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: We show that, when connected with monopoles, the flat D-flat direction breaking the local U(1)B-L symmetry as an extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model can be responsible for the signal of a stochastic gravitational wave background recently reported by NANOGrav collaborations, while naturally satisfying constraints at high frequency band. Thanks to the flatness of the direction, a phase of thermal inflation arises naturally. The reheating temperature is quite low, and suppresses signals at frequencies higher than the characteristic frequency set by the reheating temperature. Notably, forthcoming spaced based experiments such as LISA can probe the cutoff frequency, providing an indirect clue of the scale of soft SUSY-breaking mass parameter.

Abstract: We study the contribution of nu(e) -> nu(tau) -> tau -> μtransitions to the wrong-sign muon sample of the golden channel of the Neutrino Factory. Muons from tau decays are not really a background, since they contain information from the oscillation signal, and represent a small fraction of the sample. However, if not properly handled they introduce serious systematic error, in particular if the detector/analysis are sensitive to muons of low energy. This systematic effect is particularly troublesome for large theta(13) >= 1 degrees and prevents the use of the Neutrino Factory as a precision facility for large theta(13). Such a systematic error disappears if the tau contribution to the golden muon sample is taken into account. The fact that the fluxes of the Neutrino Factory are exactly calculable permits the knowledge of the tau sample due to the nu(e) -> nu(tau) oscillation. We then compute the contribution to the muon sample arising from this sample in terms of the apparent muon energy. This requires the computation of a migration matrix M-ij which describes the contributions of the tau neutrinos of a given energy E-i, to the muon neutrinos of an apparent energy E-j. We demonstrate that applying M-ij to the data permits the full correction of the otherwise intolerable systematic error.

Abstract: We present a new geometric approach to the flavour decomposition of an arbitrary soft supersymmetry-breaking sector in the MSSM. Our approach is based on the geometry that results from the quark and lepton Yukawa couplings, and enables us to derive the necessary and sufficient conditions for a linearly-independent basis of matrices related to the completeness of the internal [SU(3) circle times U(1)](5) flavour space. In a second step, we calculate the effective Yukawa couplings that are enhanced at large values of tan beta for general soft supersymmetry-breaking mass parameters. We highlight the contributions due to non-universal terms in the flavour decompositions of the sfermion mass matrices. We present numerical examples illustrating how such terms are induced by renormalization-group evolution starting from universal input boundary conditions, and demonstrate their importance for the flavour-violating effective Yukawa couplings of quarks.