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M. Spannowsky

Publications and source records attributed to M. Spannowsky.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2025

Limits on New Lorentz-violating Bosons

We obtain novel constraints on new scalar fields interacting with Standard Model fermions through Lorentz-violating couplings, bridging searches for scalar particles and Lorentz-symmetry tests. These constraints arise from torsion-balance experiments, magnetometer searches, and an excessive energy loss in Red Giant stars. Torsion-balance experiments impose stringent constraints, benefitting from large macroscopic sources including the Sun and Earth. Magnetometer-based searches, which detect pseudo-magnetic fields through spin precession, offer additional limiting power to low-mass scalar fields. Meanwhile, observations of Red Giant stars place strong limits on additional energy loss mechanisms, extending these constraints to higher scalar mass ranges and a wider range of Lorentz-violating couplings. Combining data from laboratory experiments and astrophysical observations, this approach strengthens constraints on Lorentz-violating interactions and paves the way for future investigations into physics beyond the Standard Model.

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arXiv2020

Small instantons and the strong CP problem in composite Higgs models

We show that QCD instantons can generate large effects at small length scales in the ultraviolet in standard composite Higgs models that utilise partial compositeness. This has important implications for possible solutions of the strong CP problem in these models. First we show that in the simplest known UV completions of composite Higgs models, if an axion is also present, it can have a mass much larger than the usual QCD axion. Even more remarkable is the case where there are no axions, but the strong CP problem can be solved by generating the up quark mass entirely from the contribution of instantons thus reviving the massless up-quark solution for these models. In both cases no additional field content is required apart from what is required to realise partial compositeness.

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arXiv2019

Higgs boson potential at colliders: status and perspectives

This document summarises the current theoretical and experimental status of the di-Higgs boson production searches, and of the direct and indirect constraints on the Higgs boson self-coupling, with the wish to serve as a useful guide for the next years. The document discusses the theoretical status, including state-of-the-art predictions for di-Higgs cross sections, developments on the effective field theory approach, and studies on specific new physics scenarios that can show up in the di-Higgs final state. The status of di-Higgs searches and the direct and indirect constraints on the Higgs self-coupling at the LHC are presented, with an overview of the relevant experimental techniques, and covering all the variety of relevant signatures. Finally, the capabilities of future colliders in determining the Higgs self-coupling are addressed, comparing the projected precision that can be obtained in such facilities. The work has started as the proceedings of the Di-Higgs workshop at Colliders, held at Fermilab from the 4th to the 9th of September 2018, but it went beyond the topics discussed at that workshop and included further developments.

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arXiv2019

All-in-one Relaxion, a unified solution to five BSM puzzles

We present a unified relaxion solution to the five major outstanding issues in particle physics: the hierarchy problem, dark matter, matter-antimatter asymmetry, neutrino masses and the strong CP problem. The only additional field content in our construction with respect to standard relaxion models is an up-type vector-like fermion pair and three right-handed neutrinos charged under the relaxion shift symmetry. The observed dark matter abundance is generated automatically by oscillations of the relaxion field that begin once it is misaligned from its original stopping point after reheating. The matter-antimatter asymmetry arises from spontaneous baryogenesis induced by the CPT violation due to the rolling of the relaxion after reheating. The CPT violation is communicated to the baryons and leptons via an operator, $\partial_\mu \phi J^\mu$, where $J^\mu$ consists of right-handed neutrino currents arising naturally from a simple neutrino mass model. Finally, the strong CP problem is solved via the Nelson-Barr mechanism, i.e. by imposing CP as a symmetry of the Lagrangian that is broken only spontaneously by the relaxion. The CP breaking is such that although an ${\cal O}(1)$ strong CKM phase is generated, the induced strong CP phase is much smaller, i.e., within experimental bounds.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2018

The CLIC Potential for New Physics

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is a mature option for the future of high energy physics. It combines the benefits of the clean environment of $e^+e^-$ colliders with operation at high centre-of-mass energies, allowing to probe scales beyond the reach of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for many scenarios of new physics. This places the CLIC project at a privileged spot in between the precision and energy frontiers, with capabilities that will significantly extend knowledge on both fronts at the end of the LHC era. In this report we review and revisit the potential of CLIC to search, directly and indirectly, for physics beyond the Standard Model.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2018

Signs of heavy Higgs bosons at CLIC: An $e^+ e^-$ road to the Electroweak Phase Transition

We analyse the sensitivity of the proposed Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) to the existence of beyond the Standard Model (SM) Higgs bosons through their decays into pairs of massive gauge bosons $H \to VV$ and SM-like Higgses $H \to hh$, considering CLIC centre of mass energies $\sqrt{s} = 1.4$ TeV and $3$ TeV. We find that resonant di-Higgs searches at CLIC would allow for up to two orders of magnitude improvement w.r.t. the sensitivity achievable by HL-LHC in the mass range $m_H \in [250\,\mathrm{GeV},\, 1 \,\mathrm{TeV}]$. Focusing then on a real singlet extension of the SM, we explore the prospects of heavy Higgs searches at CLIC for probing the regions of parameter space yielding a strongly first order electroweak phase transition that could generate the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. Our study illustrates the complementarity between CLIC and other possible future colliders like FCC-ee in probing singlet extensions of the SM, and shows that high-energy $e^+ e^-$ colliders provide a powerful means to unravel the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking in the early Universe.

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arXiv2018

Vector boson scattering: Recent experimental and theory developments

This document summarises the talks and discussions happened during the VBSCan Split17 workshop, the first general meeting of the VBSCan COST Action network. This collaboration is aiming at a consistent and coordinated study of vector-boson scattering from the phenomenological and experimental point of view, for the best exploitation of the data that will be delivered by existing and future particle colliders.

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arXiv2017

Resonant Di-Higgs Production in the $b{\bar b}WW$ Channel: Probing the Electroweak Phase Transition at the LHC

We analyze the prospects for resonant di-Higgs production searches at the LHC in the $b\bar{b} W^+ W^-$ ($W^{+} \to \ell^{+} \nu_{\ell}$, $W^{-} \to \ell^{-} \bar{\nu}_{\ell}$) channel, as a probe of the nature of the electroweak phase transition in Higgs portal extensions of the Standard Model. In order to maximize the sensitivity in this final state, we develop a new algorithm for the reconstruction of the $b \bar{b} W^+ W^-$ invariant mass in the presence of neutrinos from the $W$ decays, building from a technique developed for the reconstruction of resonances decaying to $\tau^{+}\tau^{-}$ pairs. We show that resonant di-Higgs production in the $b\bar{b} W^+ W^-$ channel could be a competitive probe of the electroweak phase transition already with the datasets to be collected by the CMS and ATLAS experiments in Run-2 of the LHC. The increase in sensitivity with larger amounts of data accumulated during the High Luminosity LHC phase can be sufficient to enable a potential discovery of the resonant di-Higgs production in this channel.

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arXiv2016

Jet activity as a probe of high-mass resonance production

We explore the method of using the measured jet activity associated with a high mass resonance state to determine the corresponding production modes. To demonstrate the potential of the approach, we consider the case of a resonance of mass $M_R$ decaying to a diphoton final state. We perform a Monte Carlo study, considering three mass points $M_R=0.75,\,1.5\,,2.5$ TeV, and show that the $\gamma\gamma$, $WW$, $gg$ and light and heavy $q\overline{q}$ initiated cases lead to distinct predictions for the jet multiplicity distributions. As an example, we apply this result to the ATLAS search for resonances in diphoton events, using the 2015 data set of $3.2\,{\rm fb}^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV. Taking the spin-0 selection, we demonstrate that a dominantly $gg$-initiated signal hypothesis is mildly disfavoured, while the $\gamma\gamma$ and light quark cases give good descriptions within the limited statistics, and a dominantly $WW$-initiated hypothesis is found to be in strong tension with the data. We also comment on the $b\overline{b}$ initial state, which can already be constrained by the measured $b$-jet multiplicity. Finally, we present expected exclusion limits with integrated luminosity, and demonstrate that with just a few 10's of ${\rm fb}^{-1}$ we can expect to constrain the production modes of such a resonance.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2015

Towards an Understanding of the Correlations in Jet Substructure

Over the past decade, a large number of jet substructure observables have been proposed in the literature, and explored at the LHC experiments. Such observables attempt to utilize the internal structure of jets in order to distinguish those initiated by quarks, gluons, or by boosted heavy objects, such as top quarks and W bosons. This report, originating from and motivated by the BOOST2013 workshop, presents original particle-level studies that aim to improve our understanding of the relationships between jet substructure observables, their complementarity, and their dependence on the underlying jet properties, particularly the jet radius and jet transverse momentum. This is explored in the context of quark/gluon discrimination, boosted W boson tagging and boosted top quark tagging.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2014

Les Houches 2013: Physics at TeV Colliders: New Physics Working Group Report

We present the activities of the "New Physics" working group for the "Physics at TeV Colliders" workshop (Les Houches, France, 3--21 June, 2013). Our report includes new computational tool developments, studies of the implications of the Higgs boson discovery on new physics, important signatures for searches for natural new physics at the LHC, new studies of flavour aspects of new physics, and assessments of the interplay between direct dark matter searches and the LHC.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2013

Boosted objects and jet substructure at the LHC

This report of the BOOST2012 workshop presents the results of four working groups that studied key aspects of jet substructure. We discuss the potential of the description of jet substructure in first-principle QCD calculations and study the accuracy of state-of-the-art Monte Carlo tools. Experimental limitations of the ability to resolve substructure are evaluated, with a focus on the impact of additional proton proton collisions on jet substructure performance in future LHC operating scenarios. A final section summarizes the lessons learnt during the deployment of substructure analyses in searches for new physics in the production of boosted top quarks.

hep-ex↗
arXiv2012

Release Note -- Vbfnlo-2.6.0

Vbfnlo is a flexible parton level Monte Carlo program for the simulation of vector boson fusion (VBF), double and triple vector boson (plus jet) production in hadronic collisions at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the strong coupling constant, as well as Higgs boson plus two jet production via gluon fusion at the one-loop level. This note briefly describes the main additional features and processes that have been added in the new release -- Vbfnlo Version 2.6.0. At NLO QCD diboson production (Wγ, WZ, ZZ, Zγand γγ), same-sign W pair production via vector boson fusion and the process Wγγj have been implemented (for which one-loop tensor integrals up to six-point functions are included). In addition, gluon induced diboson production can be studied separately at the leading order (one-loop) level. The diboson processes WW, WZ and Wγcan be run with anomalous gauge boson couplings, and anomalous couplings between a Higgs and a pair of gauge bosons is included in WW, ZZ, Zγand γγdiboson production. The code has also been extended to include anomalous gauge boson couplings for single vector boson production via VBF, and a spin-2 model has been implemented for diboson pair production via vector boson fusion.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2011

Jet Substructure at the Tevatron and LHC: New results, new tools, new benchmarks

In this report we review recent theoretical progress and the latest experimental results in jet substructure from the Tevatron and the LHC. We review the status of and outlook for calculation and simulation tools for studying jet substructure. Following up on the report of the Boost 2010 workshop, we present a new set of benchmark comparisons of substructure techniques, focusing on the set of variables and grooming methods that are collectively known as "top taggers". To facilitate further exploration, we have attempted to collect, harmonise, and publish software implementations of these techniques.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2011

Boosted objects: a probe of beyond the Standard Model physics

We present the report of the hadronic working group of the BOOST2010 workshop held at the University of Oxford in June 2010. The first part contains a review of the potential of hadronic decays of highly boosted particles as an aid for discovery at the LHC and a discussion of the status of tools developed to meet the challenge of reconstructing and isolating these topologies. In the second part, we present new results comparing the performance of jet grooming techniques and top tagging algorithms on a common set of benchmark channels. We also study the sensitivity of jet substructure observables to the uncertainties in Monte Carlo predictions.

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arXiv2010

NLO QCD corrections to WZ+jet production with leptonic decays

We compute the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to WZ+jet production at the Tevatron and the LHC, including decays of the electroweak bosons to light leptons with all off-shell effects taken into account. The corrections are sizable and have significant impact on the differential distributions.

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