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M. Beneke

Publications and source records attributed to M. Beneke.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2011

B polarization of cosmic background radiation from second-order scattering sources

B-mode polarization of the cosmic background radiation is induced from purely scalar primordial sources at second order in perturbations of the homogeneous, isotropic universe. We calculate the B-mode angular power spectrum C_l^{BB} sourced by the second-order scattering term in the full second-order Boltzmann equations for the polarized radiation phase-space density, which have recently become available. We find that at l\approx 200 the second-order effect is comparable to the first-order effect for a tensor-to-scalar ratio of r=10^{-6}, and to about 2\cdot 10^{-4} at l\approx 1000. It is always negligible relative to the weak-lensing induced contribution.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2010

Electroweak non-resonant corrections to top pair production close to threshold

The production of W+ W- b bbar from e+ e- collisions at energies close to the t tbar threshold is dominated by the resonant process with a nearly on-shell t tbar intermediate state. The W b pairs in the final state can also be reached through the decay of off-shell tops or through background processes containing no or only single top quarks. This non-resonant production starts to contribute at NLO to the W+ W- b bbar total cross section in the non-relativistic power-counting v ~ alpha_s ~ sqrt(alpha_EW). The NLO non-resonant corrections presented in this talk represent the non-trivial NLO electroweak corrections to the e+ e- -> W+ W- b bbar cross section in the top anti-top resonance region. In contrast to the QCD corrections which have been calculated (almost) up to NNNLO, the parametrically larger NLO electroweak contributions have not been completely known so far, but are mandatory for the required accuracy at a future linear collider. We consider the total cross section of the e+ e- -> W+ W- b bbar process and additionally implement cuts on the invariant masses of the W+ b and W- bbar pairs.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Threshold expansion of massive coloured particle cross sections

Pair production of massive coloured particles in hadron collisions is accompanied by potentially large radiative corrections related to the suppression of soft gluon emission and enhanced Coulomb exchange near the production threshold. We recently developed a framework to sum both series of corrections for the partonic cross section using soft-collinear and non-relativistic effective theory. If it can be argued that the resummed cross section approximates the complete result over a significant kinematic range, an improvement of the hadronic cross section results, even when the production is not kinematically constrained to the threshold. This is discussed here for the case of top quark production.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Heavy-to-light currents at NNLO in SCET and semi-inclusive anti-B ---> X(s) l+ l- decay

We perform the two-loop matching calculation for heavy-to-light currents from QCD onto soft-collinear effective theory for the complete set of Dirac structures. The newly obtained matching coefficients enter several phenomenological applications, of which we discuss heavy-to-light form factor ratios and exclusive radiative decays, as well as the semi-inclusive decay anti-B ---> X(s) l+ l-. For this decay, we observe a significant shift of the forward-backward asymmetry zero and find q_0^2 = (3.34 +0.22 -0.25) GeV^2 for an invariant mass cut m_X^cut=2.0 GeV.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Electroweak non-resonant NLO corrections to e+ e- -> W+ W- b bbar in the t tbar resonance region

We analyse subleading electroweak effects in the top anti-top resonance production region in e+ e- collisions which arise due to the decay of the top and anti-top quarks into the W+ W- b bbar final state. These are NLO corrections adopting the non-relativistic power counting v ~ alpha_s ~ sqrt(alpha_EW). In contrast to the QCD corrections which have been calculated (almost) up to NNNLO, the parametrically larger NLO electroweak contributions have not been completely known so far, but are mandatory for the required accuracy at a future linear collider. The missing parts of these NLO contributions arise from matching coefficients of non-resonant production-decay operators in unstable-particle effective theory which correspond to off-shell top production and decay and other non-resonant irreducible background processes to t tbar production. We consider the total cross section of the e+ e- -> W+ W- b bbar process and additionally implement cuts on the invariant masses of the W+ b and W- bbar pairs.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Boltzmann hierarchy for the cosmic microwave background at second order including photon polarization

Non-gaussianity and B-mode polarization are particularly interesting features of the cosmic microwave background, as -- at least in the standard model of cosmology -- their only sources to first order in cosmological perturbation theory are primordial, possibly generated during inflation. If the primordial sources are small, the question arises how large is the non-gaussianity and B-mode background induced in second-order from the initially gaussian and scalar perturbations. In this paper we derive the Boltzmann hierarchy for the microwave background photon phase-space distributions at second order in cosmological perturbation theory including the complete polarization information, providing the basis for further numerical studies. As an aside we note that the second-order collision term contains new sources of B-mode polarization and that no polarization persists in the tight-coupling limit.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2010

Flavor Physics in the Quark Sector

One of the major challenges of particle physics has been to gain an in-depth understanding of the role of quark flavor and measurements and theoretical interpretations of their results have advanced tremendously: apart from masses and quantum numbers of flavor particles, there now exist detailed measurements of the characteristics of their interactions allowing stringent tests of Standard Model predictions. Among the most interesting phenomena of flavor physics is the violation of the CP symmetry that has been subtle and difficult to explore. Till early 1990s observations of CP violation were confined to neutral $K$ mesons, but since then a large number of CP-violating processes have been studied in detail in neutral $B$ mesons. In parallel, measurements of the couplings of the heavy quarks and the dynamics for their decays in large samples of $K, D$, and $B$ mesons have been greatly improved in accuracy and the results are being used as probes in the search for deviations from the Standard Model. In the near future, there will be a transition from the current to a new generation of experiments, thus a review of the status of quark flavor physics is timely. This report summarizes the results of the current generation of experiments that is about to be completed and it confronts these results with the theoretical understanding of the field.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

All-order colour structure and two-loop anomalous dimension of soft radiation in heavy-particle pair production at the LHC

We consider the factorization and resummation of soft and Coulomb gluons for pair-production processes of heavy coloured particles at hadron colliders, and discuss: the construction of a colour basis that diagonalizes the leading soft function to all orders in perturbation theory; the determination of the two-loop soft anomalous dimension needed for NNLL resummations; and a general formula that provides all logarithmically enhanced O(alpha_s^2) correction requiring as process-independent input only the one-loop hard matching coefficients.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Soft and Coulomb gluon resummation in squark-antisquark production at the LHC

We present results for a combined resummation of soft and Coloumb gluon corrections in squark-antisquark production at the LHC, including the non-trivial interference of the two effects and the contribution of squark-antisquark bound states below threshold. The total correction to the next-to-leading order approximation is found to be sizeable, and amounts to 5-14 % in the squark mass region 200 GeV-2 TeV. The scale dependence of the total cross section is also reduced.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

NNLO vertex corrections to non-leptonic B decays: Tree amplitudes

The colour-suppressed tree amplitude in non-leptonic B decays is particularly sensitive to perturbative and non-perturbative corrections. We calculate the two-loop (NNLO) vertex corrections to the colour-suppressed and colour-allowed tree amplitudes in QCD factorization. Our results are given completely analytically, including the full dependence on the charm quark mass. We then update theoretical predictions for a range of interesting observables derived from pi pi, pi rho, and rho rho final states that do not depend (significantly) on penguin contributions, and hence are now available with NNLO accuracy. We observe good agreement with experimental data within experimental and theoretical errors, except for observables involving the pi^0 pi^0 branching fraction.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Soft radiation in heavy-particle pair production: all-order colour structure and two-loop anomalous dimension

We present a factorization formula for the production of pairs of heavy coloured particles in hadronic collisions at the production threshold, which forms the basis for the resummation of soft gluons and Coulomb gluons. We construct a basis in colour space that diagonalizes the soft function appearing in the factorization formula to all orders in perturbation theory. This extends recent results on the structure of soft anomalous dimensions and allows us to determine an analytic expression for the two-loop soft anomalous dimension at threshold for all production processes of interest.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Penguins with Charm and Quark-Hadron Duality

The integrated branching fraction of the process $B\to X_s l^+l^-$ is dominated by resonance background from narrow charmonium states, such as $B\to X_sψ\to X_s l^+l^-$, which exceeds the non-resonant charm-loop contribution by two orders of magnitude. The origin of this fact is discussed in view of the general expectation of quark-hadron duality. The situation in $B\to X_s l^+l^-$ is contrasted with charm-penguin amplitudes in two-body hadronic B decays of the type $B\toππ$, for which it is demonstrated that resonance effects and the potentially non-perturbative $c\bar c$ threshold region do not invalidate the standard picture of QCD factorization. This holds irrespective of whether the charm quark is treated as a light or a heavy quark.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Hadronic B decays in the MSSM with large tan(beta)

We present an analysis of non-leptonic B decays in the minimally flavour-violating MSSM with large tan(beta). We relate the Wilson coefficients of the relevant hadronic scalar operators to leptonic observables, showing that the present limits on the Bs->mu+ mu- and B+->tau nu_tau branching fractions exclude any visible effect in hadronic decays. We study the transverse helicity amplitudes of B->VV decays, which exhibit an enhanced sensitivity to the scalar operators, showing that even though an order one modification relative to the SM is not excluded in some of these amplitudes, they are too small to be detected at B factories.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

Higgs couplings in the MSSM at large tan(beta)

We consider tan(beta)-enhanced quantum effects in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) including those from the Higgs sector. To this end, we match the MSSM to an effective two-Higgs doublet model (2HDM), assuming that all SUSY particles are heavy, and calculate the coefficients of the operators that vanish or are suppressed in the MSSM at tree-level. Our result clarifies the dependence of the large-tan(beta) resummation on the renormalization convention for tan(beta), and provides analytic expressions for the Yukawa and trilinear Higgs interactions. The numerical effect is analyzed by means of a parameter scan, and we find that the Higgs-sector effects, where present, are typically larger than those from the "wrong-Higgs" Yukawa couplings in the 2HDM.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

B -> chi_cJ K decays revisited

We demonstrate that exclusive B decays to P-wave charmonium factorize in the non-relativistic limit provided that colour-octet contributions are taken into account, and estimate the branching fractions. Although there are very large uncertainties, we find reasonable parameter choices, where the main features of the data -- large corrections to (naive) factorization and suppression of the chi_{c2} and h_c final states -- are reproduced though the suppression of chi_{c2} is not as strong as seen in the data. Our results also provide an example, where an endpoint divergence in hard spectator-scattering factorizes and is absorbed into colour-octet operator matrix elements.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

Dominant NNLO corrections to four-fermion production near the W-pair production threshold

We calculate the parametrically dominant next-to-next-to-leading order corrections to four-fermion production e^- e^+ -> mu^- nubar_mu u dbar + X at centre-of-mass energies near the W-pair production threshold employing the method of unstable-particle effective theory. In total the correction is small, leading to a shift of 3 MeV in the W-mass measurement. We also discuss the implementation of realistic cuts and provide a result for the interference of single-Coulomb and soft radiative corrections that can easily be extended to include an arbitrary number of Coulomb photons.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

Ultrasoft contribution to heavy-quark pair production near threshold

We compute the third-order correction to the heavy-quark current correlation function due to the emission and absorption of an ultrasoft gluon. Our result supplies a missing contribution to top-quark pair production near threshold and the determination of the bottom quark mass from QCD sum rules.

hep-ph↗