Abstract: This Letter presents the first study of Higgs boson production in association with a vector boson (V = W or Z) in the fully hadronic qqbb final state using data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC in ffiffiproton-proton collisions at root root s= 13 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137fb(-1). The vector bosons and Higgs bosons are each reconstructed as large-radius jets and tagged using jet substructure techniques. Dedicated tagging algorithms exploiting b-tagging properties are used to identify jets consistent with Higgs bosons decaying into b (b) over bar. Dominant backgrounds from multijet production are determined directly from the data, and a likelihood fit to the jet mass distribution of Higgs boson candidates is used to extract the number of signal events. The VH production cross section is measured inclusively and differentially in several ranges of Higgs boson transverse momentum: 250-450, 450-650, and greater than 650 GeV. The inclusive signal yield relative to the standard model expectation is observed to be μ= 1.4(-0.9)(+1.0) and the corresponding cross section is 3.1 +/- 1.3(stat)(-1.4)(+1.8) (syst) pb.

Abstract: Einstenian cubic gravity (ECG) is a modified theory of gravity constructed with cubic contractions of the curvature tensor. This theory has the remarkable feature of having the same two propagating degrees of freedom of Einstein gravity (EG), at the perturbative level on maximally symmetric spacetimes. The additional unstable modes steaming from the higher order derivative dynamics are suppressed provided that we consider the ECG as an effective field theory wherein the cubic terms are seen as perturbative corrections of the Einstein -Hilbert term. Extensions of ECG have been proposed in cosmology and compact objects in order to probe if this property holds in more general configurations. In this work, we construct a modified ECG gravity in a five dimensional warped braneworld scenario. By assuming a specific combination of the cubic parameters, we obtained modified gravity equations of motion with terms up to second -order. For a thin 3-brane, the cubic -gravity corrections yield an effective positive bulk cosmological constant. Thus, in order to keep the 5D bulk warped compact, an upper bound of the cubic parameter with respect to the bulk curvature was imposed. For a thick brane, the cubic -gravity terms modify the scalar field potential and its corresponding vacuum. Nonetheless, the domain -wall structure with a localized source is preserved. At the perturbative level, the Kaluza-Klein (KK) tensor gravitational modes are stable and possess a localized massless mode provided the cubic corrections are small compared to the EG braneworld.

Abstract: We examine the contribution of tensor modes, in addition to the dominant scalar ones, on the temperature anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). To this end, we analyze in detail the temperature two -point angular correlation function C(Theta) from the Planck 2018 dataset, focusing on large angles (Theta greater than or similar to 120 degrees) corresponding to small l multipoles. A hierarchical set of infrared cutoffs are naturally introduced to the scalar and tensor power spectra of the CMB by invoking an extra Kaluza-Klein spatial dimension compactifying at about the grand unified theory scale between the Planck epoch and the start of inflation. We associate this set of lower scalar and tensor cutoffs with the parity of the multipole expansion of the C(Theta) function. By fitting the Planck 2018 data we compute the multipole coefficients, thereby reproducing the well-known odd -parity preference in angular correlations seen by all three satellite missions: Cosmic Background Explorer, WMAP, and Planck. Our fits improve significantly once tensor modes are included in the analysis, hence providing a hint of the imprints of primordial gravitational waves on the temperature correlations observed in the CMB today. To conclude, we suggest a relationship between, on the one hand, the lack of (positive) large -angle correlations and the odd -parity dominance in the CMB and, on the other hand, the effect of primordial gravitational waves on the CMB temperature anisotropies.