Abstract: A technique is presented to measure the efficiency with which c-jets are mistagged as b-jets (mistagging efficiency) using t (t) over bar events, where one of theW bosons decays into an electron or muon and a neutrino and the other decays into a quark-antiquark pair. The measurement utilises the relatively large and known W -> cs branching ratio, which allows ameasurement to be made in an inclusive c-jet sample. The data sample used was collected by the ATLAS detector at root s = 13 TeV and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1). Events are reconstructed using a kinematic likelihood technique which selects the mapping between jets and t (t) over bar decay products that yields the highest likelihood value. The distribution of the b-tagging discriminant for jets from the hadronic W decays in data is compared with that in simulation to extract the mistagging efficiency as a function of jet transverse momentum. The total uncertainties are in the range 3-17%. The measurements generally agree with those in simulation but there are some differences in the region corresponding to the most stringent b-jet tagging requirement.

Abstract: We explore the complementarity of direct detection (DD) and spallation source (SS) experiments for the study of sterile neutrino physics. We focus on the sterile baryonic neutrino model: an extension of the Standard Model that introduces a massive sterile neutrino with couplings to the quark sector via a new gauge boson. In this scenario, the inelastic scattering of an active neutrino with the target material in both DD and SS experiments gives rise to a characteristic nuclear recoil energy spectrum that can allow for the reconstruction of the neutrino mass in the event of a positive detection. We first derive new bounds on this model based on the data from the COHERENT collaboration on CsI and LAr targets, which we find do not yet probe new areas of the parameter space. We then assess how well future SS experiments will be able to measure the sterile neutrino mass and mixings, showing that masses in the range similar to 15 – 50 MeV can be reconstructed. We show that there is a degeneracy in the measurement of the sterile neutrino mixing that substantially affects the reconstruction of parameters for masses of the order of 40 MeV. Thanks to their lower energy threshold and sensitivity to the solar tau neutrino flux, DD experiments allow us to partially lift the degeneracy in the sterile neutrino mixings and considerably improve its mass reconstruction down to 9 MeV. Our results demonstrate the excellent complementarity between DD and SS experiments in measuring the sterile neutrino mass and highlight the power of DD experiments in searching for new physics in the neutrino sector.

Abstract: We consider the radiation of two or more soft partons in QCD hard-scattering at one-loop order. The corresponding scattering amplitude is singular, and the singular behaviour is controlled by a process-independent soft current. Using regularization in d = 4 – 2 epsilon space-time dimensions, we explicitly evaluate the ultraviolet and infrared divergent (epsilon-pole) terms of the one-loop soft current for emission of an arbitrary number of soft partons in a generic hard-scattering process. Then we consider the specific case of soft quark-antiquark (q (q) over bar) emission and we compute the one-loop current by including the finite terms. We find that the one-loop soft-q (q) over bar current exhibits a new type of transverse-momentum singularity, which has a quantum (absorptive) origin and a purely non-abelian character. At the squared amplitude (cross section) level, this transverse-momentum singularity produces contributions to multijet production processes in hadron collisions. The one-loop squared current also leads to charge asymmetry terms, which are a distinctive features of soft-q (q) over bar radiation. We also extend these results to the cases of QED and mixed QCDxQED radiative corrections for soft fermion-antifermion emission.

Abstract: We consider quantum-decoherence effects in neutrino oscillation data. Working in the open quantum system framework we adopt a phenomenological approach that allows to parameterize the energy dependence of the decoherence effects. We consider several phenomenological models. We analyze data from the reactor experiments RENO, Daya Bay and KamLAND and from the accelerator experiments NOvA, MINOS/MINOS+ and T2K. We obtain updated constraints on the decoherence parameters quantifying the strength of damping effects, which can be as low as Gamma ij less than or similar to 8 x 10-27 GeV at 90% confidence level in some cases. We also present sensitivities for the future facilities DUNE and JUNO.

Abstract: We analyze 7.3 yr of ANTARES high-energy neutrino and Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) gamma-ray data in search of cosmic neutrino + gamma-ray (nu + gamma) transient sources or source populations. Our analysis has the potential to detect either individual nu + gamma transient sources (durations delta t less than or similar to 1000 s), if they exhibit sufficient gamma-ray or neutrino multiplicity, or a statistical excess of nu + gamma transients of individually lower multiplicities. Individual high gamma-ray multiplicity events could be produced, for example, by a single ANTARES neutrino in coincidence with a LAT-detected gamma-ray burst. Treating ANTARES track and cascade event types separately, we establish detection thresholds by Monte Carlo scrambling of the neutrino data, and determine our analysis sensitivity by signal injection against these scrambled data sets. We find our analysis is sensitive to nu + gamma transient populations responsible for >5% of the observed gamma-coincident neutrinos in the track data at 90% confidence. Applying our analysis to the unscrambled data reveals no individual nu + gamma events of high significance; two ANTARES track + Fermi gamma-ray events are identified that exceed a once per decade false alarm rate threshold (p = 17%). No evidence for subthreshold nu + gamma source populations is found among the track (p = 39%) or cascade (p = 60%) events. Exploring a possible correlation of high-energy neutrino directions with Fermi gamma-ray sky brightness identified in previous work yields no added support for this correlation. While TXS.0506+056, a blazar and variable (nontransient) Fermi gamma-ray source, has recently been identified as the first source of high-energy neutrinos, the challenges in reconciling observations of the Fermi gamma-ray sky, the IceCube high-energy cosmic neutrinos, and ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays using only blazars suggest a significant contribution by other source populations. Searches for transient sources of high-energy neutrinos thus remain interesting, with the potential for either neutrino clustering or multimessenger coincidence searches to lead to discovery of the first nu + gamma transients.