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F. Maltoni

Publications and source records attributed to F. Maltoni.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

Les Houches Physics at TeV Colliders 2005, Standard Model and Higgs working group: Summary report

This Report summarises the activities of the "SM and Higgs" working group for the Workshop "Physics at TeV Colliders", Les Houches, France, 2-20 May, 2005. On the one hand, we performed a variety of experimental and theoretical studies on standard candles (such as W, Z, and ttbar production), treating them either as proper signals of known physics, or as backgrounds to unknown physics; we also addressed issues relevant to those non-perturbative or semi-perturbative ingredients, such as Parton Density Functions and Underlying Events, whose understanding will be crucial for a proper simulation of the actual events taking place in the detectors. On the other hand, several channels for the production of the Higgs, or involving the Higgs, have been considered in some detail. The report is structured into four main parts. The first one deals with Standard Model physics, except the Higgs. A variety of arguments are treated here, from full simulation of processes constituting a background to Higgs production, to studies of uncertainties due to PDFs and to extrapolations of models for underlying events, from small-$x$ issues to electroweak corrections which may play a role in vector boson physics. The second part of the report treats Higgs physics from the point of view of the signal. In the third part, reviews are presented on the current status of multi-leg, next-to-leading order and of next-to-next-to-leading order QCD computations. Finally, the fourth part deals with the use of Monte Carlos for simulation of LHC physics.

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Analysis of charmonium production at fixed-target experiments in the NRQCD approach

We present an analysis of the existing data on charmonium hadro-production based on non-relativistic QCD (NRQCD) calculations at the next-to-leading order (NLO). All the data on J/psi and psi' production in fixed-target experiments and on pp collisions at low energy are included. We find that the amount of color octet contribution needed to describe the data is about 1/10 of that found at the Tevatron.

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Heavy-quark production at large rapidities at hadron colliders

We investigate heavy-quark production as a function of the rapidity interval between two heavy quarks in hadronic collisions. We compare the results relevant to bottom production at the Tevatron and at LHC, obtained using exact leading-order and NLO pQCD production, as well as the contribution of the 4b channel with and without the addition of BFKL gluon radiation.

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The Higgs Working Group: Summary Report 2003

Theoretical progress in Higgs boson production and background processes is discussed with particular emphasis on QCD corrections at and beyond next-to-leading order as well as next-to-leading order electroweak corrections. The residual theoretical uncertainties of the investigated processes are estimated in detail. Moreover, recent investigations of the MSSM Higgs sector and other extensions of the SM Higgs sector are presented. The potential of the LHC and a high-energy linear e+e- collider for the measurement of Higgs couplings is analyzed.

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Higgs Boson Production in Association with Bottom Quarks

In the Standard Model, the coupling of the Higgs boson to b quarks is weak, leading to small cross sections for producing a Higgs boson in association with b quarks. However, Higgs bosons with enhanced couplings to b quarks, such as occur in supersymmetric models for large values of tan beta, will be copiously produced at both the Tevatron and the LHC in association with b quarks, which will be an important discovery channel. We investigate the connections between the production channels, bg -> bh and gg ->b bbar h, at next-to-leading order (NLO) in perturbative QCD and present results for the cases with two high p_T b jets and with one high p_T b jet at both the Tevatron the the LHC. Finally, the total cross sections without cuts are compared between gg -> b bbar h at NLO and b bbar ->h at NNLO.

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Observation potential for eta_b at the Tevatron

We calculate the cross section for eta_b production at the Tevatron at next-to-leading order in the strong coupling and find that more than two millions of eta_b's are expected per inverse picobarn of integrated luminosity. We discuss the decay modes into charmed states and suggest that the decays into D* D(*) mesons might be the most promising channels to observe the eta_b in Run II.

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Higgs Boson Production in Association with Three Jets

The scattering amplitudes for Higgs + 5 partons are computed, with the Higgs boson produced via gluon fusion in the large top-quark mass limit. A parton-level analysis of Higgs + 3 jet production via gluon fusion and via weak-boson fusion is presented, and the effectiveness of a central-jet veto is analysed.

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Les Houches 'Physics at Tev Colliders 2003' QCD/SM Working Group: Summary Report

This report documents the results obtained by the Working Group on Quantum Chromodynamics and the Standard Model for the Workshop `Physics at TeV Colliders'', Les Houches, France, 26 May - 6 June 2003. After a Monte Guide description, the first contributions report on progress in describing multiple interactions, important for the LHC, and underlying events. An announcement of a Monte Carlo database, under construction, is then followed by a number of contributions improving parton shower descriptions. Subsequently, a large number of contributions address resummations in various forms, after which follow studies of QCD effects in pion pair, top quark pair and photon pair plus jet production. After a study of electroweak corrections to hadronic precision observables, the report ends by presenting recent progress in methods to compute finite order corrections at one-loop with many legs, and at two-loop.

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Les Houches Guidebook to Monte Carlo Generators for Hadron Collider Physics

Recently the collider physics community has seen significant advances in the formalisms and implementations of event generators. This review is a primer of the methods commonly used for the simulation of high energy physics events at particle colliders. We provide brief descriptions, references, and links to the specific computer codes which implement the methods. The aim is to provide an overview of the available tools, allowing the reader to ascertain which tool is best for a particular application, but also making clear the limitations of each tool.

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Associated Production of a Z Boson and a Single Heavy-Quark Jet

The leading-order process for the production of a Z boson and a heavy-quark jet at hadron colliders is gQ -> ZQ (Q=c,b). We calculate this cross section at next-to-leading order at the Tevatron and the LHC, and compare it with other sources of ZQ events. This process is a background to new physics, and can be used to measure the heavy-quark distribution function.

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Higgs-Boson Production in Association with a Single Bottom Quark

Higgs bosons from an extended Higgs sector, such as a two-Higgs-doublet model, can have greatly enhanced coupling to the bottom quark. Producing such a Higgs boson in association with a single high-p_T bottom quark via g b -> h b allows for the suppression of backgrounds. Previous studies have instead used g g,qbar q -> bbar b h as the production mechanism, which is valid only if both b quarks are at high p_T. We calculate g b -> h b at next-to-leading order in QCD, and find that it is an order of magnitude larger than g g,qbar q -> bbar b h at the Fermilab Tevatron and the CERN Large Hadron Collider. This production mechanism improves the prospects for the discovery of a Higgs boson with enhanced coupling to the b quark.

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Higgs-Boson Production via Bottom-Quark Fusion

Higgs bosons with enhanced coupling to bottom quarks are copiously produced at hadron colliders via b\bar{b} -> h, where the initial b quarks reside in the proton sea. We revisit the calculation of the next-to-leading-order cross section for this process and argue that the appropriate factorization scale for the b distribution functions is approximately m_h/4, rather than m_h, as had been previously assumed. This greatly improves the convergence of the perturbation series, and yields a result with mild factorization-scale dependence. We also show that the leading-order calculation of gg -> b\bar{b}h, integrated over the momenta of the final-state particles, is very sensitive to the factorization and renormalization scales. For scales of order m_h/4 the gg -> b\bar{b}h cross section is comparable to that of b\bar{b} -> h, in contrast to the order-of-magnitude discrepancy between these two calculations for the scale m_h. The result we obtain improves the prospects for Higgs-boson discovery at hadron colliders for large values of tan(β).

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Color-flow decomposition of QCD amplitudes

We introduce a new color decomposition for multi-parton amplitudes in QCD, free of fundamental-representation matrices and structure constants. This decomposition has a physical interpretation in terms of the flow of color, which makes it ideal for merging with shower Monte-Carlo programs. The color-flow decomposition allows for very efficient evaluation of amplitudes with many quarks and gluons, many times faster than the standard color decomposition based on fundamental-representation matrices. This will increase the speed of event generators for multi-jet processes, which are the principal backgrounds to signals of new physics at colliders.

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The contribution of the four-parton final states to gamma* gamma* -> hadrons

In the analysis of the total cross section for the gamma* gamma* -> hadrons process, we include the four parton final states, which are part of the O(alpha_s^2) corrections. The four-parton final states contain the diagrams with gluon exchange in the crossed channel, which constitute the leading order of the BFKL resummation. We show that the diagrams with gluon exchange in the crossed channel play an important role in the large Y region, however their contribution to the cross section must be evaluated exactly. In fact, the high-energy limit, which constitutes the kinematic framework of the BFKL resummation, is not sufficiently accurate at LEP2 energies. The inclusion of the diagrams with gluon exchange in the crossed channel reduces the discrepancy between the theory and the LEP2 data collected by the L3 Collaboration, but the data still lie above the theory, even allowing for a large scale uncertainty in the theory. Thus, in order to describe accurately the data for gamma* gamma* -> hadrons in the large Y region, corrections of an order higher than O(alpha_s^2) seem to be necessary.

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Measuring the top-quark Yukawa coupling at hadron colliders via tth, h->WW

We study the signal and background for the process tth, h->WW at the LHC and a 100 TeV VLHC. Signals are studied in two-, three-, and four-lepton final states. We find a statistical uncertainty in the top-quark Yukawa coupling at the LHC of 16%, 8%, 12% for m_h = 130, 160, 190 GeV, respectively. The statistical uncertainty at the VLHC is likely to be negligible in comparison with the systematic uncertainty.

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Scale of fermion mass generation

Unitarity of longitudinal weak vector boson scattering implies an upper bound on the scale of electroweak symmetry breaking, $Λ_{EWSB}\equiv \sqrt{8π}v\approx$ 1 TeV. Appelquist and Chanowitz have derived an analogous upper bound on the scale of fermion mass generation, proportional to $v^2/m_f$, by considering the scattering of same-helicity fermions into pairs of longitudinal weak vector bosons in a theory without a standard Higgs boson. We show that there is no upper bound, beyond that on the scale of electroweak symmetry breaking, in such a theory. This result is obtained by considering the same process, but with a large number of longitudinal weak vector bosons in the final state. We further argue that there is no scale of (Dirac) fermion mass generation in the standard model. In contrast, there is an upper bound on the scale of Majorana-neutrino mass generation, given by $Λ_{Maj}\equiv 4πv^2/m_ν$. In general, the upper bound on the scale of fermion mass generation depends on the dimensionality of the interaction responsible for generating the fermion mass. We explore the scale of fermion mass generation in a variety of excursions from the standard model: models with fermions in nonstandard representations, a theory with higher-dimension interactions, a two-Higgs-doublet model, and models without a Higgs boson.

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Forward jets and forward $W$-boson production at hadron colliders

In this talk we give a short review of forward jets and forward $W$-boson production at hadron colliders, in view of the extraction of footprints of BFKL physics. We argue that at Tevatron energies, dijet production at large rapidity intervals is still subasymptotic with respect to the BFKL regime, thus the cross section is strongly dependent on the various cuts applied in the experimental setup. In addition, the choice of equal transverse momentum cuts on the tagging jets makes the cross section dependent on large logarithms of non-BFKL origin, and thus may spoil the BFKL analysis. For vector boson production in association with two jets, we argue that the configurations that are kinematically favoured tend to have the vector boson forward in rapidity. Thus $W + 2$ jet production lends itself naturally to extensions to the high-energy limit.

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