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Moult, Ian

Publications and source records attributed to Moult, Ian.

18 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

Les Houches study on inclusive jet production at NNLO+NNLL

Jet production at the LHC is a powerful probe of QCD, making it ideal for precision tests and determinations of QCD parameters such as parton distribution functions and the strong coupling constant. To make the most of the abundant jet production data collected at the LHC, precise calculations are required. While state-of-the-art calculations reach next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD accuracy, a critical assessment of the remaining uncertainties arising from non-perturbative effects and missing higher orders remains crucial for correctly interpreting comparisons between theory and data. Scale variation is nearly always used to determine effects from missing higher orders. In this article, we reassess this method in the context of inclusive jet production by performing NNLO QCD calculations supplemented by small-jet-radius resummation through next-to-next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy (NNLL). We find that NNLL resummation can have an appreciable impact on the scale uncertainty for inclusive jet cross sections, and, for some scale choices, can lead to sizeable shifts of the central cross section. We conclude that scale variations in fixed-order and resummed calculations can drastically underestimate the impact of higher orders for commonly used jet radius parameters, and that missing higher-order estimates obtained via scale variations should be considered unreliable. Our findings add further evidence to the importance of going beyond scale variations in jet and jet substructure calculations.

Lee, Kyle↗
DOE OSTI2025

Conformal collider physics meets LHC data

The remarkably high energies of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have allowed for the first measurements of the shapes and scalings of multipoint correlators of energy flow operators, ⟨ Ψ | E ( n → 1 ) E ( n → 2 ) ⋯ E ( n → k ) | Ψ ⟩ , providing new insights into the Lorentzian dynamics of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In this letter, we use recent advances in effective field theory to derive a rigorous factorization theorem for the light-ray density matrix, ρ = | Ψ ⟩ ⟨ Ψ | , inside high transverse momentum jets at the LHC. Using the light-ray operator product expansion, the scaling behavior of multipoint correlators can be computed from the expectation value of the twist-2 spin- J light-ray operators, O [ J ] , in this state, Tr [ ρ O [ J ] ] . We compute the light-ray density matrix at next-to-leading order, and combine this with results for the next-to-leading logarithmic scaling behavior of the correlators up to six-points, comparing with CMS open data. This theoretical accuracy allows us to resolve the quantum scaling dimensions of QCD light-ray operators inside jets at the LHC. Our factorization theorem for the light-ray density matrix at the LHC completes the link between recent developments in the study of energy correlators and LHC phenomenology, opening the door to a wide variety of precision jet substructure studies. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Collinear limit of the four-point energy correlator in N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory

We present a compact formula, expressed in terms of classical polylogarithms up to weight three, for the leading order four-point energy correlator in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, in the limit where the four detectors are collinear. This formula is derived by combining a simplified, manifestly dual conformal invariant form of the 1 → 4 splitting function obtained from the square of the tree-level five-particle form factor of stress-tensor multiplet operators, with a novel integration-by-parts algorithm operating directly on Feynman parameter integrals. Our results provide valuable data for exploring the structure of physical observables in perturbation theory, and for calculations of jet substructure observables in quantum chromodynamics. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Chicherin, Dmitry (ORCID:000000028985084X)↗
DOE OSTI2024

The 1 → 3 massive splitting functions from QCD factorization and SCET

Splitting functions are universal functions describing the collinear dynamics of gauge theories, and as such are crucial ingredients for a wide variety of calculations in perturbative QCD. We present analytic results for the triple collinear splitting functions in QCD with a single massive parton. We derive the splitting functions using two distinct methods; first by expanding the squared matrix elements in the collinear limit, and secondly by using soft-collinear effective theory with massive quarks. We find agreement between these two approaches, providing a strong check of our results. Additionally, we also check all iterated and soft limits of our results, finding agreement with predictions from factorization. Our results provide an important ingredient for higher order perturbative calculations involving massive partons, and for the description of the collinear dynamics of heavy flavor jets.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

A collinear perspective on the Regge limit

The high energy (Regge) limit provides a playground for understanding all loop structures of scattering amplitudes, and plays an important role in the description of many phenomenologically relevant cross-sections. While well understood in the planar limit, the structure of non-planar corrections introduces many fascinating complexities, for which a general organizing principle is still lacking. We study the structure of multi-reggeon exchanges in the context of the effective field theory for forward scattering, and derive their factorization into collinear operators (impact factors) and soft operators. We derive the structure of the renormalization group consistency equations in the effective theory, showing how the anomalous dimensions of the soft operators are related to those of the collinear operators, allowing us to derive renormalization group equations in the Regge limit purely from a collinear perspective. The rigidity of the consistency equations provides considerable insight into the all orders organization of Regge amplitudes in the effective theory, as well as its relation to other approaches. Along the way we derive a number of technical results that improve the understanding of the effective theory. We illustrate this collinear perspective by re-deriving all the standard BFKL equations for two-Glauber exchange from purely collinear calculations, and we show that this perspective provides a number of conceptual and computational advantages as compared to the standard view from soft or Glauber physics. We anticipate that this formulation in terms of collinear operators will enable a better understanding of the relation between BFKL and DGLAP in gauge theories, and facilitate the analysis of renormalization group evolution equations describing Reggeization beyond next-to-leading order.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

A formalism for extracting track functions from jet measurements

The continued success of the jet substructure program will require widespread use of tracking information to enable increasingly precise measurements of a broader class of observables. The recent reformulation of jet substructure in terms of energy correlators has simplified the incorporation of universal non-perturbative matrix elements, so called “track functions”, in jet substructure calculations. These advances make it timely to understand how these universal non-perturbative functions can be extracted from hadron collider data, which is complicated by the use jet algorithms. In this paper we introduce a new class of jet functions, which we call (semi-inclusive) track jet functions, which describe measurements of the track energy fraction in identified jets. These track jet functions can be matched onto the universal track functions, with perturbatively calculable matching coefficients that incorporate the jet algorithm dependence. We perform this matching, and present phenomenological results for the charged energy fraction in jets at the LHC and EIC/HERA at collinear next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. We show that higher moments of the charged energy fraction directly exhibit non-linear Lorentzian renormalization group flows, allowing the study of these flows with collider data. Our factorization theorem enables the extraction of universal track functions from jet measurements, opening the door to their use for a precision jet substructure program.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Probing the Short-Distance Structure of the Quark-Gluon Plasma with Energy Correlators

Energy-energy correlators (EECs) are promising observables to study the dynamics of jet evolution in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) through its imprint on angular scales in the energy flux of final-state particles. We carry out the first complete calculation of EECs using realistic simulations of high-energy heavy-ion collisions and dissect the different dynamics underlying the final distribution through analyses of jet propagation in a uniform medium. The EECs of γ -jets in heavy-ion collisions are found to be enhanced by the medium response from elastic scatterings instead of induced gluon radiation at large angles. In the meantime, EECs are suppressed at small angles due to energy loss and transverse momentum broadening of jet shower partons. These modifications are further shown to be sensitive to the angular scale of the in-medium interaction, as characterized by the Debye screening mass. Experimental verification and measurement of such modifications will shed light on this scale and the short-distance structure of the QGP in heavy-ion collisions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Anomalous dimensions from soft Regge constants

Using an effective field theory (EFT) formalism for forward scattering, we reconsider the factorization of 2 → 2 scattering amplitudes in the Regge limit. Expanding the amplitude in gauge invariant operators labelled by the number of Glauber exchanges, allows us to further factorize the standard impact factors into separate collinear and soft functions. The soft functions are universal, and describe radiative corrections to the Reggeized gluon states exchanged by the collinear projectiles. Remarkably, we find that the one-loop soft function for the single Reggeized gluon state is given to O(ϵ) in terms of the two-loop cusp and two-loop rapidity anomalous dimensions. We argue that this iterative structure follows from the simple action of crossing symmetry in the forward scattering limit, which in the EFT allows us to replace the divergent part of a soft loop by a much simpler Glauber loop. We use this correspondence to provide a simple calculation of the two-loop Regge trajectory using the EFT. We then explore its implications at higher perturbative orders, and derive the maximally matter dependent contributions to the Regge trajectory to all loop orders, i.e. the terms ~ α$^{k+1}_{s}$n$^{k}_{f}$ for any k, where n f is the number of massless flavors. These simplifications suggests that the EFT approach to the Regge limit will be helpful to explore and further understand the structure of the Regge limit.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Systematic quark/gluon identification with ratios of likelihoods

Discriminating between quark- and gluon-initiated jets has long been a central focus of jet substructure, leading to the introduction of numerous observables and calculations to high perturbative accuracy. At the same time, there have been many attempts to fully exploit the jet radiation pattern using tools from statistics and machine learning. We propose a new approach that combines a deep analytic understanding of jet substructure with the optimality promised by machine learning and statistics. After specifying an approximation to the full emission phase space, we show how to construct the optimal observable for a given classification task. This procedure is demonstrated for the case of quark and gluons jets, where we show how to systematically capture sub-eikonal corrections in the splitting functions, and prove that linear combinations of weighted multiplicity is the optimal observable. In addition to providing a new and powerful framework for systematically improving jet substructure observables, we demonstrate the performance of several quark versus gluon jet tagging observables in parton-level Monte Carlo simulations, and find that they perform at or near the level of a deep neural network classifier. Combined with the rapid recent progress in the development of higher order parton showers, we believe that our approach provides a basis for systematically exploiting subleading effects in jet substructure analyses at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and beyond.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Non-Gaussianities in collider energy flux

The microscopic dynamics of particle collisions is imprinted into the statistical properties of asymptotic energy flux, much like the dynamics of inflation is imprinted into the cosmic microwave background. This energy flux is characterized by correlation functions < E(n → 1 )…E(n → k ) > of energy flow operators E(n → ). There has been significant recent progress in studying energy flux, including the calculation of multi-point correlation functions and their direct measurement inside high-energy jets at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In this paper, we build on these advances by defining a notion of “celestial non-gaussianity” as a ratio of the three-point function to a product of two-point functions. We show that this celestial non-gaussianity is under perturbative control within jets at the LHC, allowing us to cleanly access the non-gaussian interactions of quarks and gluons. We find good agreement between perturbative calculations of the non-gaussianity and a charged-particle-based analysis using CMS Open Data, and we observe a strong non-gaussianity peaked in the “flattened triangle” regime. The ability to robustly study three-point correlations is a significant step in advancing our understanding of jet substructure at the LHC. We anticipate that the celestial non-gaussianity, and its generalizations, will play an important role in the development of higher-order parton showers simulations and in the hunt for ever more subtle signals of potential new physics within jets.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Subleading power resummation of rapidity logarithms: the energy-energy correlator in $ \mathcal{N} $ = 4 SYM

We derive and solve renormalization group equations that allow for the resummation of subleading power rapidity logarithms. Our equations involve operator mixing into a new class of operators, which we term the “rapidity identity operators”, that will generically appear at subleading power in problems involving both rapidity and virtuality scales. To illustrate our formalism, we analytically solve these equations to resum the power suppressed logarithms appearing in the back-to-back (double light cone) limit of the Energy-Energy Correlator (EEC) in \( \mathcal{N} \) = 4 super-Yang-Mills. These logarithms can also be extracted to \( \mathcal{O}\left({\alpha}_s^3\right) \) from a recent perturbative calculation, and we find perfect agreement to this order. Instead of the standard Sudakov exponential, our resummed result for the subleading power logarithms is expressed in terms of Dawson’s integral, with an argument related to the cusp anomalous dimension. We call this functional form “Dawson’s Sudakov”. Our formalism is widely applicable for the resummation of subleading power rapidity logarithms in other more phenomenologically relevant observables, such as the EEC in QCD, the p T spectrum for color singlet boson production at hadron colliders, and the resummation of power suppressed logarithms in the Regge limit.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

The soft quark Sudakov

There has been recent interest in understanding the all loop structure of the subleading power soft and collinear limits, with the goal of achieving a systematic resummation of subleading power infrared logarithms. Most of this work has focused on subleading power corrections to soft gluon emission, whose form is strongly constrained by symmetries. In this paper we initiate a study of the all loop structure of soft fermion emission. In N = 1 QCD we perform an operator based factorization and resummation of the associated infrared logarithms using the formalism introduced in, and prove that they exponentiate into a Sudakov due to their relation to soft gluon emission. We verify this result through explicit calculation to O($α$ $^{3}_{s}$). We show that in QCD, this simple Sudakov exponentiation is violated by endpoint contributions proportional to (C A –C F ) n which contribute at leading logarithmic order. Combining our N = 1 result and our calculation of the endpoint contributions to O($α$ $^{3}_{s}$), we conjecture a result for the soft quark Sudakov in QCD, a new all orders function first appearing at subleading power, and give evidence for its universality. Our result, which is expressed in terms of combinations of cusp anomalous dimensions in different color representations, takes an intriguingly simple form and also exhibits interesting similarities to results for large-x logarithms in the off diagonal splitting functions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Subleading power factorization with radiative functions

The study of amplitudes and cross sections in the soft and collinear limits allows for an understanding of their all orders behavior, and the identification of universal structures. At leading power soft emissions are eikonal, and described by Wilson lines. Beyond leading power the eikonal approximation breaks down, soft fermions must be added, and soft radiation resolves the nature of the energetic partons from which they were emitted. For both subleading power soft gluon and quark emissions, we use the soft collinear effective theory (SCET) to derive an all orders gauge invariant bare factorization, at both amplitude and cross section level. This yields universal multilocal matrix elements, which we refer to as radiative functions. These appear from subleading power Lagrangians inserted along the lightcone which dress the leading power Wilson lines. Here, the use of SCET enables us to determine the complete set of radiative functions that appear to O(λ 2 ) in the power expansion, to all orders in α s . For the particular case of event shape observables in e + e – → dijets we derive how the radiative functions contribute to the factorized cross section to O(λ 2 ).

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗