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Ferreiro, A., & Pla, S. (2022). Adiabatic regularization and preferred vacuum state for the lambda phi^4 field theory in cosmological spacetimes. Phys. Rev. D, 106(6), 065015–12pp.
Abstract: We extend the method of adiabatic regularization by introducing an arbitrary parameter μfor a scalar field with quartic self-coupling in a Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker spacetime at one-loop order. The subtraction terms constructed from this extended version allow us to define a preferred vacuum state at a fixed time ri 1/4 ri0 for this theory. We compute this vacuum state for two commonly used background fields in cosmology, specially in the context of preheating. We also give a possible prescription for an adequate value for mu.
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Figueroa, D. G., Florio, A., Loayza, N., & Pieroni, M. (2022). Spectroscopy of particle couplings with gravitational waves. Phys. Rev. D, 106(6), 063522–8pp.
Abstract: We discuss the possibility to measure particle couplings with stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds (SGWBs). Under certain circumstances a sequence of peaks of different amplitude and frequency-a stairway-emerges in a SGWB spectrum, with each peak probing a different coupling. The detection of such signature opens the possibility to reconstruct couplings (spectroscopy) of particle species involved in high energy phenomena generating SGWBs. Stairwaylike signatures may arise in causally produced backgrounds in the early Universe, e.g., from preheating or first order phase transitions. As a proof of principle we study a preheating scenario with an inflaton 0 coupled to multiple daughter fields f chi jg with different coupling strengths. As a clear stairway signature is imprinted in the SGWB spectrum, we reconstruct the relevant couplings with various detectors.
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Figueroa, D. G., Raatikainen, S., Rasanen, S., & Tomberg, E. (2022). Implications of stochastic effects for primordial black hole production in ultra-slow-roll inflation. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 05(5), 027–48pp.
Abstract: We study the impact of stochastic noise on the generation of primordial black hole (PBH) seeds in ultra-slow-roll (USR) inflation with numerical simulations. We consider the non-linearity of the system by consistently taking into account the noise dependence on the inflaton perturbations, while evolving the perturbations on the coarse-grained background affected by the noise. We capture in this way the non-Markovian nature of the dynamics, and demonstrate that non-Markovian effects are subleading. Using the Delta N formalism, we find the probability distribution P(R) of the comoving curvature perturbation R. We consider inflationary potentials that fit the CMB and lead to PBH dark matter with i) asteroid, ii) solar, or iii) Planck mass, as well as iv) PBHs that form the seeds of supermassive black holes. We find that stochastic effects enhance the PBH abundance by a factor of O(10)-O(10(8)), depending on the PBH mass. We also show that the usual approximation, where stochastic kicks depend only on the Hubble rate, either underestimates or overestimates the abundance by orders of magnitude, depending on the potential. We evaluate the gauge dependence of the results, discuss the quantum-to-classical transition, and highlight open issues of the application of the stochastic formalism to USR inflation.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Amos, K. R., Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Cardillo, F., et al. (2022). Search for neutral long-lived particles in pp collisions at root s = 13 TeV that decay into displaced hadronic jets in the ATLAS calorimeter. J. High Energy Phys., 06(6), 005–49pp.
Abstract: A search for decays of pair-produced neutral long-lived particles (LLPs) is presented using 139 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2015-2018 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. Dedicated techniques were developed for the reconstruction of displaced jets produced by LLPs decaying hadronically in the ATLAS hadronic calorimeter. Two search regions are defined for different LLP kinematic regimes. The observed numbers of events are consistent with the expected background, and limits for several benchmark signals are determined. For a SM Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV, branching ratios above 10% are excluded at 95% confidence level for values of c times LLP mean proper lifetime in the range between 20 mm and 10 m depending on the model. Upper limits are also set on the cross-section times branching ratio for scalars with a mass of 60 GeV and for masses between 200 GeV and 1 Tev.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Amos, K. R., Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Cardillo, F., et al. (2022). Measurements of differential cross-sections in top-quark pair events with a high transverse momentum top quark and limits on beyond the Standard Model contributions to top-quark pair production with the ATLAS detector at root s=13 TeV. J. High Energy Phys., 06(6), 063–73pp.
Abstract: Cross-section measurements of top-quark pair production where the hadronically decaying top quark has transverse momentum greater than 355 GeV and the other top quark decays into l nu b are presented using 139 fb(-1) of data collected by the ATLAS experiment during proton-proton collisions at the LHC. The fiducial cross-section at root s = 13 TeV is measured to be sigma = 1.267 +/- 0.005 +/- 0.053 pb, where the uncertainties reflect the limited number of data events and the systematic uncertainties, giving a total uncertainty of 4.2%. The cross-section is measured differentially as a function of variables characterising the t (t) over bar system and additional radiation in the events. The results are compared with various Monte Carlo generators, including comparisons where the generators are reweighted to match a parton-level calculation at next-to-next-to-leading order. The reweighting improves the agreement between data and theory. The measured distribution of the top-quark transverse momentum is used to search for new physics in the context of the effective field theory framework. No significant deviation from the Standard Model is observed and limits are set on the Wilson coefficients of the dimension-six operators O-tG and O-tq((8)), where the limits on the latter are the most stringent to date.
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