Abstract: It has been pointed out recently that current low-energy constraints still allow for sizable flavor-changing decay rates of the 125 GeV boson into leptons, h -> tau l (l = e, mu). In this work we discuss the role of hadronic tau-lepton decays in probing lepton flavor violating couplings in the Higgs sector. At low energy, the effective Higgs coupling to gluons induced by heavy quarks contributes to hadronic tau decays, establishing a direct connection with the relevant process at the LHC, pp(gg) -> h -> tau l. Semileptonic transitions like tau -> l pi pi are sensitive to flavor-changing scalar couplings, while decays such as tau -> l eta((l)) probe pseudoscalar couplings, thus providing a useful low-energy handle to disentangle possible Higgs flavor violating signals at the LHC. As part of our analysis, we provide an appropriate description of all the relevant hadronic matrix elements needed to describe Higgs mediated tau -> pi pi transitions, improving over previous treatments in the literature.

Abstract: It is well known that a quantized two-dimensional Weyl fermion coupled to gravity spoils general covariance and breaks the covariant conservation of the energy-momentum tensor. In this brief article, we point out that the quantum conservation of the momentum can also fail in flat spacetime, provided the Weyl fermion is coupled to a time-varying homogeneous electric field. This signals a quantum anomaly of the space-translation symmetry, which has not been highlighted in the literature so far.

Abstract: It is well known that the scotogenic model for neutrino mass generation can explain correctly the relic abundance of cold dark matter. There have been claims in the literature that an important part of the parameter space of the simplest scotogentic model can be constrained by the requirement that no Z(2)-breaking must occur in the early universe. Here we show that this requirement does not give any constraints on the underlying parameter space at least in those parts, where we can trust perturbation theory. To demonstrate this, we have taken into account the proper decoupling of heavy degrees of freedom in both the thermal potential and in the RGE evolution.

Abstract: Jet energy scale measurements and their systematic uncertainties are reported for jets measured with the ATLAS detector using proton-proton collision data with a center-of-mass energy of root s = 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb(-1) collected during 2015 at the LHC. Jets are reconstructed from energy deposits forming topological clusters of calorimeter cells, using the anti-k(t) algorithm with radius parameter R = 0.4. Jets are calibrated with a series of simulation-based corrections and in situ techniques. In situ techniques exploit the transverse momentum balance between a jet and a reference object such as a photon, Z boson, or multijet system for jets with 20 < p(T) < 2000 GeV and pseudorapidities of vertical bar eta vertical bar < 4.5, using both data and simulation. An uncertainty in the jet energy scale of less than 1% is found in the central calorimeter region (vertical bar eta vertical bar < 1.2) for jets with 100 < p(T) < 500 GeV. An uncertainty of about 4.5% is found for low-p(T) jets with p(T) = 20 GeV in the central region, dominated by uncertainties in the corrections for multiple proton-proton interactions. The calibration of forward jets (vertical bar eta vertical bar > 0.8) is derived from dijet p(T) balance measurements. For jets of p(T) = 80 GeV, the additional uncertainty for the forward jet calibration reaches its largest value of about 2% in the range vertical bar eta vertical bar > 3.5 and in a narrow slice of 2.2 < vertical bar eta vertical bar < 2.4.

Abstract: Jet shapes have been measured in inclusive jet production in proton-proton collisions at root s = 7 TeV using 3 pb(-1) of data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. Jets are reconstructed using the anti-k(t) algorithm with transverse momentum 30 GeV < p(T) < 600 GeV and rapidity in the region vertical bar y vertical bar < 2.8. The data are corrected for detector effects and compared to several leading-order QCD matrix elements plus parton shower Monte Carlo predictions, including different sets of parameters tuned to model fragmentation processes and underlying event contributions in the final state. The measured jets become narrower with increasing jet transverse momentum and the jet shapes present a moderate jet rapidity dependence. Within QCD, the data test a variety of perturbative and nonperturbative effects. In particular, the data show sensitivity to the details of the parton shower, fragmentation, and underlying event models in the Monte Carlo generators. For an appropriate choice of the parameters used in these models, the data are well described.