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The workshop is organized so as to provide balanced alternation of "Senior" and "Young" talk sessions. This will give the opportunity to early-stage researchers, severely penalized by the pandemic, to spread their work, but also to experienced scientists to be aware about original research inputs coming from younger physicists.
Welcoming with the Major Organizing committee
Discussion Sessions
NeΨ 2023 will take place in the Aula Magna “Fratelli Pontecorvo” at the Physics Department “E. Fermi” of the University of Pisa.
It aims at bringing together the theoretical and experimental communities, to create a discussion table to settle the main results recently obtained in the context of high-energy physics.
The event includes oral presentations on the most promising tests concerning the physics beyond the Standard Model, the tensions that have already been reduced in the sector of Flavor physics, and the ones that still require a deeper investigation. The ultimate goal is to draw a common path for the search of New Physics, especially in view of the improved precision that will be achieved by current and future collider experiments (e.g., Belle II and LHCb Upgrade II).
The registration as a listener is reserved for participants without contribution (talk/poster) in a maximum number of 40 people. Invited speakers can instead already register as presenters.
Young researchers are strongly invited to apply for a contribution too! Abstract of the talk/poster can be submitted for approval by the Organizing Committee via the dedicated form. In this case we recommend registration after the committee decision.
Finally, we will also allow for remote attendance to the workshop for a limited number of participants.
No FEE required.
Deadlines for call for abstracts and YR support have been postponed! Please check the important dates.
For more information, both of practical and scientific nature, please send an e-mail to the chairperson Manuel Naviglio. The e-mail can be found at the end of this page.
The workshop is supported by:
I will review the dispersive and data-driven calculations of the hadronic contributions to the Muon g-2, with emphasis on the hadronic vacuum polarization. I will discuss in detail the comparison with the lattice evaluation both of the total and of the intermediate window quantity, and the implications of the present discrepancy. I will conclude with an outlook on future developments.
The Muon 𝑔−2 experiment at Fermilab aims to measure the magnetic anomaly of muon to 140 parts-per-billion precision, which is about four times more precise than the predecessor experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. To that end, the experiment not only requires the accumulation of 21 times more of the detected positrons but a much better understanding and, thus, reduction of the systematic errors. An extensive analysis of correcting the systematic effects and assessing the corresponding systematic uncertainties was conducted and published for the Run-1 result in April 2021. This talk focuses on and summarizes the beam dynamics aspects of those systematic corrections to the anomalous spin precession frequency measurement. A few key differences in the Run-1 and the ongoing Run-2/3 analysis process will be briefly covered.
The ratio 𝑅(𝐸) of the cross-sections for 𝑒+𝑒−→ hadrons and 𝑒+𝑒−→𝜇+𝜇− is a valuable energy-dependent probe of the hadronic sector of the Standard Model. Moreover, the experimental measurements of 𝑅(𝐸) are the inputs of the dispersive calculations of the leading hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to the muon 𝑔−2 and these are in significant tension with direct lattice calculations and with the muon 𝑔−2 experiment. In this talk we discuss the results of our first-principles lattice study of 𝑅(𝐸). By using a recently proposed method for extracting smeared spectral densities from Euclidean lattice correlators, we have calculated 𝑅(𝐸) convoluted with Gaussian kernels of different widths 𝜎 and central energies up to 2.5 GeV. Our theoretical results have been compared with the KNT19 compilation of experimental results smeared with the same Gaussian kernels and a tension (about three standard deviations) has been observed for 𝜎∼600 MeV and central energies around the 𝜌 resonance peak.
A search for the electroweak production of pairs of charged sleptons decaying into two-lepton final states with missing transverse momentum is presented. A simplified model of 𝑅-parity-conserving supersymmetry is considered: direct pair-production of sleptons (ℓ̃ℓ̃), with each decaying into a charged lepton and a 𝜒̃01 neutralino. The lightest neutralino (𝜒̃01) is assumed to be the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). The analysis targets the experimentally challenging mass region where 𝑚(ℓ̃)−𝑚(𝜒̃01) is close to the 𝑊-boson mass (
moderately compressed'' region). The decay topology is similar to those of SM processes, making it challenging to separate signal from background. The search uses 139~fb−1 of 𝑠√=13~TeV proton-proton collisions recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No significant excesses over the expected background are observed, therefore exclusion limits on the studied simplified model are reported in the mass plane at 95\% CL. Sleptons with masses up to 150 GeV are excluded at 95% CL for the case of a mass-splitting between sleptons and the LSP of 50 GeV. In particular, since electroweak-scale SUSY with light smuons and a light LSP can explain the 𝑔−2 anomaly for small tan𝛽 values, exclusion limits are also set for selectrons and smuons separately and parts of the region excluded by this search in the 𝑚(𝜇̃)−𝑚(𝜒̃01) plane are compatible with the (𝑔−2)𝜇 anomaly for small tan𝛽 values.
I will give an overview of the RBC/UKQCD g-2 program including both the hadronic light-by-light as well as the hadronic vacuum polarization contribution.
The Muon g-2 Experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory was designed to measure the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon,
The experimental concept uses a polarized muon beam stored in an extremely homogeneous storage ring magnetic field. Parity violation in the weak decay is used as a spin analyzer; the detected rate of the decay electrons oscillates with the frequency,
The error budget of the theory calculation of the muon 𝑔−2 is dominated by two hadronic contributions: the Hadronic Vacuum Polarization (HVP) and the Hadronic Light-by-Light (HLbL) scattering. Reducing the error on these contributions is essential to match the future experimental precision.
In this talk, we present a lattice calculation of the three light pseudoscalar meson (
By replacing continuous space–time with a Euclidean lattice, lattice gauge theories provide a way to capture the non-perturbative effects in the muon g-2. We present first results by the RC collaborations towards obtaining a precise estimate of these effects using a novel local description of lattice QCD and QED, based on C boundary conditions in space.
During the last 15 years the "Radio MontecarLow (“Radiative Corrections and Monte Carlo Generators for Low Energies”) Working Group, see www.lnf.infn.it/wg/sighad/, has been providing valuable support to the development of radiative corrections and Monte Carlo generators for low energy
While the working group has been operating for more than 15 years without a formal basis for funding, parts of our program have recently been included as a Joint Research Initiative in the group application of the European hadron physics community, STRONG2020, to the European Union, with a more specific goal of creating an annotated database for low-energy hadronic cross sections in
We will report on both these initiatives.
In this talk I will review the calculation of the short and intermediate window for g-2, based on our recent simulations performed int the Twisted Mass regularization of QCD, with physical pion mass and three different lattice spacings. Our results highlights that the tension with experimental measurement is concentrated in the intermediate energy region.
The muon anomalous magnetic moment is currently one of the most intriguing measurements, as it marks a 4.2 𝜎 deviation from the reference prediction of the Standard Model, and is expected to provide an even more stringent test in the next few years with the experimental error reducing by a factor of four. In parallel the theoretical error need to be reduced. It is dominated by the non-perturbative hadronic contribution to the vacuum polarization (HVP), usually determined by a data-driven method, from the dispersive integral over the measured hadron production cross section in
The MUonE experiment proposes a third, independent and competitive determination of the HVP contribution, from a precise measurement of the elastic muon-electron scattering at the CERN SPS. The project is challenging on both experimental aspects and the needed theory calculations. The main ideas and the status of the project will be presented.
The muon anomalous magnetic moment
In this talk, the theoretical formulation for the NNLO photonic contributions and the NNLO real and virtual lepton pair contributions to
The Standard Model theoretical prediction of the muon anomalous magnetic moment,
The MUonE project is a recently proposed experiment at CERN that will help to shed light on this situation, by providing an independent determination of the leading order hadronic vacuum polarisation (HLO) contribution,
which dominates the theoretical uncertainty on
In order to achieve an accuracy similar to the one of existing determinations of
In this talk, the analysis of a potential source of reducible background at MUonE, coming from the 𝜋0 production in muon-electron scattering, i.e.
This kind of study is motivated by the fact that the
Moreover, the effects of this same process as a background to possible New Physics searches at MUonE are analysed, in phase-space regions complementary to the elastic-scattering ones, where one can study processes such as the production of a light new gauge boson 𝑍′ via the process
The muon anomaly,
The anomaly was measured with a precision of 0.54 ppm by the Brookhaven E821 experiment and the E989 experiment at Fermilab aims for a four-fold improvement in precision, to confirm or refute the discrepancy. In Spring 2021, E989 published the first results of
We present our previous and ongoing lattice QCD efforts to determine thehadron vacuum polarization contribution to the muon magnetic moment.
The main goal of the Fermilab Muon g-2 experiment is to determine the muon anomalous magnetic moment (
The Muon
We show that the models that induce neutrino magnetic moments while maintaining their small masses naturally also predict observable shifts in the muon anomalous magnetic moment. This shift is of the right magnitude to be consistent with the Brookhaven measurement as well as the recent Fermilab measurement of the muon g−2. This points out the direct correlation between the magnetic moment of SM charged lepton and neutral lepton (neutrino) by showing that the measurement of muon g−2 by the Fermilab experiment can be an in-direct and novel test of the neutrino magnetic-moment hypothesis, which can be as sensitive as other ongoing-neutrino/dark matter experiments. Such a correlation between muon g−2 and the neutrino magnetic moment is generic in models employing leptonic family symmetry to explain a naturally large neutrino magnetic moment. This talk will be based on results obtained with K.S. Babu, Manfred Lindner, and Vishnu P.K. and presented in hep-ph 2007.04291 and 2104.03291.
The LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider is dedicated to the study of heavy-flavoured hadrons. Using large data samples accumulated during the first two runs of the LHC, the LHCb collaboration has performed various measurements providing a sensitive test of the Standard Model and strengthening our knowledge of flavour physics, QCD and electroweak processes. Selected recent results are presented and prospects are given for the new LHC run.
The LHCb collaboration has recently set a first limit on the radiative leptonic decay of the
Several results in high energy physics experiments highlighted hints of new physics in semileptonic decays of B particles. Among the existing experiments, the LHCb detector plays a very important role in this sector. In fact, it is specifically designed for the study of particles containing b or c quarks. Some LHCb results suggested the violation of the lepton flavour universality stated in the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. The confirmation of these results would lead to the discovery of new physics, such as heavy mediators.
A very good laboratory where to probe this SM concept are the rare b→ sll decays. Indeed, they are sensitive to possible contributions from heavy mediators, inaccessible to direct searches. LHCb already performed several kinds of analysis on b → sll decays. Among them, the branching ratio measurements and the angular analyses. The comparison between the decays to electrons and to muons might reveal differences between leptons families.
The most recent results of the b → sll analyses will be presented in this talk. Furthermore, future outlooks that could help to tackle the puzzle of the flavour anomalies will be discussed.
In this talk, we consider the rare decay channel
The Standard Model of particle physics leaves many fundamental questions unanswered, among which, for example, neutrino masses, matter-antimatter asymmetry and the nature of dark matter. Flavour physics (the intensity frontier) is one of the main fields of investigation to unveil the unsolved questions.
Several aspects of flavour physics, including the recent experimental ``anomalies” in leptonic decays, are critically reviewed. New results and ideas to improve the accuracy of the theoretical predictions and future developments are discussed
We discuss a novel approach, based on spectral reconstruction techniques, which circumvents the well-known problem of the analytic continuation from Minkowskian to Euclidean time for hadronic processes above kinematical thresholds. The approach is discussed for the specific case of the radiative decays of pseudoscalar mesons
These processes, which give access to the rare decays
the lattice due to the presence of intermediate states which hinder the analytic continuation to Euclidean time when the photon off-shellness
Since the observation of neutrino oscillations, lepton number conservation is known to be a non-exact symmetry of the Standard Model lagrangian: yet there is still no evidence of lepton flavour violating processes involving charged leptons (cLFV), such as
Between these new experiments shines MEGII @Paul Scherrer Institut, designed to overtake the current measurement of
Auxiliary detectors help to improve the background rejection.
A trigger and data acquisition system WaveDAQ allows to digitize the waveforms from each of the
Currently, MEGII has ended its second year of data acquisition.
In this presentation In will review MEG~II's experimental concept and status.
An attractive explanation for the flavor puzzle of the Standard Model is the multi-scale origin of the flavor hierarchies, where the size of the Standard Model Yukawas of the different families is associated to different scales. This solution makes more natural the tight flavor bounds for New Physics at the TeV scale, and can accommodate possible B-anomalies. I will discuss the status and prospects of B-anomalies in this context and other related observables.
As the number of fermion fields is increased, gauge theories are expected to undergo a transition from a QCD-like phase, characterised by confinement and chiral symmetry breaking, to a conformal phase, where the theory becomes scale-invariant at large distances. In this paper, we discuss some properties of a third phase, where spontaneously broken conformal symmetry is characterised by its Goldstone boson, the dilaton. In this phase, which we refer to as conformal dilaton phase, the massless pole corresponding to the Goldstone boson guarantees that the conformal Ward identities are satisfied in the infrared despite the other hadrons carrying mass. In particular, using renormalisation group arguments in Euclidean space, we show that for massless quarks the trace of the energy momentum tensor vanishes on all physical states as a result of the fixed point.
We discuss how a recently discovered non-perturbative field-theoretical mechanism giving mass to elementary fermions can be extended to generate a mass for the electro-weak bosons, when weak interactions are introduced, and can thus be used as a viable alternative to the Higgs scenario. We will show that this new scheme, successfully tested in extensive lattice simulations, offers a solution of the Higgs mass naturalness problem (as there is no Higgs around), an understanding of the fermion mass hierarchy (as related to the ranking of gauge couplings), a physical interpretation of the electro-weak scale (as the scale of a new super-strong interaction) and unification of gauge couplings (without supersymmetry).
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is currently our only tool for direct exploration of physics at the electroweak scale and above and the high-luminosity phase is planned to last until the late 2030s. Rare flavour-changing neutral current transitions
The theoretical study of processes at a future MuC should take into account the fact that leptons, which are elementary particles in the Standard Model, can emit soft and collinear radiation, which for small transverse momentum can be factorized from the hard scattering and a description in terms of parton distribution functions (PDFs) can be introduced, similarly to what is done in case of proton colliders and the parton content of a proton.
In this talk, after a short presentation of the two future colliders mentioned above, I will quickly review our computation of the muon PDFs, which will be published at the beginning of the next year [1]. Then, following the work in [2], I will show some applications to New Physics searches at MuC and FCC-hh, focusing on 𝑍′ and Leptoquarks. Since a final word on the flavour anomalies (due to either new physics or experimental systematics) might take a while, I will show the results we obtained with and without taking into account LHCb data.
References
[1] F. Garosi, D. Marzocca, S. Trifinopoulos; Standard Model parton distribution functions for lepton colliders (in progress)
[2] A. Azatov, F. Garosi, A. Greljo, D. Marzocca, J. Salko, S. Trifinopoulos; New physics in
The decreasing uncertainties in theoretical predictions and experimental measurements of several hadronic observables related to weak processes, which in many cases are now smaller than O(1%), require theoretical calculations to include subleading corrections that were neglected so far. Precise determinations of leptonic and semi-leptonic decay rates, including
The observation of a significant deviation in the muon g-2 relative to the Standard Model (SM) e+e- prediction is perhaps a harbinger of new muon interactions beyond the SM and in many models of physics beyond the SM (BSM) a significant rate of charged lepton flavour violating (CLFV) muon interactions is predicted. The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab will extend the sensitivity to BSM CLFV interactions by 4 orders of magnitude by seeking to observe the neutrinoless transition of a muon to an electron when captured by an aluminium target. Critical to this measurement is the determination of the number of muons captured by the aluminium target. This cannot be estimated very reliably from simulation since the rate of the parent pions is model dependent and there are uncertainties in the collection and transmission efficiencies of the solenoids. However, muons captured are accompanied by distinctive X-rays which can be used to determine the muon flux. X-rays of 347 keV, 844 keV and 1809 keV will be measured by the Stopping Target Monitor (STM), a High Purity Germanium detector (HPGe), to determine the muon rate. The X-rays create transient pulses in the detector, the height of which is related to the incident energy of the X-rays. To determine the rates of the three X-rays I have implemented a Moving Window Deconvolution (MWD) algorithm. The input parameters of this algorithm have been tested on real X-ray data from 137-Cs and 152-Eu radioactive sources and beam data from the HZDR gELBE bremsstrahlung facility and optimised using simulated data. Testing this algorithm on a simulation based on the physical processes taking place in the detector has allowed the MWD resolution and efficiency to be determined as a function of rate. Furthermore, the pulse shapes expected in the HPGe STM detector have a long decay tail and the amount of data generated is bigger than the available disk space available. I have developed a Zero-Suppression (ZS) algorithm to reduce the amount of raw data being stored and analysed. This algorithm has also been tested on real data and simulation. I will present performance results from the ZS and MWD algorithms and how these will be used to accurately determine the muon flux at Mu2e.
The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics successfully predicts many fundamental properties and interactions, but it is still incomplete. Models like baryogenesis or leptogenesis for the matter-antimatter asymmetry lead to an additional CP violation beyond the SM. In this context, electric dipole moments (EDMs), which violate time-reversal and parity symmetry, and by virtue of the CPT theorem also CP, can test such scenarios.
Many EDM searches have been concluded with increasing sensitivity, all with null results. But the most exciting hints for BSM physics appeared in several precision measurements involving muons. These hints for new physics suggest a flavour structure beyond minimal flavour violation (MFV) in the lepton sector. In MFV a simple scaling by
The muEDM experiment, using for the first time the ``frozen-spin" technique in a compact storage ring, aims at improving the current direct experimental limit of
The main goal of the Fermilab Muon g-2 experiment is to determine the muon anomalous magnetic moment (
The electromagnetic coupling constant,
These non-perturbative effects can be determined from ab-initio calculations on the lattice. We present preliminary lattice results for the leading order hadronic contribution to this running at different values of
We explore the CP-violating (CPV) effects of heavy New Physics in the flavour-changing quark dipole transitions, within the framework of Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). We connect the operators defined at the heavy scale
Inspired by the various LHCb results of lepton flavour violation on
References:
L. Calibbi and G. Signorelli, Charged lepton flavour violation: An experimental and theoretical introduction, Riv. Nuovo Cim. 41, 71 (2018) [arXiv: 1709.00294 [hep-ph]].
BaBar collaboration, B. Aubert et al., “Searches for the decays
R. Aaij et al. [LHCb Collaboration], Search for the lepton-flavour-violating decays
S. Sahoo and R. Mohanta, lepton flavour violating B meson decays via scalar leptoquark, Phys. Rev. D 93, 114001 (2016) [arXiv:1512.04657[hep-ph]].
D. Das, “Lepton flavour violating
In the Standard Model of particle physics, lepton flavour and lepton number are conserved quantities, although there is no fundamental symmetry associated with their conservation and lepton flavour violation has been already confirmed by the observation of neutrino oscillations.
Many lepton flavour violating (LFV) and lepton number violating (LNV) processes can be searched for in B meson decays and the LHCb experiment plays a very important role in this sector. The observation of charged LFV or LNV decays would be a clear sign of new physics beyond Standard Model.
The most recent results of searches for LFV and LNV B meson decays at LHCb are presented in the talk. In addition, possible perspectives on this topic, such as searches for heavy neutral leptons, will be discussed.
Rare baryonic decays induced by flavour changing neutral current (FCNC) have been of immense interest in recent years because of their sensitivities towards new physics (NP) beyond the standard model (SM). The exploration had been triggered with the observation of
References:
T. Aaltonen et al. [CDF Collaboration], Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 201802 (2011) [arXiv: 1107.3753 [hep-ph]].
R. Aaij et al. [LHCb Collaboration], Phys. Lett. B 725, 25 (2013).
S. Sahoo, C. K. Das and L. Maharana, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 24, 6223 (2009).
S. Sahoo and R. Mohanta, New J. Phys. 18, 093051 (2016) [arXiv: 1607.04449 [hep-ph]].
D. Banerjee and S. Sahoo, Chin. Phys. C 41, 083101 (2017).
A. Nasrullah, M. J. Aslam and S. Shafaq, Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2018, 043B08 (2018).
R. L. Workman et al. [Particle data group], Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2022, 083C01 (2022).
K. Azizi, M. Bayar, A. Ozpineci, Y. Sarac and H. Sundu, Phys. Rev. D 85, 016002 (2012) [arXiv: 1112.5147 [hep-ph]].
P. Langacker, Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 1199 (2009).
P. Maji, S. Mahata, S. Biswas and S. Sahoo, Int. J. Theor. Phys. 61, 162 (2022).
The High-Intensity Muon Beams (HIMB) project aims to increase the rate of the intensity muon beamlines at Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) by two orders of magnitude up to 10^10 µ+/s, with a significant impact on low-energy, high-precision muon-based experiments. This is done by improving the surface muon yield with a new target geometry and by increasing capture and transmission with solenoid-based beamlines.
Even though the project focuses on surface muons, the increased capture and transmission affect all the particle species produced at target. The beamlines will be able to deliver muons, electrons and pions, and it is essential to evaluate the deliverable beam characteristics of all the particle species in the full momentum range accepted by the dipoles, up to 80 MeV/c.
To evaluate the performances of the beamlines, we rely on particle tracking simulations in high-fidelity field maps, which are computationally intensive and time-expensive to optimize. The optimization of the relevant beam parameters is performed with Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithms (MOGA), as they have been proved efficient in solving high-dimensional global optimization problems.
We present here the optimization strategy of the HIMB beamlines based on MOGA and its results.
The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics successfully predicts many fundamental properties and interactions, but it is still incomplete. Models like baryogenesis or leptogenesis for the matter-antimatter asymmetry lead to an additional CP violation beyond the SM. In this context, electric dipole moments (EDMs), which violate time-reversal and parity symmetry, and by virtue of the CPT theorem also CP, can test such scenarios.
Many EDM searches have been concluded with increasing sensitivity, all with null results. But the most exciting hints for BSM physics appeared in several precision measurements involving muons. These hints for new physics suggest a flavour structure beyond minimal flavour violation (MFV) in the lepton sector. In MFV a simple scaling by
The muEDM experiment, using for the first time the ``frozen-spin" technique in a compact storage ring, aims at improving the current direct experimental limit of
The angular correlation distribution of electron-positron pairs from Internal Pair Conversion emitted by excited 8Be and 4He nucleus was measured by ATOMKI. Over the expected monotonically decreasing trend was measured a significant excess which can be interpreted as the production of a hypothetical particle (X17) whose mass is around 17 MeV.
The MEG-II experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute searches for the lepton flavour violating decay
A first data-taking period was conducted in 2022 and a second one is scheduled for 2023. We report here the first results on the analysis of 2022 data.
The study of non-perturbative properties characterizing Quantum Chromo-Dynamics (QCD) is of relevant theoretical and phenomenological interest. Indeed, the
The lattice approach is a natural first-principle tool to investigate the non-perturbative properties of gauge theories and it has proven to be very successful in the study of the topological properties of QCD. For this reason, in the literature there are many numerical works dedicated to the study of simpler toy models as a test-bed for new algorithms and numerical methods for the study of gauge theories.
An example is provided by the
We address the problem from a new original perspective: we study the behavior of the model when the volume is fixed in dimensionless lattice units, where perturbative predictions are turned into more easily checkable behaviors. After testing this strategy for
Axions and Axion-Like Particles (ALPs) are hypothetical particles that could help solve the strong QCD problem and/or act as dark matter or dark portals. B factories are high-precision experiments specialized in B physics, but also exceptionally capable of probing the dark matter MeV-to-GeV range. In this talk, I will report on the status and the recent results of searches for axions and ALPs at the past B factories, BaBar and Belle, and the current, second-generation Belle II.
Four decades after its prediction the axion remains the most compelling solution to the strong CP problem and a well motivated dark matter candidate, inspiring several ultrasensitive experiments based on axion-photon mixing. After reviewing the axion solution to the strong CP problem, I will focus on recent developments in axion model building suggesting that the QCD axion parameter space is much larger than what traditionally thought. The implications for astrophysical limits and future experiments will be discussed as well.
I will overview the interplay between QCD axion properties and Lattice QCD inputs and discuss open questions in axion phenomenology and cosmology.
Ab-initio results from QCD topological susceptibility as a function of temperature constrain the freeze-out of the QCD axion, and in turn limit the available parameter space of today's axion coupling and mass. The talk reviews the status of lattice studies, with emphaysis on extrapolation to the relevant temperarure range. Issues related with the continuum limit of lattice results with physical quark masses are discussed as well.
We consider a model involving a “visible” QCD axion with mass in the MeV range with flavour non-universal couplings to the Standard Model (SM) first generation fermions. Such a heavy axion must evade a variety of stringent constraints which precisely fix the couplings to the SM fields: the requirement of “pion-phobia” determines the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) charges of the light quarks to be 2/3 and 1/3 for the up and down quarks, respectively, while the precise measurement of the electron’s anomalous magnetic moment, combined with collider and beam dump constraints, require the PQ charge of the electron to be O(1). By letting the axion also couple to a Dark Matter (DM) fermion 𝜒, we solve the Boltzmann equations to find the regions of the parameter space that yield the correct relic abundance. The coupling of the DM with the electrons is subject to indirect detection constraints from the CMB, while those with the light quarks induce elastic DM-nucleus collisions that are subject to nuclear recoil constraints. This restricts the allowed region of the parameter space that reproduces the correct relic abundance to the GeV mass range and PQ charges of O(0.1).
Axions originally emerged as low-energy remnants of the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong CP problem. They also unavoidably contribute to the energy density of the Universe, quantified via the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom (Δ𝑁𝑒𝑓𝑓), which is constrained by cosmic microwave background experiments.
In the talk, I will discuss the main axion-thermalization channel in the early universe at temperatures below that of the QCD phase transition, namely the axion-pion scattering, within the 2-flavor chiral perturbation theory (ChPT). Based on the leading order (LO) ChPT, the bound on the axion mass from Δ𝑁𝑒𝑓𝑓 is found to be approximately below the eV scale. However, considering the impact of NLO corrections, I will show that the perturbative chiral expansion breaks down for temperatures above 70 MeV, making the LO analysis not reliable. I will also discuss how to extend the EFT validity via unitarization techniques up to the deconfinement temperature, providing a reliable determination of the relic density of thermal axions decoupling after the QCD phase transition.
High-statistics measurements in peripheral photon-induced scattering using relativistic heavy-ion beams provide a precise and unique opportunity to investigate extensions of the Standard Model. New measurements of exclusive dilepton production (electron, muon, and tau pairs) are discussed. In particular, the tau-pair production measurement is used to constrain tau lepton's anomalous magnetic dipole moment which is experimentally much less constrained compared to the electron or muon magnetic moments. In addition, the measurement of light-by-light scattering and the search for axion-like particles will be discussed.
The axion solution to the strong CP problem is known to be sensitive to Planck scale effects, that give rise to the axion quality problem. We study a class of chiral gauge theories with a confining vector-like SU(N) factor and a weakly interacting chiral U(1) in which the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is accidental and the axion arises as a composite Nambu-Goldstone boson. We clarify the selection rules under which higher-dimensional PQ-violating operators can generate a potential for the axion in the IR, and find analytically the general solution over the integers to the U(1) anomaly equations. These results, of more general validity, allow us to identify and classify the models with an high quality PQ symmetry, protected up to operators of dimension 12, 15 or 18 depending on the charge assignments, irrespectively of the Planck scale dynamics. Our framework is compatible with a unified dynamics for the Standard Model sector, and we highlight the phenomenological signatures of such a scenario.
Recent experimental advances now severely constrain electroweak-scale WIMPs produced via thermal freeze-out, leading to a shift away from this standard paradigm. Here we consider an axion-like particle (ALP), the pseudo-Goldstone boson of an approximate
We propose a new search for Axion-Like Particles (ALPs), targeting Vector Boson Scattering (VBS) processes at the LHC. We consider nonresonant ALP-mediated VBS, where the ALP participates as an off-shell mediator. This process occurs whenever the ALP is too light to be produced resonantly, and it takes advantage of the derivative nature of ALP interactions with the electroweak Standard Model bosons. We study the production of
Axion-like particle (ALP) is one of the promising candidates of dark matter (DM). It can emerge from the dark sector with global U(1) symmetry. It is often (implicitly) assumed that the dark sector has a CP symmetry. However, since CP is violated within the SM, the dark sector with CP violation is also an interesting possibility. In this talk, we propose a new renormalizable model for ALP with CP violation in the dark sector. We discuss the properties of the predicted ALP and how the ALP can be probed in future collider experiments.