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Christophe Royon

Publications and source records attributed to Christophe Royon.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Saturation effects in diffractive deep inelastic scattering

We study the production of $c$ and $b$ quarks in photon-induced processes as a probe of gluon saturation, with a focus on the high-energy region accessible in ultra-peripheral collisions (UPCs) at the LHC. We compare predictions for inclusive and diffractive heavy quark production with and without saturation effects by using the nonlinear Balitsky--Kovchegov and the linear Balitsky--Fadin--Kuraev--Lipatov equations for the evolution of the dipole amplitude. The percentage of coherent diffractive events is predicted to be $~20\%$ in the saturation model, which is approximately twice as large as predictions based on parton distribution functions and shadowing. This indicates that measurements of diffractive heavy quark production in UPCs may provide a sensitive probe for distinguishing linear and nonlinear regimes of quantum chromodynamics.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2026

Beam monitoring for radiotherapy from conventional to FLASH dose rates using Low Gain Avalanche Silicon detectors

We report the performance of low gain avalanche Silicon detectors (LGADs) for instantaneous electron and proton beam monitoring across dose rates ranging from conventional radiotherapy to the FLASH regime, benefiting from the fast response of these detectors of a few nanoseconds. The beam sources provide a dose rate greater than 40~Gy/s through pulses of widths 0.5, 1, 2 and 3~$\mu$s for electron beams and 3, 5, 10 $\mu$s for proton beams. Two different LGAD devices and silicon diodes are tested, yielding a linear dose response for electron beams up to $\sim$450~Gy/s and for proton beams up to $\sim$12~Gy/s. Beyond the linear regime the response continues to increase with a reduced slope and no true signal plateau is observed, at least up to 1800 Gy/s for electrons and 150 Gy/s for protons. This study contributes towards the instantaneous monitoring of increasingly intense flash beams for radiotherapy using fast detectors such as LGADs since measurements can be performed every fraction of $\mu$s.

physics.med-ph↗
arXiv2025

Scaling of the elastic proton-proton cross-section

We discuss scaling properties of the elastic $pp$ cross-section both at the ISR and the LHC. We observe that the ratio of bump to dip positions of the differential cross-section $d\sigma_{\rm el}/dt$ is constant over a wide energy range. We next study the consequences of this property, including geometric scaling at the ISR and new scaling laws at the LHC.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2024

Gluon Saturation Effects in Exclusive Heavy Vector Meson Photoproduction

We study exclusive $J/\psi$ and $\Upsilon$ photoproduction for proton and Pb targets in the high-energy limit, with the energy dependence computed using the linear Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov and the nonlinear Balitsky-Kovchegov evolution equations. The difference between these two evolution equations can be directly attributed to gluon saturation physics. We find that for proton targets there is no difference between the two approaches at the energies of the currently available data, while for Pb targets in $J/\psi$ production the data shows a clear preference for the evolution with gluon saturation.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2024

Scaling properties of elastic pp cross-section

We show that the elastic differential $pp$ cross-section has a unique universal property that the ratio of bump-to-dip position is constant from the energies of the ISR to the LHC. We explore this property to compare Geometric Scaling present at the ISR with the recently proposed scaling law at the LHC. We argue that at the LHC, within present experimental uncertainties, there is fact a family of scaling laws.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2024

Scaling laws of elastic proton-proton scattering differential cross sections

We show that elastic scattering $pp \to pp $ differential cross sections as function of the four-momentum transfer square $|t|$ have a universal property, such that the ratio of bump-to-dip positions is constant from the energies of the ISR to the LHC, from tens of GeV and up to the TeV scale. We explore this property to compare the geometrical scaling observed at the ISR with the recently proposed scaling law at the LHC. We argue that, at the LHC, within present experimental uncertainties, there is in fact a family of scaling laws. We discuss the constraints that the scaling laws impose on the parametrization of the elastic $pp\to pp$ scattering amplitude.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2023

First computation of Mueller Tang processes using the full NLL BFKL approach

We present the full next-to-leading order (NLO) prediction for the jet-gap-jet cross section at the LHC within the BFKL approach. We implement, for the first time, the NLO impact factors in the calculation of the cross section. We provide results for differential cross sections as a function of the difference in rapidity and azimuthal angle betwen the two jets and the second leading jet transverse momentum. The NLO corrections of the impact factors induce an overall reduction of the cross section with respect to the corresponding predictions with only LO impact factors. We note that NLO impact factors feature a logarithmic dependence of the cross section on the total center of mass energy which formally violates BFKL factorization. We show that such term is one order of magnitude smaller than the total contribution, and thus can be safely included in the current prediction without a need of further resummation of such logarithmic terms. Fixing the renormalization scale $μ_R$ according to the principle of minimal sensitivity, suggests $μ_R$ about 4 times the sum of the transverse jet energies and provides smaller theroretical uncertainties with respect to the leading order case.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2022

Searching for anomalous top quark interactions with proton tagging and timing detectors at the LHC

We study the LHC sensitivity to new broad neutral resonances produced in two-photon fusion and decaying to a top quark pair, $γγ\to t\bar{t}$. This is probed in central exclusive $t\bar{t}$ production in proton-proton collisions, $pp \to p t\bar{t} p$. We use the tagging of the intact protons by PPS (CMS) and AFP (ATLAS) and consider the semi-leptonic $t\bar t$ channel. The sensitivity is also mapped onto a set of dimension-8 $γγt\bar{t}$ operators in the large mass limit. Using the kinematical correlations between the intact protons and the reconstructed $t\bar{t}$ system, we obtain a sensitivity to the couplings of the dimension-8 operators of $1.4 \cdot 10^{-11}~\mathrm{GeV}^{-4}$ at 95% CL. The sensitivity to the anomalous couplings is significantly improved down to about $7\cdot 10^{-12}~\mathrm{GeV}^{-4}$ if the proton time-of-flight is known with a precision of 20 ps in future measurements. The 95% CL sensitivity to broad neutral resonances reaches masses of order $ 1500~\mathrm{GeV} $ when using timing information.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2022

White Paper on Forward Physics, BFKL, Saturation Physics and Diffraction

The goal of this whitepaper is to give a comprehensive overview of the rich field of forward physics. We discuss the occurrences of BFKL resummation effects in special final states, such as Mueller-Navelet jets, jet gap jets, and heavy quarkonium production. It further addresses TMD factorization at low x and the manifestation of a semi-hard saturation scale in (generalized) TMD PDFs. More theoretical aspects of low x physics, probes of the quark gluon plasma, as well as the possibility to use photon-hadron collisions at the LHC to constrain hadronic structure at low x, and the resulting complementarity between LHC and the EIC are also presented. We also briefly discuss diffraction at colliders as well as the possibility to explore further the electroweak theory in central exclusive events using the LHC as a photon-photon collider.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2022

The odderon discovery by the D0 and TOTEM collaborations

We describe the discovery of the colorless $C$-odd gluonic compound, the odderon, by the D0 and TOTEM Collaborations by comparing elastic differential cross sections measured in $pp$ and $p \bar{p}$ interactions at high energies.

hep-ex↗
arXiv2021

Performance of a low gain avalanche detector in a medical linac and characterisation of the beam profile

Low gain avalanche detectors can measure charged particle fluences with high speed and spatial precision, and are a promising technology for radiation monitoring and dosimetry. A detector has been tested in a medical linac where single particles were observed with a time resolution of 50\,ps. The integrated response is similar to a standard ionising chamber but with a spatial precision twenty times finer, and a temporal precision over 100 million times better, with the capability to measure the charge deposited by a single linac pulse. The unprecedented resolving power allows the structure of the $\sim 3\,μ$s linac pulses to be viewed and the 350\,ps sub-pulses in the train to be observed.

physics.ins-det↗
arXiv2020

New opportunities at the photon energy frontier

Ultra-peripheral collisions (UPCs) involving heavy ions and protons are the energy frontier for photon-mediated interactions. UPC photons can be used for many purposes, including probing low-$x$ gluons via photoproduction of dijets and vector mesons, probes of beyond-standard-model processes, such as those enabled by light-by-light scattering, and studies of two-photon production of the Higgs.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2020

Probing Nucleons and Nuclei in High Energy Collisions

This volume is a collection of contributions for the 7-week program "Probing Nucleons and Nuclei in High Energy Collisions" that was held at the Institute for Nuclear Theory in Seattle, WA, USA, from October 1 until November 16, 2018. The program was dedicated to the physics of the Electron Ion Collider (EIC), the world's first polarized electron-nucleon (ep) and electron-nucleus (eA) collider to be constructed in the USA. These proceedings are organized by chapters, corresponding to the weeks of the program: Week I, Generalized parton distributions; Week II, Transverse spin and TMDs; Week III, Longitudinal spin; Week IV, Symposium week; Weeks V & VI, eA collisions; Week VII, pA and AA collisions. We hope these proceedings will be useful to readers as a compilation of EIC-related science at the end of the second decade of the XXI century.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2018

Searching for axion-like particles with proton tagging at the LHC

The existence of an axion-like particle (ALP) would induce anomalous scattering of light by light. This process can be probed at the Large Hadron Collider in central exclusive production of photon pairs in proton-proton collisions by tagging the surviving protons using forward proton detectors. Using a detailed simulation, we estimate the expected bounds on the ALP--photon coupling for a wide range of masses. We show that the proposed search is competitive and complementary to other collider bounds for masses above 600 GeV, especially for resonant ALP production between 600 GeV and 2 TeV. Our results are also valid for a CP-even scalar, and the efficiency of the search is independent of the width of the ALP.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2017

Pomeron Physics at the LHC

We present current and ongoing research aimed at identifying Pomeron effects at the LHC in both the weak and strongly coupled regimes of QCD.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2017

Probing the anomalous $γγγZ$ coupling at the LHC with proton tagging

The sensitivities to the anomalous quartic gauge boson coupling $γγγZ$ are estimated via $γZ$ production with intact protons in the forward region at the LHC. Proton tagging proves to be a powerful tool to suppress the background, which allows consideration of the hadronic decays of the $Z$ boson in addition to the leptonic ones. We discuss the discovery potential for an integrated luminosity of $300\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ and $3000\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$. The sensitivity we obtain at $300\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ goes beyond the one expected from LHC bounds on the $Z\rightarrow γγγ$ decay by about three orders of magnitude. The $γZ$ channel provides important discriminatory information with respect to the exclusive $γγ$ channel, as many particles beyond the Standard Model (such as a radion or Kaluza Klein gravitons) predict a signal in the latter but not the former.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2017

Test of Ultra Fast Silicon Detectors for Picosecond Time Measurements with a New Multipurpose Read-Out Board

Ultra Fast Silicon Detectors (UFSD) are sensors optimized for timing measurements employing a thin multiplication layer to increase the output signal. A multipurpose read-out board hosting a low-cost, low-power fast amplifier was designed at the University of Kansas and tested at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) using a 180 GeV pion beam. The amplifier has been designed to read out a wide range of detectors and it was optimized in this test for the UFSD output signal. In this paper we report the results of the experimental tests using 50 $\rm{μm}$ thick UFSD with a sensitive area of 1.4 $\rm{mm^2}$. A timing precision below 30 ps was achieved.

physics.ins-det↗