We formulate a collinear partonic shower algorithm that achieves next-to-single-logarithmic (NSL, $\alpha_s^n L^{n-1}$) accuracy for collinear-sensitive non-singlet fragmentation observables. This entails the development of an algorithm for nesting triple-collinear splitting functions. It also involves the inclusion of the one-loop double-collinear corrections, through a $z$-dependent NLO-accurate effective $1\to 2$ branching probability, using a formula that can be applied more generally also to future full showers with $1\to3$ splitting kernels. The specific NLO branching probability is calculated in two ways, one based on slicing, the other using a subtraction approach based on recent analytical calculations. We close with demonstrations of the shower's accuracy for non-singlet partonic fragmentation functions and the energy spectrum of small-$R$ quark jets. This work represents an important conceptual step towards general NNLL accuracy in parton showers.
We demonstrate a new technique to search for dark compact objects. When dark matter comprising a dark compact object interacts with photons, the compact object can disperse light traveling though it. As these objects pass between the Earth and a distant star, they act as "lampshades" that dim the star. We examine how dimming effects from clumps of dark matter in the galaxy could be searched for in microlensing surveys, which measure the brightness of stars as a function of time. Using the EROS-2 and OGLE surveys, we show that a dimming analysis of existing data can be used to constrain dark sectors, and could be used to discover dark matter in compact objects.
We study the theory of a scalar in the fundamental representation of the internal supergroup $SU(N|M)$. Remarkably, for $M=N+1$ its tree-level mass does not receive quantum corrections at one loop from either self-coupling or interactions with gauge bosons and fermions. This property comes at the price of introducing both degrees of freedom with wrong statistics and with wrong sign kinetic terms. We detail a method to break $SU(N|M)$ down to its bosonic subgroup through a Higgs-like mechanism, allowing for the partial decoupling of the dangerous modes, and study the associated vacuum structure up to one loop.
The long-distance and non-local parts of the form factors describing the single-photon mediated $K_{S,L}\to\pi^0\gamma^*\to\pi^0\ell^+\ell^-$ ($\ell = e, \mu$) transitions in the standard model are addressed in QCD in the limit where the number $N_c$ of colours becomes infinite. It is shown that this provides a suitable theoretical framework to study these decay modes and that it allows to predict the decay rates for $K_{S}\to\pi^0\ell^+\ell^-$. It also unambiguously predicts that the interference between the direct and indirect CP-violating contributions to the decay rate for $K_L\to\pi^0 \ell^+ \ell^-$ is constructive.
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a leading experiment in neutrino physics which is presently under construction. DUNE aims to measure the yet unknown parameters in the three flavor oscillation case which includes discovery of leptonic CP violation, determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy and measuring the octant of $\theta_{23}$. Additionally, the ancillary goals of DUNE include probing the subdominant effects induced by possible physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). One such new physics scenario is the possible presence of Large Extra Dimension (LED) which can naturally give rise to tiny neutrino masses. LED impacts neutrino oscillation through two new parameters, - namely the lightest Dirac mass $m_{0}$ and the radius of the extra dimension $R_{\text{ED}}$ ($< 2$ $\mu$m). At the DUNE baseline of 1300 km, the probability seems to be modified more at the higher energy ($\gtrsim 4-5$ GeV) in presence of LED. In this work, we attempt to constrain the parameter space of $m_{0}$ and $R_{\text{ED}}$ by performing a statistical analysis of neutrino data simulated at DUNE far detector (FD). We illustrate how a combination of the standard low energy (LE) neutrino beam and a medium energy (ME) neutrino beam can take advantage of the relatively large impact of LED at higher energy and improve the constraints. In the analysis we also show the role of the individual oscillation channels ($\nu_{\mu} \to \nu_{e}, \nu_{\mu} \to \nu_{\mu}, \nu_{\mu} \to \nu_{\tau}$), as well as the two neutrino mass hierarchies.
The energy and centrality dependence of the kaon resonance ratio $(K^{*0}+\Bar{K}^{*0})/(K^+ + K^-)$ is explored in the RHIC-BES and CBM-FAIR energy regime. To this aim, the Ultra-relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) model is employed to simulate reconstructable $K^{*}$ resonances in Au+Au and p+p collisions from $\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}=3-39$ GeV. We obtain a good description of the resonance yields and mean transverse momenta over the whole investigated energy range. The decrease of the $K^*/K$ ratio, with increasing centrality is in line with the available experimental data. We also observe the experimenatlly measured increase in $\langle p_{\text{T}}\rangle$ with increasing centrality which is interpreted as a lower reconstruction probability of low-$p_{\text{T}}$ $K^*$ due to the $p_{\text{T}}$ dependent absorption of the decay daughter hadrons. We conclude that the observed suppression of reconstructable $K^{*}$ resonances provides a strong sign of an extended hadronic rescattering stage at all investigated energies. Its duration increases from peripheral to central reactions as expected. Following a method, suggested by the STAR experiment, the "duration" of the hadronic stage is extracted using the $K^*/K$ ratios at chemical and kinetic freeze-out. The resulting lifetimes are in good agreement with the experimental data, but much shorter than the actual lifetime of the hadronic phase in the transport simulation. This indicates that the experimental method to estimate the life time of the hadronic stage is too simplified.
I describe in detail the phenomenology of a d=4 flavour-non-universal gauge theory, based on Ref. [1] , where global accidental symmetries control the pattern of the Yukawa couplings of the charged fermions and, at the same time, the deviations from the Standard Model of the relevant flavour observables. Special attention is payed to the phenomenology at the lowest new scale, the mass $m_{Z_{23}}$ of a neutral vector boson, in the MultiTeV
We apply the 3D glasma simulation method using Milne coordinates, proposed in our previous work [1], to the early stage of the Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=200$ GeV. The nucleus model prior to the collisions, which offers the initial condition for the 3D glasma simulation is constructed to account for the longitudinal structure of the nucleus, the finite thickness of nucleons and their random positions along the collision axis. We investigate rapidity profiles for a wide range of physical quantities of the glasma, including energy, pressure, fluctuations of topological charge, eccentricity, and angular momentum. In particular, we elucidate the behavior of eccentricity and angular momentum, which are physical quantities dependent on the geometric shape of the glasma, across a wide range of impact parameter regions.
Baryon number conservation is an accidental symmetry in the Standard Model, but its violation is theoretically anticipated, making the search for such processes a promising avenue for discovering new physics. In this paper, we explore how measurements of different nucleon decay channels can reveal the structure of the underlying theory. We investigate the chirality structure of baryon-number violating interactions through lifetime measurements of strangeness-conserving nucleon-decay channels. By employing an effective field theory approach, we demonstrate that the ratio of partial decay widths of proton decay channels, $\Gamma(p \to \eta \ell^+)/\Gamma(p \to \pi^0 \ell^+)$, where $\ell^+$ denotes a positron or anti-muon, is sensitive to this chirality structure. Furthermore, we find that in certain new physics models, both anti-lepton and anti-neutrino channels provide valuable insights into the model's structure. Our results highlight the importance of searching for various decay channels in upcoming nucleon decay experiments.
I present an algorithm for the reconstruction of multivariate rational functions from black-box probes. The arguably most important application in high-energy physics is the calculation of multi-loop and multi-leg amplitudes, where rational functions appear as coefficients in the integration-by-parts reduction to basis integrals. I show that for a dense coefficient the algorithm is nearly optimal, in the sense that the number of required probes is close to the number of unknowns.
In a canonical type-I seesaw scenario, the SM is extended with three singlet right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) $N_i, i=1,2,3$ with masses $M_i, i=1,2,3$ to simultaneously explain sub-eV masses of light neutrinos and baryon asymmetry of the Universe. In this paper, we show that a relatively low-scale thermal leptogenesis accompanied by gravitational wave signatures is possible when the type-I seesaw is extended with a singlet fermion ($S$) and a singlet scalar ($\rho$), where $S$ and $\rho$ are odd under a discrete $Z_2$ symmetry. We also add a vector-like fermion doublet $\Psi$ and impose a $Z^\prime_2$ symmetry under which both $N_1$ and $\Psi$ are odd while all other particles are even. This gives rise to a singlet-doublet Majorana fermion dark matter in our setup. At a high scale, the $Z_2$ symmetry is broken spontaneously by the vacuum expectation value of $\rho$ and leads to : (i) mixing between RHNs ($N_2, N_3$) and S, and (ii) formation of Domain walls (DWs). In the former case, the final lepton asymmetry is generated by the out-of-equilibrium decay of $S$, which dominantly mixes with $N_2$. We show that the scale of thermal leptogenesis can be lowered to $M_S \sim 4 \times 10^8$ GeV. In the latter case, the disappearance of the DWs gives observable gravitational wave signatures, which can be probed at NANOGrav, EPTA, LISA, etc.
We explore how higher-order derivative terms impact a physical observable within a Lorentz-Symmetry Violating (LSV) framework. We specifically examine Podolsky electrodynamics coupled with the Carroll-Field-Jackiw model (CFJ). Our analysis shows how vacuum and wave propagation are affected by the interaction of LSV parameters with properties of Podolsky electrodynamics. In this scenario, our results indicate that the new electromagnetic vacuum is birefringent, dichroic, and dispersive. We also point out that the higher-derivative term in the presence of the CFJ space-time anisotropy induces an oscillation mechanism between the photon, which acquires a non-vanishing mass, and the massive vector mode carried by the higher derivative. We then investigate the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a moving charged particle interacting with this new medium. Our analysis reveals that the refractive vacuum through which the charged particle travels influences the electromagnetic radiation, leading to a profile similar to the Cherenkov effect.
The ground state of QCD in sufficiently strong magnetic field at finite baryon density is an inhomogeneous state consisting of an array of solitons, called the chiral soliton lattice (CSL). It is, however, replaced in a region with higher density and/or magnetic field by the so-called domain-wall Skyrmion(DWSk) phase where Skyrmions are created on top of the CSL. This was previously proposed within the Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) approximation neglecting a gauge field dynamics and taking into account its effect by a flux quantization condition. In this paper, by taking into account dynamics of the gauge field, we show that the phase boundary between the CSL and DWSk phases beyond the BPS approximation is identical to the one obtained in the BPS approximation. We also find that domain-wall Skyrmions are electrically charged with the charge one as a result of the chiral anomaly.
The planar two-loop scalar Feynman integrals contributing to the massive NNLO QCD corrections for $W$-boson pair production via quark-antiquark annihilation can be classified into three family branches, each of which is reduced to a distinct set of master integrals (MIs), totaling $27$, $45$ and $15$, respectively. These MIs are analytically calculated using the method of differential equations, with solutions expanded as Taylor series in the dimensional regulator $\epsilon$. For the first two family branches, the differential systems can be successfully transformed into canonical form by adopting appropriate bases of MIs. This enables the MIs of these family branches to be expressed either as Goncharov polylogarithms (GPLs) or as one-fold integrals over GPLs, up to $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^4)$. In contrast, the differential system for the third family branch can only be cast into a form linear in $\epsilon$ due to the presence of elliptic integrals. The solution to this linear-form differential system is expressed in an iterated form owing to the strictly lower-triangular structure of the coefficient matrices at $\epsilon = 0$. Our analytic expressions for these MIs are verified with high accuracy against the numerical results from the \texttt{AMFlow} package.
We employ the entropic uncertainty relations and the quantum Fisher information to explore the formation of quark $t\bar{t}$ pairs at a large hadron collider through the combination of $q\bar{q}$ pair and $gg$ pair initiated processes. A comprehensive analysis has been undertaken on the procedure of quark and gluon channel mixing in the production of top quark pairs $t\bar{t}$, encompassing the tightness of the entropic uncertainty inequalities and the maximum quantum Fisher information of the system.
Since the discovery of $T_{cc}$ by LHCb, there has been considerable interest in $T_{cc}$ and its heavy-flavor partners. However, the study of its strange partner $T_{ss}$ has been largely overlooked. Within the framework of the chiral quark model, we conducted a systematic study of the bound states of $T_{ss}$ utilizing the Gaussian Expansion Method. Considering all physical channels with $01^{+}$, including molecular and diquark structures. Our calculations revealed that upon considering the coupling between diquarks and molecular states, we identified a deep bound state with a bounding energy of 60 MeV, primarily composed of $K K^{*}$. Using the $^3P_0$ model, we calculated the decay width of $K^{*}$ within the $KK^{*}$ bound state, which is approximated as the decay width of the bound state in the $T_{ss}$ system. The results indicate that due to the effect of binding energy, the decay width of $K^{*}$ in $KK^{*}$ is approximately $3$ MeV smaller than that of $K^{*}$ in vacuum. Additionally, resonance state calculations were performed. Utilizing the real-scaling method, we searched for possible resonance states in the $T_{ss}$ sysytem. Due to the strong attraction in the $[K^{*}]_8[K^{*}]_8$ configuration, four resonance states were found in the vicinity of $2.2$-$2.8$ GeV, predominantly featuring hidden-color structures, and their decay widths are all less than $10$ MeV. We strongly recommend experimental efforts to search for the resonance states in the $T_{ss}$ system predicted by our calculations.
In this paper, we derive the renormalization scale dependence of noncommutative mirror Yukawa couplings. To achieve this, we first formulate an Euclidean noncommutative version of the Yukawa sector within the electroweak-scale mirror right handed neutrinos model. Then, we calculate the noncommutative one loop $\beta$ functions of Yukawa couplings for mirror fermions involved in this model, by taking advantage of the Slavnov Taylor identities for the universal mirror Yukawa couplings, and by using the noncommutative vulcanised scalar and spinor propagators that prevent the UV/IR mixing. This leads us to a system of six cubic coupled first order differential equations that depend only on the mirror Yukawa couplings and not on the noncommutative deformation and vulcanised parameters. We solve this system numerically for different initial conditions to get the evolution of the mirror Yukawa couplings in terms of the renormalization scale. Furthermore, we discuss the link to the commutative case and analyze the occurrence of the Landau pole for some specific sets of initial conditions.
We propose a class of dark matter models based on a chiral $U(1)$ gauge symmetry acting on a dark sector. The chiral $U(1)$ protects the masses of the dark sector fermions, and also guarantees the stability of the dark matter particle by virtue of an unbroken discrete $\mathcal{Z}_N$ gauge symmetry. We identify 38 such $U(1)$ models which are descendants of a chiral $SU(3) \times SU(2)$ gauge symmetry, consisting of a minimal set of fermions with simple $U(1)$ charge assignments. We show how these models can also be utilized to generate small Majorana neutrino masses radiatively via the scotogenic mechanism with the dark sector particles circulating inside loop diagrams. We further explore the phenomenology of the simplest model in this class, which admits a Majorana fermion, Dirac fermion or a scalar field to be the dark matter candidate, and show the consistency of various scenarios with constraints from relic density and direct detection experiments.
A nonequilibrium state does not relax to thermodynamic equilibrium but to a state which takes into account long-living fluctuations as quasi-conserved quantities. This state is described by the relevant statistical operator within the Zubarev method to derive the nonequilibrium statistical operator. We apply this approach to the spectra of particles produced in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at the LHC experiments at CERN. We show that controversal explanations of the low-momentum part of the spectrum given by an extended hydrodynamic-like Blast-Wave approach [with mesonic chemical potentials] and the reaction-kinetic description of the hadron resonance gas can be considered as special approximation of a more general nonequilibrium approach which takes mesonic chemical potentials into account to describe quasi-conserved particle numbers, but takes also continuum correlations, in particular resonances, into account using the Beth-Uhlenbeck [or Dashen-Ma-Bernstein] virial expansion. We present results for the spectra of pions, kaons, and protons and explain why different approaches can explain the data obtained from the ALICE experiments.
An axion-like spectator during inflation can trigger a tachyonic instability which amplifies the modes of one of the helicities of the gauge field, resulting in the production of parity-violating gravitational waves (GWs). In this paper we investigate the impact of the coupling $RFF$ of the gauge field to gravity on the production of GWs. We find that such a coupling introduces a multiplicative factor to the tachyonic mass, which effectively enhances the amplitude of the gauge field modes. Produced GWs are expected to be observed by future space-based GW detectors. Additionally, we find that the strong backreaction due to particle production leads to multiple peaks in the energy spectrum of GWs.
The brightest-of-all-time gamma-ray burst (GRB), GRB 221009A, is the first GRB observed to have emission line (up to 37 MeV) in its prompt emission spectra. It is naturally explained as \pair annihilation line that was Doppler boosted in the relativistic jet of the GRB. In this work, we repeatedly apply the simple optical depth argument to different physical processes necessary to produce an observable \pair annihilation line. This approach results in robust constraints on the physics of the line: We conclude that in GRB 221009A, the \pair pairs were produced at a radius greater than $4.3\times 10^{15}$\,cm from the central engine, and annihilated in a region between $1.4\times 10^{16}$\,cm and $4.3\times 10^{16}$\,cm. From these constraints, we established a self-consistent picture of \pair production, cooling, and annihilation. We also derived a criterion for pair production in the GRB prompt emission: $E_{\rm{iso}} \gtrsim3.3\times 10^{53} E_{\rm{peak},100} (1+z) R^2_{\rm{prod},16}~\text{erg}$. Using this criterion, we find tens of candidate GRBs that could have produced \pair in prompt emissions to annihilate. GRB 221009A is with the highest likelihood according to this criterion. We also predict the presence of a thermal radiation, with a time-evolving black body temperature, sweeping through soft X-ray during the prompt emission phase.
We investigate in this work the evolution of the collective fast neutrino flavor conversion (FFC) in a three dimensional (3D) cubic box with periodic boundary condition for three different neutrino angular distributions that are axially asymmetric. We find that the system evolves toward a quasistationary state where the angular distribution of the spatially averaged neutrino electron-minus-muon lepton number (ELN) does not contain any crossings. In the quasistationary state, near flavor equilibration is achieved in one angular domain enclosed by the initial ELN angular crossing contour, similar to the conclusion derived based on simplified one dimensional (1D) system with axially symmetric neutrino angular distributions. We have also performed additional simulations in coordinates where the initial first ELN angular moment has only one nonvanishing spatial component by using the original axially asymmetric ELN angular distributions as well as the corresponding axisymmetric ELN distributions, and find interesting similarity between these two sets. Finally, we propose three different analytical prescriptions generalized from earlier 1D models to 3D models, and evaluate their performances in predicting the post-FFC moments. Our findings suggest that further development of effective classical transport model in multidimensions to capture the effect of FFC is promising.
Recent advancements in gravitational wave astronomy hold the promise of a completely new way to explore our Universe. These lecture notes aim to provide a concise but self-contained introduction to key concepts of gravitational wave physics, with a focus on the opportunities to explore fundamental physics in transient gravitational wave signals and stochastic gravitational wave background searches.CERN-TH-2024-152
We constrain dark energy and modified gravity within the effective field theory of dark energy framework using the full-shape BOSS galaxy power spectrum, combined with Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) data and recent baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) measurements from DESI. Specifically, we focus on a varying braiding parameter $\alpha_{\rm B}$, a running of the ``effective'' Planck mass $\alpha_{\rm M}$, and a constant dark energy equation of state $w$. The analysis is performed with two of these parameters at a time, including all the other standard cosmological parameters and marginalizing over bias and nuisance parameters. The full-shape galaxy power spectrum is modeled using the effective field theory of large-scale structure up to 1-loop order in perturbation theory. We find that the CMB data is most sensitive to $\alpha_{\rm B}$, and that adding large-scale structure information only slightly changes the parameter constraints. However, the large-scale structure data significantly improve the bounds on $\alpha_{\rm M}$ and $w$ by a factor of two. This improvement is driven by background information contained in the BAO, which breaks the degeneracy with $H_0$ in the CMB. We confirm this by comparing the BOSS full-shape information with BOSS BAO, finding no significant differences. This is likely to change with future high-precision full-shape data from Euclid and DESI however, to which the pipeline developed here is immediately applicable.
In this paper we study higher-derivative supersymmetric effective field theories focusing on the systematic procedure for the elimination of ghosts from the spectrum. Particular attention is paid to the auxiliary fields, for which the higher-derivative terms induce non-algebraic equations of motion. By employing field redefinitions or the reduction of order procedure (both in component and superfield language) we show that the auxiliary fields remain non-dynamical in the EFT and that on shell they give rise to both derivative and non-derivative corrections to the scalar action. These methods are applied to the search for a SUSY embedding of the DBI action and to the dimensional reduction of HD terms for the K\"ahler moduli in type IIB string compactifications.
The way a relativistic system approaches fluid dynamical behaviour can be understood physically through the signals that will contribute to its linear response to perturbations. What these signals are is captured in the analytic structure of the retarded correlation function. The non-analyticities can be grouped into three types based on their dimension in the complex frequency plane. In this paper, we will use kinetic theory to find how we can calculate their corresponding signals. In the most general case of a system with particles that have a continuum of thermalization rates, we find that a non-analytic region appears. To calculate its signal, we introduce the non-analytic area density that describes the properties of this region, and we construct a method to calculate it. Further, to take into account the ambiguity present in signal analysis, following from manipulations of the non-analyticities, we will identify two specific choices called pictures with interesting analytic properties and compare in what scenarios each picture is most useful.
Cosmological models are often motivated and formulated in the language of particle physics, using quantities such as the axion decay constant, but tested against data using ostensibly physical quantities, such as energy density ratios, assuming uniform priors on the latter. This approach neglects priors on the model from fundamental theory, including from particle physics and string theory, such as the preference for sub-Planckian axion decay constants. We introduce a novel approach to learning theory-informed priors for Bayesian inference using normalizing flows (NF), a flexible generative machine learning technique that generates priors on model parameters when analytic expressions are unavailable or difficult to compute. As a test case, we focus on early dark energy (EDE), a model designed to address the Hubble tension. Rather than using uniform priors on the $\textit{phenomenological}$ EDE parameters $f_{\rm EDE}$ and $z_c$, we train a NF on EDE cosmologies informed by theory expectations for axion masses and decay constants. Our method recovers known constraints in this representation while being $\sim 300,000$ times more efficient in terms of total CPU compute time. Applying our NF to $\textit{Planck}$ and BOSS data, we obtain the first theory-informed constraints on EDE, finding $f_{\rm EDE} \lesssim 0.02$ at $95\%$ confidence with an $H_0$ consistent with $\textit{Planck}$, but in $\sim 6\sigma$ tension with SH0ES. This yields the strongest constraints on EDE to date, additionally challenging its role in resolving the Hubble tension.