Search

CP-odd Higgs couplings to bottom and charm quarks arise in many extensions of the standard model and are of potential interest for electroweak baryogenesis. These couplings induce a contribution to the electron EDM. The experimental limit on the latter then leads to a strong bound on the CP-odd Higgs couplings. We point out that this bound receives large QCD corrections, even though it arises from a leptonic observable. We calculate the contribution of CP-odd Higgs couplings to the bottom and charm quarks in renormalisation-group improved perturbation theory at next-to-leading order in the strong interaction, thereby reducing the uncertainty to a few percent., 20 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

Flavour-changing-neutral currents (FCNCs) involving the top quark are highly suppressed within the Standard Model (SM). Hence, any signal in current or planned future collider experiments would constitute a clear manifestation of physics beyond the SM. We propose a novel, interference-based strategy to search for top-quark FCNCs involving the $Z$ boson that has the potential to complement traditional search strategies due to a more favourable luminosity scaling. The strategy leverages on-shell interference between the FCNC and SM decay of the top quark into hadronic final states. We estimate the feasibility of the most promising case of anomalous $tZc$ couplings using Monte Carlo simulations and a simplified detector simulation. We consider the main background processes and discriminate the signal from the background with a deep neural network that is parametrised in the value of the anomalous $tZc$ coupling. We present sensitivity projections for the HL-LHC and the FCC-hh. We find an expected $95\%$ CL upper limit of $\mathcal{B}_{\mathrm{excl}}(t\rightarrow Zc) = 6.4 \times 10^{-5}$ for the HL-LHC. In general, we conclude that the interference-based approach has the potential to provide both competitive and complementary constraints to traditional multi-lepton searches and other strategies that have been proposed to search for $tZc$ FCNCs., 24 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables

We investigate a family of four-dimensional quantum field theories with weakly interacting ultraviolet fixed points up to four loop order in perturbation theory. Key new ingredients are the three loop gauge contributions to quartic scalar beta functions, which we compute in the $\overline{\text{MS}}$ scheme for a template $SU(N_c)$ gauge theory coupled to $N_f$ fundamental fermions and elementary scalars. We then determine fixed point couplings, field and mass anomalous dimensions, and universal scaling exponents up to the first three non-trivial orders in a small Veneziano parameter. The phase diagram and UV-IR connecting trajectories are found and contrasted with asymptotic freedom. Further, the size of the conformal window, unitarity, and mechanisms leading to the loss of conformality are investigated. Our results provide blueprints for concrete 4d non-supersymmetric conformal field theories with standard model-like field content, and invite further model building., Comment: 17 pages, 2 external figures

The rare $K \to ����\bar��$ decay modes and the parameter $��_K$ that measures CP violation in Kaon mixing are sensitive probes of physics beyond the standard model. In this article we provide the updated standard-model prediction for the rare decay modes in detail, and summarise the status of standard-model prediction of $��_K$. We find $\text{BR}(K^+ \to ��^+ ��\bar ��) = 7.73(61) \times 10^{-11}$ and $\text{BR}(K_L \to ��^0 ��\bar ��) = 2.59(29) \times 10^{-11}$. The uncertainties are dominated by parametric input., 8 pages, new Standard Model prediction, to be published in the proceedings of the BEAUTY2020 conference

The parameter $��_K$ describes CP violation in the neutral kaon system and is one of the most sensitive probes of new physics. The large uncertainties related to the charm-quark contribution to $��_K$ have so far prevented a reliable standard-model prediction. We show that CKM unitarity enforces a unique form of the $|��S = 2|$ weak effective Lagrangian in which the short-distance theory uncertainty of the imaginary part is dramatically reduced. The uncertainty related to the charm-quark contribution is now at the percent level. We present the updated standard-model prediction $��_K = 2.16(6)(8)(15) \times 10^{-3}$, where the errors in brackets correspond to QCD short-distance and long-distance, and parametric uncertainties, respectively., 5 pages, 1 figure

We study the fixed point that controls the IR dynamics of QED in $d = 4 - 2��$. We derive the scaling dimensions of four-fermion and bilinear operators beyond leading order in $��$-expansion. For the four-fermion operators, this requires the computation of a two-loop mixing that was not known before. We then extrapolate these scaling dimensions to $d = 3$ to estimate their value at the IR fixed point of QED$_3$ as function of the number of fermions $N_f$. The next-to-leading order result for the four-fermion operators corrects significantly the leading one. Our best estimate at this order indicates that they do not cross marginality for any value of $N_f$, which would imply that they cannot trigger a departure from the conformal phase. For the scaling dimensions of bilinear operators, we observe better convergence as we increase the order. In particular, $��$-expansion provides a convincing estimate for the dimension of the flavor-singlet scalar in the full range of $N_f$., 39 pages, 5 figures

We study how large the rate of the lepton-flavor violating Higgs decay h->tau mu can be in the (R-parity conserving) MSSM. We make no assumptions, such as universality or alignment, about the flavor structure of the MSSM. We only assume that all couplings and, in particular, the trilinear scalar ones, are perturbative. We take into account lower bounds on the bino and slepton masses from tau->mu gamma and h->gamma gamma as well as upper bounds on the trilinear scalar couplings from the requirement that the global minimum is not charge breaking. We find that in highly fine-tuned regions of parameter space, the ratio BR(h->tau mu)/BR(h->tau tau) can be enhanced by about three orders of magnitude above the estimate from naive dimensional analysis, but still about two orders of magnitude below the present bound. Thus, if h->tau mu is experimentally established to be close to present bounds, the MSSM will be excluded., 22 pages, 6 figures, version published in JHEP

We study Quantum Electrodynamics in d=3 (QED_3) coupled to N_f flavors of fermions. The theory flows to an IR fixed point for N_f larger than some critical number N_f^c. For N_f, 6 pages, 3 figures. v2: references added, minor corrections

Anomalous couplings of the $Z$ boson to top quarks are only marginally constrained by direct searches and are still sensitive to new particle dynamics at the TeV scale. Employing an effective field theory approach we consider the dimension-six operators which generate deviations from the standard-model vector and axial-vector interactions. We show that rare $B$ and $K$ meson decays together with electroweak precision observables provide strong constraints on these couplings. We also consider constraints from t-channel single-top production., 18 pages, 2 figures, v2 matches JHEP version

We calculate the full two-loop electroweak matching corrections to the operator governing the decay B_q --> l^+ l^- in the Standard Model. Their inclusion removes an electroweak scheme and scale uncertainty of about 7% of the branching ratio. Using different renormalization schemes of the involved electroweak parameters, we estimate residual perturbative electroweak and QED uncertainties to be less than 1% at the level of the branching ratio., 16 pages, 6 figures, supplementary Mathematica file "c10.m" with analytical results; v2: references updated

We combine our new results for the O(alpha_em) and O(alpha_s^2) corrections to B_{s,d} -> l^+ l^-, and present updated branching ratio predictions for these decays in the standard model. Inclusion of the new corrections removes major theoretical uncertainties of perturbative origin that have just begun to dominate over the parametric ones. For the recently observed muonic decay of the B_s meson, our calculation gives BR(B_s -> mu^+ mu^-) = (3.65 +_ 0.23) * 10^(-9)., 4 pages, 1 figure; v3: matches the published version in Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 101801 (2014); title and ordering of references modified; results unchanged

The main goals of the first "Workshop on FLAvor SYmmetries and consequences in accelerators and cosmology" (FLASY) was to summarize the theoretical status of flavor symmetries, bringing together young researchers in the field to stimulate discussions and new collaborations, with the aim of investigating possible new physics scenarios to be tested at the LHC, as well as in future neutrino, cosmology experiments and dark matter searches., Contributions of the 1st Workshop on Flavor Symmetries and consequences in Accelerators and Cosmology 11 - 14 July 2011, Valencia (Spain), 208 pages

Discrete flavour groups have been studied in connection with special patterns of neutrino mixing suggested by the data, such as Tri-Bimaximal mixing (groups A4, S4...) or Bi-Maximal mixing (group S4...) etc. We review the predictions for sin(��_13) in a number of these models and confront them with the experimental measurements. We compare the performances of the different classes of models in this respect. We then consider, in a supersymmetric framework, the important implications of these flavour symmetries on lepton flavour violating processes, like ��-> e gamma and similar processes. We discuss how the existing limits constrain these models, once their parameters are adjusted so as to optimize the agreement with the measured values of the mixing angles. In the simplified CMSSM context, adopted here just for indicative purposes, the small tan(beta) range and heavy SUSY mass scales are favoured by lepton flavour violating processes, which makes it even more difficult to reproduce the reported muon g-2 discrepancy., 45 pages, 16 figures, 3 tables; V3 submitted to add an acknowledgment to a Network

The branching ratio of the rare decay B->X_s gamma provides potentially strong constraints on models beyond the Standard Model. Considering a general scenario with new heavy neutral gauge bosons, present in particular in Z' and gauge flavour models, we point out two new contributions to the B->X_s gamma decay. The first one originates from one-loop diagrams mediated by gauge bosons and heavy exotic quarks with electric charge -1/3. The second contribution stems from the QCD mixing of neutral current-current operators generated by heavy neutral gauge bosons and the dipole operators responsible for the B->X_s gamma decay. The latter mixing is calculated here for the first time. We discuss general sum rules which have to be satisfied in any model of this type. We emphasise that the neutral gauge bosons in question could also significantly affect other fermion radiative decays as well as non-leptonic two-body B decays, epsilon'/epsilon, anomalous (g-2)_mu and electric dipole moments., 31 pages, 5 figures; version published on JHEP; added magic QCD numbers for flavour-violating Z gauge boson contribution to B -> X_s gamma

The rare K -> pi nu anti-nu decays play a central role in testing the Standard Model and its extensions. Upcoming experiments plan to measure the decay rates with high accuracy. Yet, unknown higher-order electroweak corrections result in a sizeable theory error. We remove this uncertainty by computing the full two-loop electroweak corrections to the top-quark contribution X_t to the rare decays K_L -> pi0 nu anti-nu, K+ -> pi+ nu anti-nu, and B -> X_{d,s} nu anti-nu in the Standard Model. The remaining theoretical uncertainty related to electroweak effects is now far below 1%. Finally we update the branching ratios to find Br(K_L -> pi0 nu anti-nu) = 2.43(39)(6) * 10^-11 and Br(K+ -> pi+ nu anti-nu) = 7.81(75)(29) * 10^-11. The first error summarises the parametric, the second the remaining theoretical uncertainties., 20 pages, 6 figures; typos corrected, updated numerics using input from PDG 2010, version as published in PRD