Lepton-antilepton Pair Research Articles

A Comprehensive Overview of Photon-Proton Scattering and QCD Methodology

The AdS/CFT correspondence is used as a helpful reference in the light front hyperbolic geometry technique, which solves this issue by mapping a confining gauge theory parameterized on the light front to a greater anti-de Sitter space. Three different interaction processes exist Direct or angular the target photon quark and the photon pair directly. When a lepton-antilepton pair is produced, only quantum electrodynamics (QED) is used; however, when a quark-antiquark pair is produced, both QED and perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD) are used. A deep-inelastic electron-photon scattering experiment was used to study the photon structure function, which describes the photon inherent quark composition: Single resolved: the desired spectroscopy quark combination creates the vector meson, one of the constituents of relationships to the investigating photon. The main focus of the current study was on photon-proton and QCD methodology. The main theoretical conclusion resulting from the work carried out can be used in the development of the conceptual concept of further researchers and this work also will be a guideline for future researchers.

Impact parameter dependence of photon-photon interactions in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

The Lorentz-boosted electromagnetic fields surrounding relativistic heavy ions with large charges can be treated as a flux of linearly polarized quasireal photons, which can interact via the photon-photon scattering to produce lepton antilepton pairs. Those photon-photon interactions can happen even in heavy-ion collisions with hadronic overlap, making an opportunity to probe the electromagnetic properties of the produced deconfined quark-gluon plasma. In this paper, we review the recent experimental progress of the impact parameter dependent photon-photon interactions in heavy-ion collisions, and discuss their essential role in probing the possible electromagnetic properties of quark-gluon plasma produced in hadronic heavy-ion collisions.

Fiducial cross sections for the lepton-pair-plus-photon decay mode in Higgs production up to NNLO QCD

The rare three-body decay of a Higgs boson to a lepton-antilepton pair and a photon is starting to become experimentally accessible at the LHC. We investigate how higher-order QCD corrections to the dominant gluon-fusion production process impact on the fiducial cross sections in this specific Higgs decay mode for electrons and muons. Corrections up to NNLO QCD are found to be sizeable. They are generally uniform in kinematical variables related to the Higgs boson, but display several distinctive features in the kinematics of its individual decay products.

Mapping the electromagnetic fields of heavy-ion collisions with the Breit-Wheeler process

Ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions are expected to produce the strongest electromagnetic fields in the known Universe. These highly-Lorentz contracted fields can manifest themselves as linearly polarized quasi-real photons that can interact via the Breit-Wheeler process to produce lepton anti-lepton pairs. The energy and momentum distribution of the produced dileptons carry information about the strength and spatial distribution of the colliding fields. Recently it has been demonstrated that photons from these fields can interact even in heavy-ion collisions with hadronic overlap, providing a purely electromagnetic probe of the produced medium. In this review we discuss the recent theoretical progress and experimental advances for mapping the ultra-strong electromagnetic fields produced in heavy-ion collisions via measurement of the Breit-Wheeler process.

A semi-classical study on the Sauter-Schwinger effect of lepton antilepton pairs in vacuum

In this paper we purpose a fluctuation mechanism of the continuously appearing and disappearing lepton-antilepton pairs in vacuum. Within this approach, a semi-classical study on the Sauter-Schwinger effect is accomplished. We examined the suggested mechanism by comparing calculation of the Schwinger threshold our mechanism provides with the original one (m2c3/eℏ). While derivation we observed that the fluctuation mechanism suggests that muons and tauons should maintain the idea of classical lepton radius just as electrons maintain the idea of classical electron radius. The mechanism provides that lepton-antilepton pairs have initial total energies proportional to their rest mass energies with common constant of proportionality equal to1.47858037433852.

Neutrino tridents at DUNE

The DUNE near detector will collect an unprecedented large number of neutrino interactions, allowing the precise measurement of rare processes such as neutrino trident production, i.e. the generation of a lepton-antilepton pair through the scattering of a neutrino off a heavy nucleus. The event rate of this process is a powerful probe to a well-motivated parameter space of new physics beyond the Standard Model. In this paper, we perform a detailed sensitivity study of the DUNE near detector to neutrino tridents. We provide state-of-the-art predictions for the Standard Model cross sections and corresponding event rates at the near detector for the nu_mu -> nu_mu mu^+ mu^-, nu_mu -> nu_mu e^+e^- and nu_mu -> nu_e e^+ mu^- trident interactions (and the corresponding anti-neutrino modes), discussing their uncertainties. We analyze all relevant backgrounds, utilize a Geant4-based simulation of the DUNE-near detector liquid argon TPC (the official DUNE simulation at the time of writing this paper), and identify a set of selection cuts that would allow the DUNE near detector to measure the nu_mu -> nu_mu mu^+ mu^- cross section with a ~25% accuracy after running in neutrino and anti-neutrino modes for ~3 years each. This would lead to the most precise measurement of the trident process, surpassing the previous measurement by the CCFR collaboration. We show that this measurement would be highly sensitive to new physics, and, in particular, we find that the parameter space of models with gauged L_mu - L_tau that can explain the (g-2)_mu anomaly could be covered almost entirely. As a byproduct, a new Monte Carlo tool to generate neutrino trident events is made publicly available.

Dark tridents at off-axis liquid argon neutrino detectors

We present dark tridents, a new channel for exploring dark sectors in short-baseline neutrino experiments. Dark tridents are clean, distinct events where, like neutrino tridents, the scattering of a very weakly coupled particle leads to the production of a lepton-antilepton pair. Dark trident production occurs in models where long-lived dark-sector particles are produced along with the neutrinos in a beam-dump environment and interact with neutrino detectors downstream, producing an on-shell boson which decays into a pair of charged leptons. We focus on a simple model where the dark matter particle interacts with the standard model exclusively through a dark photon, and concentrate on the region of parameter space where the dark photon mass is smaller than twice that of the dark matter particle and hence decays exclusively into standard-model particles. We compute event rates and discuss search strategies for dark tridents from dark matter at the current and upcoming liquid argon detectors aligned with the Booster beam at Fermilab — MicroBooNE, SBND, and ICARUS — assuming the dark sector particles are produced off-axis in the higher energy NuMI beam. We find that MicroBooNE has already recorded enough data to be competitive with existing bounds on this dark sector model, and that new regions of parameter space will be probed with future data and experiments.

Probing leptophilic dark sectors with hadronic processes

We study vector portal dark matter models where the mediator couples only to leptons. In spite of the lack of tree-level couplings to colored states, radiative effects generate interactions with quark fields that could give rise to a signal in current and future experiments. We identify such experimental signatures: scattering of nuclei in dark matter direct detection; resonant production of lepton–antilepton pairs at the Large Hadron Collider; and hadronic final states in dark matter indirect searches. Furthermore, radiative effects also generate an irreducible mass mixing between the vector mediator and the Z boson, severely bounded by ElectroWeak Precision Tests. We use current experimental results to put bounds on this class of models, accounting for both radiatively induced and tree-level processes. Remarkably, the former often overwhelm the latter.

Measurement of event-shape observables in [Formula: see text] events in pp collisions at [Formula: see text][Formula: see text] with the ATLAS detector at the LHC.

Event-shape observables measured using charged particles in inclusive Z-boson events are presented, using the electron and muon decay modes of the Z bosons. The measurements are based on an integrated luminosity of 1.1~mathrm{fb}^{-1} of proton–proton collisions recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy sqrt{s}=7 {mathrm{TeV}}. Charged-particle distributions, excluding the lepton–antilepton pair from the Z-boson decay, are measured in different ranges of transverse momentum of the Z boson. Distributions include multiplicity, scalar sum of transverse momenta, beam thrust, transverse thrust, spherocity, and {mathcal {F}}-parameter, which are in particular sensitive to properties of the underlying event at small values of the Z-boson transverse momentum. The measured observables are compared with predictions from Pythia 8, Sherpa, and Herwig 7. Typically, all three Monte Carlo generators provide predictions that are in better agreement with the data at high Z-boson transverse momenta than at low Z-boson transverse momenta, and for the observables that are less sensitive to the number of charged particles in the event.

Simulation of electromagnetic and strange probes of dense nuclear matter at NICA/MPD

The main task of the NICA/MPD physics program is a study of the properties of nuclear matter under extreme conditions achieved in collisions of heavy ions. These properties can reveal themselves through different probes, the most promising among those being the lepton-antilepton pairs and strange hadrons. In this paper the MPD performance for measuring the electron-positron pairs and strange hyperons in central Au+Au collisions at NICA energies is presented.

Electromagnetic and strange probes of dense nuclear matter at NICA/MPD: a feasibility study

The main task of the NICA/MPD physics program is a study of the properties of nuclear matter under extreme conditions achieved in collisions of heavy ions. These properties can reveal themselves through different probes, the most promising among those being the lepton-antilepton pairs and strange hadrons. In this paper the MPD performance for measuring the electron-positron pairs and strange particles (Λ, Ξ– and Ω– hyperons and their antiparticles \(\overline \Lambda \), \({\overline \Xi ^ + }\) and \({\overline \Omega ^ + }\) as well as hypernuclei 3ΛΛ) in central Au + Au collisions at NICA energies is presented.

Electromagnetic probes in heavy-ion collisions

Due to their penetrating nature, electromagnetic probes, i.e., lepton-antilepton pairs (dileptons) and photons are unique tools to gain insight into the nature of the hot and dense medium of strongly-interacting particles created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, including hints to the nature of the restoration of chiral symmetry of QCD. Of particular interest are the spectral properties of the electromagnetic current-correlation function of these particles within the dense and/or hot medium. The related theoretical investigations of the in-medium properties of the involved particles in both the partonic and hadronic part of the QCD phase diagram underline the importance of a proper understanding of the properties of various hadron resonances in the medium.

Central production of lepton–antilepton pairs and heavy quark composite states in hadron diffractive collisions at ultrahigh energies

Central production of lepton–antilepton pairs (e+e- and μ+μ-) and heavy quark composite states (charmonia and bottomonia) in diffractive proton collisions (proton momenta transferred |q⊥| ~ m/ ln s) are studied at ultrahigh energies ( ln s ≫ 1), where σ tot (pp±) ~ ln N s with 1 ≲ N ≲ 2. The pp±-rescattering corrections, which are not small, are calculated in terms of the K-matrix approach modified for ultrahigh energies. Two versions of hadron interactions are considered in detail: the growth (i) σ tot (pp±) ~ ln 2 s, σ inel (pp±) ~ ln 2 s within the black disk mode and (ii) σ tot (pp±) ~ ln 2 s, σ inel (pp±) ~ ln s within the resonant disk mode. The energy behavior of the diffractive production processes differs strongly for these modes, thus giving a possibility to distinguish between the versions of the ultrahigh energy interactions.

Enhancement of Majorana dark matter annihilation through Higgs bremsstrahlung

For Majorana dark matter, gauge boson bremsstrahlung plays an important role in enhancing an otherwise helicity-suppressed s-wave annihilation cross-section. This is well known for processes involving a radiated photon or gluon together with a Standard Model fermion-antifermion pair, and the case of massive electroweak gauge bosons has also recently been studied. Here we show that internal Higgs bremsstrahlung also lifts helicity suppression and could be the dominant contribution to the annihilation rate in the late Universe for dark matter masses below ∼ 1 TeV. Using a toy model of leptophilic dark matter, we calculate the annihilation cross-section into a lepton-antilepton pair with a Higgs boson and investigate the energy spectra of the final stable particles at the annihilation point.

Scalar dark matter models with significant internal bremsstrahlung

There has been interest recently on particle physics models that may give rise to sharp gamma ray spectral features from dark matter annihilation. Because dark matter is supposed to be electrically neutral, it is challenging to build weakly interacting massive particle models that may accommodate both a large cross section into gamma rays at, say, the Galactic center, and the right dark matter abundance. In this work, we consider the gamma ray signatures of a class of scalar dark matter models that interact with Standard Model dominantly through heavy vector-like fermions (the vector-like portal). We focus on a real scalar singlet S annihilating into lepton-antilepton pairs. Because this two-body final-state annihilation channel is d-wave suppressed in the chiral limit, σff̄v∝v4, we show that virtual internal bremsstrahlung emission of a gamma ray gives a large correction, both today and at the time of freeze-out. For the sake of comparison, we confront this scenario to the familiar case of a Majorana singlet annihilating into light lepton-antilepton pairs, and show that the virtual internal bremsstrahlung signal may be enhanced by a factor of (up to) two orders of magnitude. We discuss the scope and possible generalizations of the model.

Study of theη→e+e−γDecay Using WASA-at-COSY Detector System

Since the eta meson is a short-lived neutral particle, it is not possible to investigate its structure via classical methods of particle scattering. To learn about its quark wave function, one studies those decay processes of this meson in which a pair of photons is produced, where at least one of them is virtual. The virtual photons have a non-zero mass and convert into lepton-antilepton pairs. Therefore, information about the quarks' spatial distribution inside the meson can be extracted from the lepton-antilepton invariant mass distributions by comparing the empirical results with QED predictions, which are based on the assumption that the meson is a point-like particle. The deviation from the expected behavior in the leptonic mass spectrum exposes the inner structure of the meson. This deviation is characterized by a form factor. The corresponding data were collected for the pd --> 3He eta reaction at a proton beam momentum of 1.69 GeV/c. The experiment was performed using the WASA-at-COSY detector in November 2008. 525 +/- 26 events of the eta --> g e+ e- decay channel were reconstructed. The analysis chain led to the determination of the value of the slope parameter, bp, equal to (2.27 +/- 0.73stat. +/- 0.46sys.) GeV^{-2}, where the systematical uncertainty should be treated as an upper limit only. The estimation of the charge radius of the eta meson has been made resulting with the value of < r(eta)^2 >^(1/2) = (0.68 +/- 0.02) fm.

Tests of the fundamental symmetries in η meson decays

Patterns of chiral symmetry violation and tests of the conservation of the fundamental C, P and CP symmetries are key physics issues in studies of the π0, η and η′ meson decays. These tests include searches for rare or forbidden decays and searches for asymmetries among the decay products in the not-so-rare decays. Some examples for the rare decays are η → 2π, η → 4π0 (CP tests), decays into an odd number of photons (e.g., η → 3γ) and the decay η → π0e+e− (C tests). In the conversion decay η → π+π−e+e−, the asymmetry in the distribution of the angle between the two-pion and two-lepton decay planes allows to search for CP violation in a flavor-conserving process beyond the CKM mechanism which is not constrained by the limits on the neutron dipole moment. In addition, the Dalitz decays and the decays into a lepton-antilepton pair are sensitive to contributions from a vector boson responsible for the annihilation of hypothetical light dark matter particles. The muon g – 2 and the branching ratio for the π0 e+e− decay are currently the observables where hints of a deviation from the Standard Model predictions are reported. The experimental studies of the π0, η and η′ meson decays are carried out at four European accelerator research facilities: KLOE/KLOE-2 at DAFNE (Frascati), Crystal Ball at MAMI (Mainz), WASA at COSY (Jülich), Crystal Barrel at ELSA (Bonn).

Azimuthal asymmetries in exclusive four-particle “Drell-Yan” events

I study hard collisions between unpolarized protons and antiprotons where a lepton-antilepton pair is detected in coincidence with a final proton-antiproton pair, and no more particles are produced, in the regime 10 GeV^2 << s << 1000 GeV^2, M > 4 GeV, q_T < 3 GeV/c. The present work is centered on azimuthal asymmetries. Because of momentum conservation, a Boer-Mulders term in the momentum distribution of a quark implies a balancing effect in the momentum distribution of some spectators. This produces azimuthal asymmetries of the final hadrons. To analyze this, I have organized a parton-level MonteCarlo generator where a standard cos(2phi)-asymmetry of the dilepton distribution is produced, thanks to a soft rescattering process between an active quark coming from a hadron and a spectator anti-diquark coming from the other hadron. This produces cos(2phi)-asymmetries of the final hadron pair. Hadron and lepton asymmetries have the same size.

Model-independent constraints on lepton-flavor-violating decays of the top quark

The imminent start of the Large Hadron Collider, which is expected to produce $\sim 10^8$ $t\bar{t}$ pairs per year, provides an unprecedented opportunity for top physics. As the top quark is widely expected to be rather sensitive to effects of new physics, a detailed study of its properties, including rare decays, is called for. A possible, experimentally distinctive decay is the case where a top decays to a light quark and a flavor-violating lepton-antilepton pair. We use an effective operator analysis to place model-independent bounds on contributions to the decays $t\to u e^{\pm} \mu^{\mp}$ and $t\to c e^{\pm} \mu^{\mp}$. We enumerate the dimension-six operators which contribute to these decays and which are invariant under the Standard Model gauge group. We separate these operators into two classes, one with operators where the top quark belongs to an SU(2) doublet and thus can contribute at tree level to low-energy processes, and one class with operators where the top quark is a right-handed singlet and can only contribute to low-energy processes via loop diagrams. We use $B$ and $K$ decays to place limits on the coefficients of some of these operators, but find that several remain unconstrained and could potentially make observable contributions to top decay.

Lepton decay channels of egret gluinos at the LHC

Prospects for observing a SUSY-like signal from two gluinos \( \tilde g\tilde g \) are investigated within a certain region of the mSUGRA parameter space, where the cross section of the two gluino production in pp collisions at the LHC (\( \sqrt s \) = 14 TeV) via gluon-gluon fusion (gg → \( \tilde g\tilde g \)) is estimated at a rather high level of 17.3 pb. In this so-called EGRET region, the lightest stable neutralinos can serve as cold dark matter particles and are natural explanations of the excess of diffuse galactic gamma rays observed by the EGRET space apparatus. The \( \tilde g\tilde g \) -event selection relies on a very clear signature when decay products of each gluino contain one b-anti-b pair, one or two lepton-antilepton pair(s) and a neutralino. Rather high transverse-missing energy, carried away by the two neutralinos, is an essential signature of the events and also allows the relevant Standard Model background to be reduced significantly. In particular, it was found that the clear signatures of the selected processes demonstrate good prospects discovering the EGRET gluinos at the LHC. Furthermore, these signatures allow one to distinguish different mSUGRA parameters m1/2 inside the EGRET region.