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ATLAS Collaboration(Aaboud, M. et al), Alvarez Piqueras, D., Barranco Navarro, L., Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo Gimenez, V., Cerda Alberich, L., et al. (2016). Search for the Higgs boson produced in association with a W boson and decaying to four b-quarks via two spin-zero particles in pp collisions at 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector. Eur. Phys. J. C, 76(11), 605–31pp.
Abstract: This paper presents a dedicated search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson to a pair of new spin-zero particles, H -> aa, where the particle a decays to b-quarks and has a mass in the range of 20-60 GeV. The search is performed in events where the Higgs boson is produced in associationwith aW boson, giving rise to a signature of a lepton (electron or muon), missing transverse momentum, and multiple jets from b-quark decays. The analysis is based on the full dataset of pp collisions at root s = 13 TeV recorded in 2015 by theATLAS detector at theCERNLargeHadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb(-1). No significant excess of events above the Standard Model prediction is observed, and a 95% confidence-level upper limit is derived for the product of the production cross section for pp -> WH times the branching ratio for the decay H -> aa -> 4b. The upper limit ranges from 6.2 pb for an a-boson mass m(a) = 20 GeV to 1.5 pb for m(a) = 60 GeV.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aaboud, M. et al), Alvarez Piqueras, D., Barranco Navarro, L., Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo Gimenez, V., Cerda Alberich, L., et al. (2016). Search for Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model Higgs bosons H/A and for a Z ' boson in the tau tau final state produced in pp collisions at root s=13 TeV with the ATLAS Detector. Eur. Phys. J. C, 76(11), 585–30pp.
Abstract: A search for neutral Higgs bosons of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) and for a heavneutral Z' boson is performed using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb(-1) from proton-proton collisions at root s = 13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The heavy resonance is assumed to decay to a tau(+)tau(-) pair with at least one tau lepton decaying to final states with hadrons and a neutrino. The search is performed in the mass range of 0.2-1.2 TeV for the MSSM neutral Higgs bosons and 0.5-2.5 TeV for the heavy neutral Z' boson. The data are in good agreement with the background predicted by the Standard Model. The results are interpreted in MSSMand Z' benchmark scenarios. The most stringent constraints on the MSSM m(A)-tan beta space exclude at 95% confidence level (CL) tan beta > 7.6 for m(A) = 200 GeV in the m(h)(mod+) MSSM scenario. For the Sequential Standard Model, a Z(SSM)' mass up to 1.90 TeV is excluded at 95% CL and masses up to 1.82-2.17 TeV are excluded for a Z(SFM)' of the strong flavour model.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aad, G. et al), Alvarez Piqueras, D., Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo Gimenez, V., Costa, M. J., Fernandez Martinez, P., et al. (2016). Performance of pile-up mitigation techniques for jets in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV using the ATLAS detector. Eur. Phys. J. C, 76(11), 581–36pp.
Abstract: The large rate of multiple simultaneous protonproton interactions, or pile-up, generated by the Large Hadron Collider in Run 1 required the development of many new techniques to mitigate the adverse effects of these conditions. This paper describes the methods employed in the ATLAS experiment to correct for the impact of pile-up on jet energy and jet shapes, and for the presence of spurious additional jets, with a primary focus on the large 20.3 fb(-1) data sample collected at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 8 TeV. The energy correction techniques that incorporate sophisticated estimates of the average pile-up energy density and tracking information are presented. Jet-to-vertex association techniques are discussed and projections of performance for the future are considered. Lastly, the extension of these techniques to mitigate the effect of pile-up on jet shapes using subtraction and grooming procedures is presented.
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Barenboim, G., & Park, W. I. (2016). Small changes to the inflaton potential can result in large changes in observables. Phys. Rev. D, 93(12), 123508–5pp.
Abstract: We show that a tiny correction to the inflaton potential can make critical changes in the inflationary observables for some types of inflation models.
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ANTARES, I. C., LIGO and Virgo Collaborations(Adrian-Martinez, S. et al), Barrios-Marti, J., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Sanchez-Losa, A., Tönnis, C., Zornoza, J. D., et al. (2016). High-energy neutrino follow-up search of gravitational wave event GW150914 with ANTARES and IceCube. Phys. Rev. D, 93(12), 122010–15pp.
Abstract: We present the high-energy-neutrino follow-up observations of the first gravitational wave transient GW150914 observed by the Advanced LIGO detectors on September 14, 2015. We search for coincident neutrino candidates within the data recorded by the IceCube and ANTARES neutrino detectors. A possible joint detection could be used in targeted electromagnetic follow-up observations, given the significantly better angular resolution of neutrino events compared to gravitational waves. We find no neutrino candidates in both temporal and spatial coincidence with the gravitational wave event. Within +/- 500 s of the gravitational wave event, the number of neutrino candidates detected by IceCube and ANTARES were three and zero, respectively. This is consistent with the expected atmospheric background, and none of the neutrino candidates were directionally coincident with GW150914. We use this nondetection to constrain neutrino emission from the gravitational-wave event.
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Alekhin, S. et al, & Hernandez, P. (2016). A facility to search for hidden particles at the CERN SPS: the SHiP physics case. Rep. Prog. Phys., 79(12), 124201–137pp.
Abstract: This paper describes the physics case for a new fixed target facility at CERN SPS. The SHiP (search for hidden particles) experiment is intended to hunt for new physics in the largely unexplored domain of very weakly interacting particles with masses below the Fermi scale, inaccessible to the LHC experiments, and to study tau neutrino physics. The same proton beam setup can be used later to look for decays of tau-leptons with lepton flavour number non-conservation, tau -> 3 μand to search for weakly-interacting sub-GeV dark matter candidates. We discuss the evidence for physics beyond the standard model and describe interactions between new particles and four different portals-scalars, vectors, fermions or axion-like particles. We discuss motivations for different models, manifesting themselves via these interactions, and how they can be probed with the SHiP experiment and present several case studies. The prospects to search for relatively light SUSY and composite particles at SHiP are also discussed. We demonstrate that the SHiP experiment has a unique potential to discover new physics and can directly probe a number of solutions of beyond the standard model puzzles, such as neutrino masses, baryon asymmetry of the Universe, dark matter, and inflation.
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Ayala, C., Gonzalez, P., & Vento, V. (2016). Heavy quark potential from QCD-related effective coupling. J. Phys. G, 43(12), 125002–12pp.
Abstract: We implement our past investigations of quark-antiquark interaction through a non-perturbative running coupling defined in terms of a gluon mass function, similar to that used in some Schwinger-Dyson approaches. This coupling leads to a quark-antiquark potential, which satisfies not only asymptotic freedom but also describes linear confinement correctly. From this potential, we calculate the bottomonium and charmonium spectra below the first open flavor meson-meson thresholds and show that for a small range of values of the free parameter determining the gluon mass function an excellent agreement with data is attained.
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de Salas, P. F., Lineros, R. A., & Tortola, M. (2016). Neutrino propagation in the Galactic dark matter halo. Phys. Rev. D, 94(12), 123001–14pp.
Abstract: Neutrino oscillations are a widely observed and well-established phenomenon. It is also well known that deviations with respect to flavor conversion probabilities in vacuum arise due to neutrino interactions with matter. In this work, we analyze the impact of new interactions between neutrinos and the dark matter present in the Milky Way on the neutrino oscillation pattern. The dark matter-neutrino interaction is modeled by using an effective coupling proportional to the Fermi constant GF with no further restrictions on its flavor structure. For the galactic dark matter profile we consider a homogeneous distribution as well as several density profiles, estimating in all cases the size of the interaction required to get an observable effect at different neutrino energies. Our discussion is mainly focused in the PeV neutrino energy range, to be explored in observatories like IceCube and KM3NeT. The obtained results may be interpreted in terms of a light O(sub-eV-keV) or weakly interacting massive particlelike dark matter particle or as a new interaction with a mediator of O(sub-eV-keV) mass.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aaboud, M. et al), Alvarez Piqueras, D., Barranco Navarro, L., Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo Gimenez, V., Cerda Alberich, L., et al. (2016). Measurement of the b(b)over-bar dijet cross section in pp collisions at root s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector. Eur. Phys. J. C, 76(12), 670–24pp.
Abstract: The dijet production cross section for jets containing a b-hadron (b-jets) has been measured in protonproton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The data used correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.2 fb(-1). The cross section is measured for events with two identified b-jets with a transverse momentum pT > 20 GeV and a minimum separation in the eta-phi plane of Delta R = 0.4. At least one of the jets in the event is required to have p(T) > 270 GeV. The cross section is measured differentially as a function of dijet invariant mass, dijet transverse momentum, boost of the dijet system, and the rapidity difference, azimuthal angle and angular distance between the b-jets. The results are compared to different predictions of leading order and next-to-leading order perturbative quantum chromodynamics matrix elements supplemented with models for parton-showers and hadronization.
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ATLAS Collaboration(Aaboud, M. et al), Alvarez Piqueras, D., Barranco Navarro, L., Cabrera Urban, S., Castillo Gimenez, V., Cerda Alberich, L., et al. (2016). Measurement of the photon identification efficiencies with the ATLAS detector using LHC Run-1 data. Eur. Phys. J. C, 76(12), 666–42pp.
Abstract: The algorithms used by the ATLAS Collaboration to reconstruct and identify prompt photons are described. Measurements of the photon identification efficiencies are reported, using 4.9 fb(-1) of pp collision data collected at the LHC at root s = 7 TeV and 20.3 fb-1 at root s = 8 TeV. The efficiencies are measured separately for converted and unconverted photons, in four different pseudorapidity regions, for transverse momenta between 10 GeV and 1.5 TeV. The results from the combination of three data-driven techniques are compared to the predictions from a simulation of the detector response, after correcting the electromagnetic shower momenta in the simulation for the average differences observed with respect to data. Data-to-simulation efficiency ratios used as correction factors in physics measurements are determined to account for the small residual efficiency differences. These factors are measured with uncertainties between 0.5% and 10% in 7 TeV data and between 0.5% and 5.6% in 8 TeV data, depending on the photon transverse momentum and pseudorapidity.
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