Evidence for Factorization Breaking in Diffractive Low-Q^2 Dijet Production

We calculate diffractive dijet production in deep-inelastic scattering at next-to-leading order of perturbative QCD, including contributions from direct and resolved photons, and compare our predictions to preliminary data from the H1 collaboration at HERA. In contrast to recent experimental claims, evidence for factorization breaking is found only for resolved, and not direct, photon contributions. No evidence is found for large normalization uncertainties in diffractive parton densities. The results confirm theoretical expectations for the (non-)cancellation of soft singularities in diffractive scattering as well as previous results for (almost) real photoproduction.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Calculating two- and three-body decays with FeynArts and FormCalc

The Feynman diagram generator FeynArts and the computer algebra program FormCalc allow for an automatic computation of 2->2 and 2->3 scattering processes in High Energy Physics. We have extended this package by four new kinematical routines and adapted one existing routine in order to accomodate also two- and three-body decays of massive particles. This makes it possible to compute automatically two- and three-body particle decay widths and decay energy distributions as well as resonant particle production within the Standard Model and the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model at the tree- and loop-level. The use of the program is illustrated with three standard examples: h->b\bar{b}, \mu->e\bar{\nu}_e\nu_\mu, and Z->\nu_e\bar{\nu}_e.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur

Suppression factors in diffractive photoproduction of dijets

After new publications of H1 data for the diffractive photoproduction of dijets, which overlap with the earlier published H1 data and the recently published data of the ZEUS collaboration, have appeared, we have recalculated the cross sections for this process in next-to-leading order (NLO) of perturbative QCD to see whether they can be interpreted consistently. The results of these calculations are compared to the data of both collaborations. We find that the NLO cross sections disagree with the data, showing that factorization breaking occurs at that order. If direct and resolved contributions are both suppressed by the same amount, the global suppression factor depends on the transverse-energy cut. However, by suppressing only the resolved contribution, also reasonably good agreement with all the data is found with a suppression factor independent of the transverse-energy cut.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures, 3 table

Can new heavy gauge bosons be observed in ultra-high energy cosmic neutrino events?

A wide range of models beyond the Standard Model predict charged and neutral resonances, generically called $W'$- and $Z'$-bosons, respectively. In this paper we study the impact of such resonances on the deep inelastic scattering of ultra-high energy neutrinos as well as on the resonant charged current $\bar\nu_e e^-$ scattering (Glashow resonance). We find that the effects of such resonances can not be observed with the Pierre Auger Observatory or any foreseeable upgrade of it.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

How robust is a thermal photon interpretation of the ALICE low-p_T data?

We present a rigorous theoretical analysis of the ALICE measurement of low-p_T direct-photon production in central lead-lead collisions at the LHC with a centre-of-mass energy of \sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76 TeV. Using NLO QCD, we compute the relative contributions to prompt-photon production from different initial and final states and the theoretical uncertainties coming from independent variations of the renormalisation and factorisation scales, the nuclear parton densities and the fragmentation functions. Based on different fits to the unsubtracted and prompt-photon subtracted ALICE data, we consistently find T = 304 \pm 58 MeV and 309 \pm 64 MeV for the effective temperature of the quark-gluon plasma (or hot medium) at p_T \in [0.8;2.2] GeV and p_T \in [1.5;3.5] GeV as well as a power-law (p_T^{-4}) behavior for p_T > 4 GeV as predicted by QCD hard scattering.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

Electroweak top-quark pair production at the LHC with Z′Z' bosons to NLO QCD in POWHEG

We present the calculation of the NLO QCD corrections to the electroweak production of top-antitop pairs at the CERN LHC in the presence of a new neutral gauge boson. The corrections are implemented in the parton shower Monte Carlo program POWHEG. Standard Model (SM) and new physics interference effects are properly taken into account. QED singularities, first appearing at this order, are consistently subtracted. Numerical results are presented for SM and $Z'$ total cross sections and distributions in invariant mass, transverse momentum, azimuthal angle and rapidity of the top-quark pair. The remaining theoretical uncertainty from scale and PDF variations is estimated, and the potential of the charge asymmetry to distinguish between new physics models is investigated for the Sequential SM and a leptophobic topcolor model.Comment: 33 pages, 15 figures, 1 table. Discussion added on uncertainties from parton showers and NLL contribution

Dijet photoproduction of massless charm jets at next-to-leading order of QCD

We compute the charm dijet photoproduction cross section at next-to-leading order of QCD in the zero-mass variable flavour number scheme, i.e. with active charm quarks in the proton and photon. The results are compared to recent measurements from the ZEUS experiment at HERA. The predictions for various distributions agree well with the data, in particular for large momentum fractions of the the partons in the photon, where direct photon processes dominate. At low momentum fractions, the predictions are quite sensitive to the charm content in the photon. The experimental data are shown to favour parameterizations with a substantial charm quark density such as the one proposed by Cornet et al.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figure

NLO+NLL limits on W' and Z' gauge boson masses in general extensions of the Standard Model

QCD resummation predictions for the production of charged (W') and neutral (Z') heavy gauge bosons decaying leptonically are presented. The results of our resummation code at next-to-leading order and next-to-leading logarithmic (NLO+NLL) accuracy are compared to Monte Carlo predictions obtained with PYTHIA at leading order (LO) supplemented with parton showers (PS) and FEWZ at NLO and next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) for the $p_T$-differential and total cross sections in the Sequential Standard Model (SSM) and general SU(2)xSU(2)xU(1) models. The LO+PS Monte Carlo and NNLO fixed-order predictions are shown to agree approximately with those at NLO+NLL at small and intermediate $p_T$, respectively, and the importance of resummation for total cross sections is shown to increase with the gauge boson mass. The theoretical uncertainties are estimated by variations of the renormalisation/factorisation scales and of the parton densities, the former being significantly reduced by the resummation procedure. New limits at NLO+NLL on W' and Z' boson masses are obtained by reinterpreting the latest ATLAS and CMS results in general extensions of the Standard Model.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures, 6 table