Abstract: BackgroundNon-melanoma skin cancer is one of the most common types of cancer and one of the main approaches is brachytherapy. For small lesions, the treatment of this cancer with brachytherapy can be done with two commercial applicators, one of these is the Large Field Valencia Applicators (LFVA).PurposeThe aim of this study is to test the capabilities of the LFVA to use clinically 60Co sources instead of the 192Ir ones. This study was designed for the same dwell positions and weights for both sources.MethodsThe Penelope Monte Carlo code was used to evaluate dose distribution in a water phantom when a 60Co source is considered. The LFVA design and the optimized dwell weights reported for the case of 192Ir are maintained with the only exception of the dwell weight of the central position, that was increased. 2D dose distributions, field flatness, symmetry and the leakage dose distribution around the applicator were calculated.ResultsWhen comparing the dose distributions of both sources, field flatness and symmetry remain unchanged. The only evident difference is an increase of the penumbra regions for all depths when using the 60Co source. Regarding leakage, the maximum dose within the air volume surrounding the applicator is in the order of 20% of the prescription dose for the 60Co source, but it decreases to less than 5% at about 1 cm distance.ConclusionsFlatness and symmetry remains unaltered as compared with 192Ir sources, while an increase in leakage has been observed. This proves the feasibility of using the LFVA in a larger range of clinical applications.

Abstract: A strongly interacting dark sector can give rise to a class of signatures dubbed dark showers, where in analogy to the strong sector in the Standard Model, the dark sector undergoes its own showering and hadronization, before decaying into Standard Model final states. When the typical decay lengths of the dark sector mesons are larger than a few centimeters (and no larger than a few meters) they give rise to the striking signature of emerging jets, characterized by a large multiplicity of displaced vertices.In this article we consider the general reinterpretation of the CMS search for emerging jets plus prompt jets into arbitrary new physics scenarios giving rise to emerging jets. More concretely, we consider the cases where the SM Higgs mediates between the dark sector and the SM, for several benchmark decay scenarios. Our procedure is validated employing the same model than the CMS emerging jet search. We find that emerging jets can be the leading probe in regions of parameter space, in particular when considering the so-called gluon portal and dark photon portal decay benchmarks. With the current 16.1 fb-1 of luminosity this search can exclude down to O\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ \mathcal{O} $$\end{document}(20)% exotic branching ratio of the SM Higgs, but a naive extrapolation to the 139 fb-1 luminosity employed in the current model-independent, indirect bound of 16 % would probe exotic branching ratios into dark quarks down to below 10 %. Further extrapolating these results to the HL-LHC, we find that one can pin down exotic branching ratio values of 1%, which is below the HL-LHC expectations of 2.5-4 %. We make our recasting code publicly available, as part of the LLP Recasting Repository.

Abstract: We benefit from the lattice QCD determination by the HPQCD of the Standard Model (SM) form factors for the (B) over bar (s) -> D-s [Phys. Rev. D101(2020) 074513] and the SM and tensor ones for the (B) over bar (s) -> D-s* (arXiv:2304.03137[hep-lat]) semileptonic decays, and the heavy quark effective theory (HQET) relations for the analogous B -> D-(*()) decays obtained by F.U. Bernlochner et al. in Phys. Rev. D95(2017) 115008, to extract the leading and sub-leading Isgur-Wise functions for the (B) over bar (s) -> D-s(()*()) decays. Further use of the HQET relations allows us to evaluate the corresponding scalar, pseudoscalar and tensor form factors needed for a phenomenological study of new physics (NP) effects on the (B) over bar (s) -> D-s(()*()) semileptonic decay. At present, the experimental values for the ratios R-D(*) = Gamma[ (B) over bar -> D-(*())(tau- (nu) over bar tau)]/Gamma[(B) over bar -> D-(*())e(-)(mu(-)) (nu) over bar (e(mu))]are the best signal in favor of lepton flavor universality violation (LFUV) seen in charged current (CC) b -> c decays. In this work we conduct a study of NP effects on the (B) over bar (s) -> D-s(()*()) tau(-)(tau) semileptonic decays by comparing tau spin, angular and spin-angular asymmetry distributions obtained within the SM and three different NP scenarios. As expected from SU(3) light-flavor symmetry, we get results close to the ones found in a similar analysis of the (B) over bar -> D-(*()) case. The measurement of the (B) over bar (s) -> D-s(()*())(l (nu) over bar tau) semileptonic decays, which is within reach of present experiments, could then be of relevance in helping to establish or rule out LFUV in CC b -> c transitions.

Abstract: A search for nonresonant Higgs boson pair production in the b (b) over bar gamma gamma final state is performed using 140 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. This analysis supersedes and expands upon the previous nonresonant ATLAS results in this final state based on the same data sample. The analysis strategy is optimised to probe anomalous values not only of the Higgs (H) boson self-coupling modifier kappa(lambda) but also of the quartic HHVV (V = W, Z) coupling modifier kappa(2V). No significant excess above the expected background from Standard Model processes is observed. An observed upper limit mu(HH) < 4.0 is set at 95% confidence level on the Higgs boson pair production cross-section normalised to its Standard Model prediction. The 95% confidence intervals for the coupling modifiers are -1.4 < kappa(lambda) < 6.9 and -0.5 < kappa(2V) < 2.7, assuming all other Higgs boson couplings except the one under study are fixed to the Standard Model predictions. The results are interpreted in the Standard Model effective field theory and Higgs effective field theory frameworks in terms of constraints on the couplings of anomalous Higgs boson (self-)interactions.

Abstract: Differential cross-sections are measured for the production of four charged leptons in association with two jets. These measurements are sensitive to final states in which the jets are produced via the strong interaction as well as to the purely-electroweak vector boson scattering process. The analysis is performed using proton-proton collision data collected by ATLAS at root s = 13TeV and with an integrated luminosity of 140 fb(-1). The data are corrected for the effects of detector inefficiency and resolution and are compared to stateof-the-art Monte Carlo event generator predictions. The differential cross-sections are used to search for anomalous weak-boson self-interactions that are induced by dimension-six and dimension-eight operators in Standard Model effective field theory.