arXiv subjects

Francesca Acanfora

Publications and source records attributed to Francesca Acanfora.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Heavy Vector Triplets at a Muon Collider

Heavy spin-one particles are well-motivated new physics candidates that can have their origin in weakly coupled extensions of the Standard Model gauge group or in strongly coupled Composite Higgs models. Due to the variety of production and decay modes, heavy vector triplets are a useful benchmark for the study and comparison of future colliders. Here we perform a detailed collider analysis of a variety of $2 \to 2$ and $2 \to 3$ processes at a proposed future muon collider. We focus on decays into leptons and Standard Model gauge bosons, and find that heavy vector triplets could be probed up to masses of around $12\,$TeV for almost any (perturbative) value of the coupling. We compare the direct reach of a muon collider to the LHC and to updated projections for the HL-LHC, HE-LHC and FCC-hh, and include indirect limits from future measurements of electroweak precision observables. We find that a muon collider offers projected sensitivities that are competitive with future hadron colliders, exceeding those of the HE-LHC in the scenarios considered though not reaching the projected sensitivity of the FCC-hh.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

Dark Higgs-strahlung at Belle II: A distinctive dark sector signature with displaced vertices and missing energy

Dark photons with kinetic mixing are compelling mediators for the interactions between dark matter and Standard Model particles. While most experimental searches focus on fully visible or fully invisible decays of dark photons, we explore processes that involve dark Higgs-strahlung, i.e. the emission of a dark Higgs boson connected to the mass generation of the dark photon. If the dark Higgs boson is the lightest dark sector particle, it is expected to be long-lived and decay into Standard Model particles via Higgs mixing. At electron-positron colliders, dark Higgs-strahlung may occur either in isolation (leading to a single displaced vertex and missing energy) or accompanied by a photon from initial-state radiation. Both signatures offer distinctive kinematic features, such as peaks in photon energy or missing invariant mass, which enable efficient background suppression and enhances sensitivity beyond existing searches. Our study suggests that Belle II could significantly improve coverage of dark sector models by targeting this previously unexplored final state and that combining dark Higgs-strahlung events with and without additional photon offers great potential for reconstructing the properties of the dark sector.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2024

Fusing photons into diphoton resonances at Belle II and beyond

We propose a new search for a diphoton resonance in the $e^+e^-+\gamma\gamma$ final state at Belle II that improves the expected reach compared to the $\gamma+\gamma\gamma$ channel in most of the available mass range. For simplicity we show our results in the simple parameter space of an ALP coupled solely to Standard Model photons. In addition, we show how an extension of the forward coverage of Belle II, or another similar experiment at the high intensity frontier, could improve the reach in our channel. We show that such a forward extension can be advantageous even with a loss of a factor 100 in luminosity compared to Belle II.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

Bounds on scattering of neutral Goldstones

We study the space of $2\to 2$ scattering amplitudes of neutral Goldstone bosons in four space-time dimensions. We establish universal bounds on the first two non-universal Wilson coefficients of the low energy Effective Field Theory (EFT) for such particles. We reconstruct the analytic, crossing-symmetric, and unitary amplitudes saturating our bounds, and we study their physical content. We uncover non-perturbative Regge trajectories by continuing our numerical amplitudes to complex spins. We then explore the consequence of additional constraints arising when we impose the knowledge about the EFT up to the cut-off scale. In the process, we improve on some aspects of the numerical $S$-matrix bootstrap technology for massless particles.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Fusing photons into nothing, a new search for invisible ALPs and Dark Matter at Belle II

We consider an axion-like particle coupled to the Standard Model photons and decaying invisibly at Belle II. We propose a new search in the $e^+e^-+\text{invisible}$ channel that we compare against the standard $\gamma+\text{invisible}$ channel. We find that the $e^+e^-+\text{invisible}$ channel has the potential to ameliorate the reach for the whole ALP mass range. This search leverages dedicated kinematic variables which significantly suppress the Standard Model background. We explore the implications of our expected reach for Dark Matter freeze-out through ALP-mediated annihilations.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

Machine learning-based classification of vector vortex beams

Structured light is attracting significant attention for its diverse applications in both classical and quantum optics. The so-called vector vortex beams display peculiar properties in both contexts due to the non-trivial correlations between optical polarization and orbital angular momentum. Here we demonstrate a new, flexible experimental approach to the classification of vortex vector beams. We first describe a platform for generating arbitrary complex vector vortex beams inspired to photonic quantum walks. We then exploit recent machine learning methods -- namely convolutional neural networks and principal component analysis -- to recognize and classify specific polarization patterns. Our study demonstrates the significant advantages resulting from the use of machine learning-based protocols for the construction and characterization of high-dimensional resources for quantum protocols.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Sub-GeV Dark Matter in Superfluid He-4: an Effective Theory Approach

We employ an effective field theory to study the detectability of sub-GeV dark matter through its interaction with the gapless excitations of superfluid helium-4. In a quantum field theory language, the possible interactions between the dark matter and the superfluid phonon are solely dictated by symmetry. We compute the rate for the emission of one and two phonons, and show that these two observables combined allow for a large exclusion region for the dark matter masses. Our approach allows a direct calculation of the differential distributions, even though it is limited only to the region of softer phonon excitations, where the effective field theory is well defined. The method presented here is easily extendible to different models of dark matter.

hep-ph↗