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The African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications, also known as the African School of Physics (ASP), was initiated in 2010, as a three-week biennial event, to offer additional training in fundamental and applied physics to African students with a minimum of three-year university education. Since its inception, ASP has grown to be much more than a school. ASP has become a series of activities and events to support academic development of African students, teachers and faculties. We report on the eighth African School of Physics, ASP2024, organized in Morocco, on April 15--19 and July 7--21, 2024. ASP2024 included programs for university students, high school teachers and high school pupils., Comment: 23 pages, 24 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2302.13940

On April 15-19, 2024, as a part of the eighth African School of Physics, ASP2024, we organized a program for learners from selected high schools in the vicinity of Marrakesh, Morocco. In this event, within a week, we reached out to over a thousand high school students, aka learners, from many high schools in the region of Marrakesh. We present a summary report on these outreach activities., Comment: 15 pages

We summarize the current status of high energy physics (HEP) in Africa, Latin America, and other developing regions, Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

The African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications, also known as the African School of Physics (ASP), was initiated in 2010, as a three-week biennial event, to offer additional training in fundamental and applied physics to African students with a minimum of three-year university education. Since its inception, ASP has grown to be much more than a school. ASP has become a series of activities and events with directed ethos towards physics as an engine for development in Africa. We report on the seven African School of Physics, ASP2022, organized at Nelson Mandela University, on November~28 to December~8, 2022. ASP2022 included programs for university students, high school teachers and high school pupils., Comment: 18 pages

The 2021-22 High-Energy Physics Community Planning Exercise (a.k.a. ``Snowmass 2021'') was organized by the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society. Snowmass 2021 was a scientific study that provided an opportunity for the entire U.S. particle physics community, along with its international partners, to identify the most important scientific questions in High Energy Physics for the following decade, with an eye to the decade after that, and the experiments, facilities, infrastructure, and R&D needed to pursue them. This Snowmass summary report synthesizes the lessons learned and the main conclusions of the Community Planning Exercise as a whole and presents a community-informed synopsis of U.S. particle physics at the beginning of 2023. This document, along with the Snowmass reports from the various subfields, will provide input to the 2023 Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) subpanel of the U.S. High-Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP), and will help to guide and inform the activity of the U.S. particle physics community during the next decade and beyond., Comment: 75 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. This is the first chapter and summary of the full report of the Snowmass 2021 Workshop. This version fixes an important omission from Table 2, adds two references that were not available at the time of the original version, fixes a minor few typos, and adds a small amount of material to section 1.1.3

This is the summary report of the Community Engagement Frontier for the Snowmass 2021 study of the future of particle physics. The report discusses a number of general issues of importance to the particle physics community, including (1) the relation of universities, national laboratories, and industry, (2) career paths for scientists engaged in particle physics, (3) diversity, equity, and inclusion, (4) physics education, (5) public education and outreach, (6) engagement with the government and public policy, and (7) the environmental and social impacts of particle physics., Comment: 51 pages, 2 figures; to appear in the proceedings of the 2021 Community Study on the Future of U.S. Particle Physics (Snowmass 2021)

This is the Snowmass2021 Energy Frontier (EF) Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) report. It combines the EF topical group reports of EF08 (Model-specific explorations), EF09 (More general explorations), and EF10 (Dark Matter at Colliders). The report includes a general introduction to BSM motivations and the comparative prospects for proposed future experiments for a broad range of potential BSM models and signatures, including compositeness, SUSY, leptoquarks, more general new bosons and fermions, long-lived particles, dark matter, charged-lepton flavor violation, and anomaly detection., Comment: 108 pages + 38 pages references and appendix, 37 figures, Report of the Topical Group on Beyond the Standard Model Physics at Energy Frontier for Snowmass 2021. The first nine authors are the Conveners, with Contributions from the other authors

The rapid development of vaccines to combat the spread of COVID-19 disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a great scientific achievement. Before the development of the COVID-19 vaccines, most studies capitalized on the available data that did not include pharmaceutical measures. Such studies focused on the impact of non-pharmaceutical measures (e.g social distancing, sanitation, wearing of face masks, and lockdown) to study the spread of COVID-19. In this study, we used the SIDARTHE-V model which is an extension of the SIDARTHE model wherein we include vaccination roll outs. We studied the impact of vaccination on the severity (deadly nature) of the virus in African countries. Model parameters were extracted by fitting simultaneously the COVID-19 cumulative data of deaths, recoveries, active cases, and full vaccinations reported by the governments of Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Togo, and Zambia. With countries having some degree of variation in their vaccination programs, we considered the impact of vaccination campaigns on the death rates in these countries. The study showed that the cumulative death rates declined drastically with the increased extent of vaccination in each country; while infection rates were sometimes increasing with the arrival of new waves, the death rates did not increase as we saw before vaccination., Comment: 40 pages, 10 figures

Despite dark matter abundance, its nature remains elusive. Many searches of dark matter particles are carried out using different technologies either via direct detection, indirect detection, or collider searches. In this work, the invisible Higgs sector was investigated, where Higgs bosons are produced via the vector boson fusion (VBF) process and subsequently decay into invisible particles. The hypothesis under consideration is that the Higgs boson might decay into a pair of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which are candidates for dark matter. The observed number of events are found to be in agreement with the background expectation from Standard Model (SM). Assuming a 125 GeV Higgs boson with SM production cross section, the observed and expected upper limits on the branching fraction of its decay into invisible particles are found to be 0.13 at 95\% confidence level. Combination of searches for an invisibly decaying Higgs boson produced via the main Higgs production modes at the LHC using 2011-2018 data is conducted and discussed., Comment: Submitted to the Proceedings of the African Conference on Fundamental and Applied Physics Second Edition, ACP2021, March 7-11, 2022

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) are not only called for to ensure morality and justice in our society, they also support ongoing and future excellence in particle physics. Over the past decade, the particle physics community has devised programs to support DEIA along multiple axes, and the way we think about measuring and implementing these initiatives has evolved. DEIA in physics is a broad topic, so in this paper we focus on the experiences of marginalized communities and outline ways different stakeholders can build a culture of equitable access for the success of marginalized individuals. Specifically, we identify urgent needs in the following areas: (1) We need to acquire a better understanding of the status quo, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to assess the effectiveness of existing programs and to develop best practices; (2) we need to develop effective and inclusive ways to engage marginalized communities; (3) we need to create infrastructure to better support members of marginalized communities, on an academic, financial and personal level; (4) we need to create an environment conducive to equitable access and success by establishing community expectations, fostering inclusion in social interactions, and holding individuals and institutions accountable; and (5) we need to establish a mechanism to monitor progress in the area of DEIA, including the implementation of the recommendations enumerated in this paper and others during the Snowmass 2021 process., Comment: Contribution to Snowmass 2021

The African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications, also known as the African School of Physics (ASP), was initiated in 2010, as a three-week biennial event, to offer additional training in fundamental and applied physics to African students with a minimum of three-year university education. Since its inception, ASP has grown to be much more than a school. ASP has become a series of activities and events with directed ethos towards physics as an engine for development in Africa. One such activity of ASP is the African Conference on Fundamental and Applied Physics (ACP). The first edition of ACP took place during the 2018 edition of ASP at the University of Namibia in Windhoek. In this paper, we report on the second edition of ACP, organized on March 7--11, 2022, as a virtual event., Comment: 12 pages

The Community Engagement Frontier presents this set of three white papers, as part of Snowmass 2021. These papers address critical issues -- Power Dynamics in Physics, Informal Socialization in Physics Training, and Policing and Gatekeeping in STEM -- that make significant impacts on the experiences of the people who work in and learn particle physics. In this introductory document, we present crosscutting concepts that appear in each paper, and some advice on how to manage readers' responses to the contents. We expect that you will learn something new here. We hope that whatever you encounter, you will be energized to increase justice in this discipline we all love., Comment: Submitted to the Proceedings of the US Community Study on the Future of Particle Physics (Snowmass 2021); 6 pages Added references, and corrected typos

This paper addresses issues related to the process of informal socialization into physics, particularly for senior graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Many physicists' careers are built on the relationships they have and develop during these critical years., Comment: Submitted to the Proceedings of the US Community Study on the Future of Particle Physics (Snowmass 2021); 26 pages Added references

The purpose of this white paper is to describe how unfair power dynamics related to various aspects of identity -- race, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and ability status -- operate in physics settings and offer concrete steps that one can take to make our discipline more equitable and just., Comment: Submitted to the Proceedings of the US Community Study on the Future of Particle Physics (Snowmass 2021); 23 pages Added references

The purpose of this white paper is to lay out the impacts of policing and gatekeeping in STEM, illustrated with lived experiences of scientists of color who are achieving despite the daunting challenges they face., Comment: Submitted to the Proceedings of the US Community Study on the Future of Particle Physics (Snowmass 2021); 15 pages Added references

Research, education and training in high energy physics (HEP) often draw international collaborations even when priorities and long term visions are defined regionally or nationally. Yet in many developing regions, HEP activities are limited in both human capacity and expertise, as well as in resource mobilisation. In this paper, the benefits -- to the U.S. HEP program -- of engagements with developing countries are identified and studied through specific examples of Africa and Latin America; conversely, the impact of HEP education and research for developing countries are also pointed out. In the context of the U.S. strategic planning for high energy physics, the authors list recommendations on investments that will benefit both developed and developing nations., Comment: 14 pages

This Snowmass2021 Contributed Paper addresses the role of the Particle Physics community in creating and fostering international connections in American education. It describes the pressing need to introduce students and faculty to the challenges and rewards of international collaboration, not only to develop the next generation of scientists and engineers for particle physics, but to maintain and build U.S. leadership on an increasingly competitive world stage. We present and assess current efforts in education and public engagement with an eye toward identifying those activities in need of change or increased resources to improve audience reach and program efficacy. We also consider possible new activities that might improve upon or complement existing programs, with the common goal of providing all U.S. students with the opportunity to benefit from a quality international scientific experience., Comment: contribution to Snowmass 2021

This Snowmass21 Contributed Paper addresses the structural changes that need to occur in the many groups and organizations that intersect with the US particle physics community to enable impactful public engagement to flourish. The impetus for these changes should come from the particle physics community, which should acknowledge the importance of public engagement and act on the recommendations in this Snowmass contributed paper. Scientists have expressed frustration at the barriers, penalties and lack of support that discourage them from participating in public engagement. In this paper, we provide many ways to create a supportive, enabling atmosphere for public engagement among physicists., Comment: 22 pages

Finding a balance between professional responsibilities and personal priorities is a great challenge of contemporary life and particularly within the HEPAC community. Failure to achieve a proper balance often leads to different degrees of mental and physical issues and affects work performance. In this paper, we discuss some of the main causes that lead to the imbalance between work and personal life in our academic field. We present some recommendations in order to establish mechanisms to create a healthier and more equitable work environment, for the different members of our community at the different levels of their careers.

The sixth edition of the African School of Fundamental and Applied Physics (ASP) was planned for Morocco in July 2020 and was referred to as ASP2020. Preparations were at an advanced stage when ASP2020 was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The three-week event was restructured into two activities in 2021 -- an online event on July 19-30, 2021 and a hybrid event on December 12-18, 2021 -- and was renamed ASP2021. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, an online lecture series was integrated into the ASP activities. The ASP mentorship program, which consists of online engagements between lecturers and assigned mentees, continued in this way. ASP alumni studied one year of COVID-19 data of ten African countries to offer insights into pandemic containment measures. In this note, we report on ASP activities since the last in-person edition of ASP in 2018 in Namibia., Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures and 1 table

A review of the Higgs portal-vector dark matter interpretation of the spin-independent dark-matter nucleon elastic scattering cross section is presented, where the invisible Higgs decay width measured at the LHC is used. Effective Field Theory and ultraviolet complete models are discussed. LHC interpretations show only the scalar and Majorana dark-matter scenarios; we propose to include interpretation for vector dark matter in the EFT and UV completions theoretical framework. In addition, our studies suggest an extension of the LHC dark matter interpretations to the sub-GeV regime., Comment: contribution to Snowmass 2022

We studied the COVID-19 pandemic evolution in selected African countries. For each country considered, we modeled simultaneously the data of the active, recovered and death cases. In this study, we used a year of data since the first cases were reported. We estimated the time-dependent basic reproduction numbers, $R_0$, and the fractions of infected but unaffected populations, to offer insights into containment and vaccine strategies in African countries. We found that $R_0\leq 4$ at the start of the pandemic but has since fallen to $R_0 \sim 1$. The unaffected fractions of the populations studied vary between $1-10$\% of the recovered cases., Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures and 1 table

New facilities of the 2020s, such as the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC), will be relevant through at least the 2030s. This means that their software efforts and those that are used to analyze their data need to consider sustainability to enable their adaptability to new challenges, longevity, and efficiency, over at least this period. This will help ensure that this software will be easier to develop and maintain, that it remains available in the future on new platforms, that it meets new needs, and that it is as reusable as possible. This report discusses a virtual half-day workshop on "Software Sustainability and High Energy Physics" that aimed 1) to bring together experts from HEP as well as those from outside to share their experiences and practices, and 2) to articulate a vision that helps the Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics (IRIS-HEP) to create a work plan to implement elements of software sustainability. Software sustainability practices could lead to new collaborations, including elements of HEP software being directly used outside the field, and, as has happened more frequently in recent years, to HEP developers contributing to software developed outside the field rather than reinventing it. A focus on and skills related to sustainable software will give HEP software developers an important skill that is essential to careers in the realm of software, inside or outside HEP. The report closes with recommendations to improve software sustainability in HEP, aimed at the HEP community via IRIS-HEP and the HEP Software Foundation (HSF)., Comment: A report from the "Sustainable Software in HEP" IRIS-HEP blueprint workshop: https://indico.cern.ch/event/930127/

COVID-19 is a new pandemic disease that is affecting almost every country with a negative impact on social life and economic activities. The number of infected and deceased patients continues to increase globally. Mathematical models can help in developing better strategies to contain a pandemic. Considering multiple measures taken by African governments and challenging socio-economic factors, simple models cannot fit the data. We studied the dynamical evolution of COVID-19 in selected African countries. We derived a time-dependent reproduction number for each country studied to offer further insights into the spread of COVID-19 in Africa.

The African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications is a biennial school in Africa. It is based on the observation that fundamental physics provides excellent motivation for students of science. The aim of the school is to build capacity to harvest, interpret, and exploit the results of current and future physics experiments and to increase proficiency in related applications. The participating students are selected from all over Africa. The school also offers a workshop to train high school teachers, an outreach to motivate high school pupils and a physics conference to support a broader participation of African research faculties. Support for the school comes from institutes in Africa, Europe, USA and Asia. In this paper, we will present the school and discuss strategies to make the school sustainable., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, Talk presented at the 2019 Meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society (DPF2019), July 29 - August 2, 2019, Northeastern University, Boston, C1907293

Higgs portal interactions provide a simple mechanism for addressing two open problems in cosmology: dark matter and the baryon asymmetry. In the latter instance, Higgs portal interactions may contain the ingredients for a strong first order electroweak phase transition as well as new CP-violating interactions as needed for electroweak baryogenesis. These interactions may also allow for a viable dark matter candidate. We survey the opportunities for probing the Higgs portal as it relates to these questions in cosmology at the LHC and possible future colliders., Comment: 33 pages, 7 figures. Summarization of the landscape of possibilities surveyed at the "Unlocking the Higgs Portal" Workshop held at the Amherst Center for Fundamental Interactions (ACFI) in May 2014

This is a summary of the projects undertaken by the Working Group I on High Energy Collider Physics at the Eighth Workshop on High Energy Physics Phenomenology (WHEPP8) held at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, January 5-16, 2004. The topics covered are (i) Higgs searches (ii) supersymmetry searches (iii) extra dimensions and (iv) linear collider., Comment: summary of Working Group I at the Eighth Workshop on High Energy Physics Phenomenology (WHEPP8), I.I.T., Mumbai, January 5-16, 2004

In the two Higgs doublet model type III and in several other extensions of the Standard Model, there are no discrete symmetries that suppress flavor changing couplings at tree level. The experimental observation of the nu_mu -- nu_tau flavor oscillation may suggest the non-conservation of lepton number. This would lead to the decay of the type A^0/H^0 --> tau^{+/-} mu^{+/-}. We determine the present low energy limit on lepton flavor violating (LFV) couplings from the muon g-2 measurement and discuss the prospects for detecting lepton flavor violating decays at the TeVatron and at the Large Hadron Collider. The achievable bounds on the LFV coupling parameter lambda_{tau mu} are presented., Comment: 19 pages, 21 figures. Updated version takes into account the recent results on the muon g-2 measurements. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D. Added minor corrections from a referee

We study the LHC sensitivity to the charged Higgs discovery in the channel H^- -> tau_L^- nu in models with a singlet neutrino in large extra dimensions. The observation of such a signal would provide a distinctive evidence for these models since in the standard two Higgs doublet model type II, H^- -> tau_L^- nu is completely suppressed., Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures, 3 tables (LaTeX, style REVTeX 4), minor changes (improved discussion of the neutrino masses, a new reference added)