Physics with boosted top quarks

The production at the LHC of boosted top quarks (top quarks with a transverse momentum that greatly exceeds their rest mass) is a promising process to search for phenomena beyond the Standard Model. In this contribution several examples are discussed of new techniques to reconstruct and identify (tag) the collimated decay topology of the boosted hadronic decays of top quarks. Boosted top reconstruction techniques have been utilized in searches for new physical phenomena. An overview is given of searches by ATLAS, CDF and CMS for heavy new particles decaying into a top and an anti-top quark, vector-like quarks and supersymmetric partners to the top quark.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. Proceedings of The Second Annual Conference on Large Hadron Collider Physics, Columbia University, New York, U.S.A, June 2-7, 201

Resurrecting the Dead Cone

The dead cone is a well-known effect in gauge theories, where radiation from a charged particle of mass m and energy E is suppressed within an angular size of m/E. This effect is universal as it does not depend on the spin of the particle nor on the nature of the gauge interaction. It is challenging to directly measure the dead cone at colliders, however, since the region of suppressed radiation either is too small to be resolved or is filled by the decay products of the massive particle. In this paper, we propose to use jet substructure techniques to expose the dead cone effect in the strong-force radiation pattern around boosted top quarks at the Large Hadron Collider. Our study shows that with 300/fb of 13-14 TeV collision data, ATLAS and CMS could obtain the first direct evidence of the dead cone effect and test its basic features.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures; v2: references added; v3: approximate version to appear in PR

Constraining the dipole moments of the top quark

We investigate the direct and indirect bounds on dipole operators involving the top quark. A careful analysis shows that the experimental upper limit on the neutron electric dipole moment strongly constrains the chromo-electric dipole of the top. We improve previous bounds by two orders of magnitude. This has significant implications for new physics models and it also means that CP violation in top pair production mediated by dipole operators will not be accessible at the LHC. The CP conserving chromo-magnetic dipole moments are constrained by recent measurements of the t\bar t spectrum by the ATLAS collaboration. We also update the indirect constraints on electric and magnetic dipole moments from radiative b -> s transitions, finding that they can be considerably larger than their colored counterparts.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; extended and updated discussion of constraints on top EDM and MDM from rare B decays; typos correcte

Recent progress in QCD at the LHC

Perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics has experienced an impressive progress in the last few years, boosted by the requirements of the LHC experimental program. In this contribution, I briefly review a selection of recent results in QCD and LHC phenomenology, covering progress in parton distribution functions, automation of NLO calculations, merging and matching at NLO, new calculations at NNLO accuracy and their matching to parton showers, and new developments and techniques in jet physics and jet substructure tools.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the "Rencontres de physique de la Vallee d'Aoste 2014" Conference, La Thuile, Italy, February 201

Theory Summary and Prospects

This talk reviews some of the theoretical progress and outstanding issues in QCD, flavour physics, Higgs and electroweak physics and the search for physics beyond the Standard Model at the Tevatron and the LHC, and previews some physics possibilities for future runs of the LHC and proposed future hadron colliders.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, Presented at the Second Annual Conference on Large Hadron Collider Physics Columbia University, New York, U.S.A June 2-7, 201

Exposing the QCD Splitting Function with CMS Open Data

The splitting function is a universal property of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) which describes how energy is shared between partons. Despite its ubiquitous appearance in many QCD calculations, the splitting function cannot be measured directly since it always appears multiplied by a collinear singularity factor. Recently, however, a new jet substructure observable was introduced which asymptotes to the splitting function for sufficiently high jet energies. This provides a way to expose the splitting function through jet substructure measurements at the Large Hadron Collider. In this letter, we use public data released by the CMS experiment to study the 2-prong substructure of jets and test the 1 -> 2 splitting function of QCD. To our knowledge, this is the first ever physics analysis based on the CMS Open Data.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures; v2: references updated and figure formatting improved; v3: approximate version to appear in PR

Aspects of Jets at 100 TeV

We present three case studies at a 100 TeV proton collider for how jet analyses can be improved using new jet (sub)structure techniques. First, we use the winner-take-all recombination scheme to define a recoil-free jet axis that is robust against pileup. Second, we show that soft drop declustering is an effective jet grooming procedure that respects the approximate scale invariance of QCD. Finally, we highlight a potential standard candle for jet calibration using the soft-dropped energy loss. This latter observable is remarkably insensitive to the scale and flavor of the jet, a feature that arises because it is infrared/collinear unsafe, but Sudakov safe.Comment: 9 pages, double column, 7 figures, based on a talk by A.L. at the "Workshop on Physics at a 100 TeV Collider" at SLAC from April 23-25, 2014; v.2: PRD versio

Evolution variable dependence of jet substructure

Studies on jet substructure have evolved significantly in recent years. Jet substructure is essentially determined by QCD radiations and non-perturbative effects. Predictions of jet substructure are usually different among Monte Carlo event generators, and are governed by the parton shower algorithm implemented. For leading logarithmic parton shower, even though one of the core variables is the evolution variable, its choice is not unique. We examine evolution variable dependence of the jet substructure by developing a parton shower generator that interpolates between different evolution variables using a parameter $\alpha$. Jet shape variables and associated jet rates for quark and gluon jets are used to demonstrate the $\alpha$-dependence of the jet substructure. We find angular ordered shower predicts wider jets, while relative transverse momentum ($p_{\bot}$) ordered shower predicts narrower jets. This is qualitatively in agreement with the missing phase space of $p_{\bot}$ ordered showers. Such difference can be reduced by tuning other parameters of the showering algorithm, especially in the low energy region, while the difference tends to increase for high energy jets.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Jet-Images: Computer Vision Inspired Techniques for Jet Tagging

We introduce a novel approach to jet tagging and classification through the use of techniques inspired by computer vision. Drawing parallels to the problem of facial recognition in images, we define a jet-image using calorimeter towers as the elements of the image and establish jet-image preprocessing methods. For the jet-image processing step, we develop a discriminant for classifying the jet-images derived using Fisher discriminant analysis. The effectiveness of the technique is shown within the context of identifying boosted hadronic W boson decays with respect to a background of quark- and gluon- initiated jets. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we demonstrate that the performance of this technique introduces additional discriminating power over other substructure approaches, and gives significant insight into the internal structure of jets