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At least 631 records · Page 35

Search for higgsinos decaying to two Higgs bosons and missing transverse momentum in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} $ = 13 TeV

Results are presented from a search for physics beyond the standard model in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} $ = 13 TeV in channels with two Higgs bosons, each decaying via the process H → b$ \overline{\mathrm{b}} $, and large missing transverse momentum. The search uses a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb$^{−1}$ collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC. The search is motivated by models of supersymmetry that predict the production of neutralinos, the neutral partners of the electroweak gauge and Higgs bosons. The observed event yields in the signal regions are found to be consistent with the standard model background expectations. The results are interpreted using simplified models of supersymmetry. For the electroweak production of nearly mass-degenerate higgsinos, each of whose decay chains yields a neutralino $ \left({\overset{\sim }{\upchi}}_1^0\right) $ that in turn decays to a massless goldstino and a Higgs boson, $ \left({\overset{\sim }{\upchi}}_1^0\right) $ masses in the range 175 to 1025 GeV are excluded at 95% confidence level. For the strong production of gluino pairs decaying via a slightly lighter $ \left({\overset{\sim }{\upchi}}_2^0\right) $ to H and a light $ \left({\overset{\sim }{\upchi}}_1^0\right) $, gluino masses below 2330 GeV are excluded.[graphic not available: see fulltext]

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Millicharged relics reveal massless dark photons

The detection of massless kinetically-mixed dark photons is notoriously difficult, as the effect of this mixing can be removed by a field redefinition in vacuum. In this work, we study the prospect of detecting massless dark photons in the presence of a cosmic relic directly charged under this dark electromagnetism. Such millicharged particles, in the form of dark matter or dark radiation, generate an effective dark photon mass that drives photon-to-dark photon oscillations in the early universe. We also study the prospect for such models to alleviate existing cosmological constraints on massive dark photons, enlarging the motivation for direct tests of this parameter space using precision terrestrial probes.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

An SU(5) × U(1)' SUSY GUT with a “vector-like chiral” fourth family to fit all low energy data, including the muon g – 2

An additional generation of quarks and leptons and their SUSY counterparts, which are vector-like under the Standard Model gauge group but are chiral with respect to the new U(1) 3–4 gauge symmetry, are added to the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We show that this model is a GUT and unifies the three SM gauge couplings and also the additional U(1) 3–4 coupling at a GUT scale of ≈ 5 × 10 16 GeV and explains the experimentally observed deviation of the muon g – 2. We also fit the quark flavor changing processes consistent with the latest experimental data and look at the effect of the new particles on the W boson mass without obviously conflicting with the observed masses of particles, CKM matrix elements, neutrino mixing angles, their mass differences, and the lepton-flavor violating bounds. This model predicts sparticle masses less than 25 TeV, with a gluino mass ≈ 2.3 – 3 TeV consistent with constraints, and one of the neutralinos as the LSP with a mass of ≈ 480 – 580 GeV, which is a potential dark matter candidate. The model is string theory motivated and predicts the VL quarks, leptons, a massive Z' and two Dirac neutrinos at the TeV scale and the branching ratios of μ → eγ, τ → μγ and τ → 3μ with BR(μ → eγ) within reach of future experiments.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

QED corrections to the thermal neutrino interaction rate

Abstract Motivated by precision computations of neutrino decoupling at MeV temperatures, we show how QED corrections to the thermal neutrino interaction rate can be related to the electron-positron spectral function as well as an effective$$\overline{\nu }\nu \gamma $$vertex. The spectral function is needed both in a timelike and in a spacelike domain, and for both of its physical polarization states (transverse and longitudinal with respect to spatial momentum). Incorporating an NLO evaluation of this spectral function, an estimate of the$$\overline{\nu }\nu \gamma $$vertex, and HTL resummation of scatterings mediated by soft Bose-enhancedt-channel photons, we compute the interaction rate as a function of the neutrino momentum and flavour. Effects on the – (0. . .2)% level are found, noticeably smaller than a previous estimate of a related quantity.

Physics↗

Replica wormhole and information retrieval in the SYK model coupled to Majorana chains

Motivated by recent studies of the information paradox in (1+1)-D anti-de Sitter spacetime with a bath described by a (1+1)-D conformal field theory, we study the dynamics of second Ŕenyi entropy of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model (χ) coupled to a Majorana chain bath (ψ). The system is prepared in the thermofield double (TFD) state and then evolved by HL + HR. For small system-bath coupling, we find that the second Rényi entropy $S^(2)_{χL,χR}$ of the SYK model undergoes a first order transition during the evolution. In the sense of holographic duality, the long-time solution corresponds to a “replica wormhole”. The transition time corresponds to the Page time of a black hole coupled to a thermal bath. We further study the information scrambling and retrieval by introducing a classical control bit, which controls whether or not we add a perturbation in the SYK system. The mutual information between the bath and the control bit shows a positive jump at the Page time, indicating that the entanglement wedge of the bath includes an island in the holographic bulk.

1/N Expansion↗

The black hole weak gravity conjecture with multiple charges

We study the effect of higher-derivative corrections on asymptotically flat, fourdimensional, dyonic black holes in low-energy models of gravity coupled to N U(1) gauge fields. For large extremal black holes, the leading O (1/Q 2 ) correction to the extremality bound is calculated from the most general low-energy effective action containing operators with up to four derivatives. Motivated by the multi-charge generalization of the Weak Gravity Conjecture, we analyze the necessary kinematic conditions for an asymptotically large extremal black hole to decay into a multi-particle state of extremal black holes. In the large black hole regime, we show that the convex hull condition degenerates to the requirement that a certain quartic form constructed from the Wilson coefficients of the fourderivative effective operators, is everywhere positive. Using on-shell unitarity methods, we show that higher-derivative operators are renormalized at one-loop only if they generate local, on-shell matrix elements that are invariant tensors of the electromagnetic duality group U(N). The one-loop logarithmic running of the four-derivative Wilson coefficients is calculated and shown to imply the positivity of the extremality form at some finite value of Q 2 . This result generalizes an argument recently given by Charles [1], and shows that under the given assumptions the multi-charge Weak Gravity Conjecture is not a Swampland criterion.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Chromoelectric field correlator for quarkonium transport in the strongly coupled $ \mathcal{N}$ = 4 Yang-Mills plasma from AdS/CFT

Previous studies have shown that a gauge-invariant correlation function of two chromoelectric fields connected by a straight timelike adjoint Wilson line encodes crucial information about quark-gluon plasma (QGP) that determines the dynamics of small-sized quarkonium in the medium. Motivated by the successes of holographic calculations to describe strongly coupled QGP, we calculate the analog gauge-invariant correlation function in strongly coupled $\mathcal{N}$ = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at finite temperature by using the AdS/CFT correspondence. Our results indicate that the transition processes between bound and unbound quarkonium states are suppressed in strongly coupled plasmas, and moreover, the leading contributions to these transition processes vanish in both the quantum Brownian motion and quantum optical limits of open quantum system approaches to quarkonia

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

A 10d construction of Euclidean axion wormholes in flat and AdS space

Euclidean wormhole geometries sourced by axions and dilatons are puzzling objects in quantum gravity. From one side of the wormhole to the other, the scalar fields traverse a few Planck lengths in field space and so corrections from the UV might potentially affect the consistency of the solution, even when the wormholes are large. Motivated by this, we carry out the first explicit 10d lifts of regular Euclidean axion wormholes. We start off with the lift of Giddings-Strominger wormholes in $\mathcal{N}$ = 8 Euclidean supergravity over a 6-torus to 10d type IIA supergravity and find the solution can be everywhere tuned into the parametrically controlled supergravity regime. Secondly, we construct explicit wormholes in AdS spaces and find them again to be under parametric control. We find the first wormhole solutions in massive type IIA on S 3 × S 3 and in type IIB on T 1,1 . The latter has an explicit holographic dual, and similar to the earlier constructions in AdS 5 × S 5 /$\mathbb{Z}$ k , the wormholes violate operator positivity since Tr(F ± $\star$ F) 2 < 0. This puzzle might arise from subtleties related to computing holographic n-point functions in the presence of multiple boundaries.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

A closer look in the mirror: reflections on the matter/dark matter coincidence

We argue that the striking similarity between the cosmic abundances of baryons and dark matter, despite their very different astrophysical behavior, strongly motivates the scenario in which dark matter resides within a rich dark sector parallel in structure to that of the standard model. The near cosmic coincidence is then explained by an approximate ℤ$_{2}$ exchange symmetry between the two sectors, where dark matter consists of stable dark neutrons, with matter and dark matter asymmetries arising via parallel WIMP baryogenesis mechanisms. Taking a top-down perspective, we point out that an adequate ℤ$_{2}$ symmetry necessitates solving the electroweak hierarchy problem in each sector, without our committing to a specific implementation. A higher-dimensional realization in the far UV is presented, in which the hierarchical couplings of the two sectors and the requisite ℤ$_{2}$-breaking structure arise naturally from extra-dimensional localization and gauge symmetries. We trace the cosmic history, paying attention to potential pitfalls not fully considered in previous literature. Residual ℤ$_{2}$-breaking can very plausibly give rise to the asymmetric reheating of the two sectors, needed to keep the cosmological abundance of relativistic dark particles below tight bounds. We show that, despite the need to keep inter-sector couplings highly suppressed after asymmetric reheating, there can naturally be order-one couplings mediated by TeV scale particles which can allow experimental probes of the dark sector at high energy colliders. Massive mediators can also induce dark matter direct detection signals, but likely at or below the neutrino floor.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Cosmological implications of Kalb-Ramond-like particles

The Kalb-Ramond field is an antisymmetric, rank-two tensor field which most notably appears in the context of string theory, but has largely been unexplored in the context of cosmology. In this work, motivated by the Kalb-Ramond field in string theory, and antisymmetric tensor fields that emerge in effective field theories ranging from particle physics to condensed matter, we study the primordial production of interacting massive Kalb-Ramond-like-particles (KRLPs). KRLPs contain features of both dark photon and axion models, which can be appreciated via their duality properties. While the massless non-interacting KRLP is dual to a pseudoscalar, and the massive non-interacting KRLP is dual to a pseudovector, the interacting massive KRLP can be distinguished from its scalar and vector counterparts. We study early-universe production of KRLPs via the freeze-in mechanism, considering a ‘dark photon-like’ interaction, an ‘axion-like’ interaction, and a ‘Higgs portal’ interaction, as well as production via cosmological gravitational particle production. We find that as a dark matter candidate, KRLPs can be produced by all of the above mechanisms and account for the relic density of dark matter today for a wide range of masses. Finally, we comment on the potential to obtain both warm and cold dark matter subcomponents, and speculate on observational and experimental prospects.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Hadronic mono- W ' probes of dark matter at colliders

Particle collisions at the energy frontier can probe the nature of invisible dark matter via production in association with recoiling visible objects. We propose a new potential production mode, in which dark matter is produced by the decay of a heavy dark Higgs boson radiated from a heavy W' boson. In such a model, motivated by left-right symmetric theories, dark matter would not be pair produced in association with other recoiling objects due to its lack of direct coupling to quarks or gluons. We study the hadronic decay mode via W' → tb and estimate the LHC exclusion sensitivity at 95% confidence level to be 10 2 - 10 5 fb for W' boson masses between 250 and 1750 GeV.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Celestial Quantum Error Correction. Part II. From qudits to celestial CFT

A holographic CFT description of asymptotically flat spacetimes inherits vacuum degeneracies and IR divergences from its gravitational dual. We devise a Quantum Error Correcting (QEC) framework to encode both effects as correctable fluctuations on the CFT dual. The framework is physically motivated by embedding a chain of qudits in the so-called Klein spacetime and then taking a continuum 𝑁 → ∞ limit. At finite 𝑁 the qudit chain 1) enjoys a discrete version of celestial symmetries and 2) supports a Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code. The limit results in hard states with quantized BMS hair in the celestial torus forming the logical subspace, robust under errors induced by soft radiation. Technically, the construction leverages the recently studied 𝑤 1+∞ hierarchy of soft currents and its realization from a sigma model in twistor space.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Islands in asymptotically flat 2D gravity

The large-$\textit{N}$ limit of asymptotically flat two-dimensional dilaton gravity coupled to $\textit{N}$ free matter fields provides a useful toy model for semiclassical black holes and the information paradox. Analyses of the asymptotic information flux as given by the entanglement entropy show that it follows the Hawking curve, indicating that information is destroyed in these models. Recently, motivated by developments in AdS/CFT, a semiclassical island rule for entropy has been proposed. We define and compute the island rule entropy for black hole formation and evaporation in the large-$\textit{N}$ RST model of dilaton gravity and show that, in contrast, it follows the unitary Page curve. The relation of these two observations, and interesting properties of the dilaton gravity island rule, are discussed.

2D Gravity↗

De Sitter diagrammar and the resummation of time

Light scalars in inflationary spacetimes suffer from logarithmic infrared divergences at every order in perturbation theory. This corresponds to the scalar field values in different Hubble patches undergoing a random walk of quantum fluctuations, leading to a simple toy “landscape” on superhorizon scales, in which we can explore questions relevant to eternal inflation. However, for a sufficiently long period of inflation, the infrared divergences appear to spoil computability. Some form of renormalization group approach is thus motivated to resum the log divergences of conformal time. Such a resummation may provide insight into De Sitter holography. We present here a novel diagrammatic analysis of these infrared divergences and their resummation. Basic graph theory observations and momen- tum power counting for the in-in propagators allow a simple and insightful determination of the leading-log contributions. One thus sees diagrammatically how the superhorizon sector consists of a semiclassical theory with quantum noise evolved by a first-order, interacting classical equation of motion. This rigorously leads to the “Stochastic Inflation” ansatz developed by Starobinsky to cure the scalar infrared pathology nonperturbatively. Our approach is a controlled approximation of the underlying quantum field theory and is systematically improvable.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Algebraic branch points at all loop orders from positive kinematics and wall crossing

A bstract There is a remarkable connection between the boundary structure of the positive kinematic region and branch points of integrated amplitudes in planar $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 4 SYM. A long-standing question has been precisely how algebraic branch points emerge from this picture. We use wall crossing and scattering diagrams to systematically study the boundary structure of the positive kinematic regions associated with MHV amplitudes. The notion of asymptotic chambers in the scattering diagram naturally explains the appearance of algebraic branch points. Furthermore, the scattering diagram construction also motivates a new coordinate system for kinematic space that rationalizes the relations between algebraic letters in the symbol alphabet. As a direct application, we conjecture a complete list of all algebraic letters that could appear in the symbol alphabet of the 8-point MHV amplitude.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Solitons in lattice field theories via tight-binding supersymmetry

Reflectionless potentials play an important role in constructing exact solutions to classical dynamical systems (such as the Korteweg-de Vries equation), non-perturbative solutions of various large-N field theories (such as the Gross-Neveu model), and closely related solitonic solutions to the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations in the theory of superconductivity. These solutions rely on the inverse scattering method, which reduces these seemingly unrelated problems to identifying reflectionless potentials of an auxiliary one-dimensional quantum scattering problem. There are several ways of constructing these potentials, one of which is quantum mechanical supersymmetry (SUSY). In this paper, motivated by recent experimental platforms, we generalize this framework to develop a theory of lattice solitons. We first briefly review the classical inverse scattering method in the continuum limit, focusing on the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation and SU(N) Gross-Neveu model in the large N limit. We then generalize this methodology to lattice versions of interacting field theories. Our analysis hinges on the use of trace identities, which are relations connecting the potential of an equation of motion to the scattering data. For a discrete Schrödinger operator, such trace identities had been known as far back as Toda; however, we derive a new set of identities for the discrete Dirac operator. We then use these identities in a lattice Gross-Neveu and chiral Gross-Neveu (Nambu-Jona-Lasinio) model to show that lattice solitons correspond to reflectionless potentials associated with the discrete scattering problem. These models are of significance as they are equivalent to a mean-field theory of a lattice superconductor. To explicitly construct these solitons, we generalize supersymmetric quantum mechanics to tight-binding models. We show that a matrix transformation exists that maps a tight-binding model to an isospectral one which shares the same structure and scattering properties. The corresponding soliton solutions have both modulated hopping and onsite potential, the former of which has no analogue in the continuum limit. We explicitly compute both topological and non-topological soliton solutions as well as bound state spectra in the aforementioned models.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

TwInflation

The general structure of Hybrid Inflation remains a very well-motivated mechanism for lower-scale cosmic inflation in the face of improving constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio. However, as originally modeled, the “waterfall” field in this mechanism gives rise to a hierarchy problem (η–problem) for the inflaton after demanding standard effective field theory (EFT) control. We modify the hybrid mechanism and incorporate a discrete “twin” symmetry, thereby yielding a viable, natural and EFT-controlled model of non-supersymmetric low-scale inflation, “Twinflation”. Analogously to Twin Higgs models, the discrete exchange-symmetry with a “twin” sector reduces quadratic sensitivity in the inflationary potential to ultra-violet physics, at the root of the hierarchy problem. The observed phase of inflation takes place on a hilltop-like potential but without fine-tuning of the initial inflaton position in field-space. We also show that all parameters of the model can take natural values, below any associated EFT-cutoff mass scales and field values, thus ensuring straightforward theoretical control. We discuss the basic phenomenological considerations and constraints, as well as possible future directions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Light, long-lived B - L gauge and Higgs bosons at the DUNE near detector

The low-energy U(1)B-L gauge symmetry is well-motivated as part of beyond Standard Model physics related to neutrino mass generation. We show that a light B - L gauge boson Z' and the associated U(1) B-L -breaking scalar φ can both be effectively searched for at high-intensity facilities such as the near detector complex of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). Without the scalar φ, the Z' can be probed at DUNE up to mass of 1 GeV, with the corresponding gauge coupling g BL as low as 10 -9 . In the presence of the scalar φ with gauge coupling to Z', the DUNE capability of discovering the gauge boson Z' can be significantly improved, even by one order of magnitude in g BL , due to additional production from the decay φ → Z'Z'. The DUNE sensitivity is largely complementary to other long-lived Z' searches at beam-dump facilities such as FASER and SHiP, as well as astrophysical and cosmological probes. On the other hand, the prospects of detecting φ itself at DUNE are to some extent weakened in presence of Z', compared to the case without the gauge interaction.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗