arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Laura Reina.
NLOX is a computer program for calculations in high-energy particle physics. It provides fully renormalized scattering matrix elements in the Standard Model of particle physics, up to one-loop accuracy for all possible coupling-power combinations in the strong and electroweak couplings, and for processes with up to six external particles.
We update the global fit to electroweak precision observables, including the effect of the latest measurements at hadron colliders of the $W$ and top-quark masses and the effective leptonic weak mixing angle. We comment on the impact of these measurements in terms of constraints on new physics. We also update the bounds derived from the fit to the Higgs-boson signal strengths, including the observables measured at the LHC Run 2, and compare the improvements with respect to the 7 and 8 TeV results.
We revisit the global fit to electroweak precision observables in the Standard Model and present model-independent bounds on several general new physics scenarios. We present a projection of the fit based on the expected experimental improvements at future $e^+ e^-$ colliders, and compare the constraining power of some of the different experiments that have been proposed. All results have been obtained with the HEPfit code.
The hadronic production of a Higgs boson (H) in association with b jets will play an important role in investigating the Higgs-boson couplings to Standard Model particles during Run II of the CERN Large Hadron Collider, and could in particular reveal the presence of anomalies in the assumed hierarchy of Yukawa couplings to the third-generation quarks. A very high degree of accuracy in the theoretical description of this process is crucial to implement the rich physics program that could lead to either direct or indirect evidence of new physics from Higgs-boson measurements. Aiming for accuracy in the theoretical modeling of H+b-jet production, we have interfaced the analytic Next-to-Leading-Order QCD calculation of H-bottom-antibottom production with parton-shower Monte Carlo event generators in the POWHEG BOX framework. In this paper we describe the most relevant aspects of the implementation and present results for the production of H+1 b jet, H+2 b jets, and $H$ with no tagged b jets, in the form of kinematic distributions of the Higgs boson, of the b jets, and of the non-b jets, at the 13 TeV Large Hadron Collider. The corresponding code is part of the public release of the POWHEG BOX.
We present results from the analytic calculation of top+antitop+Higgs hadronic production at Next-to-Leading Order in QCD interfaced with parton-shower Monte Carlo event generators in the POWHEG BOX framework. We consider kinematic distributions of the top quark and Higgs boson at the 8 TeV Large Hadron Collider and study the theoretical uncertainties due to specific choices of renormalization/factorization scales and parton-showering algorithms, namely PYTHIA and HERWIG. The importance of spin-correlations in the production and decay stages of a top/antitop quark is discussed on the example of kinematic distributions of leptons originating from the top/antitop decays. The corresponding code is now part of the public release of the POWHEG BOX.
We present preliminary results of a bayesian fit to the Wilson coefficients of the Standard Model gauge invariant dimension-6 operators involving one or more Higgs fields, using data on electroweak precision observables and Higgs boson signal strengths.
We present updated global fits of the Standard Model and beyond to electroweak precision data, taking into account recent progress in theoretical calculations and experimental measurements. From the fits, we derive model-independent constraints on new physics by introducing oblique and epsilon parameters, and modified $Zb\bar{b}$ and $HVV$ couplings. Furthermore, we also perform fits of the scale factors of the Higgs-boson couplings to observed signal strengths of the Higgs boson.
We present a study on high-performance computing and large-scale distributed computing for perturbative QCD calculations.
In these lectures I briefly review the Higgs mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and focus on the most relevant aspects of the phenomenology of the Standard Model Higgs boson at hadron colliders, namely the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider. Emphasis is put in particular on the Higgs-physics program of both LHC experiments and on the theoretical activity that has entailed from the the need of providing accurate predictions for both signal and background in Higgs-boson searches.
We present results for the O(alpha_s) virtual corrections to q g -> W b bbar q' obtained with a new automatized approach to the evaluation of one-loop amplitudes in terms of Feynman diagrams. Together with the O(alpha_s) corrections to q q' -> W b bbar g, which can be obtained from our results by crossing symmetry, this represents the bulk of the next-to-leading order virtual QCD corrections to W b bbar + j and W b + j hadronic production, calculated in a fixed-flavor scheme with four light flavors. Furthermore, these corrections represent a well defined and independent subset of the 1-loop amplitudes needed for the NNLO calculation of W b bbar. Our approach was tested against several existing results for NLO amplitudes including selected O(alpha_s) one-loop corrections to W + 3 j hadronic production. We discuss the efficiency of our method both with respect to evaluation time and numerical stability.
We present an implementation of the next-to-leading order hadronic production of a W boson in association with a pair of massive bottom quarks in the framework of POWHEG, a method to consistently interface NLO QCD calculations with shower Monte Carlo generators. The process has been implemented using the POWHEG BOX, an automated computer code that sistematically applies the POWHEG method to NLO QCD calculations. Spin correlations in the decay of the W boson into leptons have been taken into account using standard approximated techniques. We present phenomenological results for W b bbar-> l nu b bbar production, at both the Tevatron and the LHC, obtained by showering the POWHEG results with PYTHIA and HERWIG, and we discuss the outputs of the two different shower Monte Carlo programs.
We study the applicability of the Z-Sum approach to multi-loop calculations with massive particles in perturbative quantum field theory. We systematically analyze the case of one-loop scalar integrals, which represent the building blocks of any higher-loop calculation. We focus in particular on triangle one-loop integrals and identify strengths and limitations of the Z-Sum approach, extending our results to the case of one-loop box integrals when appropriate. We conclude with the calculation of a specific physical example: the calculation of heavy-flavor corrections to deep-inelastic-scattering structure functions.
We present total and differential cross sections for W b anti-b and Z b anti-b production at the CERN Large Hadron Collider including Next-to-Leading Order (NLO) QCD corrections and full bottom-quark mass effects. We discuss the scale uncertainty of the total cross sections due to the residual renormalization- and factorization-scale dependence of the truncated perturbative series. We also discuss b-quark mass effects in kinematic distributions by comparing with a calculation that considers massless bottom quarks, as implemented in the Monte Carlo program MCFM. The effects of a non-zero bottom-quark mass (m_b) cannot be neglected in phase-space regions where the relevant kinematic observable, such as the transverse momentum of the bottom quarks or the invariant mass of the bottom-quark pair, are of the order of m_b. Finally, we present the result of a detailed comparison of NLO QCD predictions for W+b-jet production with one or two jets with Tevatron data.
We present NLO QCD results for W/Z gauge boson production with bottom quark pairs at the Tevatron including full bottom-quark mass effects. We study the impact of QCD corrections on both total cross-section and invariant mass distribution of the bottom-quark pair. Including NLO QCD corrections greatly reduces the dependence of the tree-level cross-section on the renormalization and factorization scales. We also compare our calculation to a calculation that considers massless bottom quarks and find that the bottom-quark mass effects amount to about 8-10% of the total NLO QCD cross-section and can impact the shape of the bottom-quark pair invariant mass distribution, in particular in the low invariant mass region.
The possibility of detecting a Higgs boson through several production and decay channels is instrumental to the measurement of its couplings. In this paper we study the pp-> ttH(H-> tau tau) channel at the LHC, for the case of a scalar Higgs boson, and use the obtained results to improve on existing strategies toward a model independent determination of the Higgs boson couplings. The case of a scalar Higgs boson with mass below 140 GeV looks particularly promising.
We discuss the relevance of the associated production of a Higgs boson with a pair of top-antitop quarks at both the LHC and a future high energy e^+e^- collider.
The cross section for the reaction $e^+e^- \to t\bar{t} H$ depends sensitively on the top quark Yukwawa coupling $λ_t$. We calculate the rate for $t\bar{t}H$ production, followed by the decay $H\to b\bar{b}$, for a Standard Model Higgs boson with 100 < m_H <130 GeV. We interface with ISAJET to generate QCD radiation, hadronization and particle decays. We also calculate the dominant $t\bar{t}b\bar{b}$ backgrounds from electroweak and QCD processes. We consider both semileptonic and fully hadronic decays of the $t\bar{t}$ system. In our analysis, we attempt full reconstruction of the top quark and W boson masses in the generated events. The invariant mass of the remaining b-jets should show evidence of Higgs boson production. We estimate the accuracy with which $λ_t$ can be measured at a linear e^+e^- collider. Our results, including statistical but not systematic errors, show that the top quark Yukawa coupling can be measured to 6-8 % accuracy with 1000 fb^{-1} at $E_{CM}=1 TeV$, assuming 100 % efficiency for b-jet tagging. The accuracy of the measurement drops to 17-22 % if only a 60 % efficiency for b-tagging is achieved.
We compute the O(alpha_s) QCD corrections to the inclusive process e^+e^- --> t \bar t h. Although the total rate is small, it has a distinctive experimental signature and can potentially be used to measure the top quark-Higgs boson Yukawa coupling. The QCD corrections increase the rate by a factor of roughly 1.5 for e^+e^- --> t \bar t h at sqrt(s)=500 GeV and Mh=100 GeV. At sqrt(s)=1 TeV, the corrections are small.