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F. Piccinini

Publications and source records attributed to F. Piccinini.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Les Houches 2015: Physics at TeV Colliders Standard Model Working Group Report

This Report summarizes the proceedings of the 2015 Les Houches workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders. Session 1 dealt with (I) new developments relevant for high precision Standard Model calculations, (II) the new PDF4LHC parton distributions, (III) issues in the theoretical description of the production of Standard Model Higgs bosons and how to relate experimental measurements, (IV) a host of phenomenological studies essential for comparing LHC data from Run I with theoretical predictions and projections for future measurements in Run II, and (V) new developments in Monte Carlo event generators.

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The observation of light nuclei at ALICE and the X(3872) conundrum

The new data reported by ALICE on the production of light nuclei with pT < 10 GeV in Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 2.76 TeV are used to compute an order-of-magnitude estimate of the expected production cross sections of light nuclei in proton-proton collisions at high transverse momenta. We compare the hypertriton, helium-3 and deuteron production cross sections to that of X(3872), measured in prompt pp collisions by CMS. The results we find suggest a different production mechanism for the X(3872), making questionable any loosely bound molecule interpretation.

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Production of Tetraquarks at the LHC

The high prompt production cross section of X(3872) at hadron colliders has shown to be very informative about the quark nature of the X, Y, Z states. We present here a number of results on X production in pp(pbar) collisions obtained with Monte Carlo hadronization methods and illustrate what can be learned from their use to improve our understanding of exotic states. In particular, a comparison between antideuteron and X production cross sections is proposed. Hadronization might be the key to solve the problem of the extra states expected in diquark-antidiquark models which are naturally favored after the recent confirmation of the Z(4430) tetraquark, together with its lower partners Zc(3900) and Zc'(4020).

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The Z(4430) and a New Paradigm for Spin Interactions in Tetraquarks

Following the recent confirmation of the Z+(4430) resonance with J^{PG}=1^{++}, we have re-examined the model of S- and P-wave tetraquarks. We propose a `type-II' diquark-antidiquark model which shows to be very effective at producing a simple and comprehensive picture of the J^{PG}=1^{++} and 1^{--} sectors of the recently discovered charged tetraquarks and of the observed Y resonances. The model is still faced with the unresolved difficulty of explaining why some states seem to have incomplete isospin multiplets.

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Les Houches 2013: Physics at TeV Colliders: Standard Model Working Group Report

This Report summarizes the proceedings of the 2013 Les Houches workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders. Session 1 dealt primarily with (1) the techniques for calculating standard model multi-leg NLO and NNLO QCD and NLO EW cross sections and (2) the comparison of those cross sections with LHC data from Run 1, and projections for future measurements in Run 2.

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A Tentative Description of Z_c,b States in Terms of Metastable Feshbach Resonances

We attempt a description of the recently discovered Z_{c,b} states in terms of Feshbach resonances arising from the interaction between the `closed' subspace of hadrocharmonium levels and the `open' one of open-charm/beauty thresholds. We show how the neutrality of the X(3872) might be understood in this scheme and provide a preliminary explanation of the pattern of the measured total widths of X,Z_{c,b}.

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Report of the Snowmass 2013 energy frontier QCD working group

This is the summary report of the energy frontier QCD working group prepared for Snowmass 2013. We review the status of tools, both theoretical and experimental, for understanding the strong interactions at colliders. We attempt to prioritize important directions that future developments should take. Most of the efforts of the QCD working group concentrate on proton-proton colliders, at 14 TeV as planned for the next run of the LHC, and for 33 and 100 TeV, possible energies of the colliders that will be necessary to carry on the physics program started at 14 TeV. We also examine QCD predictions and measurements at lepton-lepton and lepton-hadron colliders, and in particular their ability to improve our knowledge of strong coupling constant and parton distribution functions.

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A J^PG=1++ Charged Resonance in the Y(4260) to pi+pi- J/psi Decay?

New BES and Belle data show a peak in the Y(4260) decay into J/psi plus one charged pion. We point out that the peak might correspond to a charged resonance at about 3880 MeV predicted time ago within a tetraquark model. The same tetraquark model predicts another peak at about 100 MeV below the observed one. We discuss the possibility of having it in present data. On the other hand we expect that if the molecular picture were the correct one, a peak corresponding to a D* D*bar state should appear at about 4020 MeV.

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A Monte-Carlo generator for statistical hadronization in high energy e+e- collisions

We present a Monte-Carlo implementation of the Statistical Hadronization Model in e+e- collisions. The physical scheme is based on the statistical hadronization of massive clusters produced by the event generator Herwig within the microcanonical ensemble. We present a preliminary comparison of several observables with measurements in e+e- collisions at the Z peak. Although a fine tuning of the model parameters is not carried out, a general good agreement between its predictions and data is found.

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On the Spin of the X(3872)

Whether the much studied X(3872) is an axial or tensor resonance makes an important difference to its interpretation. A recent paper by the BaBar collaboration raised the viable hypothesis that it might be a 2-+ state based on the 3 pions spectrum in the X -> J/psi omega decays. Furthermore, the Belle collaboration published the 2 pions invariant mass and spin-sensitive angular distributions in X -> J/psi rho decays. Starting from a general parametrization of the decay amplitudes for the axial and tensor quantum numbers of the X, we re-analyze the whole set of available data. The level of agreement of the two spin hypotheses with data is interpreted with a rigorous statistical approach based on Monte Carlo simulations in order to be able to combine all the distributions regardless of their different levels of sensitivity to the spin of the X. Our analysis returns a probability of 5.5% and 0.1% for the agreement with data of the 1++ and 2-+ hypotheses, respectively, once we combine the whole information (angular and mass distributions) from both channels. On the other hand, the separate analysis of J/psi rho (angular and mass distributions) and J/psi omega (mass distribution) indicates that the 2-+ assignment is excluded at the 99.9% C.L. by the former case, while the latter excludes at the same level the 1++ hypothesis. There are therefore indications that the two decay modes behave in a different way.

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Implementation of electroweak corrections in the POWHEG BOX: single W production

We present a fully consistent implementation of electroweak and strong radiative corrections to single W hadroproduction in the POWHEG BOX framework, treating soft and collinear photon emissions on the same ground as coloured parton emissions. This framework can be easily extended to more complex electroweak processes. We describe how next-to-leading order (NLO) electroweak corrections are combined with the NLO QCD calculation, and show how they are interfaced to QCD and QED shower Monte Carlo. The resulting tool fills a gap in the literature and allows to study comprehensively the interplay of QCD and electroweak effects to W production using a single computational framework. Numerical comparisons with the predictions of the electroweak generator HORACE, as well as with existing results on the combination of electroweak and QCD corrections to W production, are shown for the LHC energies, to validate the reliability and accuracy of the approach

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H -> gamma gamma: a Comment on the Indeterminacy of Non-Gauge-Invariant Integrals

We reanalyze the recent computation of the amplitude of the Higgs boson decay into two photons presented by Gastmans et al.. The reasons for which this result cannot be the correct one have been discussed in some recent papers. We address here the general issue of the indeterminacy of integrals with four-dimensional gauge-breaking regulators and to which extent it might eventually be solved by imposing physical constraints. Imposing gauge invariance as the last step upon R_xi gauge calculations with four-dimensional gauge-breaking regulators, allows indeed to recover the well known H -> gamma gamma result. However we show that in the particular case of the unitary gauge, the indeterminacy cannot be tackled in this same way. The combination of unitary gauge with a cutoff regularization scheme turns out to be non-predictive.

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NNLO massive corrections to Bhabha scattering and theoretical precision of BabaYaga@NLO

We provide an exact calculation of next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) massive corrections to Bhabha scattering in QED, relevant for precision luminosity monitoring at meson factories. Using realistic reference event selections, exact numerical results for leptonic and hadronic corrections are given and compared with the corresponding approximate predictions of the event generator BabaYaga@NLO. It is shown that the NNLO massive corrections are necessary for luminosity measurements with per mille precision. At the same time they are found to be well accounted for in the generator at an accuracy level below the one per mille. An update of the total theoretical precision of BabaYaga@NLO is presented and possible directions for a further error reduction are sketched.

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NNLO leptonic and hadronic corrections to Bhabha scattering and luminosity monitoring at meson factories

Virtual fermionic N_f = 1 and N_f = 2 contributions to Bhabha scattering are combined with realistic real corrections at next-to-next-to-leading order in QED. The virtual corrections are determined by the package bha_nnlo_hf, and real corrections with the Monte Carlo generators Bhagen-1Ph, Helac-Phegas and Ekhara. Numerical results are discussed at the energies of and with realistic cuts used at the Phi factory DAFNE, at the B factories PEP-II and KEK, and at the charm/tau factory BEPC II. We compare these complete calculations with the approximate ones realized in the generator BabaYaga@NLO used at meson factories to evaluate their luminosities. For realistic reference event selections we find agreement for the NNLO leptonic and hadronic corrections within 0.07% or better and conclude that they are well accounted for in the generator by comparison with the present experimental accuracy.

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Radiative Events as a Probe of Dark Forces at GeV-Scale e+ e- Colliders

High-luminosity e+ e- colliders at the GeV scale (flavor factories) have been recently recognized to be an ideal environment to search for a light weakly coupled vector boson U (dark photon) emerging in several new physics models able to interpret anomalous astrophysical observations in terms of dark matter. At flavor factories a particularly clean channel is the production of the U boson in association with a photon, followed by the decay of the U boson into lepton pairs. Beyond the approximations addressed in previous works, we revisit the reach potential of this channel by performing an exact lowest-order calculation of the signal and background processes. We also include the effect of initial and final state QED corrections neglected so far, to show how they affect the distributions of experimental interest. We present new results for the expected statistical significance to a dark photon signal at KLOE/KLOE-2 and future super-B factories. The calculation is implemented in a new release of the event generator BabaYaga@NLO, which is available for full event simulations and data analysis.

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Production of Light Higgs Pairs in 2-Higgs Doublet Models via the Higgs-strahlung Process at the LHC

At the Large Hadron Collider, we prove the feasibility to detect pair production of the lightest CP-even Higgs boson h of a Type II 2-Higgs Doublet Model through the process q \bar q' --> Vhh (Higgs-strahlung, V=W+-,Z), in presence of two h --> b \bar b decays. We also show that, through such production and decay channels, one has direct access to the following Higgs self-couplings, thus enabling one to distinguish between a standard and the Supersymmetric version of the above model: lambda_(Hhh) -- which constrains the form of the Higgs potential -- as well as lambda_(W+- H+- h) and lambda_(Z A h) -- which are required by gauge invariance. Unfortunately, such claims cannot be extended to the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, where the extraction of the same signals is impossible.

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The 2^-+ assignment for the X(3872)

Very recently the BaBar collaboration has put forward a claim that the X(3872) is not a 1^++ resonance, as most of the phenomenological work on the subject was relying on, but rather a 2^-+ one. We examine the consequences of this quantum number assignment for the solution of the X(3872) puzzle. The molecular interpretation appears less likely, and the conventional charmonium interpretation should be reconsidered. There are several well-known difficulties with this interpretation, to which we add a new one: the production cross section at CDF is predicted to be much smaller than that observed. We also confirm, using a relativistic string model, the conclusion from potential models that the mass of the state is not consistent with expectations. In the tetraquark interpretation the 2^-+ assignment implies a rich spectrum of partner states, although the X(3872) may be among the few which are narrow enough to be observable.

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