Abstract: Physical theories that depend on many parameters or are tested against data from many different experiments pose unique challenges to statistical inference. Many models in particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology fall into one or both of these categories. These issues are often sidestepped with statistically unsound ad hoc methods, involving intersection of parameter intervals estimated by multiple experiments, and random or grid sampling of model parameters. Whilst these methods are easy to apply, they exhibit pathologies even in low-dimensional parameter spaces, and quickly become problematic to use and interpret in higher dimensions. In this article we give clear guidance for going beyond these procedures, suggesting where possible simple methods for performing statistically sound inference, and recommendations of readily-available software tools and standards that can assist in doing so. Our aim is to provide any physicists lacking comprehensive statistical training with recommendations for reaching correct scientific conclusions, with only a modest increase in analysis burden. Our examples can be reproduced with the code publicly available at Zenodo.

Abstract: Picking arrival times of P and S phases is a fundamental and time‐consuming task for the routine processing of seismic data acquired by permanent and temporary networks. A large number of automatic pickers have been developed, but to perform well they often require the tuning of multiple parameters to adapt them to each dataset. Despite the great advance in techniques, some problems remain, such as the difficulty to accurately pick S waves and earthquake recordings with a low signal‐to‐noise ratio. Recently, phase pickers based on deep learning (DL) have shown great potential for event identification and arrival‐time picking. However, the general adoption of these methods for the routine processing of monitoring networks has been held back by factors such as the availability of well‐documented software, computational resources, and a gap in knowledge of these methods. In this study, we evaluate recent available DL pickers for earthquake data, comparing the performance of several neural network architectures. We test the selected pickers using three datasets with different characteristics. We found that the analyzed DL pickers (generalized phase detection, PhaseNet, and EQTransformer) perform well in the three tested cases. They are very efficient at ignoring large‐amplitude transient noise and at picking S waves, a task that is often difficult even for experienced analysts. Nevertheless, the performance of the analyzed DL pickers varies widely in terms of sensitivity and false discovery rate, with some pickers missing a significant percentage of true picks and others producing a large number of false positives. There are also variations in run time between DL pickers, with some of them requiring significant resources to process large datasets. In spite of these drawbacks, we show that DL pickers can be used efficiently to process large seismic datasets and obtain results comparable or better than current standard procedures.

Abstract: The spins and parities of low-lying states in 72Br populated in the beta decay of 72Kr have been studied via conversion electron spectroscopy. The measurements were carried out at ISOLDE using a miniorange spectrometer with Si(Li) and HPGe detectors for electrons and gamma ray detection. Results of the conversion coefficients corresponding to transitions deexciting 12 levels in 72Br are reported. The multipolarities of the transitions are deduced and the spins and parities of the levels involved are discussed. From the multipolarities of the most intense transitions to the ground state, the spin and parity of the 72Br ground state have been definitely established as 1+. The spin of the 101.2-keV isomeric state is determined to be 3-. The level scheme is compared with mean-field and shell-model calculations and oblate deformation for the 72Br ground state is deduced. No E0 transitions have been found in 72Br. E0 transitions in the neighboring isobaric nuclei, 72Se and 72Ge, have also been studied.

Abstract: A coupled-channel approach is applied to the charged tetraquark state T-cc(+). recently discovered by the LHCb Collaboration. The parameters of the interaction are fixed by a fit to the observed line shape in the three-body (DD0)-D-0 pi(+) channel. Special attention is paid to the three-body dynamics in the T-cc(+) due to the finite life time of the D*. An approach to the T-cc(+) is argued to be self-consistent only if both manifestations of the three-body dynamics, the pion exchange between the D and D* mesons and the finite D* width, are taken into account simultaneously to ensure that three-body unitarity is preserved. This is especially important to precisely extract the pole position in the complex energy plane whose imaginary part is very sensitive to the details of the coupled-channel scheme employed. The (DD0)-D-0 and (DD+)-D-0 invariant mass distributions, predicted based on this analysis, are in good agreement with the LHCb data. The low-energy expansion of the D* D scattering amplitude is performed and the low-energy constants (the scattering length and effective range) are extracted. The compositeness parameter of the T-cc(+) is found to be close to unity, which implies that the T-cc(+) is a hadronic molecule generated by the interactions in the D*D-+(0) and D*D-0(+) channels. Employing heavy-quark spin symmetry, an isoscalar D* D* molecular partner of the T-cc(+) with J(P) = 1(+ )is predicted under the assumption that the DD* -D* D* coupled-channel effects can be neglected.

Abstract: This paper presents a search for decays of the Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV into a pair of new pseudoscalar particles, H -> aa, where one a-boson decays into a b-quark pair and the other into a muon pair. The search uses 139 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy root s = 13 TeV recorded between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. A narrow dimuon resonance is searched for in the invariant mass spectrum between 16 GeV and 62 GeV. The largest excess of events above the Standard Model backgrounds is observed at a dimuon invariant mass of 52 GeV and corresponds to a local (global) significance of 3.3 sigma (1.7 sigma). Upper limits at 95% confidence level are placed on the branching ratio of the Higgs boson to the bb μμfinal state, beta(H -> aa -> bb μmu), and are in the range 0.2-4.0 x 10(-4), depending on the signal mass hypothesis.