Kim, J. S., Rolbiecki, K., & Ruiz de Austri, R. (2016). Model-independent combination of diphoton constraints at 750 GeV. Eur. Phys. J. C, 76(5), 251–8pp.
Abstract: Motivated by the recent diphoton excess reported by both the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, we provide a model-independent combination of diphoton results obtained at root s = 8 and 13 TeV at the LHC. We consider resonant s-channel production of a spin-0 and spin-2 particle with a mass of 750 GeV that subsequently decays to two photons. The size of the excess reported by ATLAS appears to be in a slight tension with other measurements under the spin-2 particle hypothesis.
|
Kim, J. S., Reuter, J., Rolbiecki, K., & Ruiz de Austri, R. (2016). A resonance without resonance: Scrutinizing the diphoton excess at 750 GeV. Phys. Lett. B, 755, 403–408.
Abstract: Motivated by the recent diphoton excesses reported by both ATLAS and CMS collaborations, we suggest that a new heavy spinless particle is produced in gluon fusion at the LHC and decays to a couple of lighter pseudoscalars which then decay to photons. The new resonances could arise from a new strongly interacting sector and couple to Standard Model gauge bosons only via the corresponding Wess-Zumino-Witten anomaly. We present a detailed recast of the newest 13 TeV data from ATLAS and CMS together with the 8 TeV data to scan the consistency of the parameter space for those resonances.
|
Kim, J. S., Rolbiecki, K., Ruiz de Austri, R., Tattersall, J., & Weber, T. (2016). Prospects for natural SUSY. Phys. Rev. D, 94(9), 095013–19pp.
Abstract: As we anticipate the first results of the 2016 run, we assess the discovery potential of the LHC to “natural supersymmetry.” To begin with, we explore the region of the model parameter space that can be excluded with various center-of-mass energies (13 TeV and 14 TeV) and different luminosities (20 fb(-1), 100 fb(-1), 300 fb(-1) and 3000 fb(-1)). We find that the bounds at 95% C.L. on stops vary from m((t1) over tilde) greater than or similar to 800 GeV expected this summer to m((t1) over tilde) greater than or similar to 1500 GeV at the end of the high luminosity run, while gluino bounds are expected to range from m((g) over tilde) greater than or similar to 1700 GeV to m((g) over tilde) greater than or similar to 2500 GeV over the same time period. However, more pessimistically, we find that if no signal begins to appear this summer, only a very small region of parameter space can be discovered with 5 sigma significance. For this conclusion to change, we find that both theoretical and systematic uncertainties will need to be significantly reduced.
|
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.
|
Jueid, A., Kip, J., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Skands, P. (2023). Impact of QCD uncertainties on antiproton spectra from dark-matter annihilation. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 068–15pp.
Abstract: Dark-matter particles that annihilate or decay can undergo complex sequences of processes, including strong and electromagnetic radiation, hadronisation, and hadron de-cays, before particles that are stable on astrophysical time scales are produced. Antiprotons produced in this way may leave footprints in experiments such as AMS-02. Several groups have reported an excess of events in the antiproton flux in the rigidity range of 10-20 GV. However, the theoretical modeling of baryon production is not straightforward and relies in part on phenomenological models in Monte Carlo event generators. In this work, we assess the impact of QCD uncertainties on the spectra of antiprotons from dark-matter annihila-tion. As a proof-of-principle, we show that for a two-parameter model that depends only on the thermally-averaged annihilation cross section ((o -v)) and the dark-matter mass (Mx), QCD uncertainties can affect the best-fit mass by up to ti 14% (with large uncertainties for large DM masses), depending on the choice of Mx and the annihilation channel (bb over bar or W+W-), and (o -v) by up to ti 10%. For comparison, changes to the underlying diffusion parameters are found to be within 1%-5%, and the results are also quite resilient to the choice of cosmic-ray propagation model. These findings indicate that QCD uncertainties need to be included in future DM analyses. To facilitate full-fledged analyses, we provide the spectra in tabulated form including QCD uncertainties and code snippets to perform mass interpolations and quick DM fits. The code can be found in this GitHub [1] repository.
|
