Hadronic Events Research Articles

Exact two-loop amplitudes for Higgs plus jet production with a cubic Higgs self-coupling

We compute the corrections to the two-loop amplitudes for gg → h, gg → hg, qg → hq, and qq¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ q\\overline{q} $$\\end{document} → hg due to a modified cubic Higgs self-coupling. The exact dependence on the Higgs and top-quark masses across the entire 2 → 2 phase space is determined by numerically solving a system of differential equations for the relevant master integrals. The calculated amplitudes are crucial for evaluating the impact of the considered corrections on exclusive pp → hj production at the hadronic event level. As an application, we calculate the non-universal, kinematic-dependent cubic Higgs self-coupling corrections to the Higgs-boson transverse momentum distribution in gluon-gluon fusion Higgs production for arbitrary values of the transverse momentum.

An improved description of charm fragmentation data

We consider the fragmentation of heavy quarks into heavy-flavoured hadrons, specifically the production of charmed mesons in e+e-\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$e^+e^-$$\\end{document} collisions, at different centre-of-mass energies. We focus our attention on the ratio of moments of the D∗+\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$D^{*+}$$\\end{document} energy spectrum measured by ALEPH and CLEO. This ratio is believed to provide us with a direct test of perturbative QCD evolution because hadronisation effects should cancel between the numerator and denominator. However, state-of-the-art calculations based on standard (final-state) collinear factorisation fail to describe the experimental data. We show that this discrepancy is considerably reduced if heavy-quark threshold effects are accounted for not only in DGLAP evolution, as it is usually done, but also in the resummed coefficient functions.

Determination of the number of ψ(3686) events taken at BESIII* *The BESIII Collaboration thanks the staff of BEPCII and the IHEP computing center for their strong support. This work is supported in part by National Key R&D Program of China under Contracts Nos. 2020YFA0406300, 2020YFA0406400; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Contracts Nos. 12150004, 11635010, 11735014, 11835012, 11935015,

The number of ψ(3686) events collected by the BESIII detector during the 2021 run period is determined to be (2259.3±11.1)×106 by counting inclusive ψ(3686) hadronic events. The uncertainty is systematic and the statistical uncertainty is negligible. Meanwhile, the numbers of ψ(3686) events collected during the 2009 and 2012 run periods are updated to be (107.7±0.6)×106 and (345.4±2.6)×106, respectively. Both numbers are consistent with the previous measurements within one standard deviation. The total number of ψ(3686) events in the three data samples is (2712.4±14.3)×106.

Predictions for neutrinos and new physics from forward heavy hadron production at the LHC

Scenarios with new physics particles feebly interacting with the Standard Model sector provide compelling candidates for dark matter searches. Geared with a set of new experiments for the detection of neutrinos and long-lived particles the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has joined the hunt for these elusive states. On the theoretical side, this emerging physics program requires reliable estimates of the associated particle fluxes, in particular those arising from heavy hadron decays. In this work, we provide state-of-the-art QCD predictions for heavy hadron production including radiative corrections at next-to-leading order and using parton distribution functions including small-x resummation at next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. We match our predictions to parton showers to provide a realistic description of hadronisation effects. We demonstrate the utility of our predictions by presenting the energy spectrum of neutrinos from charm hadron decays. Furthermore, we employ our predictions to estimate, for the first time, FASER’s sensitivity to electrophilic ALPs, which are predominantly generated in beauty hadron decays.

Can quantized fragmentation replace colour reconnection models?

A brief overview of properties of the model of quantized fragmentation of a helical QCD string is followed by the discussion of colour reconnection models and of the ways to reproduce the evolution of the average transverse momentum in hadronic events, as function of charged particle multiplicity. Reference to recent experimental data is included.

SMEFT at NNLO+PS: Vh production

In the context of the Standard Model effective field theory (SMEFT) the next-to-next-to-leading (NNLO) QCD corrections to the Higgsstrahlungs (Vh) processes in hadronic collisions are calculated and matched to a parton shower (PS). NNLO+PS precision is achieved for the complete sets of SMEFT operators that describe the interactions between the Higgs and two vector bosons and the couplings of the Higgs, a W or a Z boson, and light fermions. A POWHEG-BOX implementation of the computed NNLO SMEFT corrections is provided that allows for a realistic exclusive description of Vh production at the level of hadronic events. This feature makes it an essential tool for future Higgs characterisation studies by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations. Utilising our new Monte Carlo code the numerical impact of NNLO+PS corrections on the kinematic distributions in pp → Zh → ℓ+ℓ−h production is explored, employing well-motivated SMEFT benchmark scenarios.

System-size dependence of the hadronic rescattering effect at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

The first measurements of K*(892)0 resonance production as a function of charged-particle multiplicity in Xe-Xe collisions at sNN=5.44 TeV and pp collisions ats=5.02 TeV using the ALICE detector are presented. The resonance is reconstructed at midrapidity (|y| < 0.5) using the hadronic decay channel K*0 →K±π∓. Measurements of transverse-momentum integrated yield, mean transverse-momentum, nuclear modification factor of K*0, and yield ratios of resonance to stable hadron (K*0/K) are compared across different collision systems (pp, p-Pb, Xe-Xe, and Pb-Pb) at similar collision energies to investigate how the production of K*0 resonances depends on the size of the system formed in these collisions. The hadronic rescattering effect is found to be independent of the size of colliding systems and mainly driven by the produced charged-particle multiplicity, which is a proxy of the volume of produced matter at the chemical freeze-out. In addition, the production yields of K*0 in Xe-Xe collisions are utilized to constrain the dependence of the kinetic freeze-out temperature on the system size using the hadron resonance gas–partial chemical equilibrium model. ©2024 CERN, for the ALICE Collaboration 2024 CERN

Taking aim at the wino-Higgsino plane with the LHC

In this work we explore multiple search strategies for Higgsinos and mixed Higgsino-wino states in the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) and project the results onto the (μ,M2) plane. Assuming associated production of Higgsino-like pairs with a W/Z boson, we develop a search in a channel characterized by a hadronically tagged vector boson accompanied by missing energy. We use as our template an ATLAS search for dark matter produced in association with a hadronically decaying vector boson, but upgrade the search by implementing a joint-likelihood analysis, binning the missing transverse energy distribution, which greatly improves the search sensitivity. For Higgsino-like states (more than 96% admixture) we find sensitivity to masses up to 550 GeV. For well-mixed Higgsino-wino states (70–30% Higgsino) we still find sensitivities above 300 GeV. Using this newly proposed search, we draw a phenomenological map of the wino-Higgsino parameter space, recasting several complementary searches for disappearing tracks, soft leptons, trileptons, and hadronic diboson events in order to predict LHC coverage of the (μ,M2) mass plane at integrated luminosities of up to 3 ab−1. Altogether, the full run of the HL-LHC can exclude much of the “natural” (μ,M2<500 GeV) wino-Higgsino parameter space. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Simulation of shot noise effects in the EIC strong hadron cooling accelerator using real number of electrons

In the electron ion collider design, in order to achieve the peak luminosity 1034/cm 2/s with a reasonable lifetime, an efficient coherent electron cooling scheme was proposed to reduce the hadron beam emittance growth. Such a cooling scheme requires a good electron beam quality with a small energy spread. However, the shot noise in the electron beam through the accelerator might be amplified due to the microbunching instability and degrades the electron beam quality in the modulator section of the strong hadron cooling channel and correspondingly cooling rate. In this study, we report on self-consistent simulations of these effects using a real number of electrons to capture the details of shot noise and analysis of the shot noise growth through the accelerator.

Measurement of in-medium modification of energy-space structure of jets via γ and π0 triggered hadrons in Au+Au collisions at RHIC

Since the discovery of the jet quenching at RHIC, the in-medium interaction of hard scattered partons with the nuclear medium created by highenergy heavy-ion collisions has been an excellent tool to understand not only the transport properties of the medium but also its time evolution towards hadronization. The multi-differential measurement of the high momentum twoparticle correlations can probe a particular space-time window as a function of energy transfer. Comparing the correlations with the prompt photon-triggered hadron spectra, one can extract the property of the medium from various aspects and contribute to distinct models. The PHENIX experiment at RHIC has collected its highest statistics of the γ and π0 triggered hadron events in Au+Au collisions at √SNN = 200 GeV in the RHIC Year-2014 run, and measured not only the inclusive spectra of the triggered hadrons but also the angle and energy dependent IAA and DAA. We will discuss the in-medium modification of the energy-space structure of the jets at the RHIC energies with the results obtained.

Fast b-tagging at the high-level trigger of the ATLAS experiment in LHC Run 3

The ATLAS experiment relies on real-time hadronic jet reconstruction and b-tagging to record fully hadronic events containing b-jets. These algorithms require track reconstruction, which is computationally expensive and could overwhelm the high-level-trigger farm, even at the reduced event rate that passes the ATLAS first stage hardware-based trigger. In LHC Run 3, ATLAS has mitigated these computational demands by introducing a fast neural-network-based b-tagger, which acts as a low-precision filter using input from hadronic jets and tracks. It runs after a hardware trigger and before the remaining high-level-trigger reconstruction. This design relies on the negligible cost of neural-network inference as compared to track reconstruction, and the cost reduction from limiting tracking to specific regions of the detector. In the case of Standard Model HH → bb̅bb̅, a key signature relying on b-jet triggers, the filter lowers the input rate to the remaining high-level trigger by a factor of five at the small cost of reducing the overall signal efficiency by roughly 2%.

The solenoidal large intensity device (SoLID) for JLab 12 GeV

The solenoidal large intensity device (SoLID) is a new experimental apparatus planned for Hall A at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab). SoLID will combine large angular and momentum acceptance with the capability to handle very high data rates at high luminosity. With a slate of approved high-impact physics experiments, SoLID will push JLab to a new limit at the QCD intensity frontier that will exploit the full potential of its 12 GeV electron beam. In this paper, we present an overview of the rich physics program that can be realized with SoLID, which encompasses the tomography of the nucleon in 3D momentum space from semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering, expanding the phase space in the search for new physics and novel hadronic effects in parity-violating DIS, a precision measurement of J/ψ production at threshold that probes the gluon field and its contribution to the proton mass, tomography of the nucleon in combined coordinate and momentum space with deep exclusive reactions, and more. To meet the challenging requirements, the design of SoLID described here takes full advantage of recent progress in detector, data acquisition and computing technologies. In addition, we outline potential experiments beyond the currently approved program and discuss the physics that could be explored should upgrades of CEBAF become a reality in the future.

Pileup and Infrared Radiation Annihilation (PIRANHA): a paradigm for continuous jet grooming

Jet grooming is an important strategy for analyzing relativistic particle collisions in the presence of contaminating radiation. Most jet grooming techniques introduce hard cutoffs to remove soft radiation, leading to discontinuous behavior and associated experimental and theoretical challenges. In this paper, we introduce Pileup and Infrared Radiation Annihilation (Piranha), a paradigm for continuous jet grooming that overcomes the discontinuity and infrared sensitivity of hard-cutoff grooming procedures. We motivate Piranha from the perspective of optimal transport and the Energy Mover’s Distance and review Apollonius Subtraction and Iterated Voronoi Subtraction as examples of Piranha-style grooming. We then introduce a new tree-based implementation of Piranha, Recursive Subtraction, with reduced computational costs. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of Recursive Subtraction in mitigating sensitivity to soft distortions from hadronization and detector effects, and additive contamination from pileup and the underlying event.

QCD light-cone distribution amplitudes of heavy mesons from boosted HQET

Light-cone distribution amplitudes (LCDAs) frequently arise in factorization theorems involving light and heavy mesons. The QCD LCDA for heavy mesons includes short-distance physics at energy scales of the heavy-quark mass. In this paper we achieve the separation of this perturbative scale from the purely hadronic effects by matching the QCD LCDA to the convolution of a perturbative function with the universal, quark-mass independent LCDA defined in heavy-quark effective theory. This factorization allows to resum potentially large logarithms between ΛQCD and mQ as well as between mQ and the scale Q of the hard process in the production of boosted heavy mesons at colliders. As an application we derive new theoretical predictions for the branching ratio of the decay W± → B±γ. Furthermore, we provide phenomenological models for the QCD LCDAs of both the B¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\overline{B} $$\\end{document} and D mesons expressed as expansions in Gegenbauer polynomials.

A Model Study on the Effects of n-Mesons on Thermodynamics of Strongly Interacting Systems

Properties of strongly interacting matter are quite well-described by the Polyakov loop enhanced Nambu-Jona—Lasinio (PNJL) model as it incorporates two important symmetries. However, discrepancies in low temperature domain remain unless hadronic effects are entwined. Here we have tried to observe the effect of lowest lying hadrons i.e. ?-mesons (pions) considering their medium-dependent masses for zero chemical potential. The thermodynamic quantities now show satisfactory matches with existing lattice QCD and HRG results over the finite temperature window of interest.

NLO + parton-shower generator for varvec{Wc} production in the POWHEG BOX RES

We present the implementation of a next-to-leading-order plus parton-shower event generator for the hadronic production of a heavy charm quark accompanied by a leptonically-decaying W boson in the POWHEG BOX RES framework. We consider both signatures, i.e. pprightarrow c, ell ^- {bar{nu }}_{ell } and pprightarrow {bar{c}} ,ell ^+ {nu }_{ell }, and we include exactly off-shell and spin-correlation effects, as well as off-diagonal Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa contributions. We present particle-level results, obtained interfacing our code with the Herwig7.2 and Pythia8.3 shower Monte Carlo event generators, including hadronization and underlying-event effects, and compare them against the data collected by the CMS Collaboration at sqrt{s}=13 TeV.

Measurement of inclusive and leading subjet fragmentation in pp and Pb–Pb collisions at sqrt{s_{textrm{NN}}} = 5.02 TeV

This article presents new measurements of the fragmentation properties of jets in both proton–proton (pp) and heavy-ion collisions with the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We report distributions of the fraction zr of transverse momentum carried by subjets of radius r within jets of radius R. Charged-particle jets are reconstructed at midrapidity using the anti-kT algorithm with jet radius R = 0.4, and subjets are reconstructed by reclustering the jet constituents using the anti-kT algorithm with radii r = 0.1 and r = 0.2. In proton–proton collisions, we measure both the inclusive and leading subjet distributions. We compare these measurements to perturbative calculations at next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, which suggest a large impact of threshold resummation and hadronization effects on the zr distribution. In heavy-ion collisions, we measure the leading subjet distributions, which allow access to a region of harder jet frag- mentation than has been probed by previous measurements of jet quenching via hadron fragmentation distributions. The zr distributions enable extraction of the parton-to-subjet fragmentation function and allow for tests of the universality of jet fragmentation functions in the quark–gluon plasma (QGP). We find no significant modification of zr distributions in Pb–Pb compared to pp collisions. However, the distributions are also consistent with a hardening trend for zr< 0.95, as predicted by several jet quenching models. As zr → 1 our results indicate that any such hardening effects cease, exposing qualitatively new possibilities to disentangle competing jet quenching mechanisms. By comparing our results to theoretical calculations based on an independent extraction of the parton-to-jet fragmentation function, we find consistency with the universality of jet fragmentation and no indication of factorization breaking in the QGP.

Differential toverline{t} cross-section measurements using boosted top quarks in the all-hadronic final state with 139 fb−1 of ATLAS data

Measurements of single-, double-, and triple-differential cross-sections are presented for boosted top-quark pair-production in 13 TeV proton–proton collisions recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The top quarks are observed through their hadronic decay and reconstructed as large-radius jets with the leading jet having transverse momentum (pT) greater than 500 GeV. The observed data are unfolded to remove detector effects. The particle-level cross-section, multiplied by the toverline{t}to WWboverline{b} branching fraction and measured in a fiducial phase space defined by requiring the leading and second-leading jets to have pT> 500 GeV and pT> 350 GeV, respectively, is 331 ± 3(stat.) ± 39(syst.) fb. This is approximately 20% lower than the prediction of {398}_{-49}^{+48} fb by Powheg+Pythia 8 with next-to-leading-order (NLO) accuracy but consistent within the theoretical uncertainties. Results are also presented at the parton level, where the effects of top-quark decay, parton showering, and hadronization are removed such that they can be compared with fixed-order next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) calculations. The parton-level cross-section, measured in a fiducial phase space similar to that at particle level, is 1.94 ± 0.02(stat.) ± 0.25(syst.) pb. This agrees with the NNLO prediction of {1.96}_{-0.17}^{+0.02} pb. Reasonable agreement with the differential cross-sections is found for most NLO models, while the NNLO calculations are generally in better agreement with the data. The differential cross-sections are interpreted using a Standard Model effective field-theory formalism and limits are set on Wilson coefficients of several four-fermion operators.

Hadronic loop effects to excited scalar charmed mesons revisited

We re-examine the hadronic loop effects on the masses of and calculated in quark models in the framework of heavy meson chiral perturbation theory (HMCHPT). Unlike previous approaches, ours reproduces the observed scalar charm states reported by the Particle Data Group (PDG). We show why previous approaches of using HMCHPT in studying mass shift effects due to chiral loops gave unsatisfactory results.

Going off topics to demix quark and gluon jets in αS extractions

Quantum chromodynamics is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks and gluons; the coupling strength of the interaction, αS, is the least precisely-known of all interactions in nature. An extraction of the strong coupling from the radiation pattern within jets would provide a complementary approach to conventional extractions from jet production rates and hadronic event shapes, and would be a key achievement of jet substructure at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Presently, the relative fraction of quark and gluon jets in a sample is the limiting factor in such extractions, as this fraction is degenerate with the value of αS for the most well-understood observables. To overcome this limitation, we apply recently proposed techniques to statistically demix multiple mixtures of jets and obtain purified quark and gluon distributions based on an operational definiton. We illustrate that studying quark and gluon jet substructure separately can significantly improve the sensitivity of such extractions of the strong coupling. We also discuss how using machine learning techniques or infrared- and collinear-unsafe information can improve the demixing performance without the loss of theoretical control. While theoretical research is required to connect the extract topics with the quark and gluon objects in cross section calculations, our study illustrates the potential of demixing to reduce the dominant uncertainty for the αS extraction from jet substructure at the LHC.