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Double Chooz collaboration(de Kerret, H. et al), & Novella, P. (2020). Double Chooz theta(13) measurement via total neutron capture detection. Nat. Phys., 16, 558–564.
Abstract: Neutrinos were assumed to be massless particles until the discovery of the neutrino oscillation process. This phenomenon indicates that the neutrinos have non-zero masses and the mass eigenstates (nu(1), nu(2), nu(3)) are mixtures of their flavour eigenstates (nu(e), nu(mu), nu(tau)). The oscillations between different flavour eigenstates are described by three mixing angles (theta(12), theta(23), theta(13)), two differences of the squared neutrino masses of the nu(2)/nu(1) and nu(3)/nu(1) pairs and a charge conjugation parity symmetry violating phase delta(CP). The Double Chooz experiment, located near the Chooz Electricite de France reactors, measures the oscillation parameter theta(13) using reactor neutrinos. Here, the Double Chooz collaboration reports the measurement of the mixing angle theta(13) with the new total neutron capture detection technique from the full data set, yielding sin(2)(2 theta(13)) = 0.105 +/- 0.014. This measurement exploits the multidetector configuration, the isoflux baseline and data recorded when the reactors were switched off. In addition to the neutrino mixing angle measurement, Double Chooz provides a precise measurement of the reactor neutrino flux, given by the mean cross-section per fission <sigma(f)& rang; = (5.71 +/- 0.06) x 10(-43) cm(2) per fission, and reports an empirical model of the distortion in the reactor neutrino spectrum. The Double Chooz collaboration reports the neutrino oscillation parameter theta(13) from a measurement of the disappearance of reactor anti-electron neutrinos with the total neutron capture technique.
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Donini, A., Palomares-Ruiz, S., & Salvado, J. (2019). Neutrino tomography of Earth. Nat. Phys., 15(1), 37–40.
Abstract: Cosmic-ray interactions with the atmosphere produce a flux of neutrinos in all directions with energies extending above the TeV scale(1). The Earth is not a fully transparent medium for neutrinos with energies above a few TeV, as the neutrinonucleon cross-section is large enough to make the absorption probability non-negligible(2). Since absorption depends on energy and distance travelled, studying the distribution of the TeV atmospheric neutrinos passing through the Earth offers an opportunity to infer its density profiles(3-7). This has never been done, however, due to the lack of relevant data. Here we perform a neutrino-based tomography of the Earth using actual data-one-year of through-going muon atmospheric neutrino data collected by the IceCube telescope(8). Using only weak interactions, in a way that is completely independent of gravitational measurements, we are able to determine the mass of the Earth and its core, its moment of inertia, and to establish that the core is denser than the mantle. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of this approach to study the Earth's internal structure, which is complementary to traditional geophysics methods. Neutrino tomography could become more competitive as soon as more statistics is available, provided that the sources of systematic uncertainties are fully under control.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo, F. L., Castillo Gimenez, V., et al. (2023). Observation of electroweak production of two jets and a Z-boson pair. Nat. Phys., 19(2), 237–253.
Abstract: Electroweak symmetry breaking explains the origin of the masses of elementary particles through their interactions with the Higgs field. Besides the measurements of the Higgs boson properties, the study of the scattering of massive vector bosons with spin 1 allows the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking to be probed. Among all processes related to vector-boson scattering, the electroweak production of two jets and a Z-boson pair is a rare and important one. Here we report the observation of this process from proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139fb(-1) recorded at a centre-of-mass energy of 13TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. We consider two different final states originating from the decays of the Z-boson pair: one containing four charged leptons and another containing two charged leptons and two neutrinos. The hypothesis of no electroweak production is rejected with a statistical significance of 5.7 sigma, and the measured cross-section for electroweak production is consistent with the Standard Model prediction. In addition, we report cross-sections for inclusive production of a Z-boson pair and two jets for the two final states.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Cardillo, F., Castillo, F. L., et al. (2021). Search for charged-lepton-flavour violation in Z-boson decays with the ATLAS detector. Nat. Phys., 17, 819–825.
Abstract: Leptons with essentially the same properties apart from their mass are grouped into three families (or flavours). The number of leptons of each flavour is conserved in interactions, but this is not imposed by fundamental principles. Since the formulation of the standard model of particle physics, the observation of flavour oscillations among neutrinos has shown that lepton flavour is not conserved in neutrino weak interactions. So far, there has been no experimental evidence that this also occurs in interactions between charged leptons. Such an observation would be a sign of undiscovered particles or a yet unknown type of interaction. Here the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN reports a constraint on lepton-flavour-violating effects in weak interactions, searching for Z-boson decays into a tau lepton and another lepton of different flavour with opposite electric charge. The branching fractions for these decays are measured to be less than 8.1 x 10(-6) (e tau) and 9.5 x 10(-6) (mu tau) at the 95% confidence level using 139 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 13 TeV and 20.3 fb(-1) at root s = 8 TeV. These results supersede the limits from the Large Electron-Positron Collider experiments conducted more than two decades ago.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Aparisi Pozo, J. A., Bailey, A. J., Cabrera Urban, S., Cardillo, F., Castillo, F. L., et al. (2021). Test of the universality of τ and μ lepton couplings in W-boson decays with the ATLAS detector. Nat. Phys., 17, 813–818.
Abstract: The standard model of particle physics encapsulates our best current understanding of physics at the smallest scales. A fundamental axiom of this theory is the universality of the couplings of the different generations of leptons to the electroweak gauge bosons. The measurement of the ratio of the decay rate of W bosons to t leptons and muons, R(tau/mu), constitutes an important test of this axiom. Using 139 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, we report a measurement of this quantity from di-leptonic tt events where the top quarks decay into a W boson and a bottom quark. We can distinguish muons originating from W bosons and those originating from an intermediate t lepton through the muon transverse impact parameter and differences in the muon transverse momentum spectra. The measured value of R(tau/mu) is 0.992 +/- 0.013 [+/- 0.007(stat) +/- 0.011(syst)] and is in agreement with the hypothesis of universal lepton couplings as postulated in the standard model. This is the only such measurement from the Large Hadron Collider, so far, and obtains twice the precision of previous measurements.
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