arXiv subjects

Donatella Lucchesi

Publications and source records attributed to Donatella Lucchesi.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Prospects for precision Higgs boson measurements at a 10 TeV muon collider

A 10 TeV muon collider offers a powerful environment for precision studies of the Higgs sector through its large vector-boson-fusion production rates. This review presents projected sensitivities to single- and double-Higgs production cross sections, the Higgs boson mass, and the trilinear Higgs self-coupling. The projections are obtained from detailed simulations of the MUSIC detector, including machine-induced background, for a baseline configuration of two experiments, each collecting an integrated luminosity of 10 $\mathrm{ab}^{-1}$. The $H\to b\bar{b}$ and $H\to WW^\ast$ production cross sections can be measured with statistical precisions of 0.18% and 0.35%, respectively, while precisions of 2.6%, 4.2%, and 6.9% are expected for $H\toγγ$, $H\to ZZ^\ast$, and $H\toμ^+μ^-$. Combining the $H\to b\bar{b}$, $H\toγγ$, and $H\toμ^+μ^-$ channels yields an expected Higgs boson mass precision of about 19 MeV. Double-Higgs production can be measured with statistical precisions of 4.2% in the $HH\to b\bar{b}b\bar{b}$ channel and 14% in the $HH\to b\bar{b}WW^\ast$ channel. Using the $HH\to b\bar{b}b\bar{b}$ channel, the trilinear Higgs self-coupling can be determined with an expected precision of about 5%. These results demonstrate the potential of a high-energy muon collider for precision Higgs physics.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2026

Higgs Physics at a $\sqrt{s} = 10$ TeV Muon Collider

This contribution discusses the physics potential of a future muon collider operating at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s} = 10$ TeV for precision studies in the Higgs sector. Using a detailed detector simulation that incorporates the dominant sources of machine-induced background, the expected sensitivity to key Higgs processes is evaluated. These include the measurement of production cross sections for $H\to b\bar{b}$, $H\to WW^*$, and double-Higgs production $H\!H\to b\bar{b}b\bar{b}$. A central focus of the study is the determination of the Higgs boson trilinear self-coupling, a critical parameter for understanding the structure of the Higgs potential and electroweak symmetry breaking. The analysis is based on the MUSIC multi-purpose detector concept, specifically optimized for the muon collider environment, and assumes an integrated luminosity of $10$ ab$^{-1}$ collected over five years. The results presented highlight the exceptional prospects of a multi-TeV muon collider for exploring the Higgs potential with a level of precision unattainable by any other proposed future collider within a comparable timeframe.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2026

MUSIC: a detector concept for 10 TeV $\mathbf{μ^+μ^-}$ collisions

The full exploitation of the physics potential of a multi-TeV muon collider will ultimately lie in the detector's ability to cope with unprecedented levels of machine-induced backgrounds. This contribution introduces the MUSIC (MUon System for Interesting Collisions) detector concept and presents its performance in the context of $\sqrt{s}$ = 10 TeV muon-antimuon collisions. The MUSIC detector is designed to mitigate machine-induced background effects while maintaining high efficiency and accuracy in the reconstruction of physics events, in particular in the Higgs boson sector and in the search for new physics. It features an all-silicon tracking system, a semi-homogeneous lead-fluorite crystal electromagnetic calorimeter, an iron-scintillator sampling hadronic calorimeter, and a superconducting magnet providing a 5 T magnetic field. Detailed detector simulations, accounting for the dominant machine-induced backgrounds, demonstrate promising performance in track, muon, photon, electron, and jet reconstruction, as well as jet flavor identification, highlighting the detector's strong potential for high-energy muon collider experiments.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2025

MUSIC: A Multi-Purpose Detector Concept for Physics at the 10 TeV Muon Collider

This work presents a proof of concept for MUSIC, a multi-purpose detector conceived for high-precision and ultra-high-energy physics studies in the challenging environment of $\sqrt{s}=10$ TeV muon-antimuon collisions. The detector features a central tracking system, electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters, and dedicated muon detectors. This paper outlines the main design elements of each subdetector, with an emphasis on the effects of machine-induced backgrounds and the reconstruction strategies employed for key physics objects. Performance results for electrons, photons, muons, and jets are reported, and studies of jet flavour identification are discussed.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2025

MuCol Milestone Report No. 7: Consolidated Parameters

This document is comprised of a collection of consolidated parameters for the key parts of the muon collider. These consolidated parameters follow on from the October 2024 Preliminary Parameters Report. Attention has been given to a high-level consistent set of baseline parameters throughout all systems of the complex, following a 10 TeV center-of-mass design. Additional details of the designs contributing to this baseline design are featured in the appendix. Likewise, explorative variations from this baseline set can be found in the appendix. The data is collected from a collaborative spreadsheet and transferred to overleaf.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2024

Experimentation at a muon collider

Experimental activities involving multi-TeV muon collisions are a relatively recent endeavor. The community has limited experience in designing detectors for lepton interactions at center-of-mass energies of 10 TeV and beyond. This review provides a short overview of the machine characteristics and outlines potential sources of beam-induced background that could impact the detector performance. The strategy for mitigating the effects of beam-induced background on the detector at $\sqrt{s}=3$ TeV is discussed, focusing on the machine-detector interface, detector design, and the implementation of reconstruction algorithms. The physics potential at this center-of-mass energy is evaluated using a detailed detector simulation that incorporates the effects of beam-induced background. This evaluation concerns the Higgs boson couplings and the Higgs field potential sensitivity, that then are used to get confidence on the expectations at 10 TeV. The physics and detector requirements for an experiment at $\sqrt{s}=10$ TeV, outlined here, form the foundation for the initial detector concept at that center-of-mass energy .

hep-ex↗

arXiv2024

Higgs Physics at a $\sqrt{s}=3$ TeV Muon Collider with detailed detector simulation

The Muon Collider is one of the most promising future collider facilities with the potential to reach multi-TeV center-of-mass energy and high luminosity. Due to the significant Higgs boson production cross section in muon collisions at these high energies, the collider can be considered a Higgs factory. It holds the capability to significantly advance our understanding of the Higgs sector to an unprecedented level of precision. However, the presence of beam-induced background resulting from the decay of the beam muons poses unique challenges for detector development and event reconstruction. In this paper, the prospects for various measurements of the Higgs boson production cross sections at a $\sqrt{s}=3$ TeV collider are presented using a detailed detector simulation in a realistic environment. The study demonstrates the feasibility of achieving high precision measurements of the Higgs boson production cross sections with the current state-of-the-art detector design. In addition, the paper discusses the detector requirements necessary for obtaining such resolutions and for measuring the Higgs trilinear self-coupling.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2023

Quantum Computing for High-Energy Physics: State of the Art and Challenges. Summary of the QC4HEP Working Group

Quantum computers offer an intriguing path for a paradigmatic change of computing in the natural sciences and beyond, with the potential for achieving a so-called quantum advantage, namely a significant (in some cases exponential) speed-up of numerical simulations. The rapid development of hardware devices with various realizations of qubits enables the execution of small scale but representative applications on quantum computers. In particular, the high-energy physics community plays a pivotal role in accessing the power of quantum computing, since the field is a driving source for challenging computational problems. This concerns, on the theoretical side, the exploration of models which are very hard or even impossible to address with classical techniques and, on the experimental side, the enormous data challenge of newly emerging experiments, such as the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider. In this roadmap paper, led by CERN, DESY and IBM, we provide the status of high-energy physics quantum computations and give examples for theoretical and experimental target benchmark applications, which can be addressed in the near future. Having the IBM 100 x 100 challenge in mind, where possible, we also provide resource estimates for the examples given using error mitigated quantum computing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Quantum computing for data analysis in high energy physics

Some of the biggest achievements of the modern era of particle physics, such as the discovery of the Higgs boson, have been made possible by the tremendous effort in building and operating large-scale experiments like the Large Hadron Collider or the Tevatron. In these facilities, the ultimate theory to describe matter at the most fundamental level is constantly probed and verified. These experiments often produce large amounts of data that require storing, processing, and analysis techniques that often push the limits of traditional information processing schemes. Thus, the High-Energy Physics (HEP) field has benefited from advancements in information processing and the development of algorithms and tools for large datasets. More recently, quantum computing applications have been investigated in an effort to understand how the community can benefit from the advantages of quantum information science. In this manuscript, we provide an overview of the state-of-the-art applications of quantum computing to data analysis in HEP, discuss the challenges and opportunities in integrating these novel analysis techniques into a day-to-day analysis workflow, and whether there is potential for a quantum advantage.

physics.data-an↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Machine Learning for $b$-jet charge identification

Machine Learning algorithms have played an important role in hadronic jet classification problems. The large variety of models applied to Large Hadron Collider data has demonstrated that there is still room for improvement. In this context Quantum Machine Learning is a new and almost unexplored methodology, where the intrinsic properties of quantum computation could be used to exploit particles correlations for improving the jet classification performance. In this paper, we present a brand new approach to identify if a jet contains a hadron formed by a $b$ or $\bar{b}$ quark at the moment of production, based on a Variational Quantum Classifier applied to simulated data of the LHCb experiment. Quantum models are trained and evaluated using LHCb simulation. The jet identification performance is compared with a Deep Neural Network model to assess which method gives the better performance.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2022

Simulated Detector Performance at the Muon Collider

In this paper we report on the current status of studies on the expected performance for a detector designed to operate in a muon collider environment. Beam-induced backgrounds (BIB) represent the main challenge in the design of the detector and the event reconstruction algorithms. The current detector design aims to show that satisfactory performance can be achieved, while further optimizations are expected to significantly improve the overall performance. We present the characterization of the expected beam-induced background, describe the detector design and software used for detailed event simulations taking into account BIB effects. The expected performance of charged-particle reconstruction, jets, electrons, photons and muons is discussed, including an initial study on heavy-flavor jet tagging. A simple method to measure the delivered luminosity is also described. Overall, the proposed design and reconstruction algorithms can successfully reconstruct the high transverse-momentum objects needed to carry out a broad physics program.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2022

Muon Collider Physics Summary

The perspective of designing muon colliders with high energy and luminosity, which is being investigated by the International Muon Collider Collaboration, has triggered a growing interest in their physics reach. We present a concise summary of the muon colliders potential to explore new physics, leveraging on the unique possibility of combining high available energy with very precise measurements.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

The physics case of a 3 TeV muon collider stage

In the path towards a muon collider with center of mass energy of 10 TeV or more, a stage at 3 TeV emerges as an appealing option. Reviewing the physics potential of such muon collider is the main purpose of this document. In order to outline the progression of the physics performances across the stages, a few sensitivity projections for higher energy are also presented. There are many opportunities for probing new physics at a 3 TeV muon collider. Some of them are in common with the extensively documented physics case of the CLIC 3 TeV energy stage, and include measuring the Higgs trilinear coupling and testing the possible composite nature of the Higgs boson and of the top quark at the 20 TeV scale. Other opportunities are unique of a 3 TeV muon collider, and stem from the fact that muons are collided rather than electrons. This is exemplified by studying the potential to explore the microscopic origin of the current $g$-2 and $B$-physics anomalies, which are both related with muons.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Promising Technologies and R&D Directions for the Future Muon Collider Detectors

Among the post-LHC generation of particle accelerators, the muon collider represents a unique machine with capability to provide very high energy leptonic collisions and to open the path to a vast and mostly unexplored physics programme. However, on the experimental side, such great physics potential is accompanied by unprecedented technological challenges, due to the fact that muons are unstable particles. Their decay products interact with the machine elements and produce an intense flux of background particles that eventually reach the detector and may degrade its performance. In this paper, we present technologies that have a potential to match the challenging specifications of a muon collider detector and outline a path forward for the future R&D efforts.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2021

Advanced assessment of Beam Induced Background at a Muon Collider

Renewed international interest in muon colliders motivates the continued investigation of the impacts of beam-induced background on detector performance. This continues the effort initiated by the Muon Accelerator Program and carried out until 2017. The beam-induced background from muon decays directly impacts detector performance and must be mitigated by optimizing the overall machine design, with particular attention paid to the machine detector interface region. In order to produce beam-induced background events and to study their characteristics in coordination with the collider optimization, a flexible simulation approach is needed. To achieve this goal we have chosen to utilize the combination of LineBuilder and Monte Carlo FLUKA codes. We report the results of beam-induced background studies with these tools obtained for a 1.5 TeV center of mass energy collider configuration. Good agreement with previous simulations using the MARS15 code demonstrate that our choice of tools meet the accuracy and performance requirements to perform future optimization studies on muon collider designs.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2021

Quantum-inspired Machine Learning on high-energy physics data

Tensor Networks, a numerical tool originally designed for simulating quantum many-body systems, have recently been applied to solve Machine Learning problems. Exploiting a tree tensor network, we apply a quantum-inspired machine learning technique to a very important and challenging big data problem in high energy physics: the analysis and classification of data produced by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. In particular, we present how to effectively classify so-called b-jets, jets originating from b-quarks from proton-proton collisions in the LHCb experiment, and how to interpret the classification results. We exploit the Tensor Network approach to select important features and adapt the network geometry based on information acquired in the learning process. Finally, we show how to adapt the tree tensor network to achieve optimal precision or fast response in time without the need of repeating the learning process. These results pave the way to the implementation of high-frequency real-time applications, a key ingredient needed among others for current and future LHCb event classification able to trigger events at the tens of MHz scale.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2020

Muon Colliders: Opening New Horizons for Particle Physics

Particle colliders have arguably been the most important instruments for particle physics over the past 50 years. As they became more powerful, they were used to push the frontier of our knowledge into previously uncharted territory. The LHC, the highest energy collider to date, at which the Higgs boson was discovered, is a prime example. To continue along the road into the Terra Promissa beyond the Standard Model requires colliders with energy reach even greater than that of the LHC. Beams of muons offer enormous potential for the exploration of the energy frontier. Since the muon is a fundamental particle, its full energy is available in collisions in contrast to protons which are composed of quarks and gluons. However, muon beams decay rapidly, which presents a special challenge for a collider. Recent research indicates that the technologies required to overcome this challenge are within our grasp and may offer a cost-effective and energy-efficient option to continue our explorations. A new international collaboration is forming to bring together the diverse expertise and complementary capabilities from around the world to realize the muon collider as the next-generation energy-frontier discovery machine.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2020

Detector and Physics Performance at a Muon Collider

A muon collider represents the ideal machine to reach very high center-of-mass energies and luminosities by colliding elementary particles. This is the result of the low level of beamstrahlung and synchrotron radiation compared to linear or circular electron-positron colliders. In contrast with other lepton machines, the design of a detector for a multi-TeV muon collider requires the knowledge of the interaction region due to the presence of a large amount of background induced by muon beam decays. The physics reaches can be properly evaluated only when the detector performance is determined. In this work, the background generated by muon beams of $750$ GeV is characterized and the performance of the tracking system and the calorimeter detector are illustrated. Solutions to minimize the effect of the beam-induced background are discussed and applied to obtain track and jet reconstruction performance. The $μ^+μ^-\to Hν\barν\to b\bar b ν\barν$ process is fully simulated and reconstructed to demonstrate that physics measurements are possible in this harsh environment. The precision on Higgs boson coupling to $b\bar b$ is evaluated for $\sqrt{s}=1.5$, 3, and 10 TeV and compared to other proposed machines.

hep-ex↗