Hadron Collider Research Articles

Anomaly detection in collider physics via factorized observables

To maximize the discovery potential of high-energy colliders, experimental searches should be sensitive to unforeseen new physics scenarios. This goal has motivated the use of machine learning for unsupervised anomaly detection. In this paper, we introduce a new anomaly detection strategy called : factorized observables for regressing conditional expectations. Our approach is based on the inductive bias of factorization, which is the idea that the physics governing different energy scales can be treated as approximately independent. Assuming factorization holds separately for signal and background processes, the appearance of nontrivial correlations between low- and high-energy observables is a robust indicator of new physics. Under the most restrictive form of factorization, a machine-learned model trained to identify such correlations will in fact converge to the optimal new physics classifier. We test on a benchmark anomaly detection task for the Large Hadron Collider involving collimated sprays of particles called jets. By teasing out correlations between the kinematics and substructure of jets, our method can reliably extract percent-level signal fractions. This strategy for uncovering new physics adds to the growing toolbox of anomaly detection methods for collider physics with a complementary set of assumptions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Safety and reliability assessment of CO2 refrigeration system for underground applications below -50 °C

A new CO2 refrigeration concept is evaluated to cool the ATLAS and CMS experiments installed close to 100 m underground, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The first prototype unit produced to validate the conceptual design and to assess safety and reliability of the system has been commissioned. This paper presents results obtained, discusses the safety and reliability of the system and discourses on the list of recommendations for the future final units to cover the cooling loads of 380 kW for ATLAS and 750 kW for CMS at -53 °C evaporation temperature.

Nonuniversality of heavy quark hadronization in elementary high-energy collisions

It has been traditionally hypothesized that the heavy quark (charm c and bottom b) fragmentation is universal across different collision systems, based on the notion that hadronization as a soft process should occur at the characteristic nonperturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD) scale, ΛQCD. However, this universality hypothesis has recently been challenged by the observation that the c- and b-baryon production relative to their meson counterparts in minimum bias proton-proton (pp) collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies is significantly enhanced as compared to the electron-positron (e+e−) collisions. The conception of nonuniversality is unambiguously reinforced by the latest measurement of the charged-particle multiplicity dependence of the b-baryon–to–meson yield ratio, Λb/B, by the LHCb experiment in s=13TeVpp collisions at the LHC, evolving continuously from the saturation value in minimum bias pp collisions toward the small value in e+e− collisions as the system size gradually reduces. We address the multiplicity dependence of b-baryon production in the canonical statistical hadronization model with input b-hadron spectrum augmented with many hitherto unobserved states from quark model predictions. We demonstrate that the decreasing trend of the Λb/B toward low multiplicities can be quantitatively understood from the canonical suppression on the yield of Λb, as caused by the requirement of strict conservation of baryon number in sufficiently small systems. We have therefore proposed a plausible scenario for understanding the origin of the nonuniversality of heavy quark fragmentation in elementary collisions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Missing energy plus jet in the SMEFT

We study the production of dineutrinos in proton-proton collisions, with large missing transverse energy and an energetic jet as the experimental signature. Recasting a search from the ATLAS collaboration we work out constraints on semileptonic four-fermion operators, gluon and electroweak dipole operators and Z-penguins in the SMEFT. All but the Z-penguin operators experience energy-enhancement. Constraints on gluon dipole operators are the strongest, probing new physics up to 14 TeV, and improve over existing ones from collider studies. Limits on FCNC four-fermion operators are competitive with Drell-Yan production of dileptons, and improve on those for tau final states. For left-handed |∆s| = |∆d| = 1 and right-handed |∆c| = |∆u| = 1 transitions these are the best available limits, also considering rare kaon and charm decays. We estimate improvements for the 3000 fb−1 High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider.

Search for dark mesons decaying to top and bottom quarks 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}$$ \\sqrt{\ extrm{s}} $$\\end{document} = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for dark mesons originating from strongly-coupled, SU(2) dark flavor symmetry conserving models and decaying gaugephobically to pure Standard Model final states containing top and bottom quarks is presented. The search targets fully hadronic final states and final states with exactly one electron or muon and multiple jets. The analyzed data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb−1 of proton-proton collisions collected 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 with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No significant excess over the Standard Model background expectation is observed and the results are used to set the first direct constraints on this type of model. The two-dimensional signal space of dark pion masses mπD\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {m}_{\\pi_D} $$\\end{document} and dark rho-meson masses mρD\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {m}_{\\rho_D} $$\\end{document} is scanned. For mπD/mρD\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {m}_{\\pi_D}/{m}_{\\rho_D} $$\\end{document} = 0.45, dark pions with masses mπD\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {m}_{\\pi_D} $$\\end{document}< 940 GeV are excluded at the 95% CL, while for mπD/mρD\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {m}_{\\pi_D}/{m}_{\\rho_D} $$\\end{document} = 0.25 masses mπD\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {m}_{\\pi_D} $$\\end{document}< 740 GeV are excluded.

Robust anomaly detection for particle physics using multi-background representation learning

Abstract Anomaly, or out-of-distribution, detection is a promising tool for aiding discoveries of new particles or processes in particle physics. In this work, we identify and address two overlooked opportunities to improve anomaly detection for high-energy physics. First, rather than train a generative model on the single most dominant background process, we build detection algorithms using representation learning from multiple background types, thus taking advantage of more information to improve the estimation of what is relevant for detection. Second, we generalize decorrelation to the multi-background setting, thus directly enforcing a more complete definition of robustness for anomaly detection. We demonstrate the benefit of the proposed robust multi-background anomaly detection algorithms on a high-dimensional dataset of particle decays at the Large Hadron Collider.

Transforming the bootstrap: using transformers to compute scattering amplitudes in planar N=4 super Yang–Mills theory

Abstract We pursue the use of deep learning methods to improve state-of-the-art computations in theoretical high-energy physics. Planar N = 4 Super Yang-Mills theory is a close cousin to the theory that describes Higgs boson production at the Large Hadron Collider; its scattering amplitudes are large mathematical expressions containing integer coefficients. In this paper, we apply Transformers to predict these coefficients. The problem can be formulated in a language-like representation amenable to standard cross-entropy training objectives. We design two related experiments and show that the model achieves high accuracy (&gt; 98%) on both tasks. Our work shows that Transformers can be applied successfully to problems in theoretical physics that require exact solutions.&amp;#xD;

Triggering dark showers with conditional dual auto-encoders

Abstract We present a family of conditional dual auto-encoders (CoDAEs) for generic and model-independent new physics searches at colliders. New physics signals, which arise from new types of particles and interactions, are considered in our study as anomalies causing deviations in data with respect to expected background events. In this work, we perform a normal-only anomaly detection, which employs only background samples, to search for manifestations of a dark version of strong force applying (variational) auto-encoders on raw detector images, which are large and highly sparse, without leveraging any physics-based pre-processing or strong assumption on the signals. The proposed CoDAE has a dual-encoder design, which is general and can learn an auxiliary yet compact latent space through spatial conditioning, showing a neat improvement over competitive physics-based baselines and related approaches, therefore also reducing the gap with fully supervised models. It is the first time an unsupervised model is shown to exhibit excellent discrimination against multiple dark shower models, illustrating the suitability of this method as an accurate, fast, model-independent algorithm to deploy, e.g. in the real-time event triggering systems of large hadron collider experiments such as ATLAS and CMS.

Simultaneous energy and mass calibration of large-radius jets with the ATLAS detector using a deep neural network

Abstract The energy and mass measurements of jets are crucial tasks for the Large Hadron Collider experiments. This paper presents a new calibration method to simultaneously calibrate these quantities for large-radius jets measured with the ATLAS detector using a deep neural network (DNN). To address the specificities of the calibration problem, special loss functions and training procedures are employed, and a complex network architecture, which includes feature annotation and residual connection layers, is used. The DNN-based calibration is compared to the standard numerical approach in an extensive series of tests. The DNN approach is found to perform significantly better in almost all of the tests and over most of the relevant kinematic phase space. In particular, it consistently improves the energy and mass resolutions, with a 30% better energy resolution obtained for transverse momenta p T &gt; 500 GeV.

Spin asymmetries for C -even quarkonium production as a probe of gluon distributions

Within the framework of transverse momentum dependent factorization in combination with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics (QCD), we study charmonium and bottomonium production in hadronic collisions. We focus on quarkonium states with even charge conjugation, for which the color-singlet production mechanism is expected to be also dominant in the small transverse momentum region, qT2≪4Mc,b2. It is shown that the distributions of linearly polarized gluons inside unpolarized, longitudinally, and transversely polarized protons contribute to the cross sections for scalar and pseudoscalar quarkonia in a very distinctive, parity-dependent way, whereas their effects on higher angular momentum states are strongly suppressed. We derive analytical expressions for single and double spin asymmetries, which would allow for the direct extraction of the gluon transverse momentum dependent distributions, mirroring the phenomenological studies of the Drell-Yan processes aimed at the extraction of their quark counterparts. By adopting Gaussian models for the gluon transverse momentum dependent distributions, which fulfill without saturating everywhere their positivity bounds, we provide numerical predictions for the transverse single-spin asymmetries. These observables could be measured at LHCSpin, the fixed target experiment planned at the LHC. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Single production of vectorlike quarks with charge 5/3 at the 14 TeV LHC

In a framework of the Standard Model (SM) simply extended by an SU(2) doublet (X,T) including a vectorlike X-quark (VLQ-X), with electric charge |QX|=5/3, we investigate the single production of the VLQ-X induced by the couplings between the VLQ-X with the first and the third generation quarks at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operating at s=14 TeV. The signal is searched in events including same-sign dileptons (electrons or muons), one b-tagged jet and missing energy, where the X quark is assumed to decay into a top quark and a W boson, both decaying leptonically. After a rapid simulation of signal and background events, the 95% CL exclusion limits and the 5σ discovery reach are respectively obtained at the LHC with an integrated luminosity of 300 and 3000 fb−1, respectively.

Quantum-Annealing-Inspired Algorithms for Track Reconstruction at High-Energy Colliders

Charged particle reconstruction or track reconstruction is one of the most crucial components of pattern recognition in high-energy collider physics. It is known to entail enormous consumption of computing resources, especially when the particle multiplicity is high, which will be the conditions at future colliders, such as the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider and Super Proton–Proton Collider. Track reconstruction can be formulated as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem, for which various quantum algorithms have been investigated and evaluated with both a quantum simulator and hardware. Simulated bifurcation algorithms are a set of quantum-annealing-inspired algorithms, known to be serious competitors to other Ising machines. In this study, we show that simulated bifurcation algorithms can be employed to solve the particle tracking problem. The simulated bifurcation algorithms run on classical computers and are suitable for parallel processing and usage of graphical processing units, and they can handle significantly large amounts of data at high speed. These algorithms exhibit reconstruction efficiency and purity comparable to or sometimes improved over those of simulated annealing, but the running time can be reduced by as much as four orders of magnitude. These results suggest that QUBO models together with quantum-annealing-inspired algorithms are valuable for current and future particle tracking problems.

Calculable neutrino Dirac mass matrix and one-loop θ¯ in the minimal left-right symmetric model

We revisit the contribution to the strong CP parameter θ¯ from leptonic CP violation at one-loop level in the minimal left-right symmetric model in the case of generalized parity as the left-right symmetry. The Hermitian neutrino Dirac mass matrix MD can be calculated using the light and heavy neutrino masses and mixings. We propose a parametrization of the right-handed neutrino mixing matrix VR and construct the heavy neutrino mass that maintains the Hermiticity of MD. We further apply it to evaluate the one-loop θ¯, denoted as θ¯loop, as a function of the sterile neutrino masses for explicit examples of VR. By requiring the magnitude of θ¯loop≲10−10, we derive the upper limits on the sterile neutrino masses, which are within reach of direct searches at the Large Hadron Collider and neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. Furthermore, our parametrization is pertinent for other phenomenological investigations. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

R&D of a timing measurement ASIC for possible HL-LHC upgrade

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will undergo a major upgrade for the High Luminosity phase of the LHC (HL-LHC), which is expected to start in 2029 [1]. In addition to improving the detector rate capabilities and performance at increased higher luminosity, precision timing measurements are added to mitigate pile-up effects. The timing detector currently under construction covers pseudo-rapidity up to η=3[2] . A possible pathway for further improvements is the extension of timing capabilities to cover the full tracker acceptance up to η=4. Low Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGAD) pixels have been shown to be a suitable candidate for replacing a part of the pixel detector end-caps during a future Long Shutdown or Year-End Technical Stop of the LHC. Here, we present preliminary results of our design efforts towards a readout Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) capable of operating with LGAD pixel sensors [3]. The first results of the modeling of a part of the ASIC are demonstrated.

Search for a leptophobic doubly charged Higgs in same-sign four-lepton and six-lepton signatures in a left-right symmetric model

We investigate the possibility of multi-lepton (four and six) signatures, including an exotic signature of same-sign four-lepton (SS4L) as signals of pair production of a doubly charged Higgs in the minimal left-right symmetric model, extended with two doublet scalars. The right-handed neutrino masses are generated in this model through a dimension-5 lepton-number violating operator allowing the triplet scalar interactions with leptons to become negligibly small. This leads to interesting six-lepton and SS4L signatures that can be observed at the high-luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) with almost no background for doubly charged Higgs with mass below 500 GeV.

Search for non-resonant Higgs boson pair production in final states with leptons, taus, and photons in pp 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 with the ATLAS detector

A search is presented for non-resonant Higgs boson pair production, targeting the bbZZ, 4V (V = W or Z), VVττ, 4τ, γγVV and γγττ decay channels. Events are categorised based on the multiplicity of light charged leptons (electrons or muons), hadronically decaying tau leptons, and photons. The search is based on a data sample of 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 recorded with the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb−1. No evidence of the signal is found and the observed (expected) upper limit on the cross-section for non-resonant Higgs boson pair production is determined to be 17 (11) times the Standard Model predicted cross-section at 95% confidence level under the background-only hypothesis. The observed (expected) constraints on the HHH coupling modifier, κλ, are determined to be −6.2 < κλ< 11.6 (−4.5 < κλ< 9.6) at 95% confidence level, assuming the Standard Model for the expected limits and that new physics would only affect κλ.

Interplay of freeze-in and freeze-out: Lepton-flavored dark matter and muon colliders

We study a lepton-flavored dark matter model and its signatures at a future muon collider. We focus on the less-explored regime of feeble dark matter interactions, which suppresses the dangerous lepton-flavor-violating processes, gives rise to dark matter freeze-in production, and leads to long-lived particle signatures at colliders. We find that the interplay of dark matter freeze-in and its mediator freeze-out gives rise to an upper bound of around TeV scales on the dark matter mass. The signatures of this model depend on the lifetime of the mediator and can range from generic prompt decays to more exotic long-lived particle signals. In the prompt region, we calculate the signal yield, study useful kinematics cuts, and report tolerable systematics that would allow for a 5σ discovery. In the long-lived region, we calculate the number of charged tracks and displaced lepton signals of our model in different parts of the detector and uncover kinematic features that can be used for background rejection. We show that, unlike in hadron colliders, multiple production channels contribute significantly, which leads to sharply distinct kinematics for electroweakly charged long-lived particle signals. Ultimately, the collider signatures of this lepton-flavored dark matter model are common among models of electroweak-charged new physics, rendering this model a useful and broadly applicable benchmark model for future muon collider studies that can help inform work on detector design and studies of systematics. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Exploring hidden signal: Fine-tuning ResNet-50 for dark matter detection

In pursuit of detecting dark matter signals, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has conducted proton-proton collisions to probe for these elusive particles, whose existence has been supported by astronomical observations. Despite extensive efforts by the CMS and ATLAS experiments, the direct detection of dark matter signals remains elusive. The current approaches employed for analyzing dark matter signatures utilize the cut-and-count method based on conventional techniques. This study introduces an alternative method for exploring dark matter signatures by utilizing fine-tuning of pre-trained models, such as ResNet-50, on 2D histograms generated from a combination of signal + background samples and background-only samples. By utilizing various signal-to-background ratios as benchmarks, an accuracy of about 90% for a signal-to-background ratio of 0.008 is achieved. This approach not only offers a more refined search for dark matter signals but also presents an efficient and effective means of analysis using machine learning techniques.

Heavy-flavor hadron production in relativistic heavy ion collisions at energies available at BNL RHIC and at the CERN LHC in the EPOS4HQ framework

Employing the recently developed EPOS4HQ event generator, we study the production of different heavy-flavor mesons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and CERN Large Hadron Collider energies. The transverse momentum spectra, yield ratio, nuclear modification factor, and elliptic flow can be well described in the EPOS4HQ framework. We furthermore analyze the processes which modify these observables as compared to pp collisions and are at the origin of the experimentally determined nuclear modification factor RAA. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Probing the internal structures of pΩ and ΩΩ with their production at the Large Hadron Collider

The strange dibaryons pΩ (S25) and ΩΩ (S01) are likely bound, existing either in molecular states like the deuteron or as more exotic compact six-quark states. Here, we investigate the production of these two dibaryons in Pb+Pb collisions at sNN=2.76 TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider within a covariant coalescence model, which employs a blast-wave-like parametrization for the phase-space configurations of constituent particles at freeze-out. For the molecular states, the pΩ and ΩΩ are produced via p−Ω and Ω−Ω coalescence, respectively, while for the six-quark states, they are formed through uudsss and ssssss coalescence. We find that the yield ratios NpΩ/NΩ and NΩΩ/NΩ have a distinct centrality dependence between the molecular and multiquark states, thus offering a promising way for distinguishing the two states. Our results suggest that the measurements of pΩ and ΩΩ production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions can shed light on their internal structures. Published by the American Physical Society 2024