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At least 757 records · Page 42

S -matrix positivity without Lorentz invariance: a case study

We investigate the analytic structure of scattering amplitudes in theories in which Lorentz invariance is spontaneously broken. We do so by computing and studying the S-matrix for a simple example: a superfluid described by a complex scalar with quartic interactions. The computation is confined to tree-level, for there are no absolutely stable single-particle states, though the lifetime can be made long by lowering the chemical potential. For the 2 → 2 amplitude in center-of-mass configurations, not only is crossing symmetry violated, there appears a tree level branch cut for unphysical kinematics. Its appearance is a consequence of non-analyticity in the dispersion relation. The branch point defines a new scale in the problem, which scales inversely with the chemical potential. In this example, even derivatives of the forward amplitude are positive while odd derivatives are negative. This pattern can be understood in a general way in the limit of a small chemical potential, or weak Lorentz breaking.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Unveiling horizons in quantum critical collapse

Critical gravitational collapse offers a unique window into regimes of arbitrarily high curvature, culminating in a naked singularity arising from smooth initial data — thus providing a dynamical counterexample to weak cosmic censorship. Near the critical regime, quantum effects from the collapsing matter are expected to intervene before full quantum gravity resolves the singularity. Despite its fundamental significance, a self-consistent treatment has so far remained elusive. In this work, we perform a one-loop semiclassical analysis using the robust anomaly-based method in the canonical setup of Einstein gravity minimally coupled to a free, massless scalar field. Focusing on explicitly solvable near-critical solutions in both 2 + 1 and 3 + 1 dimensions, we analytically solve the semiclassical Einstein equations and obtain controlled, quantitative results for several long-standing questions within the dominant s-wave sector. We find that regularity uniquely selects a Boulware-like quantum state, encoding genuine vacuum polarization effects from the collapsing matter. Remarkably, the resulting quantum corrections manifest as a growing mode. Horizon-tracing analyses, incorporating both classical and quantum modes, reveal the emergence of a finite mass gap, signaling a phase transition from classical Type II to quantum-modified Type I behavior, thereby providing a quantum enforcement of the weak cosmic censorship. The most non-trivial aspect of our analysis involves dealing with non-conformal matter fields in explicitly time-dependent critical spacetimes. Along the way, we uncover intriguing and previously underexplored features of quantum field theory in curved spacetime.

2D Gravity↗

Two-step electroweak symmetry-breaking: theory meets experiment

We study the phenomenology of a hypercharge-zero SU(2) triplet scalar whose existence is motivated by two-step electroweak symmetry-breaking. We consider both the possibility that the triplets are stable and contribute to the dark matter density, or that they decay via mixing with the standard model Higgs boson. The former is constrained by disappearing charged track searches at the LHC and by dark matter direct detection experiments, while the latter is constrained by existing multilepton collider searches. We find that a two-step electroweak phase transition involving a stable triplet with a negative quadratic term is ruled out by direct detection searches, while an unstable triplet with a mass less than 230 GeV is excluded at 95% confidence level.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

MUonE sensitivity to new physics explanations of the muon anomalous magnetic moment

The MUonE experiment aims at a precision measurement of the hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to the muon g – 2, via elastic muon-electron scattering. Since the current muon g – 2 anomaly hints at the potential existence of new physics (NP) related to the muon, the question then arises as to whether the measurement of hadronic vacuum polarization in MUonE could be affected by the same NP as well. In this work, we address this question by investigating a variety of NP explanations of the muon g – 2 anomaly via either vector or scalar mediators with either flavor-universal, non-universal or even flavor-violating couplings to electrons and muons. We derive the corresponding MUonE sensitivity in each case and find that the measurement of hadronic vacuum polarization at the MUonE is not vulnerable to any of these NP scenarios.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

The one-loop amplitudes for Higgs + 4 partons with full mass effects

We present compact analytic formulae for the one-loop amplitudes for Higgs + 4 parton scattering, $0 \to g g g g h$, $0 \to \bar{q} q gg h$ and $0\to \bar{q} q \bar{q}^\prime q^\prime h$, mediated by a loop of massive coloured quarks. We exploit the correspondence with a theory in which a massive coloured scalar circulates in the loop to avoid a proliferation in the number of terms in the result. In addition, we use momentum twistors and high precision numerical evaluations to simplify the expressions. The analytic results in this paper, in terms of spinor products, allow construction of an efficient numerical program to calculate the amplitude.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Challenges for a QCD axion at the 10 MeV scale

We report on an interesting realization of the QCD axion, with mass in the range $\mathcal{O}$(10) MeV. It has previously been shown that although this scenario is stringently constrained from multiple sources, the model remains viable for a range of parameters that leads to an explanation of the Atomki experiment anomaly. In this article we study in more detail the additional constraints proceeding from recent low energy experiments and study the compatibility of the allowed parameter space with the one leading to consistency of the most recent measurements of the electron anomalous magnetic moment and the fine structure constant. We further provide an ultraviolet completion of this axion variant and show the conditions under which it may lead to the observed quark masses and CKM mixing angles, and remain consistent with experimental constraints on the extended scalar sector appearing in this Standard Model extension. In particular, the decay of the Standard Model-like Higgs boson into two light axions may be relevant and leads to a novel Higgs boson signature that may be searched for at the LHC in the near future.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

On-shell correlators and color-kinematics duality in curved symmetric spacetimes

We define a perturbatively calculable quantity — the on-shell correlator — which furnishes a unified description of particle dynamics in curved spacetime. Specializing to the case of flat and anti-de Sitter space, on-shell correlators coincide precisely with on-shell scattering amplitudes and boundary correlators, respectively. Remarkably, we find that symmetric manifolds admit a generalization of on-shell kinematics in which the corresponding momenta are literally the isometry generators of the spacetime acting on the external kinematic data. These isometric momenta are intrinsically non-commutative but exhibit on-shell conditions that are identical to those of flat space, thus providing a common language for computing and representing on-shell correlators which is agnostic about the underlying geometry. Afterwards, we compute tree-level on-shell correlators for biadjoint scalar (BAS) theory and the nonlinear sigma model (NLSM) and learn that color-kinematics duality is manifested at the level of fields under a mapping of the color algebra to the algebra of gauged isometries on the spacetime manifold. Last but not least, we present a field theoretic derivation of the fundamental BCJ relations for on-shell correlators following from the existence of certain conserved currents in BAS theory and the NLSM.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Type II Seesaw leptogenesis

The Type II Seesaw Mechanism provides a minimal framework to explain the neutrino masses involving the introduction of a single triplet Higgs to the Standard Model. However, this simple extension was believed to be unable to successfully explain the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe through Leptogenesis. In our previous work (Phys. Rev. Lett. 128 (2022) 141801), we demonstrated that the triplet Higgs of the Type II Seesaw Mechanism alone can simultaneously generate the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe and the neutrino masses while playing a role in setting up Inflation. This is achievable with a triplet Higgs mass as low as 1 TeV, and predicts that the neutral component obtains a small vacuum expectation value $v_Δ$ < 10 keV. We find that our model has very rich phenomenology and can be tested by various terrestrial experiments as well as by astronomical observations. Particularly, we show that the successful parameter region may be probed at a future 100 TeV collider, upcoming lepton flavor violation experiments such as Mu3e, and neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. Additionally, the tensor-to-scalar ratio from the inflationary scenario will be probed by the LiteBIRD telescope, and observable isocurvature perturbations may be produced for some parameter choices. In this article, we present all the technical details of our calculations and further discussion of its phenomenological implications.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Strange hadron collectivity in pPb and PbPb collisions

The collective behavior of K$_{S}^{0}$ and $Λ/ \overline{Λ}$ strange hadrons is studied by measuring the elliptic azimuthal anisotropy ($\mathcal{v}$ 2 ) using the scalar-product and multiparticle correlation methods. Proton-lead (pPb) collisions at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 8.16 TeV and lead-lead (PbPb) collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC are investigated. Nonflow effects in the pPb collisions are studied by using a subevent cumulant analysis and by excluding events where a jet with transverse momentum greater than 20 GeV is present. The strange hadron $\mathcal{v}$ 2 values extracted in pPb collisions via the four- and six-particle correlation method are found to be nearly identical, suggesting the collective behavior. Comparisons of the pPb and PbPb results for both strange hadrons and charged particles illustrate how event-by-event flow fluctuations depend on the system size.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

AdS scale separation and the distance conjecture

It has been argued that orientifold vacua with fluxes in type IIA string theory can achieve moduli stabilisation and arbitrary decoupling between the AdS and KK scales upon sending certain unconstrained RR-flux quanta to infinity. In this paper, we find a novel scalar field in the open-string sector that allows us to interpolate between such IIA vacua that differ in flux quanta and find that the limit of large fluxes is nicely consistent with the distance conjecture. This shows that the massive IIA vacua pass an important Swampland criterion and suggests that scale-separated AdS vacua might not be in the Swampland. Our analysis also naturally suggests a flux analogue of “Reid’s fantasy” where flux vacua that differ in quantised flux numbers can be connected through trajectories in open-string field space and not just via singular domain walls.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Enhanced neutrino polarizability

We point out that neutrinos can have enhanced couplings to photons, if light (pseudo)scalar mediators are present, resulting in a potentially measurable neutrino polarizability. We show that the expected suppression from small neutrino masses can be compensated by the light mediator mass, generating dimension 7 Rayleigh operators at low scales. We explore the rich phenomenology of such models, computing in detail the constraints on the viable parameter space, spanned by the couplings of the mediator to neutrinos and photons. Finally, we build several explicit models that lead to an enhanced neutrino polarizability by modifying the inverse see-saw majoron, i.e., the pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of the U(1) L global lepton number responsible for generating small neutrino masses.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Accelerating cosmology from Λ < 0 gravitational effective field theory

A large class of Λ < 0 cosmologies have big-bang/big crunch spacetimes with time-symmetric backgrounds and asymptotically AdS Euclidean continuations suggesting a possible holographic realization. We argue that these models generically have time-dependent scalar fields, and these can lead to realistic cosmologies at the level of the homogeneous background geometry, with an accelerating phase prior to the turnaround and crunch. We first demonstrate via explicit effective field theory examples that models with an asymptotically AdS Euclidean continuation can also exhibit a period of accelerated expansion without fine tuning. We then show that certain significantly more tuned examples can give predictions arbitrarily close to a ΛCDM model. Finally, we demonstrate via an explicit construction that the potentials of interest can arise from a superpotential, thus suggesting that these solutions may be compatible with an underlying supersymmetric theory.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

One-loop integrals from volumes of orthoschemes

Recently in arXiv:2012.05599 Rudenko presented a formula for the volume of hyperbolic orthoschemes in terms of alternating polylogarithms. We use this result to provide an explicit analytic result for the one-loop scalar n -gon Feynman integral in n dimensions, for even n , with massless or massive internal and external edges. Furthermore, we evaluate the general six-dimensional hexagon integral in terms of classical polylogarithms.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Search for new particles in final states with a boosted top quark and missing transverse momentum in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for events with one top quark and missing transverse momentum in the final state is presented. The fully hadronic decay of the top quark is explored by selecting events with a reconstructed boosted top-quark topology produced in association with large missing transverse momentum. The analysis uses 139 fb -1 of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV recorded during 2015-2018 by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The results are interpreted in the context of simplified models for Dark Matter particle production and the single production of a vector-like T quark. Without significant excess relative to the Standard Model expectations, 95% confidence-level upper limits on the corresponding cross-sections are obtained. The production of Dark Matter particles in association with a single top quark is excluded for masses of a scalar (vector) mediator up to 4.3 (2.3) TeV, assuming m χ = 1 GeV and the model couplings λ q = 0.6 and λ χ = 0.4 (a = 0.5 and g χ = 1). The production of a single vector-like T quark is excluded for masses below 1.8 TeV assuming a coupling to the top quark κ T = 0.5 and a branching ratio for T → Zt of 25%.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Search for vector-like leptons coupling to first- and second-generation Standard Model leptons in pp collisions at s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for pair production of vector-like leptons coupling to first- and second-generation Standard Model leptons is presented. The search is based on a dataset of proton-proton collisions at s$$ \sqrt{s} $$ = 13 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb−1. Events are categorised depending on the flavour and multiplicity of leptons (electrons or muons), as well as on the scores of a deep neural network targeting particular signal topologies according to the decay modes of the vector-like leptons. In each of the signal regions, the scalar sum of the transverse momentum of the leptons and the missing transverse momentum is analysed. The main background processes are estimated using dedicated control regions in a simultaneous fit with the signal regions to data. No significant excess above the Standard Model background expectation is observed and limits are set at 95% confidence level on the production cross-sections of vector-like electrons and muons as a function of the vector-like lepton mass, separately for SU(2) doublet and singlet scenarios. The resulting mass lower limits are 1220 GeV (1270 GeV) and 320 GeV (400 GeV) for vector-like electrons (muons) in the doublet and singlet scenarios, respectively.

Aad, G↗

Radiative corrections relating leptoquark-fermion couplings probed at low and high energy

Scalar leptoquarks (LQ) with masses between 2 TeV and 50 TeV are prime candidates to explain deviations between measurements and Standard-Model predictions in decay observables of b-flavored hadrons (“flavor anomalies”). Explanations of low-energy data often involve $\mathcal{O}$ (1) LQ-quark-lepton Yukawa couplings, especially when collider bounds enforce a large LQ mass. This calls for the calculation of radiative corrections involving these couplings. Studying such corrections to LQ-mediated b → cτν and b → sℓ + ℓ − amplitudes, we find that they can be absorbed into finite renormalizations of the LQ Yukawa couplings. If one wants to use Yukawa couplings extracted from low-energy data for the prediction of on-shell LQ decay rates, one must convert the low-energy couplings to their high-energy counterparts, which subsume the corrections to the on-shell LQ-quark-lepton vertex. We present compact formulae for these correction factors and find that in scenarios with S 1 , R 2 , or S 3 LQ the high-energy coupling is always smaller than the low-energy one, which weakens the impact of collider data on the determination of the allowed parameter spaces. For the R 2 scenario addressing b → cτν, in which one of the two involved Yukawa coupling must be significantly larger than 1, we find this coupling reduced by 15% at high energy. If both S 1 and R 2 are present, the high-energy coupling can also be larger and the size of the correction is unbounded, because tree contribution and vertex corrections involve different couplings. We further present the conversion formula to the $\overline{MS}$ scheme for the Yukawa couplings of the S 3 scenario.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Limits on an exotic Higgs decay from a recast ATLAS four-lepton analysis

The ATLAS collaboration, using 139 fb −1 of 13 TeV collisions from the Large Hadron Collider, has placed limits on the decay of a Z boson to three dark photons. We reproduce the results of the ATLAS analysis, and then recast it as a limit on a exotic Higgs decay mode, in which the Higgs boson decays via a pair of intermediate (pseudo)scalars a to four dark photons V (or some other spin-one meson). Across the mass range for m a and m V , we find limits on the exotic Higgs branching fraction BR(H → aa → V V V V ) in the range of 4 × 10 −5 to 1 × 10 −4 .

Higgs properties↗

Massive spinning bosons on the celestial sphere

A natural extension of the Pasterski-Shao-Strominger (PSS) prescription is described, enabling the map of Minkowski space amplitudes with massive spinning external legs to the celestial sphere to be performed. An integral representation for the conformal primary wave function (CPW) of massive spinning bosons on the celestial sphere is derived explicitly for spin-one and -two. By analogy with the spin-zero case, the spinning bulk-to-boundary propagator on Euclidean AdS is employed to extend the massive CPW integral representation to arbitrary integer spin, and to describe the appropriate inverse transform of massive spinning CPWs back to the plane wave basis in Minkowski space. Subsequently, a massive spin-s momentum operator representation on the celestial sphere is determined, and used in conjunction with known Lorentz generators to derive Poincaré symmetry constraints on generic massive spinning two-, three- and four-point celestial amplitude structures. Finally, as a consistency check, three-point Minkowski space amplitudes of two massless scalars and a spin-one or -two massive boson are explicitly mapped to the celestial sphere, and the resulting three-point function coefficients are confirmed to be in exact agreement with the results obtained from Poincaré symmetry constraints.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗