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At least 775 records · Page 43

A proof of concept for matchete: an automated tool for matching effective theories

Abstract Studying the impact of new-physics models on low-energy observables necessitates matching to effective field theories at the relevant mass thresholds. We introduce the first public version of , a computer tool for matching weakly-coupled models at one-loop order. It uses functional methods to directly compute all matching contributions in a manifestly gauge-covariant manner, while simplification methods eliminate redundant operators from the output. We sketch the workings of the program and provide examples of how to match simple Standard Model extensions. The package, documentation, and example notebooks are publicly available at https://gitlab.com/matchete/matchete .

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

First demonstration of 30 eVee ionization energy resolution with RICOCHET germanium cryogenic bolometers

The future RICOCHET experiment aims to search for new physics in the electroweak sector by measuring the Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering process from reactor antineutrinos with high precision down to the sub-100 eV nuclear recoil energy range. While the RICOCHET collaboration is currently building the experimental setup at the reactor site, it is also finalizing the cryogenic detector arrays that will be integrated into the cryostat at the Institut Laue Langevin in early 2024. In this paper, we report on recent progress from the Ge cryogenic detector technology, called the CryoCube. More specifically, we present the first demonstration of a 30 eVee (electron equivalent) baseline ionization resolution (RMS) achieved with an early design of the detector assembly and its dedicated High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) based front-end electronics with a total input capacitance of about 40 pF. This represents an order of magnitude improvement over the best ionization resolutions obtained on similar phonon-and-ionization germanium cryogenic detectors from the EDELWEISS and SuperCDMS dark matter experiments, and a factor of three improvement compared to the first fully-cryogenic HEMT-based preamplifier coupled to a CDMS-II germanium detector with a total input capacitance of 250 pF. Additionally, we discuss the implications of these results in the context of the future RICOCHET experiment and its expected background mitigation performance.

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Fiducial and differential cross-section measurements of electroweak $W\gamma jj$ production in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector

The observation of the electroweak production of a W boson and a photon in association with two jets, using pp collision data at the Large Hadron Collider at a centre of mass energy of $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV, is reported. The data were recorded by the ATLAS experiment from 2015 to 2018 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb -1 . This process is sensitive to the quartic gauge boson couplings via the vector boson scattering mechanism and provides a stringent test of the electroweak sector of the Standard Model. Events are selected if they contain one electron or muon, missing transverse momentum, at least one photon, and two jets. Multivariate techniques are used to distinguish the electroweak $W\gamma jj$ process from irreducible background processes. The observed significance of the electroweak $W\gamma jj$ process is well above six standard deviations, compared to an expected significance of 6.3 standard deviations. Fiducial and differential cross sections are measured in a fiducial phase space close to the detector acceptance, which are in reasonable agreement with leading order Standard Model predictions from MADGRAPH5+PYTHIA8 and SHERPA. The results are used to constrain new physics effects in the context of an effective field theory.

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On the EFT validity for Drell–Yan tails at the LHC

Abstract In this article, we examine the validity range of the Effective Field Theory (EFT) description of high-energy Drell–Yan processes at the LHC. To this purpose, we consider explicit mediators that contribute to these processes in the s - and t -channels, comparing their effects in Drell–Yan distributions with the ones obtained by matching onto the corresponding EFT. We determine the conditions for the EFT results to accurately describe these scenarios. In particular, we explore the impact of including dimension-eight $$(d=8)$$ ( d = 8 ) operators in the faster convergence of the EFT series, at the analytical and numerical level, considering contributions to the cross section up to the square of $$d=8$$ d = 8 EFT operator insertions. Moreover, we discuss the possible implications of clipping LHC data and illustrate results for a specific New-Physics scenario motivated by low-energy flavor data.

Allwicher, L. (ORCID:0000000269561661)↗

Leveraging intermediate resonances to probe CP violation at colliders

We explore the phenomenological impact of interference in tree-level contributions to three-body final states in $2\rightarrow 3$ scattering processes. This work introduces a novel search strategy leveraging asymmetries to enable sensitivity to CP-violating effects in less well-explored regions of phase space. Analytically, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this observable in probing interference between Standard Model charged-current decays and effective left-handed vector interactions, illustrated in a toy model featuring a scalar leptoquark, $S_1 \sim (3, 1, -\,1/3)$. Numerically, we apply this framework to studying the process $pp\rightarrow b \tau \nu $; unlike traditional high-$p_T$ searches or “bump hunts”, this approach utilizes an intermediate energy regime – where new physics is neither light enough to be produced on shell or heavy enough to justify an effective field theory treatment. A proof-of-principle analysis at parton level demonstrates a percent-level asymmetry, with sensitivity also to BSM weak-CP phase. While the specific phase sensitivity is diminished at particle level due to showering and detector effects, a machine learning classifier can recover sensitively to the presence of SM-BSM interference, significantly outperforming standard analysis methods. Notably discrimination between BSM signal and SM background could be achieved at the 2$\sigma $ level for the current LHC dataset and 8$\sigma $ at the High-Luminosity LHC. Moreover, this asymmetry observable as defined can also be more broadly applied to other searches for CP-violation in $2\rightarrow 3$ processes in present and future collider environments.

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Search for resonances decaying to an anomalous jet and a Higgs boson in proton–proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13\,\text {Te}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}$

This paper presents a search for new physics through the process where a massive particle, X, decays into a Higgs boson and a second particle, Y. The Higgs boson subsequently decays into a bottom quark–antiquark pair, which is reconstructed as a single large-radius jet. The decay products of Yare also assumed to produce a single large-radius jet. The identification of the Yparticle is enhanced by computing the anomaly score of its candidate jet using an autoencoder, which measures deviations from typical quark- or gluon-induced jets. This allows a simultaneous search for multiple Ydecay scenarios within a single analysis. In the main benchmark process, Yis a scalar particle that decays into a Wboson pair. Two other scalar Ydecay processes are also considered as benchmarks: decays to a light quark–antiquark pair, and decays to a top quark–antiquark pair. A fourth benchmark process considers Yas a hadronically decaying top quark, arising from the decay of a vector-like quark into a top quark and a Higgs boson. Data recorded by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV in 2016–2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb -1 , are analyzed. The search covers Xmasses between 1.4 and 3.0 TeV and Ymasses between 90 and 400 TeV, with all simulated signals produced in the narrow-width approximation. No significant excess above the standard model background expectation is observed. The most stringent upper limits to date are placed on benchmark signal cross sections for various masses of X and Y particles

Hayrapetyan, A. [Yerevan Physics Institute]↗

Recent highlights from GENIE v3

Abstract The release of GENIE v3.0.0 was a major milestone in the long history of the GENIE project, delivering several alternative comprehensive neutrino interaction models, improved charged-lepton scattering simulations, a range of beyond the Standard Model simulation capabilities, improved experimental interfaces, expanded core framework capabilities, and advanced new frameworks for the global analysis of neutrino scattering data and tuning of neutrino interaction models. Steady progress continued following the release of GENIE v3.0.0. New tools and a large number of new physics models, comprehensive model configurations, and tunes have been made publicly available and planned for release in v3.2.0. This article highlights some of the most recent technical and physics developments in the GENIE v3 series.

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Hydration Mimicry by Membrane Ion Channels

Ions transiting biomembranes might pass readily from water through ion-specific membrane proteins if these protein channels provide environments similar to the aqueous solution hydration environment. In fact, bulk aqueous solution is an important reference condition for the ion permeation process. Assessment of this hydration mimicry concept depends on understanding the hydration structure and free energies of metal ions in water in order to provide a comparison for the membrane channel environment. To refine these considerations, we review local hydration structures of ions in bulk water and the molecular quasi-chemical theory that provides hydration free energies. In doing so, we note some current views of ion binding to membrane channels and suggest new physical chemical calculations and experiments that might further clarify the hydration mimicry concept.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

High-dimensional and permutation invariant anomaly detection

Methods for anomaly detection of new physics processes are often limited to low-dimensional spaces due to the difficulty of learning high-dimensional probability densities. Particularly at the constituent level, incorporating desirable properties such as permutation invariance and variable-length inputs becomes difficult within popular density estimation methods. In this work, we introduce a permutation-invariant density estimator for particle physics data based on diffusion models, specifically designed to handle variable-length inputs. We demonstrate the efficacy of our methodology by utilizing the learned density as a permutation-invariant anomaly detection score, effectively identifying jets with low likelihood under the background-only hypothesis. To validate our density estimation method, we investigate the ratio of learned densities and compare to those obtained by a supervised classification algorithm.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Sparks in the dark

This study presents a novel method for the definition of signal regions in searches for new physics at collider experiments. By leveraging multi-dimensional histograms with precise arithmetic and utilizing the SparkDensityTree library, it is possible to identify high-density regions within the available phase space, potentially improving sensitivity to very small signals. Inspired by a search for dark mesons at the ATLAS experiment, CMS open data is used for this proof-of-concept intentionally targeting an already excluded signal. Signal regions are defined based on density estimates of signal and background. These preliminary regions align well with the physical properties of the signal while effectively rejecting background events.

Gudnadottir, Olga Sunneborn [Uppsala Univ. (Sweden↗

Mass agnostic jet taggers

Searching for new physics in large data sets needs a balance between two competing effects—signal identification vs background distortion. In this work, we perform a systematic study of both single variable and multivariate jet tagging methods that aim for this balance. The methods preserve the shape of the background distribution by either augmenting the training procedure or the data itself. Multiple quantitative metrics to compare the methods are considered, for tagging 2-, 3-, or 4-prong jets from the QCD background. This is the first study to show that the data augmentation techniques of Planing and PCA based scaling deliver similar performance as the augmented training techniques of Adversarial NN and uBoost, but are both easier to implement and computationally cheaper.

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Optimal mass variables for semivisible jets

Strongly coupled hidden sector theories predict collider production of invisible, composite dark matter candidates mixed with standard model hadrons in the form of semivisible jets. Classical mass reconstruction techniques may not be optimal for these unusual topologies, in which the missing transverse momentum comes from massive particles and has a nontrivial relationship to the visible jet momentum. We apply the artificial event variable network, a semisupervised, interpretable machine learning technique that uses an information bottleneck, to derive superior mass reconstruction functions for several cases of resonant semivisible jet production. We demonstrate that the technique can extrapolate to unknown signal model parameter values. We further demonstrate the viability of conducting an actual search for new physics using this method, by applying the learned functions to standard model background events from quantum chromodynamics.

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Light thermal relics enabled by a second Higgs

Sub-GeV thermal relic dark matter typically requires the existence of a light mediator particle. We introduce the light two-Higgs-doublet portal, illustrated by a minimal UV-complete model for sub-GeV dark matter with kinematically forbidden annihilations into leptons. All new physics states in this scenario lie at or below the electroweak scale, affecting Higgs physics, the muon anomalous magnetic moment and potentially neutrino masses. Observation of radiative dark matter annihilation by future MeV gamma-ray telescopes would be key to unambiguously identify the scenario.

Herms, Johannes↗

Study of the Mu2e sensitivity to the $\mu^-\rightarrow e^+$ conversion process

The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab (Batavia, IL) will search for the coherent neutrinoless conversion of a muon into an electron in the electric field of an aluminum atom. The conversion process results in a monochromatic electron with energy slightly below the muon rest mass ($E_e= 104.97$ MeV). The experiment goal is to improve the previous measurement by four orders of magnitude and reach a single event sensitivity of $3 \times 10^{-17} $ on the conversion rate with respect to the muon capture rate. \\ The experiment will deliver a very intense pulsed negative muon beam to an aluminum target to achieve a total number of $10^{18}$ stopped muons in three years of running. Production and transport of the muons are accomplished with a sophisticated magnetic system comprised of a Production, a Transport and a Detector solenoid, with the last one hosting a Straw-tube Tracker and a Crystal Calorimeter. The entire detector region is surrounded by a Cosmic Ray Veto system. Mu2e is und er construction at the Muon Campus of Fermilab. \\ The INFN italian group is responsible for the design and construction of the crystal calorimeter, which plays a crucial role in the Mu2e measurement, providing particle identification capabilities fundamental for the rejection of the different background sources that can mimic a conversion electron. The calorimeter information allows also to improve the tracking performances it provides a fast standalone trigger for the experiment.\\ After a long R\&D phase, the final drawings see a calorimeter comprised of 1348 pure CsI crystals arranged in two annular disks. Each crystal is readout by two custom UV-extended Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). Performances of the selected components were verified with an electron beam test, carried out in 2017 at the Beam Test Facility (BTF) at the National Laboratories of Frascati, on a large size prototype of 51 crystals and 102 SiPMs, confirming excellent energy ($\sigma_{E}/E = \mathcal{O }(10\%)$) and timing ($\sigma_{T} <500$ ps) resolutions in a! greement with the Mu2e specifications.\\ In the first chapters of this thesis, I describe my involvement in the calorimeter activities, with particular emphasis on the data analysis of the prototype energy response and resolution, that I was personally leading. Moreover, a description of the tuning of the simulation and the careful data-MC comparison is also reported.\\ An auxiliary measurement that can be performed with Mu2e is the search for a Lepton Number Violation (LNV) process where the negatively charged muon converts, without neutrinos, into a positron, $\mu ^{-} +N(A,Z) \rightarrow $ e$^+ +N(A,Z-2)$. At the moment of writing, Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (0$\nu \beta \beta$) has set the most stringent limit on the LNV processes (T$^{0\nu \beta \beta}_{1/2} > 1.1 \times 10^{26} $ yr at 90$\%$ CL) with the GERDA experiment. In 0$\nu \beta \beta$ a pair of free electrons is created in the transformation from a nucleus $(A, Z)$ into its daughter $(A, Z + 2)$, namely: $(A,Z)\rightarrow (A, Z+2) =2 e^-$. Similar transitions could proceed through the emission of a pair of positrons, double electron capture (EC), or EC and single emission of a positron, with the nucleus changing from $(A, Z)$ to $(A, Z - 2)$. All these variations are equally interesting when discussing of new Physics, since they all manifest a non-conservation of the number of leptons.\\ Moreover, recent studies show that, because of flavor effect, off-diagonal processes, such as the $\mu^- -e^+$ conversion, can have their rate enhanced with respect to processes occurring in the $e-e$ sector.\\ Mu2e will search for $\mu^- + Al(27,13) \rightarrow e^+ +Na(27,11)$, only considering ground state transition, producing a conversion positron with energy $E_{e^+}= 92.32 $ MeV.\\ This thesis is focused on this search. In particular, I developed an algorithm to account for the radiative corrections to be applied to the conversion positrons that resulted in a few percent reduction in s ignal acceptance.\\ One of the most prominent background to ! this sear! ch is the Radiative Muon Capture (RMC) $ \mu+ N(Z,A)\rightarrow \gamma + \nu_{\mu} + N(Z-1,A)$. The produced photon can convert, virtually or in the detector materials (in the following referred as internal or external conversion respectively) in an electron-positron pair, producing positrons with energies approaching the expected conversion energy. Experimental results from previous experiments indicate the RMC endpoint ($\kmax$) to be of $\sim$ 90 MeV. A precise modeling of this background is relevant due to the proximity of the photon spectrum endpoint to the positron conversion energy. The calorimeter group is obviously interested to reconstruct the RMC distribution having also the opportunity to improve the current knowledge of the process. \\ A toy MC has been developed to evaluate the number of $e^+$ from external RMC background in the signal window. Knowing this value and ev...

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Search for Anomalous Trilinear Couplings of Electroweak Gauge Bosons Using Angular Variables at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV at CMS

A study of techniques for improving limits placed on anomalous trilinear couplings of electroweak gauge bosons is presented. Electroweak gauge bosons couple to one another as well as to fermions. Deviations of these couplings from their standard model values would be a sign of new physics. Parameters that affect the couplings of the gauge bosons to each other also affect their helicity, which in turn may be measured from their decay products. Angles between the decay planes of the gauge bosons, as well as between their decay products, are measured. The analysis uses $35.9\,\text{fb}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data from the LHC taken with the CMS detector. Building on a prior analysis that measured the fiducial cross section of $pp \to WW/WZ \to \ell\nu jj$, we show that angular variables can improve limits on anomalous couplings even further.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

In situ monitoring of the stopped muon flux at Mu2e

The specific object of Mu2e search is the neutrino-less coherent $\mu^-\rightarrow e^-$ conversion in the field of an aluminum nucleus and the signal is a monoenergetic electron of energy $ \approx 104.97$ MeV. This process is forbidden in the Standard Model but allowed in many of its extensions: with minimal changes to include neutrino masses and oscillation, the Branching Ratio of this process, or the similarly interesting $\mu\rightarrow e \gamma$ decay, is expected to be of the order of $\mathcal{O}(10^{-54})$. Values like these are below any currently achievable experimental sensitivity, and the observation of a signal would be unambiguous evidence of New Physics. The upper limit on the muon conversion was set by SINDRUM II at $7\times10^{-13}$ (90\% C.L.) and the goal of the Mu2e collaboration is an improvement of 4 order of magnitudes.\\ The Mu2e experiment can be conceptually divided into three stages: interaction of the primary proton pulse with the tungsten target a nd production of $\pi$ and $\mu$; collection and transport of the produced particles down to the aluminum stopping target; interaction with the stopping target and measurement of the output particles. The measurement of the stopped muon flux is of cardinal importance for the normalization of the Mu2e results. The baseline design includes two detectors developed to measure this flux, counting $\gamma$ emitted by the muonic atoms: HPGe and LaBr$_3$(Ce). The studies performed by the Mu2e Collaboration show that these two systems can be reliably used to determine the overall normalization.\\ The number of stopped muons is proportional to the number of protons on target, which itself depends on the extraction system for the proton beam. The Mu2e beam delivery system will use a resonant extraction to create the proton pulses and this method is characterized by intensity fluctuations on the time scale of milliseconds. These fluctuations, aside from the proportional fluctuation of t he number of muons, have a non-trivial impact on the overall! performance of the apparatus. For example, higher intensity proton bunches translate into higher veto rates by the Cosmic Rays Veto system, which is triggered by secondary particles generated by the proton interaction. Another example is the effect of the instantaneous luminosity on the reconstruction efficiency: higher intensity translates into higher detector occupancy, which in turn reduces the reconstruction efficiency.\\ The two cited detectors encounter limitations when trying to monitor the flux at the millisecond timescales: HPGe is by construction a slow detector while the rate of emission of the $\gamma (1809\textrm{ keV})$ the LaBr$_3$(Ce) will measure is too low. As of today, no system allows to monitor these fluctuations and the goal of this Thesis is to try filling this gap. The method we developed to monitor the fluctuations of the stopped muon flux, and by extension, the fluctuation in the proton pulses intensity is based on counting the number of muons capt ured in the stopping target by counting the number of protons produced in the process of the nuclear muon capture. This is one of the possible processes a stopped muon can undergo and it can lead to the ejection of charged particles.\\ The reconstruction algorithms were developed by the Mu2e collaboration with the explicit (and sometimes implicit) aim to reconstruct tracks of electrons in an energy range of a conversion electron. The protons we are interested in behave quite differently from these electrons and the cardinal task of this study has been to tailor the reconstruction routines to these particles. This has been done by analyzing simulated events consisting of a single proton to optimize the procedure and understand the features of these tracks. A major difference with respect to the electrons is the non-relativistic nature of $100\div300$ MeV$/c$ protons: accounting for the low velocity is both a challenge and a unique signature of the tracks.\\ The use of a pulse d beam and the need to allow produced $\pi$ to decay and $\m! u$ to int! eract in the stopping target forces the definition of a Mu2e \textit{event}: an event is comprised by everything which happens in a $1.7\ \mu$s window between the incidence two consecutive proton pulses. This means that the reconstruction will be performed in an environment crowded by many different particles. The next step of this study has been to estimate the performance of the method in a fully-fledged Mu2e simulated event and to study what kind of selections would improve it.\\ Our results are satisfactory since the number of reconstructed protons is significant (few per event), and show that a monitor on the timescale of milliseconds is indeed possible.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Negative Muon Count for the FNAL Muon g-2 Experiment

The primary goal of the FNAL Muon g-2 Experiment, located in Batavia, IL, USA, is to measure the anomalous magnetic dipole moment, a μ = (g-2)/2, of a muon to a precision of 0.14 ppm. Initial results from the experiment confirm a discrepancy between the experimental value of the muon anomaly compared with the theoretical value first discovered by the Brookhaven Muon g-2 Experiment in 2001. This discrepancy hints at new physics. However, running the experiment with negative muons is essential in order to verify the experimental value of the muon anomaly. As neither experiments nor simulation studies pertaining to the muon anomaly have been performed with negative muons, the goal of this work is to estimate the rates of negative muons arriving at the FNAL Muon g-2 experiment so that scientists can estimate the time required to run the experiment with negative muons. In order to do this, we performed several simulations of the Muon Campus, which delivers muons to the FNAL Muon g-2 Experiment, using the G4Beamline v. 3.06 at the National Energy Research Computing Center. We performed separate simulations for different sections of the muon campus, and simulations were repeated twice, once for negative muons and once for positive muons. An initial 10 9 protons were shot on target for both the negative and positive muon simulations. We found that the rate of negative muons arriving at the experiment was 0.549 times the rate of positive muons arriving at the experiment.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Controlled Injection of Electrons for Improved Performance of Laser-Wakefield Acceleration

Our lab performed a series of experiments on controlled injection of LWFA with two extreme laser pulses: one laser pulse was used to drive LWFA. In contrast, the other precisely controls the injection of electrons into the wakefield plasma wave. We have demonstrated an efficient reduction of electron beam emittance by optical injection and novel spatio-temporal manipulation of the electron beam by the extreme laser-plasma waves. Moreover, the optical injection process involves unprecedented new physics, which will benefit studies in astrophysics, inertial confinement fusion, laser-driven x-ray light sources, and ultrafast science. We further improved the performance of LWFA by a better understanding and control of the extreme laser-plasma wave dynamics for optical injection. Three novel mechanisms were identified in the optical injection process: (1) collision of two laser pulses, (2) collision of a laser pulse with a wakefield plasma wave, and (3) collision of two laser wakefields. All three methods improved electron-beam energy spread, emittance, stability, and reproducibility. First, we identified, compared, and independently controlled these different injection mechanisms by controlling the polarization of the injector laser pulse. Second, we manipulated the spatiotemporal splitting of LWFA electron beams to reduce their emittance. Third, we applied the same laser-plasma-wave dynamics and the same experimental setup for improved performance of ion acceleration, which has also been predicted by the recent simulations.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗