arXiv subjects

Felipe J. Llanes-Estrada

Publications and source records attributed to Felipe J. Llanes-Estrada.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Quantum Information Science and Technology for Nuclear Physics. Input into U.S. Long-Range Planning, 2023

In preparation for the 2023 NSAC Long Range Plan (LRP), members of the Nuclear Science community gathered to discuss the current state of, and plans for further leveraging opportunities in, QIST in NP research at the Quantum Information Science for U.S. Nuclear Physics Long Range Planning workshop, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico on January 31 - February 1, 2023. The workshop included 45 in-person participants and 53 remote attendees. The outcome of the workshop identified strategic plans and requirements for the next 5-10 years to advance quantum sensing and quantum simulations within NP, and to develop a diverse quantum-ready workforce. The plans include resolutions endorsed by the participants to address the compelling scientific opportunities at the intersections of NP and QIST. These endorsements are aligned with similar affirmations by the LRP Computational Nuclear Physics and AI/ML Workshop, the Nuclear Structure, Reactions, and Astrophysics LRP Town Hall, and the Fundamental Symmetries, Neutrons, and Neutrinos LRP Town Hall communities.

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arXiv2022

SMEFT as a slice of HEFT's parameter space

The Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) is the parametrization chosen to interpret many modern measurements. We have recently discussed, building on the work of other groups, that its overall framework can be experimentally tested, beyond simply constraining its parameters. This is because the Higgs Effective Field Theory (HEFT) is somewhat more general, as it does not assume that the Higgs boson $h$ needs to be embedded in a complex doublet $H$ on which the Standard Model (SM) and SMEFT are built. As a result, the HEFT parameter spaces for the various relevant channels contains hypersurfaces over which one may use SMEFT to describe data. If experimental measurements of HEFT's parameters in any of those various channels yield a point outside of any of the hypersurfaces, SMEFT is falsified; meanwhile, its framework remains appropriate (in particular, as long as the SM remains compatible with data). A common necessity of the various possible tests is that processes involving different number of Higgs bosons (maintaining the number and nature of other particles unchanged) need to be contrasted.

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arXiv2022

Shannon entropy of fragmentation functions and their Kullback-Leibler divergence to parton pdfs

The flow of information in high-energy collisions has been recently investigated by various groups: this includes the entanglement entropy of the proton becoming classical information entropy of pdfs, jet splitting affecting entropy, or the entropy distribution in hadron decays. Here we examine fragmentation functions in this context, including their entropy as probability distributions, and propose it as one convenient number to characterize progress in their extraction. We also use the Kullback-Leibler divergence to examine relations between FFs and pdfs such as that of Barone, Drago and Ma.

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arXiv2022

Baryon anticorrelations and the Pauli principle in PYTHIA

We present a computational investigation of a problem of hadron collisions from recent years, that of baryon anticorrelations. This is an experimental dearth of baryons near other baryons in phase space, not seen upon examining numerical Monte Carlo simulations. We have addressed one of the best known Monte Carlo codes, PYTHIA, to see what baryon (anti)correlations it produces, where they are originated at the string-fragmentation level in the underlying Lund model, and what simple modifications could lead to better agreement with data. We propose two ad-hoc alterations of the fragmentation code, a "one-baryon" and an "always-baryon" policies that qualitatively reproduce the data behaviour, i.e anticorrelation, and suggest that lacking Pauli-principle induced corrections at the quark level could be the culprit behind the current disagreement between computations and experiment.

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arXiv2022

Information entropy and fragmentation functions

Several groups have recently investigated the flow of information in high-energy collisions, from the entanglement entropy of the proton yielding classical Shannon entropy of its parton distribution functions (pdfs), through jet splitting generating entropy, to the entropy distribution in hadron decays. Lacking in the literature is a discussion of the information entropy of fragmentation functions (FFs) in the instances where they can be considered as probability distributions, and we here provide it. We find that this entropy is a single, convenient number to characterize future progress in the extraction of fragmentation functions. We also deploy the related Kullback-Leibler divergence between two distributions to assess existing relations among FFs and parton distribution functions (pdfs) such as that of Barone, Drago and Ma. From a couple of current parametrizations of FFs, we do not find supporting empirical evidence for the relation, although it is possible that FFs and pdfs have similar power-laws near the $x=1$ endpoint.

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arXiv2022

$γ$ rays run on time

Significant absorption of radiation is usually accompanied by refraction. This is not the case for $γ$ rays travelling cosmic distances. We show that the real and imaginary parts of the refraction index are indeed commensurable, as they are related by dispersion relations, but when turning to physical observables, the (finite) optical depth is way larger than the (infinitesimal) time delay of the gamma rays relative to gravitational radiation. The numerically large factor solving the apparent contradiction is $E_γ/H_0$ arising from basic wave properties (Bouguer-Beer-Lambert law) and the standard cosmological model, respectively.

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arXiv2022

Galaxy rotation favors prolate dark matter haloes

The flattening rotation velocity $v(r)\to {\rm constant}$ found by Vera Rubin and collaborators and very apparent in the SPARC galaxy-rotation data coincides with Kepler's law in one less dimension. Thus, it is naturally reproduced by elongated dark matter distributions with the axis of prolateness perpendicular to the galactic plane. This theoretical understanding is borne out by the detailed fits to the rotation data that we here report: for equal dark matter profile, elongated distributions provide smaller $χ^2$ than purely spherical ones. We also propose to use the geometric mean of the individual halo ellipticities, as opposed to their arithmetic average, because $s=c/a\in (0,\infty)$ corresponds to spherical haloes for $s=1$, so that the usually reported average is skewed towards oblateness and fails to reveal the large majority of prolate haloes. Several independently coded fitting exercises concur in yielding $s<1$ for most of the database entries and the oblate exceptions are understood and classified. This likely prolateness is of consequence for the estimated dark matter density near Earth.

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arXiv2022

The flair of Higgsflare: Distinguishing electroweak EFTs with $W_LW_L \to n\times h$

The electroweak symmetry-breaking sector is one of the most promising and uncharted parts of the Standard Model; but it seems likely that new electroweak physics may be out of reach of the present accelerator effort and the hope is to observe small deviations from the SM. Given that, Effective Field Theory becomes the logic method to use, and SMEFT has become the standard. However, the most general theory with the known particle content is HEFT, and whether SMEFT suffices should be investigated in future experimental efforts. Building on investigations by other groups that established geometric criteria to distinguish SMEFT from HEFT (useful for theorists examining specific beyond-SM completions), we seek more phenomenological understanding and present an analogous discussion aimed at a broader audience. We discuss various aspects of (multi-) Higgs boson production from longitudinal electroweak gauge bosons $W_LW_L\to n\times h$ in the TeV region as the necessary information to characterise the Flare function, $\mathcal{F}(h)$, that determines whether SMEFT or HEFT is needed. We also present tree-level amplitudes including contact and exchange channels, as well as a short discussion on accessing $\mathcal{F}(h)$ from the statistical limit of many bosons. We also discuss the status of the coefficients of its series expansion, its validity, whether its complex-$h$ extension can be used to predict or not a tell-tale zero, and how they relate to the dimension-6 and -8 SMEFT operators in the electroweak sector. We derive a set of new correlations among BSM corrections to the HEFT coefficients that help decide, from experimental data, whether we have a viable SMEFT. This analysis can be useful for machines beyond the LHC that could address the challenging final state with several Higgs bosons.

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arXiv2022

Maximum latent heat of neutron star matter independently of General Relativity

We establish bounds on the maximum possible specific latent heat of cold neutron-star matter derived from hadron physics alone. Existing chiral perturbation theory computations for the equation of state, together with perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics, relevant at highest densities (even if they would turn out not to be physically realizable) bind the maximum latent heat which is possible in actual neutron stars. Because these are already near gravitational collapse in General Relativity, no denser form of cold matter can exist: thus, the bounds are a generic physical limit. Even in scenarios that modify the theory of gravity, the existence of a family of latent-heat maxima is relevant to diagnose progress in the knowledge of the equation of state of neutron matter, by quantifying the maximum possible (presumed) phase transition that its error bands would allow. Thus, latent heat is a natural benchmark for the equation of state in cold QCD.

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arXiv2021

New $Z_c$ spectroscopy or Landau singularities? Searches in Heavy Ion Collisions could help decide

A constellation of quarkonium-mass peaks has been reported in the last decade, opening what could be an entire new spectroscopy of nuclear-physics like complexity. Salient among these structures are the $Z_c$, much analyzed at BESIII as nicely summarised by J.~Zhao at this conference. Their stature as new hadron states has often been challenged by proposals that the peaks arise from triangle singularities instead, because they appear in three-body reactions and often satisfy the special kinematic conditions of the Coleman-Norton theorem. To experimentally decide, we should like to resort to different reactions erasing the kinematic coincidence, and see whether each peak survives. We observe that the most universal "eraser" is the medium created in Heavy Ion Collisions, because its high temperature often affects the masses and widths of the particles participating in the reaction: if additionally the triangle reaction is completed during the lifetime of the fireball, our computations in thermal field theory show that the triangle singularities do not survive the hot hadron phase (much less the hotter quark-gluon plasma). On the contrary, ordinary quarkonia are affected but often survive the fireball and molecular-like states are also routinely detected. We have provided several examples, and here investigate the exotic $Z_{c}(4020)^\pm\to π^{\pm} h_c $ peak (produced against a $π^\mp$ in $e^+e^-$ collisions). If, as has been proposed during the debates, it is produced or enhanced by a $D_{1} D^{*} D^*$ triangle loop, the estimate here reported suggests its disappearance near the critical temperature of the confinement/deconfinement phase transition, so any future detection in heavy-ion collision data would suggest it to be a real hadron, with its absence leaning towards the singularity interpretation.

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arXiv2021

The $Z_{cs}(3985)$ structure, if a triangle/kinematic singularity, would disappear when heated in Heavy Ion Collisons

Triangle and other kinematic singularities are very sensitive to the precise masses and widths of the intervening particles. Therefore, the effect that the heavy-ion collision medium can have on those masses and widths, as captured by finite-temperature field theory and reported in the literature, may erase the singularity from the spectrum if the effect is large enough and the loop completes before the hot gas freezes out. A very timely example is provided by the $Z_{cs}(3985)$ structure recently reported by BES-III in a $(D_s^-D^{*0}+D_s^{*-}D^0)$ spectrum recoiling against a $K^+$. If a new hadron, this would be a clear exotic $c\bar{c}s\bar{u}$ tetraquark candidate, the first of a charmonium-like family with strangeness: to accept this, alternative explanations first need to be tested and discarded. As shown in figure 1, the mass spectrum recoiling against the kaon is near the $m_{D_s^{*-}}+m_{D^0}$ threshold, whereas the production cross-section seems to peak around that for $\sqrt{s(e^-e^+)}=m_{D_{s2}^{*+}} +m_{D_s^{*-}} $. Therefore, this structure may well be caused by a triangle with the three charmed mesons $D_{s2}^{*+} / D_s^{*-} / D^0$ running in the loop, with the amplitude enhanced at the two thresholds. If so, the structure would be erased from the spectrum in Heavy Ion Collisions, whereas a hadron would continue to exist although with a mass decreased by a few percent as computed by other authors.

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arXiv2021

Dark-matter prolate halo shapes from fits to SPARC galaxy rotation curves

The shape distortion of the presumed Milky Way dark matter halo can impact the local density of dark matter and thus the direct detection program. We examine the population of galactic rotation curves measured by SPARC and fit them to dark matter haloes that are distorted with a multipole density distribution, finding a significantly better fit with prolate haloes over spherically symmetric ones. This is to be expected since the long-distance Rubin flattening v(r)= constant is the natural Kepler law due to a filamentary rather than a spherical source. Then, elongating the distribution brings about a smaller squared chi, all other things being equal, including the use of several different radial dark matter profiles. The ellipticities that we fit to rotation curve data seem to be much more significant than those computed in cosmological simulations of dark matter haloes. If the Milky Way's halo would be typical of the spiral-galaxy SPARC sample (which we presently ignore), the local dark matter density might currently be overestimated by a factor 2. This would carry on into dark-matter cross-section bounds.

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arXiv2021

Elongated Gravity Sources as an Analytical Limit for Flat Galaxy Rotation Curves

The flattening of spiral-galaxy rotation curves is unnatural in view of the expectations from Kepler's third law and a central mass. It is interesting, however, that the radius-independence velocity is what one expects in one less dimension. In our three-dimensional space, the rotation curve is natural if, outside the galaxy's center, the gravitational potential corresponds to that of a very prolate ellipsoid, filament, string, or otherwise cylindrical structure perpendicular to the galactic plane. While there is observational evidence (and numerical simulations) for filamentary structure at large scales, this has not been discussed at scales commensurable with galactic sizes. If, nevertheless, the hypothesis is tentatively adopted, the scaling exponent of the baryonic Tully--Fisher relation due to accretion of visible matter by the halo comes out to reasonably be 4. At a minimum, this analytical limit would suggest that simulations yielding prolate haloes would provide a better overall fit to small-scale galaxy data.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

Vacuum replicas in field-theory models of Coulomb QCD

Dynamical symmetry breaking can happen through a Higgs mechanism but also spontaneously within a strongly-enough coupled theory. We treat a field-theoretical quark model of QCD based on a linear+Coulomb Cornell potential (to account for the longitudinal interaction), together with a transverse interaction (to account for Coulomb-gauge gluons) in BCS approximation. After extracting the well-known BCS ground state on which abundant hadron phenomenology implementing dynamical chiral symmetry breaking has been built, we find two excited replica vacuumlike states shown in figure 1. At the BCS level they are classically unstable, but second quantization blocks transitions between them in volumes much larger than a hadron size. Mesons built over the replica vacua have relative masses similar to normal mesons on the ordinary vacuum; we find no negative-mass mode, confirming their stability found earlier with a harmonic oscillator potential.

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arXiv2021

Triangle singularities waning in Heavy Ion Collisions: the case of $Y(4260)\to π(πJ/ψ)$

We have recently observed that hadron triangle singularities, that can mock new exotic hadrons, can be significanttly suppressed in relativistic heavy ion collisions, provided two conditions are met: these are, first, that the fireball lives long enough so that the triangle process has enough time to complete in the Norton-Coleman classical sense, and second, that the mass and/or width of the particles in the triangle diagram are sufficiently modified from their vacuum values. Here we add a very interesting example to the canon, which is $Y(4260) \to D_1 D \to πD^* D \to π+ J/ψπ$. This reaction has been proposed as a mechanism to explain the appearance of $Z_c(3900)$ in the $J/ψπ$ spectrum. If the two muons and two pions reconstructing the initial-state $Y$ can be isolated from the combinatorial background, then the mechanism can provide a spectroscopy test: presence of $Y(4260)$ but absence of $Z_c(3900)$ would be more indicative of such triangle mechanism, while presence of both would rather point out to $Z_c$ being an exotic hadron.

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arXiv2021

Pionic depth of the hadron gas after a heavy-ion collision

The final stage of a relativistic heavy-ion collision is a hadron gas. Final-state interactions therein distort the $p_T$ spectrum of particles coming from the phase transition upon cooling the quark-gluon plasma. Using recent state-of-the-art parametrizations of pion interactions we provide theoretical computations of the pionic depth of the gas: how likely is it that a given pion rescatters in it (we find a high probability around $p_T=0.5$ GeV at midrapidity, corresponding to the formation of the $ρ$ resonance), a comparison of the collision and Bjorken expansion rates, and how many pions make it through without interacting as a function of $p_T$. This is in the range 10-24$\%$ and shown in this plot, the main result of the contribution.

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arXiv2021

Unbiased interpolated neutron-star EoS at finite T for modified gravity studies

Neutron stars and their mergers provide the highest-density regime in which Einstein's equations in full (with a matter source) can be tested against modified theories of gravity. But doing so requires a priori knowledge of the Equation of State from nuclear and hadron physics, where no contamination from computations of astrophysics observables within General Relativity has been built in. We extend the nEoS uncertainty bands, useful for this very purpose, to finite (but small) temperatures up to 30 MeV, given that the necessary computations in ChPT and in pQCD at already available in the literature. The temperature-dependent band boundaries will be provided through the COMPOSE repository and our own website.

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arXiv2021

Systematizing and addressing theory uncertainties of unitarization with the Inverse Amplitude Method

Effective Field Theories (EFTs) constructed as derivative expansions in powers of momentum, in the spirit of Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT), are a controllable approximation to strong dynamics as long as the energy of the interacting particles remains small, as they do not respect exact elastic unitarity. This limits their predictive power towards new physics at a higher scale if small separations from the Standard Model are found at the LHC or elsewhere. Unitarized chiral perturbation theory techniques have been devised to extend the reach of the EFT to regimes where partial waves are saturating unitarity, but their uncertainties have hitherto not been addressed thoroughly. Here we take one of the best known of them, the Inverse Amplitude Method (IAM), and carefully following its derivation, we quantify the uncertainty introduced at each step. We compare its hadron ChPT and its electroweak sector Higgs EFT applications. We find that the relative theoretical uncertainty of the IAM at the mass of the first resonance encountered in a partial-wave is of the same order in the counting as the starting uncertainty of the EFT at near-threshold energies, so that its unitarized extension should \textit{a priori} be expected to be reasonably successful. This is so provided a check for zeroes of the partial wave amplitude is carried out and, if they appear near the resonance region, we show how to modify adequately the IAM to take them into account.

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