arXiv subjects

Giovanni Stagnitto

Publications and source records attributed to Giovanni Stagnitto.

28 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

The muon parton distribution functions

We compute the Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) of the unpolarised muon for the leptons, the photon, the light quarks, and the gluon. We discuss in detail the issues stemming from the necessity of evaluating the strong coupling constant at scales of the order of the typical hadron mass, and compare our novel approach with those currently available in the literature. While we restrict our phenomenological results to be leading-logarithmic accurate, we set up our formalism in a way that renders it straightforward to achieve next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy in the QED, QCD, and mixed QED$\times$QCD contributions.

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arXiv2023

Radiation from a gluon-gluino colour-singlet dipole at N$^3$LO

We compute the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) corrections to the decay of a neutralino to gluinos and partons at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^3$LO) in the strong coupling constant $α_s$, integrated separately over the phase-space of two, three, four or five particles in the final state. The resulting matrix elements are related to the quark-gluon antenna functions, completing the set of integrated antenna functions in final-final kinematics required for the extension of the antenna subtraction scheme to N$^3$LO. For a model with massless partons (quarks and gluons) and an arbitrary number of adjoint fermions, we obtained the following new results to $\mathcal{O}(α_s^3)$: the inclusive cross section for the decay of a neutralino, the renormalization of the effective coupling of a neutralino to a gluino and gluon(s), the gluino collinear anomalous dimension, the gluino contribution to the parton collinear anomalous dimensions and the neutralino-gluino-gluon(s) vertex form factors. A special case of this model is the $\mathcal{N}=1$ super Yang-Mills theory, where we can relate some of our findings to known results.

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arXiv2023

The parton-level structure of Higgs decays to hadrons at N$^3$LO

We present the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) corrections for Higgs boson decays to hadronic final states at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^3$LO) in the strong coupling constant $α_s$. In particular, we consider the Higgs boson decay to massless bottom quarks and the Higgs boson decay to a pair of gluons in the limit of a heavy top quark. The tree-level five-parton, the one-loop four-parton, the two-loop three-parton, and the three-loop two-parton matrix elements are integrated separately over the inclusive phase space and classified by partons appearing in the final state and by colour structure. As a check, we reproduce known results for the hadronic $R$-ratios at N$^3$LO. We study patterns of infrared singularity cancellation within the colour layers of the integrated expressions and observe an agreement in the highest trascendental weight terms in the decay of different colour singlets to quarks. We anticipate that our result will be an essential ingredient for the formulation of N$^3$LO subtraction schemes.

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arXiv2023

Heavy Flavoured Meson Fragmentation Functions in $e^+e^-$ annihilation up to NNLO + NNLL

In this contribution, we make use of the QCD perturbative fragmentation function formalism to describe the one-particle inclusive fragmentation of a heavy quark produced in $e^+e^-$ annihilation at $\mathcal{O}(α_S^2)$. We perform the computation analytically in Mellin-space. We resum soft-gluons effects in initial conditions and coefficient functions and perform evolution up to NNLL accuracy, obtaining the first NNLO + NNLL prediction for charm quark production. We study the impact of different matching schemes and Landau pole prescriptions in soft-gluon resummation, finding significant differences. We extract simple non-perturbative fragmentation functions for $B$ and $D^*$ mesons by comparing the perturbative prediction with the data from CLEO, BELLE and LEP experiments. We find that for charm mesons the experimental results from CLEO/BELLE and from LEP are not reconcilable with the standard DGLAP evolution.

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arXiv2023

The parton-level structure of $e^+e^-$ to 2 jets at N$^3$LO

We investigate the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) corrections to hadronic final states in electron-positron collisions at $\mathcal{O}(α_s^3)$ in the strong coupling constant $α_s$. Namely, we analytically compute the total cross section for this process by separately integrating the tree-level five-parton, the one-loop four-parton, the two-loop three-parton, and the three-loop two-parton matrix elements over the respective phase space. All the contributions to the calculation are treated in a common framework whereby phase space integrals are expressed as physical cuts of the four-loop two-point function. We check the cancellation of infrared poles at all colour levels and we reproduce the known result for the $R$-ratio at order $α_s^3$.

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arXiv2022

Antenna subtraction at NNLO with identified hadrons

We extend the antenna subtraction method to include hadron fragmentation processes up to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD in $e^+e^-$ collisions. To handle collinear singularities associated with the fragmentation process, we introduce fragmentation antenna functions in final-final kinematics with associated phase space mappings. These antenna functions are integrated over the relevant phase spaces, retaining their dependence on the momentum fraction of the fragmenting parton. The integrated antenna functions are cross-checked against the known NNLO coefficient functions for identified hadron production from $γ^*/Z^* \to q\bar{q}$ and $H \to gg$ processes.

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arXiv2022

Tagging the Higgs boson decay to bottom quarks with colour-sensitive observables and the Lund jet plane

We study the problem of distinguishing $b$-jets stemming from the decay of a colour singlet, such as the Higgs boson, from those originating from the abundant QCD background. In particular, as a case study, we focus on associate production of a vector boson and a Higgs boson decaying into a pair of $b$-jets, which has been recently observed at the LHC. We consider the combination of several theory-driven observables proposed in the literature, together with Lund jet plane images, in order to design an original $Hbb$ tagger. The observables are combined by means of standard machine learning algorithms, which are trained on events obtained with fast detector simulation techniques. We find that the combination of high-level single-variable observables with the Lund jet plane provides an excellent discrimination performance. We also study the dependence of the tagger on the invariant mass of the decaying particles, in order to assess the extension to a generic $Xbb$ tagger.

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arXiv2020

Towards Machine Learning Analytics for Jet Substructure

The past few years have seen a rapid development of machine-learning algorithms. While surely augmenting performance, these complex tools are often treated as black-boxes and may impair our understanding of the physical processes under study. The aim of this paper is to move a first step into the direction of applying expert-knowledge in particle physics to calculate the optimal decision function and test whether it is achieved by standard training, thus making the aforementioned black-box more transparent. In particular, we consider the binary classification problem of discriminating quark-initiated jets from gluon-initiated ones. We construct a new version of the widely used N-subjettiness, which features a simpler theoretical behaviour than the original one, while maintaining, if not exceeding, the discrimination power. We input these new observables to the simplest possible neural network, i.e. the one made by a single neuron, or perceptron, and we analytically study the network behaviour at leading logarithmic accuracy. We are able to determine under which circumstances the perceptron achieves optimal performance. We also compare our analytic findings to an actual implementation of a perceptron and to a more realistic neural network and find very good agreement.

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arXiv2020

Phenomenology of NNLO jet production at the LHC and its impact on parton distributions

We present a systematic investigation of jet production at hadron colliders from a phenomenological point of view, with the dual aim of providing a validation of theoretical calculations and guidance to future determinations of parton distributions (PDFs). We account for all available inclusive jet and dijet production measurements from ATLAS and CMS at 7 and 8 TeV by including them in a global PDF determination, and comparing to theoretical predictions at NNLO QCD supplemented by electroweak (EW) corrections. We assess the compatibility of the PDFs, specifically the gluon, obtained before and after inclusion of the jet data. We compare the single-inclusive jet and dijet observables in terms of perturbative behaviour upon inclusion of QCD and EW corrections, impact on the PDFs, and global fit quality. In the single-inclusive case, we also investigate the role played by different scale choices and the stability of the results upon changes in modelling of the correlated experimental systematics.

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arXiv2019

The single-jet inclusive cross-section and its definition

We investigate some well-known problematic aspects of the single-jet inclusive cross-section, specifically its non-unitarity and the possibly related issue of apparent perturbative instability at low orders. We study and clarify their origin by introducing possible alternative weighted definitions of the observable which restore unitarity. We show that the perturbative instability of the standard definition is an accidental artefact of the smallness of the NLO $K$ factor which only manifests itself for values of the jet radius in the range $R\sim 0.3-0.6$, and that its non-unitarity is necessary in order to ensure cancellation of logs of the momentum cutoff used in the jet definition. We also show that alternative unitary definitions do not have better perturbative properties compared to the conventional non-unitary definition, while suffering from lack of cancellation of large logs.

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