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At least 433 records · Page 24

Fast neutron background characterization of the future Ricochet experiment at the ILL research nuclear reactor

Abstract The future Ricochet experiment aims at searching for new physics in the electroweak sector by providing a high precision measurement of the Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CENNS) process down to the sub-100 eV nuclear recoil energy range. The experiment will deploy a kg-scale low-energy-threshold detector array combining Ge and Zn target crystals 8.8 m away from the 58 MW research nuclear reactor core of the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France. Currently, the Ricochet Collaboration is characterizing the backgrounds at its future experimental site in order to optimize the experiment’s shielding design. The most threatening background component, which cannot be actively rejected by particle identification, consists of keV-scale neutron-induced nuclear recoils. These initial fast neutrons are generated by the reactor core and surrounding experiments (reactogenics), and by the cosmic rays producing primary neutrons and muon-induced neutrons in the surrounding materials. In this paper, we present the Ricochet neutron background characterization using $$^3$$ 3 He proportional counters which exhibit a high sensitivity to thermal, epithermal and fast neutrons. We compare these measurements to the Ricochet Geant4 simulations to validate our reactogenic and cosmogenic neutron background estimations. Eventually, we present our estimated neutron background for the future Ricochet experiment and the resulting CENNS detection significance. Our results show that depending on the effectiveness of the muon veto, we expect a total nuclear recoil background rate between 44 ± 3 and 9 ± 2 events/day/kg in the CENNS region of interest, i.e. between 50 eV and 1 keV. We therefore found that the Ricochet experiment should reach a statistical significance of 4.6 to 13.6 $$\sigma $$ σ for the detection of CENNS after one reactor cycle, when only the limiting neutron background is considered.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Axions, WIMPs, proton decay and observable r in SO(10)

Abstract We explore some experimentally testable predictions of an SO (10) axion model which includes two 10-plets of fermions in order to resolve the axion domain wall problem. The axion symmetry can be safely broken after inflation, so that the isocurvature perturbations associated with the axion field are negligibly small. An unbroken gauge $$Z_2$$ Z 2 symmetry in SO (10) ensures the presence of a stable WIMP-like dark matter, a linear combination of the electroweak doublets in the fermion 10-plets and an SO (10) singlet fermion with mass $$\sim 62.5 \; \textrm{GeV}\; (1 \; \textrm{TeV}) $$ ∼ 62.5 GeV ( 1 TeV ) when it is mostly the singlet (doublet) fermion, that co-exists with axion dark matter. We also discuss gauge coupling unification, proton decay, inflation with non-minimal coupling to gravity and leptogenesis. With the identification of the SM singlet Higgs field in the 126 representation of SO (10) as inflaton, the magnetic monopoles are inflated away, and we find $$0.963 \lesssim n_s \lesssim 0.965$$ 0.963 ≲ n s ≲ 0.965 and $$0.003 \lesssim r \lesssim 0.036$$ 0.003 ≲ r ≲ 0.036 , where $$n_s$$ n s and r denote the scalar spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio, respectively. These predictions can be tested in future experiments such as CMB-S4.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Naturalness: past, present, and future

We assess the state of naturalness in high-energy physics and summarize recent approaches to the three major naturalness problems: the cosmological constant problem, the electroweak hierarchy problem, and the strong CP problem.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

First demonstration of 30 eVee ionization energy resolution with RICOCHET germanium cryogenic bolometers

The future RICOCHET experiment aims to search for new physics in the electroweak sector by measuring the Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering process from reactor antineutrinos with high precision down to the sub-100 eV nuclear recoil energy range. While the RICOCHET collaboration is currently building the experimental setup at the reactor site, it is also finalizing the cryogenic detector arrays that will be integrated into the cryostat at the Institut Laue Langevin in early 2024. In this paper, we report on recent progress from the Ge cryogenic detector technology, called the CryoCube. More specifically, we present the first demonstration of a 30 eVee (electron equivalent) baseline ionization resolution (RMS) achieved with an early design of the detector assembly and its dedicated High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) based front-end electronics with a total input capacitance of about 40 pF. This represents an order of magnitude improvement over the best ionization resolutions obtained on similar phonon-and-ionization germanium cryogenic detectors from the EDELWEISS and SuperCDMS dark matter experiments, and a factor of three improvement compared to the first fully-cryogenic HEMT-based preamplifier coupled to a CDMS-II germanium detector with a total input capacitance of 250 pF. Additionally, we discuss the implications of these results in the context of the future RICOCHET experiment and its expected background mitigation performance.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Measurement of multijet azimuthal correlations and determination of the strong coupling in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13\,\text {Te}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V} $

A measurement is presented of a ratio observable that provides a measure of the azimuthal correlations among jets with large transverse momentum $p_{\textrm{T}}$. This observable is measured in multijet events over the range of $p_{\textrm{T}} = 360$–$3170\,\text {Ge}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V} $ based on data collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13$\,\text {Te}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}$, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 134$\,\text {fb}^{-1}$. The results are compared with predictions from Monte Carlo parton-shower event generator simulations, as well as with fixed-order perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD) predictions at next-to-leading-order (NLO) accuracy obtained with different parton distribution functions (PDFs) and corrected for nonperturbative and electroweak effects. Data and theory agree within uncertainties. From the comparison of the measured observable with the pQCD prediction obtained with the NNPDF3.1 NLO PDFs, the strong coupling at the Z boson mass scale is $\alpha _\textrm{S} (m_{{\textrm{Z}}}) =0.1177 \pm 0.0013\, \text {(exp)} _{-0.0073}^{+0.0116} \,\text {(theo)} = 0.1177_{-0.0074}^{+0.0117}$, where the total uncertainty is dominated by the scale dependence of the fixed-order predictions. A test of the running of $\alpha _\textrm{S}$ in the $\,\text {Te}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}$ region shows no deviation from the expected NLO pQCD behaviour.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Measurement of the W-boson mass and width with the ATLAS detector using proton–proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV

Proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector in 2011, at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, have been used for an improved determination of the W-boson mass and a first measurement of the W-boson width at the LHC. Recent fits to the proton parton distribution functions are incorporated in the measurement procedure and an improved statistical method is used to increase the measurement precision. The measurement of the W-boson mass yields a value of m w = 80,366.5 ± 9.8 (stat.) ± 12.5 (syst.) MeV = 80,366.5 ± 15.9 MeV, and the width is measured as Γ w = 2202 ± 32 (stat.) ± 34 (syst.) MeV = 2202 ± 47 MeV. The first uncertainty components are statistical and the second correspond to the experimental and physics-modelling systematic uncertainties. Both results are consistent with the expectation from fits to electroweak precision data. The present measurement of m w is compatible with and supersedes the previous measurement performed using the same data.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

A package for renormalization group running in the SMEFT with sterile neutrinos

Abstract Sterile neutrinos are well-motivated beyond the Standard Model (BSM) particles. The Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) augmented with these new fields is known as the $$\nu $$ ν SMEFT. We present the first code for solving the renormalization group equations (RGEs) of the $$\nu $$ ν SMEFT in an automated way. For this purpose, we have implemented the $$\nu $$ ν SMEFT as a new effective field theory (EFT) in the Wilson coefficient exchange format . Furthermore, we included anomalous dimensions depending on the gauge couplings and Yukawas in the python package . This novel version of allows a consistent inclusion of $$\nu $$ ν SMEFT renormalization group (RG) running effects above the electroweak (EW) scale in phenomenological studies involving sterile neutrinos. Moreover, this new release allows us to study EW, strong, and Yukawa running effects separately within the SMEFT.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Search for heavy neutral leptons in decays of W bosons produced in 13 TeV pp collisions using prompt signatures in the ATLAS detector

The existence of right-handed neutrinos with Majorana masses below the electroweak scale could help address the origins of neutrino masses, the matter–antimatter asymmetry, and dark matter. In this paper, leptonic decays of W bosons from 140 fb-1$$^{-1}$$ of 13 TeV proton–proton collisions at the LHC, reconstructed in the ATLAS experiment, are used to search for heavy neutral leptons produced through their mixing with muon or electron neutrinos in a scenario with lepton number violation. The search is conducted using prompt leptonic decay signatures. The considered final states require two same-charge leptons or three leptons, while vetoing three-lepton same-flavour topologies. No significant excess over the expected Standard Model backgrounds is found, leading to constraints on the heavy neutral lepton’s mixing with muon and electron neutrinos for heavy-neutral-lepton masses. The analysis excludes |Ue|2$$|U_{e}|^2$$ values above 8×10-5$$8\times 10^{-5}$$ and |Uμ|2$$|U_{\mu }|^2$$ values above 5.0×10-5$$5.0 \times 10^{-5}$$ in the full mass range of 8–65 GeV. The strongest constraints are placed on heavy-neutral-lepton masses in the range 15–30 GeV of |Ue|2<1.1×10-5$$|U_{e}|^2 < 1.1 \times 10^{-5}$$ and |Uμ|2<5×10-6$$|U_{\mu }|^2 < 5 \times 10^{-6}$$.

Aad, G↗

Future Circular Collider Feasibility Study Report

In response to the 2020 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics , the Future Circular Collider (FCC) Feasibility Study was launched as an international collaboration hosted by CERN. This report describes the FCC integrated programme , which consists of two stages: an electron-positron collider (FCC-ee) in the first phase, serving as a high-luminosity Higgs, top, and electroweak factory; followed by a proton-proton collider (FCC-hh) at the energy frontier in the second phase. The FCC-ee is designed to operate at four key centre-of-mass energies: the Z pole, the WW pair production threshold, the ZH production peak, and the top/anti-top production threshold—each delivering the highest possible luminosities to four experiments. Over 15 years of operation, FCC-ee will produce more than 6 trillion Z bosons, 200 million WW pairs, nearly 3 million Higgs bosons, and 2 million top anti-top pairs. Precise energy calibration at the Z pole and WW threshold will be achieved through frequent resonant depolarisation of pilot bunches. The sequence of operation modes between the Z, WW, and ZH substages remains flexible. The FCC-hh will operate at a centre-of-mass energy of approximately 85 TeV—nearly an order of magnitude higher than the LHC—and is designed to deliver 5 to 10 times the integrated luminosity of the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC. Its mass reach for direct discovery extends to several tens of TeV. In addition to proton-proton collisions, the FCC-hh is capable of supporting ion-ion, ion-proton, and lepton-hadron collision modes. This second volume of the Feasibility Study Report presents the complete design of the FCC-ee collider, its operation and staging strategy, the full-energy booster and injector complex, required accelerator technologies, safety concepts, and technical infrastructure. It also includes the design of the FCC-hh hadron collider, development of high-field magnets, hadron injector options, and key technical systems for FCC-hh.

Benedikt, M. [European Organization for Nuclear Re↗

Status of weak scale supersymmetry after LHC Run 2 and ton-scale noble liquid WIMP searches

After completion of LHC Run 2, the ATLAS and CMS experiments had collected of order 139 fb –1 of data at √s = 13 TeV. While discovering a very Standard Model-like Higgs boson of mass m h ≃ 125 GeV, no solid signal for physics beyond the Standard Model has emerged so far at LHC. In addition, no WIMP signals have emerged so far at ton-scale noble liquid WIMP search experiments. For the case of weak scale supersymmetry (SUSY), which is touted as a simple and elegant solution to the gauge hierarchy problem and likely low energy limit of compactified string theory, LHC has found rather generally that gluinos are beyond about 2.2 TeV whilst top squark must lie beyond 1.1 TeV. These limits contradict older simplistic notions of naturalness that emerged in the 1980s–1990s, leading to the rather pessimistic view that SUSY is now excluded except for perhaps some remaining narrow corners of parameter space. Yet, this picture ignores several important developments in SUSY/string theory that emerged in the 21st century: 1. the emergence of the string theory landscape and its solution to the cosmological constant problem, 2. a more nuanced view of naturalness including the notion of “stringy naturalness”, 3. the emergence of anomaly-free discrete R-symmetries and their connection to R-parity, Peccei-Quinn symmetry, the SUSY μ problem and proton decay and 4. the importance of including a solution to the strong CP problem. Rather general considerations from the string theory landscape favor large values of soft terms, subject to the vacuum selection criteria that electroweak symmetry is properly broken (no charge and/or color breaking (CCB) minima) and the resulting magnitude of the weak scale is not too far from our measured value. Then stringy naturalness predicts a Higgs mass m h ~ 125 GeV whilst sparticle masses are typically lifted beyond present LHC bounds. Lastly, in light of these refinements in theory perspective confronted by LHC and dark matter search results, we review the most likely LHC, ILC and dark matter signatures that are expected to arise from weak scale SUSY as we understand it today.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Nuclear Dynamics and Reactions in the Ab Initio Symmetry-Adapted Framework

We review the ab initio symmetry-adapted (SA) framework for determining the structure of stable and unstable nuclei, along with related electroweak, decay, and reaction processes. This framework utilizes the dominant symmetry of nuclear dynamics, the shape-related symplectic [Formula: see text] symmetry, which has been shown to emerge from first principles and to expose dominant degrees of freedom that are collective in nature, even in the lightest species or seemingly spherical states. This feature is illustrated for a broad scope of nuclei ranging from helium to titanium isotopes, enabled by recent developments of the ab initio SA no-core shell model expanded to the continuum through the use of the SA basis and that of the resonating group method. The review focuses on energies, electromagnetic transitions, quadrupole and magnetic moments, radii, form factors, and response function moments for ground-state rotational bands and giant resonances. The method also determines the structure of reaction fragments that is used to calculate decay widths and α-capture reactions for simulated X-ray burst abundance patterns, as well as nucleon–nucleus interactions for cross sections and other reaction observables.

Physics↗

The Search for Feebly Interacting Particles

At the dawn of a new decade, particle physics faces the challenge of explaining the mystery of dark matter, the origin of matter over antimatter in the Universe, the apparent fine-tuning of the electroweak scale, and many other aspects of fundamental physics. Perhaps the most striking frontier to emerge in the search for answers involves New Physics at mass scales comparable to that of familiar matter—below the GeV scale but with very feeble interaction strength. New theoretical ideas to address dark matter and other fundamental questions predict such feebly interacting particles (FIPs) at these scales, and existing data may even provide hints of this possibility. Emboldened by the lessons of the LHC, a vibrant experimental program to discover such physics is underway, guided by a systematic theoretical approach that is firmly grounded in the underlying principles of the Standard Model. We give an overview of these efforts, their motivations, and the decadal goals that animate the community involved in the search for FIPs, and we focus in particular on accelerator-based experiments.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Octet scalars shaping LHC distributions in 4-jet final states

We study properties of a hypothetical scalar particle, Θ, which is a color octet and an electroweak singlet. At hadron colliders, Θ is pair produced through its QCD coupling to gluons, so that its mass determines the cross section. It decays at tree level into $q\bar{q}$ through dimension-5 operators, and at one loop into gluons. Thus, the main LHC signature of Θ is a pair of dijets of equal invariant mass. The CMS search in this channel shows a 3.6σ excess over the QCD background for a dijet mass M jj ≈ 0.95 TeV, which can be due to Θ : its production cross section (65 fb for a real scalar) and the acceptance of the CMS event selection applied to pp → ΘΘ → ($q\bar{q}$) ($q\bar{q}$) yield a rate consistent with the excess. Furthermore, the shape of the dσ/dM jj signal is in agreement with the CMS result. Given the data-driven background fit performed by CMS, we find that a complex scalar (whose production rate is twice as large) fits better the data than a real scalar. Besides the pair of dijets, testable LHC signals include a trijet-dijet topology, a $t\bar{t}$ pair plus a dijet resonance, as well as final states involving a Higgs, W or Z boson plus jets.

Dobrescu, Bogdan A. [Fermi National Accelerator La↗

LHC EFT WG note: Basis for anomalous quartic gauge couplings

In this note, we give a definitive basis for the dimension-eight operators leading to quartic—but no cubic—interactions among electroweak gauge bosons. These are often called anomalous quartic gauge couplings, or aQGCs. We distinguish in particular the CP-even ones from their CP-odd counterparts.

Durieux, Gauthier (ORCID:0000000172726490)↗

Statistical patterns of theory uncertainties

A comprehensive uncertainty estimation is vital for the precision program of the LHC. While experimental uncertainties are often described by stochastic processes and well-defined nuisance parameters, theoretical uncertainties lack such a description. We study uncertainty estimates for cross-section predictions based on scale variations across a large set of processes. We find patterns similar to a stochastic origin, with accurate uncertainties for processes mediated by the strong force, but a systematic underestimate for electroweak processes. We propose an improved scheme, based on the scale variation of reference processes, which reduces outliers in the mapping from leading order to next-to-leading-order in perturbation theory.

Ghosh, Aishik↗

Light thermal relics enabled by a second Higgs

Sub-GeV thermal relic dark matter typically requires the existence of a light mediator particle. We introduce the light two-Higgs-doublet portal, illustrated by a minimal UV-complete model for sub-GeV dark matter with kinematically forbidden annihilations into leptons. All new physics states in this scenario lie at or below the electroweak scale, affecting Higgs physics, the muon anomalous magnetic moment and potentially neutrino masses. Observation of radiative dark matter annihilation by future MeV gamma-ray telescopes would be key to unambiguously identify the scenario.

Herms, Johannes↗

Excitations of static isolated fermions in the Higgs phase of gauge Higgs theory

A spectrum of localized excitations of isolated static fermions has been discovered in several different gauge Higgs theories. In lattice numerical simulations, we show that the charged elementary particles can have the spectrum of excitations in the Higgs phase of SU(3) gauge Higgs theory, q=2 Abelian Higgs theory, Landau-Ginzburg theory, and in chiral U(1) gauge Higgs theory. Possibly these excited states of the isolated fermions can be observed in ARPES studies of conventional superconductors. Also, we consider that similar kinds of excitations could exist in other gauge Higgs theories, such as the electroweak sector of the Standard Model.

Matsuyama, Kazue↗

Mystery of the Universe: Matter-antimatter Asymmetry

Why do we exist today? The question simply comes to mind and most of us must have wondered at least once. Scientifically answering it is one of the serious but engrossing challenges in modern physics. The question is translated into another one in language of particle physics; why is there more matter than antimatter in our Universe? Antimatter is composed of antiparticles which have an opposite electric charge to that of particle. In the early Universe, both particles were present in equal amount. However, looking around the present Universe, everything, such as the moon, galaxies and human being, is made of matter. The puzzle is known as matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. This talk will discuss theoretical approaches to solving the mystery in terms of particle physics introducing one possible hypothesis, electroweak baryogenesis, which is the most testable scenario in experiments.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗