Archidiacono, M., Gariazzo, S., Giunti, C., Hannestad, S., & Tram, T. (2020). Sterile neutrino self-interactions: H-0 tension and short-baseline anomalies. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 12(12), 029–20pp.
Abstract: Sterile neutrinos with a mass in the eV range have been invoked as a possible explanation of a variety of short baseline (SBL) neutrino oscillation anomalies. However, if one considers neutrino oscillations between active and sterile neutrinos, such neutrinos would have been fully thermalised in the early universe, and would be therefore in strong conflict with cosmological bounds. In this study we first update cosmological bounds on the mass and energy density of eV-scale sterile neutrinos. We then perform an updated study of a previously proposed model in which the sterile neutrino couples to a new light pseudoscalar degree of freedom. Consistently with previous analyses, we find that the model provides a good fit to all cosmological data and allows the high value of H-0 measured in the local universe to be consistent with measurements of the cosmic microwave background. However, new high l polarisation data constrain the sterile neutrino mass to be less than approximately 1 eV in this scenario. Finally, we combine the cosmological bounds on the pseudoscalar model with a Bayesian inference analysis of SBL data and conclude that only a sterile mass in narrow ranges around 1 eV remains consistent with both cosmology and SBL data.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., Remon Alepuz, C., Ruiz Valls, P., & Sanchez Mayordomo, C. (2017). Observation of J/psi phi Structures Consistent with Exotic States from Amplitude Analysis of B+ -> J/psi phi K+ Decays. Phys. Rev. Lett., 118(2), 022003–10pp.
Abstract: The first full amplitude analysis of B+ -> J/psi phi K+ with J/psi -> mu(+)mu(-), phi -> K+K- decays is performed with a data sample of 3 fb(-1) of pp collision data collected at root s = 7 and 8 TeV with the LHCb detector. The data cannot be described by a model that contains only excited kaon states decaying into phi K+ , and four J/psi phi structures are observed, each with significance over 5 standard deviations. The quantum numbers of these structures are determined with significance of at least 4 standard deviations. The lightest has mass consistent with, but width much larger than, previous measurements of the claimed X(4140) state.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., Remon Alepuz, C., Ruiz Valls, P., & Sanchez Mayordomo, C. (2016). Measurement of the B-s(0) -> J/Psi eta lifetime. Phys. Lett. B, 762, 484–492.
Abstract: Using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3fb(-1), collected by the LHCb experiment in ppcollisions at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8TeV, the effective lifetime in the B-s(0) -> J/Psi eta decay mode, teff, is measured to be tau(eff) = 1.479 +/- 0.034 (stat)+/- 0.011 (syst) ps. Assuming CP conservation, tau(eff) corresponds to the lifetime of the light B-s(0) mass eigenstate. This is the first measurement of the effective lifetime in this decay mode.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Garcia Martin, L. M., Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., Remon Alepuz, C., Ruiz Valls, P., et al. (2016). Measurement of the forward Z boson production cross-section in pp collisions at root s=13 TeV. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 136–33pp.
Abstract: A measurement of the production cross-section of Z bosons in pp collisions at root s=13 TeV is presented using dimuon and dielectron final states in LHCb data. The cross-section is measured for leptons with pseudorapidities in the range 2.0 < eta < 4.5, transverse momenta pT > 20 GeV and dilepton invariant mass in the range 60 < m(ll) < 120 GeV. The integrated cross-section from averaging the two final states is sigma(ll)(Z) = 194.3+/-0.9+/-3.3+/-7.6 pb, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is due to systematic effects, and the third is due to the luminosity determination. In addition, differential cross-sections are measured as functions of the Z boson rapidity, transverse momentum and the angular variable phi(eta)*.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., Remon Alepuz, C., Ruiz Valls, P., & Sanchez Mayordomo, C. (2017). Observation of eta(c)(2S) -> p(p)over-bar and search for X(3872) -> p(p)over-bar decays. Phys. Lett. B, 769, 305–313.
Abstract: The first observation of the decay eta(c)(2S) -> p (p) over bar is reported using proton -proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 fb(-1) recorded by the LHCb experiment at centre -of -mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. The eta c(2S) resonance is produced in the decay B+ [c (c) over bar ]K+. The product of branching fractions normalised to that for the intermediate state, R-eta c,(2s), is measured to be R-eta c,(2s) equivalent to B(B+-> eta c (2S)K+) x B(eta c(2s)(2S) -> p<<(p)over bar> )/B(B+ -> J/psi k(+)) x B(J/psi -> p<<(p)over bar> ) = (1.58 +/- 0.33 +/- 0.09) x 10(-2), where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. No signals for the decays B+ -> X(3872)(-> p (p) over bar )K+ and B+ psi(3770)(-> p (p) over bar )K+ are seen, and the 95% confidence level upper limits on their relative branching ratios are found to be R-x(3872) < 0.25 x 10(-2) and R-psi(3770) < 0.10. In addition, the mass differences between the nc(1S) and the J/psi states, between the eta(c)(2S) and the eta(c)(2S) states, and the natural width of the psi(1S) are measured as M-J/psi – M-eta c(7s)= 110.2 +/- 0.5 +/- 0.9 MeV, M psi(2S) – M-eta c (2S) = 52.5 +/- 1.7 +/- 0.6 MeV, Gamma(eta c) (1s) = 34.0 +/- 1.9 +/- 1.3 MeV.
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LHCb Collaboration(Aaij, R. et al), Garcia Martin, L. M., Martinez-Vidal, F., Oyanguren, A., Remon Alepuz, C., Ruiz Valls, P., et al. (2017). Search for the suppressed decays B+ -> K+K+pi(-) and B+ -> pi(+)pi K-+(-). Phys. Lett. B, 765, 307–316.
Abstract: A search is made for the highly-suppressed B meson decays B+ -> K+K+pi(-) and B+ -> pi(+)pi K-+(-) using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 fb(-1) collected by the LHCb experiment in proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. No evidence is found for the decays, and upper limits at 90% confidence level are determined to be B(B+ -> K+K+pi(-))< 1.1 x 10(-8) and B(B+ -> pi(+)pi K-+(-)) < 4.6 x 10(-8).
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Ardu, M., Davidson, S., & Lavignac, S. (2024). Constraining new physics models from μ → e observables in bottom-up EFT. Eur. Phys. J. C, 84(5), 458–36pp.
Abstract: Upcoming experiments will improve the sensitivity to μ-> e processes by several orders of magnitude, and could observe lepton flavour-changing contact interactions for the first time. In this paper, we investigate what could be learned about New Physics from the measurements of these μ-> e observables, using a bottom-up effective field theory (EFT) approach and focusing on three popular models with new particles around the TeV scale (the type II seesaw, the inverse seesaw and a scalar leptoquark). We showed in a previous publication that μ-> e observables have the ability to rule out these models because none can fill the whole experimentally accessible parameter space. In this work we give more details on our EFT formalism and present more complete results. We discuss the impact of some observables complementary to μ-> e transitions (such as the neutrino mass scale and ordering, and LFV tau decays) and draw attention to the interesting appearance of Jarlskog-like invariants in our expressions for the low-energy Wilson coefficients.
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Ares, F., Esteve, J. G., Falceto, F., & Uson, A. (2020). Complex behavior of the density in composite quantum systems. Phys. Rev. B, 102(16), 165121–13pp.
Abstract: In this paper, we study how the probability of presence of a particle is distributed between the two parts of a composite fermionic system. We uncover that the difference of probability depends on the energy in a striking way and show the pattern of this distribution. We discuss the main features of the latter and explain analytically those that we understand. In particular, we prove that it is a nonperturbative property and we find out a large/small coupling constant duality. We also find and study features that may connect our problem with certain aspects of nonlinear classical dynamics, such as the existence of resonances and sensitive dependence on the state of the system. We show that the latter has, indeed, a similar origin than in classical mechanics: the appearance of small denominators in the perturbative series. Inspired by the proof of the Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theorem, we are able to deal with this problem by introducing a cutoff in energies that eliminates these small denominators. We also formulate some conjectures that we are not able to prove at present but can be supported by numerical experiments.
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Arganda, E., Marcano, X., Martin Lozano, V., Medina, A. D., Perez, A. D., Szewc, M., et al. (2022). A method for approximating optimal statistical significances with machine-learned likelihoods. Eur. Phys. J. C, 82(11), 993–14pp.
Abstract: Machine-learning techniques have become fundamental in high-energy physics and, for new physics searches, it is crucial to know their performance in terms of experimental sensitivity, understood as the statistical significance of the signal-plus-background hypothesis over the background-only one. We present here a simple method that combines the power of current machine-learning techniques to face high-dimensional data with the likelihood-based inference tests used in traditional analyses, which allows us to estimate the sensitivity for both discovery and exclusion limits through a single parameter of interest, the signal strength. Based on supervised learning techniques, it can perform well also with high-dimensional data, when traditional techniques cannot. We apply the method to a toy model first, so we can explore its potential, and then to a LHC study of new physics particles in dijet final states. Considering as the optimal statistical significance the one we would obtain if the true generative functions were known, we show that our method provides a better approximation than the usual naive counting experimental results.
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Arguelles, C. A., Palomares-Ruiz, S., Schneider, A., Wille, L., & Yuan, T. L. (2018). Unified atmospheric neutrino passing fractions for large-scale neutrino telescopes. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 047–41pp.
Abstract: The atmospheric neutrino passing fraction, or self-veto, is defined as the probability for an atmospheric neutrino not to be accompanied by a detectable muon from the same cosmic-ray air shower. Building upon previous work, we propose a redefinition of the passing fractions by unifying the treatment for muon and electron neutrinos. Several approximations have also been removed. This enables performing detailed estimations of the uncertainties in the passing fractions from several inputs: muon losses, cosmic-ray spectrum, hadronic-interaction models and atmosphere-density profiles. We also study the passing fractions under variations of the detector configuration: depth, surrounding medium and muon veto trigger probability. The calculation exhibits excellent agreement with passing fractions obtained from Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, we provide a general software framework to implement this veto technique for all large-scale neutrino observatories.
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