelling in a simulated sample. We employ conditional normalizing flows to learn the full conditional probability distribution from which we sample new events for conditional values drawn from the target distribution to produce the desired, altered distribution. In contrast to common reweighting techniques, this procedure is independent of binning choice and does not rely on an estimate of the density ratio between two distributions. In several toy examples we show that normalizing flows outperform reweighting approaches to match the distribution of the target.We demonstrate that the corrected distribution closes well with the ground truth, and a statistical uncertainty on the training dataset can be ascertained with bootstrapping. In our examples, this leads to a statistical precision up to three times greater than using reweighting techniques with identical sample sizes for the source and target distributions. We also explore an application in the context of high energy particle physics.