Garcia-Barcelo, J. M., Diaz-Morcillo, A., & Gimeno, B. (2023). Enhancing resonant circular-section haloscopes for dark matter axion detection: approaches and limitations in volume expansion. J. High Energy Phys., 11(11), 159–30pp.
Abstract: Haloscopes, microwave resonant cavities utilized in detecting dark matter axions within powerful static magnetic fields, are pivotal in modern astrophysical research. This paper delves into the realm of cylindrical geometries, investigating techniques to augment volume and enhance compatibility with dipole or solenoid magnets. The study explores volume constraints in two categories of haloscope designs: those reliant on single cavities and those employing multicavities. In both categories, strategies to increase the expanse of elongated structures are elucidated. For multicavities, the optimization of space within magnets is explored through 1D configurations. Three subcavity stacking approaches are investigated, while the foray into 2D and 3D geometries lays the groundwork for future topological developments. The results underscore the efficacy of these methods, revealing substantial room for progress in cylindrical haloscope design. Notably, an elongated single cavity design attains a three-order magnitude increase in volume compared to a WC-109 standard waveguide-based single cavity. Diverse prototypes featuring single cavities, 1D, 2D, and 3D multicavities highlight the feasibility of leveraging these geometries to magnify the volume of tangible haloscope implementations.
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Cottin, G., Helo, J. C., Hirsch, M., Titov, A., & Wang, Z. S. (2021). Heavy neutral leptons in effective field theory and the high-luminosity LHC. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 039–34pp.
Abstract: Heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) with masses around the electroweak scale are expected to be rather long-lived particles, as a result of the observed smallness of the active neutrino masses. In this work, we study long-lived HNLs in NRSMEFT, a Standard Model (SM) extension with singlet fermions to which we add non-renormalizable operators up to dimension-6. Operators which contain two HNLs can lead to a sizable enhancement of the production cross sections, compared to the minimal case where HNLs are produced only via their mixing with the SM neutrinos. We calculate the expected sensitivities for the ATLAS detector and the future far-detector experiments: AL3X, ANUBIS, CODEX-b, FASER, MATHUSLA, and MoEDAL-MAPP in this setup. The sensitive ranges of the HNL mass and of the active-heavy mixing angle are much larger than those in the minimal case. We study both, Dirac and Majorana, HNLs and discuss how the two cases actually differ phenomenologically, for HNL masses above roughly 100 GeV.
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Chala, M., Durieux, G., Grojean, C., de Lima, L., & Matsedonskyi, O. (2017). Minimally extended SILH. J. High Energy Phys., 06(6), 088–32pp.
Abstract: Higgs boson compositeness is a phenomenologically viable scenario addressing the hierarchy problem. In minimal models, the Higgs boson is the only degree of freedom of the strong sector below the strong interaction scale. We present here the simplest extension of such a framework with an additional composite spin-zero singlet. To this end, we adopt an effective field theory approach and develop a set of rules to estimate the size of the various operator coefficients, relating them to the parameters of the strong sector and its structural features. As a result, we obtain the patterns of new interactions affecting both the new singlet and the Higgs boson's physics. We identify the characteristics of the singlet field which cause its effects on Higgs physics to dominate over the ones inherited from the composite nature of the Higgs boson. Our effective field theory construction is supported by comparisons with explicit UV models.
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Baglio, J., Campanario, F., Glaus, S., Muhlleitner, M., Ronca, J., Spira, M., et al. (2020). Higgs-pair production via gluon fusion at hadron colliders: NLO QCD corrections. J. High Energy Phys., 04(4), 181–50pp.
Abstract: Higgs-pair production via gluon fusion is the dominant production mechanism of Higgs-boson pairs at hadron colliders. In this work, we present details of our numerical determination of the full next-to-leading-order (NLO) QCD corrections to the leading top-quark loops. Since gluon fusion is a loop-induced process at leading order, the NLO calculation requires the calculation of massive two-loop diagrams with up to four different mass/energy scales involved. With the current methods, this can only be done numerically, if no approximations are used. We discuss the setup and details of our numerical integration. This will be followed by a phenomenological analysis of the NLO corrections and their impact on the total cross section and the invariant Higgs-pair mass distribution. The last part of our work will be devoted to the determination of the residual theoretical uncertainties with special emphasis on the uncertainties originating from the scheme and scale dependence of the (virtual) top mass. The impact of the trilinear Higgs-coupling variation on the total cross section will be discussed.
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NEXT Collaboration(Fernandes, A. F. M. et al), Alvarez, V., Benlloch-Rodriguez, J. M., Carcel, S., Carrion, J. V., Diaz, J., et al. (2020). Low-diffusion Xe-He gas mixtures for rare-event detection: electroluminescence yield. J. High Energy Phys., 04(4), 034–18pp.
Abstract: High pressure xenon Time Projection Chambers (TPC) based on secondary scintillation (electroluminescence) signal amplification are being proposed for rare event detection such as directional dark matter, double electron capture and double beta decay detection. The discrimination of the rare event through the topological signature of primary ionisation trails is a major asset for this type of TPC when compared to single liquid or double-phase TPCs, limited mainly by the high electron diffusion in pure xenon. Helium admixtures with xenon can be an attractive solution to reduce the electron diffu- sion significantly, improving the discrimination efficiency of these optical TPCs. We have measured the electroluminescence (EL) yield of Xe-He mixtures, in the range of 0 to 30% He and demonstrated the small impact on the EL yield of the addition of helium to pure xenon. For a typical reduced electric field of 2.5 kV/cm/bar in the EL region, the EL yield is lowered by similar to 2%, 3%, 6% and 10% for 10%, 15%, 20% and 30% of helium concentration, respectively. This decrease is less than what has been obtained from the most recent simulation framework in the literature. The impact of the addition of helium on EL statistical fluctuations is negligible, within the experimental uncertainties. The present results are an important benchmark for the simulation tools to be applied to future optical TPCs based on Xe-He mixtures.
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Alcaide, J., Banerjee, S., Chala, M., & Titov, A. (2019). Probes of the Standard Model effective field theory extended with a right-handed neutrino. J. High Energy Phys., 08(8), 031–18pp.
Abstract: If neutrinos are Dirac particles and, as suggested by the so far null LHC results, any new physics lies at energies well above the electroweak scale, the Standard Model effective field theory has to be extended with operators involving the right-handed neutrinos. In this paper, we study this effective field theory and set constraints on the different dimension-six interactions. To that aim, we use LHC searches for associated production of light (and tau) leptons with missing energy, monojet searches, as well as pion and tau decays. Our bounds are generally above the TeV for order one couplings. One particular exception is given by operators involving top quarks. These provide new signals in top decays not yet studied at colliders. Thus, we also design an LHC analysis to explore these signatures in the tt production. Our results are also valid if the right-handed neutrinos are Majorana and long-lived.
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Chala, M., Krause, C., & Nardini, G. (2018). Signals of the electroweak phase transition at colliders and gravitational wave observatories. J. High Energy Phys., 07(7), 062–29pp.
Abstract: If the electroweak phase transition (EWPT) is of strongly first order due to higher dimensional operators, the scale of new physics generating them is at the TeV scale or below. In this case the effective-field theory (EFT) neglecting operators of dimension higher than six may overlook terms that are relevant for the EWPT analysis. In this article we study the EWPT in the EFT to dimension eight. We estimate the reach of the future gravitational wave observatory LISA for probing the region in which the EWPT is strongly first order and compare it with the capabilities of the Higgs measurements via double-Higgs production at current and future colliders. We also match different UV models to the previously mentioned dimension-eight EFT and demonstrate that, from the top-down point of view, the double-Higgs production is not the best signal to explore these scenarios.
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Reig, M. (2021). The stochastic axiverse. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 207–40pp.
Abstract: In addition to spectacular signatures such as black hole superradiance and the rotation of CMB polarization, the plenitude of axions appearing in the string axiverse may have potentially dangerous implications. An example is the cosmological overproduction of relic axions and moduli by the misalignment mechanism, more pronounced in regions where the signals mentioned above may be observable, that is for large axion decay constant. In this work, we study the minimal requirements to soften this problem and show that the fundamental requirement is a long period of low-scale inflation. However, in this case, if the inflationary Hubble scale is lower than around O(100) eV, no relic DM axion is produced in the early Universe. Cosmological production of some axions may be activated, via the misalignment mechanism, if their potential minimum changes between inflation and today. As a particular example, we study in detail how the maximal-misalignment mechanism dilutes the effect of dangerous axions and allows the production of axion DM in a controlled way. In this case, the potential of the axion that realises the mechanism shifts by a factor increment theta = pi between the inflationary epoch and today, and the axion starts to oscillate from the top of its potential. We also show that axions with masses m(a) similar to O(1 – 100) H-0 realising the maximal-misalignment mechanism generically behave as dark energy with a decay constant that can take values well below the Planck scale, avoiding problems associated to super-Planckian scales. Finally, we briefly study the basic phenomenological implications of the mechanism and comment on the compatibility of this type of maximally-misaligned quintessence with the swampland criteria.
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Jueid, A., Kip, J., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Skands, P. (2024). The Strong Force meets the Dark Sector: a robust estimate of QCD uncertainties for anti-matter dark matter searches. J. High Energy Phys., 02(2), 119–48pp.
Abstract: In dark-matter annihilation channels to hadronic final states, stable particles – such as positrons, photons, antiprotons, and antineutrinos – are produced via complex sequences of phenomena including QED/QCD radiation, hadronisation, and hadron decays. These processes are normally modelled by Monte Carlo (MC) event generators whose limited accuracy imply intrinsic QCD uncertainties on the predictions for indirect-detection experiments like Fermi-LAT, Pamela, IceCube or Ams-02. In this article, we perform a comprehensive analysis of QCD uncertainties, meaning both perturbative and nonperturbative sources of uncertainty are included – estimated via variations of MC renormalization-scale and fragmentation-function parameters, respectively – in antimatter spectra from dark-matter annihilation, based on parametric variations of the Pythia 8 event generator. After performing several retunings of light-quark fragmentation functions, we define a set of variations that span a conservative estimate of the QCD uncertainties. We estimate the effects on antimatter spectra for various annihilation channels and final-state particle species, and discuss their impact on fitted values for the dark-matter mass and thermally-averaged annihilation cross section. We find dramatic impacts which can go up to O(10%) for the annihilation cross section. We provide the spectra in tabulated form including QCD uncertainties and code snippets to perform fast dark-matter fits, in this github repository.
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NEXT Collaboration(Ferrario, P. et al), Benlloch-Rodriguez, J. M., Kekic, M., Renner, J., Uson, A., Alvarez, V., et al. (2019). Demonstration of the event identification capabilities of the NEXT-White detector. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 052–20pp.
Abstract: In experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay, the possibility of identifying the two emitted electrons is a powerful tool in rejecting background events and therefore improving the overall sensitivity of the experiment. In this paper we present the first measurement of the efficiency of a cut based on the different event signatures of double and single electron tracks, using the data of the NEXT-White detector, the first detector of the NEXT experiment operating underground. Using a Th-228 calibration source to produce signal-like and background-like events with energies near 1.6 MeV, a signal efficiency of 71.6 +/- 1.5(stat) +/- 0.3(sys) % for a background acceptance of 20.6 +/- 0.4(stat) +/- 0.3(sys)% is found, in good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations. An extrapolation to the energy region of the neutrinoless double beta decay by means of Monte Carlo simulations is also carried out, and the results obtained show an improvement in background rejection over those obtained at lower energies.
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