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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 73 records · Page 4

Tracking discontinuities in parameter space

We develop a geometric framework in Feynman-parameter space to determine constraints on the sequential discontinuities of Feynman integrals. Our method is based on tracking the deformation of the integration contour as external kinematics are analytically continued. This procedure imposes powerful constraints on the analytic structure of Feynman integrals, providing crucial inputs for their bootstrap. We demonstrate the usefulness of this framework by applying it to integrals in dimensional regularization, with higher propagator powers, and to examples with non-uniform transcendental weight. The method is illustrated with several one- and two-loop calculations.

Differential and Algebraic Geometry↗

$t\overline{t}b\overline{b}$ at NLO precision in a variable flavor number scheme

Top-quark pair production in association with two $b$-jets is computed at next-to-leading order QCD precision, including effects of the $b$-quark mass, and matched to a $t\overline{t}$+jets simulation in a variable flavor number scheme. The Monte Carlo realization of this method, called fusing, consistently embeds the four-flavor calculation in a particle-level event generator. As a first phenomenological application, we present observables relevant to the data-driven estimation of irreducible backgrounds to $t\overline{t}H$ -production.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Parton distribution function uncertainties in theoretical predictions for far-forward tau neutrinos at the Large Hadron Collider

New experiments dealing with neutrinos in the far-forward region at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are under design or already in preparation. Two of them, FASERν and SND@LHC, are expected to be active during Run 3 and have the potential to detect the interactions of ν and $\bar {v}$ that come from high-energy collisions in one of the LHC interaction points, extracted along the direction tangent to the beam line. Tau neutrinos and antineutrinos come predominantly from $D^{±}_{s}$ production in pp collisions, followed by the leptonic decay of these mesons. Neutrino pseudorapidities in the range of η > 6.9 and η > 8.9 are relevant to these future experiments. At such pseudorapidities at high energies, QCD theoretical predictions for the flux of ν τ plus $\bar {v}_τ$ rely on parton distribution functions (PDFs) in a combination of very small and large parton–x values. We evaluate PDF un certainties affecting the flux of ν τ + $\bar {v}_τ$ produced by $D^{±}_{s}$ decay in the far forward region at the LHC. Next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD uncertainties are included in the calculation of $D^{±}_{s}$ production and NLO PDF sets are used for consistency. The theoretical uncertainty associated with the 40 PDF sets of the PROSA19 group amounts to ±(20 – 30)% for the (ν τ + $\bar {v}_τ$) number of charged-current (CC) events. Scale uncertainties are much larger, resulting in a range of CC event predictions from ~70% lower to ~90% higher than the central prediction. A comparison of the predictions with those obtained using as input the central PDFs from the 3-flavour NLO PDF sets of the CT14, ABMP16 and NNPDF3.1 collaborations show that far-forward neutrino energy distributions vary by as much as a factor of ~2 – 4 relative to the PROSA19 predictions at TeV neutrino energies. The Forward Physics Facility in the high luminosity LHC era will provide data capable of constraining NLO QCD evaluations with these PDF sets.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Improved calculation of total cross section for pair production by relativistic heavy ions

A calculation of the total cross section for direct electron-positron pair production by heavy ions is described. It combines the use of the Weizsaecker-Williams method for low-energy transfers and existing calculations for high-energy transfers. Higher-order corrections to the total cross section are calculated based on the Weizsaecher-Williams method and existing results for pair production by photons.

Eby, P. B.↗

Program VSAERO theory document: A computer program for calculating nonlinear aerodynamic characteristics of arbitrary configurations

The VSAERO low order panel method formulation is described for the calculation of subsonic aerodynamic characteristics of general configurations. The method is based on piecewise constant doublet and source singularities. Two forms of the internal Dirichlet boundary condition are discussed and the source distribution is determined by the external Neumann boundary condition. A number of basic test cases are examined. Calculations are compared with higher order solutions for a number of cases. It is demonstrated that for comparable density of control points where the boundary conditions are satisfied, the low order method gives comparable accuracy to the higher order solutions. It is also shown that problems associated with some earlier low order panel methods, e.g., leakage in internal flows and junctions and also poor trailing edge solutions, do not appear for the present method. Further, the application of the Kutta conditions is extremely simple; no extra equation or trailing edge velocity point is required. The method has very low computing costs and this has made it practical for application to nonlinear problems requiring iterative solutions for wake shape and surface boundary layer effects.

Maskew, Brian↗

The analytic two-loop soft function for leading-jet p T

We present the calculation of the two-loop soft function for the transverse momentum distribution of the leading jet produced in association with any colour-singlet system (e.g. a Higgs or a Z boson). This constitutes a central ingredient for the resummation of the above distribution as well as the jet-vetoed cross section at the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic order, both of which play an important role in the precision physics programme at the Large Hadron Collider. The calculation is performed in soft-collinear effective theory with an appropriate regularisation of the rapidity divergences that occur in the phase-space integrals. We obtain analytic results by employing an exponential regulator and by taking a Laurent expansion in the jet radius R . All expressions are presented as supplementary material attached to this article.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Transverse momentum resummation at N$^{3}$LL+NNLO for diboson processes

Diboson processes are one of the most accessible and stringent probes of the electroweak gauge structure of the Standard Model at the LHC. They will be probed at the percent level at the high-luminosity LHC, challenging current theory predictions. We present transverse momentum resummed calculations at N$^{3}$LL+NNLO for the processes ZZ, WZ, WH and ZH, compare our predictions with most recent LHC data and present predictions at 13.6 TeV including theory uncertainty estimates. For W$^{+}$W$^{−}$ production we further present jet-veto resummed results at N$^{3}$LL$_{p}$+NNLO. Our calculations will be made publicly available in the upcoming MCFM release and allow future analyses to take advantage of improved predictions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Dihadron correlations in small- x DIS at NLO: transverse momentum dependent fragmentation

We compute the inclusive dihadron cross-section in Deep Inelastic Scattering at next-to-leading order (NLO) and small x in the Color Glass Condensate. We focus on the kinematic limit where the hadrons are produced at forward rapidities (in the direction of the virtual photon) and back-to-back in the transverse plane. Our calculation demonstrates that the coefficient of the Sudakov double logarithm for this process is –$\frac{αs}{2π}$ [C F + $\frac{Nc}{2}$] instead of –$\frac{αsNc}{4π}$ when back-to-back jets are measured in the final state. To preserve the universality of the Sudakov soft factor associated with the Weizsäcker-Williams transverse momentum dependent (TMD) gluon distribution, we promote the collinear fragmentation functions into TMD fragmentation functions. We then perform the resummation of the Sudakov logarithms through Collins-Soper-Sterman evolution of the TMD fragmentation functions and the Weizsäcker-Williams TMD gluon distribution. Finally, analytic expressions are obtained for the NLO coefficient functions in the $\overline{MS}$-scheme. These results pave the way towards numerically calculating dihadron correlations at small x at the future Electron-Ion Collider with full NLO accuracy.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

A spectral metric for collider geometry

By quantifying the distance between two collider events, one can triangulate a metric space and reframe collider data analysis as computational geometry. One popular geometric approach is to first represent events as an energy flow on an idealized celestial sphere and then define the metric in terms of optimal transport in two dimensions. In this paper, we advocate for representing events in terms of a spectral function that encodes pairwise particle angles and products of particle energies, which enables a metric distance defined in terms of one-dimensional optimal transport. This approach has the advantage of automatically incorporating obvious isometries of the data, like rotations about the colliding beam axis. It also facilitates first-principles calculations, since there are simple closed-form expressions for optimal transport in one dimension. Up to isometries and event sets of measure zero, the spectral representation is unique, so the metric on the space of spectral functions is a metric on the space of events. At lowest order in perturbation theory in electron-positron collisions, our metric is simply the summed squared invariant masses of the two event hemispheres. Going to higher orders, we present predictions for the distribution of metric distances between jets in fixed-order and resummed perturbation theory as well as in parton-shower generators. Finally, we speculate on whether the spectral approach could furnish a useful metric on the space of quantum field theories.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Non-Gaussianities in collider energy flux

The microscopic dynamics of particle collisions is imprinted into the statistical properties of asymptotic energy flux, much like the dynamics of inflation is imprinted into the cosmic microwave background. This energy flux is characterized by correlation functions < E(n → 1 )…E(n → k ) > of energy flow operators E(n → ). There has been significant recent progress in studying energy flux, including the calculation of multi-point correlation functions and their direct measurement inside high-energy jets at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In this paper, we build on these advances by defining a notion of “celestial non-gaussianity” as a ratio of the three-point function to a product of two-point functions. We show that this celestial non-gaussianity is under perturbative control within jets at the LHC, allowing us to cleanly access the non-gaussian interactions of quarks and gluons. We find good agreement between perturbative calculations of the non-gaussianity and a charged-particle-based analysis using CMS Open Data, and we observe a strong non-gaussianity peaked in the “flattened triangle” regime. The ability to robustly study three-point correlations is a significant step in advancing our understanding of jet substructure at the LHC. We anticipate that the celestial non-gaussianity, and its generalizations, will play an important role in the development of higher-order parton showers simulations and in the hunt for ever more subtle signals of potential new physics within jets.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Non-local slicing approaches for NNLO QCD in MCFM

We present the implementation of several processes at Next-to-Next-to Leading Order (NNLO) accuracy in QCD in the parton-level Monte Carlo program MCFM. The processes treated are pp → H, W ± , Z, W ± H, ZH, W ± γ, Zγ and γγ and, for the first time in the code, W + W - , W ± Z and ZZ. Decays of the unstable bosons are fully included, resulting in a flexible fully differential Monte Carlo code. The NNLO corrections have been calculated using two non-local slicing approaches, isolating the doubly unresolved region by cutting on the zero-jettiness, $\mathscr{T}_0$, or on q T , the transverse momentum of the colour singlet final-state particles. We find that for most, but not all processes the q T slicing method leads to smaller power corrections for equal computational burden.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Projection-to-Born-improved subtractions at NNLO

While the current frontier in fixed-order precision for collider observables is N 3 LO, important steps are necessary to consolidate NNLO cross-section predictions with improved stability and efficiency. Slicing methods have been successfully applied to obtain NNLO and N 3 LO predictions, but have shown poor performance in the presence of fiducial cuts due to large kinematical power corrections. In this paper we implement Projection-to-Born-improved q T (P2B q T ) and jettiness (P2Bτ 0 ) subtractions for a large class of color singlet processes in MCFM. This method allows for the efficient evaluation of fiducial power corrections in any non-local subtraction scheme using a Projection-to-Born subtraction. We demonstrate the significant numerical improvements of this method based on fiducial Drell-Yan and Higgs cross-sections. Moreover, with fiducial power corrections removed via this method, the leading-logarithmic power corrections that have only been calculated without fiducial cuts can be included, further improving the calculations. For di-photon production with photon isolation, we devise a novel method in combination with P2B-improved subtractions, which we name P2B γ τ 0 , and P2B γ q T for the two subtraction schemes, respectively. This method allows the inclusion of both fiducial power corrections due to kinematic cuts on the photons and a set of isolation power corrections in the fragmentation channel where a quark may enter the isolation cone. We find significant improvements in the convergence of NNLO di-photon cross-sections with photon isolation cuts, demonstrating that it is possible to achieve a stable and efficient calculation of di-photon cross-sections using slicing methods.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Heavy-quark contributions to the DIS structure functions F 4 and F 5 at NLO in the ACOT scheme

We compute the contributions of heavy quarks to the deep-inelastic scattering structure functions F 4 and F 5 at next-to-leading order of perturbative QCD in the ACOT scheme. Both analytic results including the details of the calculation as well as numerical results for the neutral and charged current cases are presented. Our study thus lays the groundwork for future measurements of these two structure functions in experiments such as the SHiP experiment.

deep inelastic scattering↗

Small radius inclusive jet production at the LHC through NNLO+NNLL

The study of hadronic jets and their substructure at hadronic colliders is crucial for improving our understanding of QCD, and searching for new physics. As such, there has been a significant effort to improve their theoretical description. In the small radius limit, inclusive jet production exhibits a universal factorization, enabling the resummation of logarithms which greatly stabilizes theoretical predictions. In this paper, we show how to combine a recently introduced framework for small-R resummation with the Stripper subtraction formalism for fragmentation, enabling next-to-next-to-leading order calculations of small-R inclusive jet production for a wide variety of processes at the LHC. We extract the two-loop constants for the jet functions, enabling for the first time next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic resummation matched to next-to-next-to-leading order perturbative calculation. We compare with CMS data for small-R jet production, and find that our results greatly improve the accuracy of the predictions at small-R, and stabilize the perturbative convergence and error estimates at larger R. Our approach is applicable to a wide class of jet substructure observables exhibiting similar factorization theorems, opening the door to an NNLO jet substructure program at the LHC.

Effective Field Theories↗

Refining the GENEVA method for Higgs boson production via gluon fusion

We describe a number of improvements to the Geneva method for matching NNLO calculations to parton shower programs. In particular, we detail changes to the resummed calculation used in the matching procedure, including disentangling the cross section dependence on factorisation and beam scales, and an improved treatment of timelike logarithms. We also discuss modifications in the implementation of the splitting functions which serve to make the resummed calculation differential in the higher multiplicity phase space. These changes improve the stability of the numerical cancellation of the nonsingular term at small values of the resolution parameter. As a case study, we consider the gluon-initiated Higgs boson production process gg → H. We validate the NNLO accuracy of our predictions against independent calculations, and compare our showered and hadronised results with recent data taken at the ATLAS and CMS experiments in the diphoton decay channel, finding good agreement.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Soft integrals and soft anomalous dimensions at $\mathrm{N^3LO}$ and beyond

We calculate soft phase-space and loop master integrals for the computation of color-singlet cross sections through N 3 LO in perturbative QCD. Our results are functions of homogeneous transcendental weight and include the first nine terms in the expansion in the dimensional regulator ϵ. We discuss the application of our results to the computation of deeply-inelastic scattering and e + e - annihilation processes. We use these results to compute the perturbative coefficient functions for the Drell-Yan and gluon-fusion Higgs boson production cross sections to higher orders in ϵ through N 3 LO in QCD in the limit where only soft partons are produced on top of the colorless final state. Furthermore, we extract the anomalous dimension of the inclusive threshold soft function and of the N-Jettiness beam and jet functions to N 4 LO in perturbative QCD.

higher-order perturbative calculations↗

NLO QCD corrections to full off-shell production of $t\overline{t}Z$ including leptonic decays

Motivated by ongoing new physics searches in the top-quark sector at the Large Hadron Collider we report on the calculation of NLO QCD corrections to the Standard Model $pp$→$t\overline{t}Z + X$ process in the tetra-lepton decay channel. This calculation is based on the matrix elements for the $e^+v_eμ^-\bar v_μb\bar bτ^+τ^-$ final state and includes all resonant and non-resonant Feynman diagrams, interferences and off-shell effects of the top quark as well as the W and Z gauge bosons. Also incorporated are photon-induced contributions. As it is customary for such studies, we show theoretical predictions for both fixed and dynamical factorisation and renormalisation scale choices and different PDF sets. Furthermore, we study the main theoretical uncertainties that are associated with neglected higher-order terms in the perturbative expansion and with the parameterisation of the PDF sets. In order to investigate the size of off-shell effects and higher-order corrections in top-quark decays, we perform a second computation for this process, which is based on the narrow-width-approximation where the top quarks, W and Z gauge bosons are kept on-shell. Results are given for the integrated and differential fiducial cross sections for the LHC Run II center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Jet-veto resummation at N 3 LL p + NNLO in boson production processes

Vetoing energetic jet activity is a crucial tool for suppressing backgrounds and enabling new physics searches at the LHC, but the introduction of a veto scale can introduce large logarithms that may need to be resummed. We present an implementation of jet-veto resummation for color-singlet processes at the level of N 3 LL p matched to fixed-order NNLO predictions. Our public code MCFM allows for predictions of a single boson, such as Z/γ*, W ± or H, or with a pair of vector bosons, such as W + W – , W ± Z or ZZ. The implementation relies on recent calculations of the soft and beam functions in the presence of a jet veto over all rapidities, with jets defined using a sequential recombination algorithm with jet radius R. However one of the ingredients that is required to reach full N 3 LL accuracy is only known approximately, hence N 3 LL p . We describe in detail our formalism and compare with previous public codes that operate at the level of NNLL. Our higher-order predictions improve significantly upon NNLL calculations by reducing theoretical uncertainties. We demonstrate this by comparing our predictions with ATLAS and CMS results.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗