arXiv subjects

Freya Blekman

Publications and source records attributed to Freya Blekman.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Sensitivity of the FCC-ee to axion-like particles at different center-of-mass energies

The sensitivity of the proposed FCC-ee collider to axion-like particles (ALPs) is investigated at all planned center-of-mass energies, focusing on the case where the ALP couples primarily to electroweak gauge bosons at leading order. We study the associated production of an ALP with a photon, with the ALP decaying in turn to two photons, yielding a three-photon final state. Expected 95% confidence level sensitivities to the ALP-photon coupling are computed for ALP masses between 5 and 320 GeV. In the benchmark model considered, the FCC-ee can probe the ALP-photon coupling down to a few $10^{-6}$ GeV$^{-1}$ at the Z pole and about $10^{-5}$ GeV$^{-1}$ at the WW, ZH, and $t\bar{t}$ running stages. The higher-energy running stages extend the mass reach beyond the Z-pole kinematic range, while the Z-pole run provides the best sensitivity at low masses. We also study how the sensitivity changes when the relative coupling strengths to the electroweak gauge fields are varied, showing that the three-photon channel can provide information complementary to photon-fusion probes of ALPs.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2024

Crowd-sourced particle physics stories from DESY-CMS

The CMS at DESY outreach Instagram account (@cmsatdesy) serves as a platform for science communication and outreach for a large experimental particle physics group. The initiative aims to promote scientific research, engage young scientists in outreach activities, and showcase their contributions. Instagram was chosen for its strong alignment with the target demographic and its broad user base in Germany and internationally. The account highlights the work of young scientists, providing insights into their scientific journeys and disseminating particle physics outreach content. Multiple contributors collaborate on content creation, offering early career researchers opportunities for training in science communication while maintaining a manageable time commitment. This paper presents the evolution of the project, its initial objectives, target audience, and the experiences gained in content development and public engagement on social media platforms.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2024

Tagging more quark jet flavours at FCC-ee at 91 GeV with a transformer-based neural network

Jet flavour tagging is crucial in experimental high-energy physics. A tagging algorithm, DeepJetTransformer, is presented, which exploits a transformer-based neural network that is substantially faster to train than state-of-the-art graph neural networks. The DeepJetTransformer algorithm uses information from particle flow-style objects and secondary vertex reconstruction for $b$- and $c$-jet identification, supplemented by additional information that is not always included in tagging algorithms at the LHC, such as reconstructed $K_{S}^{0}$ and $\Lambda^{0}$ and $K^{\pm}/\pi^{\pm}$ discrimination. The model is trained as a multiclassifier to identify all quark flavours separately and performs excellently in identifying $b$- and $c$-jets. An $s$-tagging efficiency of $40\%$ can be achieved with a $10\%$ $ud$-jet background efficiency. The performance improvement achieved by including $K_{S}^{0}$ and $\Lambda^{0}$ reconstruction and $K^{\pm}/\pi^{\pm}$ discrimination is presented. The algorithm is applied on exclusive $Z \to q\bar{q}$ samples to examine the physics potential and is shown to isolate $Z \to s\bar{s}$ events. Assuming all non-$Z \to q\bar{q}$ backgrounds can be efficiently rejected, a $5\sigma$ discovery significance for $Z \to s\bar{s}$ can be achieved with an integrated luminosity of $60~\text{nb}^{-1}$ of $e^{+}e^{-}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=91.2~\mathrm{GeV}$, corresponding to less than a second of the FCC-ee run plan at the $Z$ boson resonance.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2023

Top Secrets: Long-Lived ALPs in Top Production

We investigate the discovery potential for long-lived particles produced in association with a top-antitop quark pair at the (High-Luminosity) LHC. Compared to inclusive searches for a displaced vertex, top-associated signals offer new trigger options and an extra handle to suppress background. We design a search strategy for a displaced di-muon vertex in the tracking detectors, in association with a reconstructed top-antitop pair. For axion-like particles with masses above the di-muon threshold, we find that the (High-Luminosity) LHC can probe effective top-quark couplings as small as $|c_{tt}|/f_a = 0.03(0.002)/$TeV and proper decay lengths as long as $20(300)$ m, assuming a cross section of $1$ fb, with data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 150 fb$^{-1}$ (3 ab$^{-1}$). Our predictions suggest that searches for top-associated displaced di-muons will explore new terrain in the current sensitivity gap between searches for prompt di-muons and missing energy.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Four-top quark physics at the LHC

The production of four top quarks is a rare process in the Standard Model that provides unique opportunities and sensitivity to Standard Model observables including potential enhancement from many popular new physics extensions. This article summarises the latest experimental measurements of the four-top quark production cross section at the LHC. An overview of the interpretations of the experimental results in terms of the top quark Yukawa coupling and limits on physics beyond the Standard Model is also given as well as prospects for future measurements and opportunities offered by this challenging final state.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2021

Review of opportunities for new long-lived particle triggers in Run 3 of the Large Hadron Collider

Long-lived particles (LLPs) are highly motivated signals of physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) with great discovery potential and unique experimental challenges. The LLP search programme made great advances during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but many important regions of signal space remain unexplored. Dedicated triggers are crucial to improve the potential of LLP searches, and their development and expansion is necessary for the full exploitation of the new data. The public discussion of triggers has therefore been a relevant theme in the recent LLP literature, in the meetings of the LLP@LHC Community workshop and in the respective experiments. This paper documents the ideas collected during talks and discussions at these Workshops, benefiting as well from the ideas under development by the trigger community within the experimental collaborations. We summarise the theoretical motivations of various LLP scenarios leading to highly elusive signals, reviewing concrete ideas for triggers that could greatly extend the reach of the LHC experiments. We thus expect this document to encourage further thinking for both the phenomenological and experimental communities, as a stepping stone to further develop the LLP@LHC physics programme.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2020

Soft displaced leptons at the LHC

Soft displaced leptons are representative collider signatures of compressed dark sectors with feeble couplings to the standard model. Prime targets are dark matter scenarios where co-scattering or co-annihilation sets the relic abundance upon freeze-out. At the LHC, searches for soft displaced leptons are challenged by a large background from hadron or tau lepton decays. In this article, we present an analysis tailored for displaced leptons with a low transverse momentum threshold at 20 GeV. Using a neural network, we perform a comprehensive analysis of the event kinematics, including a study of the expected detection efficiencies and backgrounds at small momenta. Our results show that weak-scale particles decaying into soft leptons with decay lengths between 1mm and 1m can be probed with LHC Run 2 data. This motivates the need for dedicated triggers that maximize the sensitivity to displaced soft leptons.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

FCC-ee: Your Questions Answered

This document answers in simple terms many FAQs about FCC-ee, including comparisons with other colliders. It complements the FCC-ee CDR and the FCC Physics CDR by addressing many questions from non-experts and clarifying issues raised during the European Strategy symposium in Granada, with a view to informing discussions in the period between now and the final endorsement by the CERN Council in 2020 of the European Strategy Group recommendations. This document will be regularly updated as more questions appear or new information becomes available.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Searching for long-lived particles beyond the Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider

Particles beyond the Standard Model (SM) can generically have lifetimes that are long compared to SM particles at the weak scale. When produced at experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, these long-lived particles (LLPs) can decay far from the interaction vertex of the primary proton-proton collision. Such LLP signatures are distinct from those of promptly decaying particles that are targeted by the majority of searches for new physics at the LHC, often requiring customized techniques to identify, for example, significantly displaced decay vertices, tracks with atypical properties, and short track segments. Given their non-standard nature, a comprehensive overview of LLP signatures at the LHC is beneficial to ensure that possible avenues of the discovery of new physics are not overlooked. Here we report on the joint work of a community of theorists and experimentalists with the ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb experiments --- as well as those working on dedicated experiments such as MoEDAL, milliQan, MATHUSLA, CODEX-b, and FASER --- to survey the current state of LLP searches at the LHC, and to chart a path for the development of LLP searches into the future, both in the upcoming Run 3 and at the High-Luminosity LHC. The work is organized around the current and future potential capabilities of LHC experiments to generally discover new LLPs, and takes a signature-based approach to surveying classes of models that give rise to LLPs rather than emphasizing any particular theory motivation. We develop a set of simplified models; assess the coverage of current searches; document known, often unexpected backgrounds; explore the capabilities of proposed detector upgrades; provide recommendations for the presentation of search results; and look towards the newest frontiers, namely high-multiplicity "dark showers", highlighting opportunities for expanding the LHC reach for these signals.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2015

Probing top-philic sgluons with LHC Run I data

Many theories beyond the Standard Model predict the existence of colored scalar states, known as sgluons, lying in the adjoint representation of the QCD gauge group. In scenarios where they are top-philic, sgluons are expected to be copiously pair-produced at the LHC via strong interactions with decays into pairs of top quarks or gluons. Consequently, sgluons can be sought in multijet and multitop events at the LHC. We revisit two LHC Run I analyses in which events featuring either the same-sign dileptonic decay of a four-top-quark system or its single leptonic decay are probed. Adopting a simplified model approach, we show how this reinterpretation allows us to extract simultaneous bounds on the sgluon mass and couplings.

hep-ph↗