Leptonic Decay Research Articles

Muon g−2 and lepton flavor violation in supersymmetric GUTs

We present a class of supersymmetric (SUSY) GUT models that can explain the apparent discrepancy between the SM predictions and experimental values of muon g−2 while providing testable signals for lepton flavor violation in charged lepton decays. Moreover, these models predict LSP neutralino abundance that is compatible with the Planck dark matter bounds. We find that scenarios in the framework of SU(4)c×SU(2)L×SU(2)R unification, with additional symmetries to explain fermion masses and neutrino oscillations, provide interesting benchmarks for the search of SUSY by correlating a possible manifestation of it in dark matter, rare lepton decays, and LHC signals. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Probing axion-like particles in leptonic decays of heavy mesons

Abstract We study the possibility to find the axion-like particles (ALPs) through the leptonic decays of heavy mesons. The Standard Model (SM) predictions of the branching ratios of the leptonic decays of heavy mesons are less than corresponding experimental upper limits. This provides some space for the existence of decay channels where the ALP is one of the products. Three scenarios are considered: first, the ALP is only coupled to one single charged fermion, namely, the quark, the antiquark, or the charged lepton; second, the ALP is only coupled to quark and antiquark with the same strength; third, the ALP is coupled to all the charged fermions with the same strength. The constraints of the coupling strength in different scenarios are obtained by comparing the experimental data of the branching ratios of leptonic decays of $B^-$, $D^+$, and $D_s^+$ mesons with the theoretical predictions which are achieved by using the Bethe-Salpeter (BS) method. These constraints are further applied to predict the upper limits of the leptonic decay processes of the $B_c^-$ meson in which the ALP participates.Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Article funded by SCOAP3 and published under licence by Chinese Physical Society and the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Science and the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and IOP Publishing Ltd.

Limits on W_{R} from Meson Decays.

In this Letter we show that pseudoscalar meson leptonic decay data can be used to set stringent limits on the mass m_{W_{R}} of a right-handed vector boson, such as the one that appears in left-right symmetric models. We have shown that for a heavy neutrino with a mass m_{N} in the range 50<m_{N}/MeV<1900 one can constraint m_{W_{R}}≳(4-19) TeV at 90% CL. This provides the most stringent experimental limits on the W_{R} mass to date for this heavy neutrino mass range.

Hunting for Bileptons at Hadron Colliders.

I review possible signals at hadron colliders of bileptons, namely doubly charged vectors or scalars with lepton number L=±2, as predicted by a 331 model, based on a SU(3)c×SU(3)L×U(1)X symmetry. In particular, I account for a version of the 331 model wherein the embedding of the hypercharge is obtained with the addition of three exotic quarks and vector bileptons. Furthermore, a sextet of SU(3)L, necessary to provide masses to leptons, yields an extra scalar sector, including a doubly charged Higgs, i.e., scalar bileptons. As bileptons are mostly produced in pairs at hadron colliders, their main signal is provided by two same-sign lepton pairs at high invariant mass. Nevertheless, they can also decay according to non-leptonic modes, such as a TeV-scale heavy quark, charged 4/3 or 5/3, plus a Standard Model quark. I explore both leptonic and non-leptonic decays and the sensitivity to the processes of the present and future hadron colliders.

Search for Higgs boson pair production with one associated vector boson in proton-proton collisions at s\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\sqrt{s} $$\\end{document} = 13 TeV

A search for Higgs boson pair (HH) production in association with a vector boson V (W or Z boson) is presented. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1. Both hadronic and leptonic decays of V bosons are used. The leptons considered are electrons, muons, and neutrinos. The HH production is searched for in the bb¯bb¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \ extrm{b}\\overline{\ extrm{b}}\ extrm{b}\\overline{\ extrm{b}} $$\\end{document} decay channel. An observed (expected) upper limit at 95% confidence level of VHH production cross section is set at 294 (124) times the standard model prediction. Constraints are also set on the modifiers of the Higgs boson trilinear self-coupling, kλ, assuming k2V = 1, and vice versa on the coupling of two Higgs bosons with two vector bosons, k2V. The observed (expected) 95% confidence intervals of these coupling modifiers are −37.7 < kλ < 37.2 (−30.1 < kλ < 28.9) and −12.2 < k2V < 13.5 (−7.2 < k2V < 8.9), respectively.

Release note: VBFNLO 3.0

Vbfnlo is a flexible parton level Monte Carlo program for the simulation of vector boson fusion (VBF), QCD-induced single and double vector boson production plus two jets, and double and triple vector boson production (plus jet) in hadronic collisions at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the strong coupling constant, as well as Higgs boson plus two and three jet production via gluon fusion at the one-loop level. For the new version – Version 3.0 – several major enhancements have been included. An interface according to the Binoth Les Houches Accord (BLHA) has been added for all VBF and di/tri-boson processes including fully leptonic decays. For all dimension-8 operators affecting vector boson scattering (VBS) processes, a modified T-matrix unitarization procedure has been implemented. Several new production processes have been added, namely the VBS Zγjj\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$Z\\gamma jj$$\\end{document} and γγjj\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\gamma \\gamma jj$$\\end{document} processes at NLO, γγjj\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\gamma \\gamma jj $$\\end{document}, WWj and ZZj production at NLO including the loop-induced gluon-fusion contributions and the gluon-fusion one-loop induced Φjjj\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\varPhi jjj$$\\end{document} (Φ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\varPhi $$\\end{document} is a CP-even or CP-odd scalar boson) process at LO, retaining the full top-mass dependence. Finally, the code has been parallelized using Openmpi.

Precision studies in charm and new physics searches at BESIII

The investigation of charm physics plays an important role in checking the Standard Model’s description of strong and weak interactions, validating its predictions for particle physics, and exploring new physics beyond the Standard Model. Using a large dataset from [Formula: see text] annihilation, BESIII has conducted comprehensive and extensive studies in the areas of hadronic, leptonic and semileptonic decays. This proceeding presents an overview of the recent researches and discoveries by BESIII on decays of charmed baryons, charmed mesons and charmonium states, highlighting their significance in advancing the understanding of new physics, experimental determination of physical parameters and improvement of measurement precision.

Track signals at IceCube from subleading channels

Tracks events at the IceCube Observatory are characterized by an energetic muon crossing several kilometers before decaying. Such muons are dominantly produced in charged current (CC) muon neutrino-hadron interactions. However, muons are also produced through W-boson production and in the decay of tau leptons and heavy mesons created in neutral and charged current interactions induced by all neutrino flavors. In this paper, we investigate the contribution of these subleading channels to events characterized as tracks at the IceCube. Our results indicate that these channels correspond to a non-negligible fraction of the high-energy starting events track events. In addition, we show that its contributions are concentrated in muons that are less energetic than those arising from muonic neutrino CC interactions for the same visible energies of the process. Finally, we investigate the impact of these additional channels on the description of the astrophysical neutrino flux, and we find that the inclusion of these subleading processes are important in determining the parameters of the astrophysical neutrino flux. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Constraining |Vcs| and physics beyond the Standard Model from exclusive (semi)leptonic charm decays

We study the available data on exclusive leptonic and semileptonic c → sℓ+ν decays within the Standard Model and beyond. Our analysis accounts for theory correlations between the relevant hadronic matrix elements through application of dispersive bounds. We find that, within a global analysis, the dispersive bounds are generally well respected and only mildly affect the extraction of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix element |Vcs|. Assuming Standard Model dynamics, we obtainVcs=0.957±0.003,\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\left|{V}_{cs}\\right|=0.957\\pm 0.003, $$\\end{document}which is compatible with the HFLAV/PDG reference value |Vcs| = 0.975 ± 0.006 at the 2.7σ level. Our findings lead to significant deficits in the second-row and second-column unitarity relations of the CKM matrix. Allowing for beyond the SM contributions in the Weak Effective Theory, we find very strong constraints on potential (pseudo)scalar and tensor effects. However, the data still permits sizeable CP-violating right-handed currents.

Analyzing leptonic decays of heavy quarkonia in the covariant confined quark model

The leptonic decay widths of heavy quarkonia are complementary observables to the semileptonic decays of heavy mesons and provide additional insight into the possible lepton flavor universality breaking. We analyze the former in the framework of the covariant confined quark model, introducing a novel approach for the description of the radially excited quarkonia states, which is based on constituent quark mass running and the orthogonality of the states. We are able to describe the experimental observations by our approach within the Standard Model, which does not support new physics explanations. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Purely leptonic decays of heavy-flavored charged mesons

We study the purely leptonic decays of heavy-flavored charged pseudoscalar (P) and vector (V) mesons (D(s)(*)+, B(c)(*)+) in the relativistic independent quark (RIQ) model based on an average flavor-independent confining potential in an equally mixed scalar-vector harmonic form. We first compute the mass spectra of the ground-state-mesons and fix the model parameters necessary for the present analysis. Using the meson wave functions derivable in the RIQ model, and model parameters so fixed from hadron spectroscopy, we predict the decay constants: fP(V), ratios of decay constants: fV/fP, fP1/fP2, fV1/fV2, and the branching fractions (BFs): B(P(V)→l+νl), l=e, μ, τ, which agree with the available experimental data and other Standard Model (SM) predictions. For the unmeasured decay constants, especially in the purely leptonic decays of the charged vector mesons, our predictions could be tested in the upcoming Belle-II, SCTF, CEPC, FCC-ee, and LHCb experiments in the near future. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Observation of γγ→ττ in proton–proton collisions and limits on the anomalous electromagnetic moments of the τ lepton

The production of a pair of τ leptons via photon-photon fusion,γγ→ττ, is observed for the first time in proton-proton collisions, with a significance of 5.3 standard deviations. This observation is based on a data set recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb-1. Events with a pair of τ leptons produced via photon-photon fusion are selected by requiring them to be back-to-back in the azimuthal direction and to have a minimum number of charged hadrons associated with their production vertex. The τ leptons are reconstructed in their leptonic and hadronic decay modes. The measured fiducial cross section ofγγ→ττisσobsfid=12.4-3.1+3.8fb. Constraints are set on the contributions to the anomalous magnetic moment (aτ) and electric dipole moments (dτ) of the τ lepton originating from potential effects of new physics on theγττvertex:aτ=0.0009-0.0031+0.0032and|dτ|<2.9×10-17ecm(95% confidence level), consistent with the standard model.

Quantum corrections to the decay law in flight

The deviation of the decay law from the exponential is a well known effect of quantum mechanics. Here we analyze the relativistic survival probabilities, S(t,p), where p is the momentum of the decaying particle and provide analytical expressions for S(t,p) in the exponential (E) as well as the nonexponential (NE) regions at small and large times. Under minimal assumptions on the spectral density function, analytical expressions for the critical times of transition from the NE to the E at small times and the E to NE at large times are derived. The dependence of the decay law on the relativistic Lorentz factor, γ=1/1−v2/c2, reveals several interesting features. In the short time regime of the decay law, the critical time, τst, shows a steady increase with γ, thus implying a larger NE region for particles decaying in flight. Comparing S(t,p) with the well known time dilation formula, e−Γt/γ, in the exponential region, an expression for the critical γ where S(t,p) deviates most from e−Γt/γ is presented. This is a purely quantum correction. Under particular conditions on the resonance parameters, there also exists a critical γ at large times which decides if the NE region shifts backward or forward in time as compared to that for a particle at rest. All the above analytical results are supported by calculations involving realistic decays of hadrons and leptons.

Charm physics with overlap fermions on 2+1-flavor domain wall fermion configurations* *Supported in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFA0406400, 2023YFA1606002), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12075253, 11935017, 12192264, 12293060, 12293065, 12293063, 12070131001), CRC 110 by DFG and NNSFC. Keh-Fei Liu is supported by the U.S. DOE Grant (DE-SC0013065) and DOE Grant (DEAC05-06OR23177),

Decay constants of pseudoscalar mesons D, , and vector mesons , , are determined from the lattice QCD at a lattice spacing fm. For vector mesons, the decay constants defined by tensor currents are given in the scheme at GeV. The calculation is performed on domain wall fermion configurations generated by the RBC-UKQCD collaborations and the overlap fermion action is used for the valence quarks. Comparing the current results with our previous results at a coarser lattice spacing fm provides a better understanding of the discretization error. We obtain with a better precision than our previous result. Combining our MeV with the total width of determined in a recent study gives a branching fraction for leptonic decay.

Bottomonia in quark-antiquark confining potential

This paper comprehensively explores bottomonia mass spectra and their decay properties by solving the non-relativistic Schrodinger wave equation numerically with an approximate quark-antiquark potential form. We also incorporate spin-dependent terms—spin-spin, spin-orbit, and tensor terms to remove mass degeneracy and to obtain excited states (nS, nP, nD, nF, n = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) mass spectra. Using the Van Royen—Weisskopf formula, we investigate leptonic decay constants, di-leptonic, di-gamma, tri-gamma, di-gluon decay widths and incorporate first-order radiative corrections. We also computed radiative transition widths, which provide better insight into the non-perturbative aspects of QCD. The states ϒ(10750), ϒ(10860), ϒ(11020) are analyzed as pure states 33 D 1, 53 S 1 and 43 D 1, respectively. The present mass spectroscopy and decay properties results align with available experimental values and other theoretical predictions. Our results may provide better insight into upcoming experimental information in the near future.

Leptonic and semileptonic decays of mesons in the domain model of the QCD vacuum

The leptonic and semileptonic decays of mesons are investigated within the domain model of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) vacuum and hadronization. The domain model is the mean-field approach based on the statistical ensemble of almost everywhere homogeneous Abelian (anti-)self-dual gluon fields which reproduces main features of low-energy QCD and allows one to deduce a nonlocal effective meson action. Using this meson action, the leptonic decay constants, form factors and branching ratios of semileptonic decays are evaluated simultaneously with masses of mesons. The results are compared to experimental data or other approaches. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Structure-dependent QED in B−→ℓ−ν¯γ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {B}^{-}\ o {\\ell}^{-}\\overline{\ u}\\left(\\gamma \\right) $$\\end{document}

Based on explicitly gauge invariant interpolating operators we compute complete next-leading order QED-corrections for leptonic decays. These are sizeable since the helicity-suppression in V-A interactions allows for structure-dependent collinear logs. We have explicitly checked that these logs are absent for helicity-unsuppressed Yukawa-type transitions. Based on B → γ form factors we present the rates for B−→μ−τ−ν¯γ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {B}^{-}\ o \\left({\\mu}^{-},{\ au}^{-}\\right)\\overline{\ u}\\left(\\gamma \\right) $$\\end{document} in differential and integrated form as a function of the photon energy cut-off Eγcut\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {E}_{\\gamma}^{\ extrm{cut}} $$\\end{document}. The effect of the virtual structure-dependent corrections are approximately +5% and +3% for the μ- and τ-channel respectively. The structure dependence of the real radiation exceeds that of the virtual one for Eγcutμ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {\\left.{E}_{\\gamma}^{\ extrm{cut}}\\right|}_{\\mu } $$\\end{document}> 0.18(3) GeV and is subdominant for the tau channel even when fully inclusive.

D and Ds decay constants in Nf = 2 + 1 QCD with Wilson fermions

We present results for the leptonic decay constants of the D and Ds mesons from Nf = 2 + 1 lattice QCD. We employ a set of 49 high statistics gauge ensembles generated by the Coordinated Lattice Simulations (CLS) effort utilising non-perturbatively improved Wilson fermions and the tree-level Symanzik improved gauge action at six values of the lattice spacing in the range a = 0.098 fm down to a = 0.039 fm, with pion masses varying from around 420 MeV down to below the physical point. The ensembles lie on three trajectories in the quark mass plane, two trajectories intersecting close to the physical quark mass point and the third one approaching the SU(3) chiral limit, enabling tight control of the light and strange quark mass dependence. We obtain fDs\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {f}_{{\ extrm{D}}_{\ extrm{s}}} $$\\end{document} = 246.8(1.3) MeV, fD = 208.4(1.5) MeV and fDs\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {f}_{{\ extrm{D}}_{\ extrm{s}}} $$\\end{document}/fD = 1.1842(36), where the precision of our results is mostly limited by the determination of the scale.

Search for the leptonic decays D*+→e+νe and D*+→μ+νμ

We present the first search for the leptonic decays D*+→e+νe and D*+→μ+νμ by analyzing a data sample of electron-positron collisions recorded with the BESIII detector at center-of-mass energies between 4.178 and 4.226 GeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 6.32 fb−1. No significant signal is observed. The upper limits on the branching fractions for D*+→e+νe and D*+→μ+νμ are set to be 1.1×10−5 and 4.3×10−6 at 90% confidence level, respectively. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Theoretical overview on heavy flavor physics at LHCb

Precise prediction of the heavy hadrons decay amplitudes is of great importance in the determination of the parameters of KM matrix and searching for new physics signals beyond the standard model. Due to the high accuracy of the B meson decay constants, the structure dependent QED corrections should be taken into account for B→μ+μ− decays due to the power enhancement, but this effect is numerically negligible for B→τ+τ−. The radiative leptonic decays and double radiative decays are the best channels to determine the B meson distribution amplitudes, but one should systematically deal with the power corrections to reduce the uncertainty. The heavy-to-light form factors is one of the most important nonperturbative quantities, and an improved method to improve the theoretical accuracy is to fit the form factors using combined data from Lattice and light-cone sum rules which works well at large recoil region. The power suppressed weak annihilation contribution is phenomenologically important in the nonleptonic decays, and the previously neglected hard-collinear gluon exchange diagrams have the potential to cancel the endpoint singularity arising from the hard gluon exchange. Therefore, more endeavors need to be paid to this topic.