Abstract: A search for flavour-changing neutral current (FCNC) tqH interactions involving a top quark, another up-type quark (q = u, c), and a Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson decaying into a tau-lepton pair (H -> tau(+)tau(-)) is presented. The search is based on a dataset of pp collisions at root s = 13 TeV that corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1) recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Two processes are considered: single top quark FCNC production in association with a Higgs boson (pp -> tH), and top quark pair production in which one of top quarks decays into Wb and the other decays into qH through the FCNC interactions. The search selects events with two hadronically decaying tau-lepton candidates (tau(had)) or at least one tau(had) with an additional lepton (e, mu), as well as multiple jets. Event kinematics is used to separate signal from the background through a multivariate discriminant. A slight excess of data is observed with a significance of 2.3 sigma above the expected SM background, and 95% CL upper limits on the t -> qH branching ratios are derived. The observed (expected) 95% CL upper limits set on the t -> cH and t -> uH branching ratios are 9.4x10(-4)(4.8(-1.4)(+2.2) x 10(-4)) and 6.9x10(-4) (3.5(-1.0)(+1.5) x10(-4)), respectively. The corresponding combined observed (expected) upper limits on the dimension-6 operator Wilson coefficients in the effective tqH couplings are C-c phi < 1.35 (0.97) and C-u phi < 1.16 (0.82).

Abstract: We present novel results for the three-gluon vertex, obtained from an extensive quenched lattice simulation in the Landau gauge. The simulation evaluates the transversely projected vertex, spanned on a special tensorial basis, whose form factors are naturally parametrized in terms of individually Bosesymmetric variables. Quite interestingly, when evaluated in these kinematics, the corresponding form factors depend almost exclusively on a single kinematic variable, formed by the sum of the squares of the three incoming four-momenta, q, r, and p. Thus, all configurations lying on a given plane in the coordinate system (q2, r2, p2) share, to a high degree of accuracy, the same form factors, a property that we denominate planar degeneracy. We have confirmed the validity of this property through an exhaustive study of the set of configurations satisfying the condition q2 = r2, within the range [0, 5 GeV]. This drastic simplification allows for a remarkably compact description of the main bulk of the data, which is particularly suitable for future numerical applications. A semi-perturbative analysis reproduces the lattice findings rather accurately, once the inclusion of a gluon mass has cured all spurious divergences.

Abstract: We revisit the gauge symmetry related to integrable projective transformations in metric-affine formalism, identifying the gauge field of the Weyl (conformal) symmetry as a dynamical component of the affine connection. In particular, we show how to include the local scaling symmetry as a gauge symmetry of a large class of geometric gravity theories, introducing a compensator dilaton field that naturally gives rise to a Stuckelberg sector where a spontaneous breaking mechanism of the conformal symmetry is at work to generate a mass scale for the gauge field. For Ricci-based gravities that include, among others, General Relativity, f(R) and f(R, R μnu R μnu) theories and the EiBI model, we prove that the on-shell gauge vector associated to the scaling symmetry can be identified with the torsion vector, thus recovering and generalizing conformal invariant theories in the Riemann-Cartan formalism, already present in the literature.