Probing top quark FCNC couplings in the triple-top signal at the high energy LHC and future circular collider

Our main aim in this paper is to present detailed studies to probe the top quark flavor changing neutral current (FCNC) interactions at $tqg$, $tq\gamma$, $tqH$ and $tqZ (\sigma^{\mu \nu}, \gamma_{\mu})$ vertices in the triple-top signal $p p \to t \bar t t \, (\bar t t \bar t)$ at the high energy proposal of Large Hadron Collider (HE-LHC) and future circular hadron-hadron collider (FCC-hh). To this end, we investigate the production of three top quarks which arises from the FCNC couplings taken into account the fast simulation at $\sqrt{s} = 27$ TeV of HE-LHC and 100 TeV of FCC-hh considering the integrated luminosities of 10, 15 and 20 ab$^{-1}$. All the relevant backgrounds are considered in a cut based analysis to obtain the limits on the anomalous couplings and the corresponding branching ratios. The obtained exclusion limits on the coupling strengths and the branching ratios are summarized and compared in details with the results in the literature, namely the most recent direct LHC experimental limits and HL-LHC projections as well. We show that, for higher energy phase of LHC, a dedicated search for the top quark FCNC couplings can achieve much better sensitivities to the triple-top signal than other top quark production scenarios. We found that the limits for the branching ratios of $tqg$ and $tqH$ transitions could reach an impressive sensitivity and the obtained 95\% CL limits are at least three orders of magnitude better than the current LHC experimental results as well as the existing projections of HL-LHC.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures and 6 Tables; Final version accepted for publication in Nuclear Physics

First global QCD analysis of charged hadron fragmentation functions and their uncertainties at next-to-next-to-leading order

In this paper, we present ${\tt SGK18}$ FFs, a first global QCD analysis of parton-to-{\it unidentified} charged hadrons fragmentation functions (FFs) at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) accuracy in perturbative QCD. This analysis is based on single-inclusive charged hadron production in electron-positron ($e^-e^+$) annihilation. The uncertainties in the extraction of ${\tt SGK18}$ FFs as well as the corresponding observables are estimated using the "Hessian" technique. We study the quality of the {\tt SGK18} FFs determined in this analysis by comparing with the recent results in literature. We also show how {\tt SGK18} FFs results describe the available data for single-inclusive unidentified charged hadron production in $e^-e^+$ annihilation. We demonstrate that the theoretical uncertainties due to the variation of the renormalization and factorization scales improve when NNLO QCD corrections are considered. We find that the resulting {\tt SGK18} FFs are in good agreement with all data analyzed and the inclusion of NNLO corrections tends to improve the data description with somewhat smaller uncertainty.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures and 3 Table

Impact of unidentified light charged hadron data on the determination of pion fragmentation functions

In this paper a new comprehensive analysis of parton-to-pion fragmentation functions (FFs) is performed for the first time by including all experimental data sets on single inclusive pion as well as unidentified light charged hadron production in electron-positron ($e^+e^-$) annihilation. We determine the pion FFs along with their uncertainties using the standard "Hessian" technique at next-to-leading order (NLO) and next-to-next-to leading order (NNLO) in perturabative QCD. It is shown that the determination of pion FFs using simultaneously the data sets from pion and unidentified light charged hadron productions leads to the reduction of all pion FFs uncertainties especially for the case of strange quark and gluon FFs by significant factors. In this study, we have quantified the constraints that these data sets could impose on the extracted pion FFs. Our results also illustrate the significant improvement in the precision of FFs fits achievable by inclusion of higher order corrections. The improvements on both FFs uncertainties as well as fit quality have been clearly discussed.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figures and 3 table

Single top quark production as a probe of anomalous tqγtq\gamma and tqZtqZ couplings at the FCC-ee

In this paper, a detailed study to probe the top quark Flavour-Changing Neutral Currents (FCNC) $tq\gamma$ and $tqZ$ at the future $e^{-}e^{+}$ collider FCC-ee in three different center-of-mass energies of 240, 350 and 500 GeV is presented. A set of useful variables are proposed and used in a multivariate technique to separate signal $e^- e^+ \rightarrow Z/\gamma \rightarrow t \bar{q} ~ ( \bar{t} q )$ from standard model background processes. The study includes a fast detector simulation based on the {\sc delphes} package to consider the detector effects. The $3 \sigma$ discovery regions and the upper limits on the FCNC branching ratios at 95\% confidence level (CL) in terms of the integrated luminosity are presented. It is shown that with 300 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity of data, FCC-ee would be able to exclude the effective coupling strengths above ${\cal O} (10^{-4}-10^{-5})$ which is corresponding to branching fraction of ${\cal O}(0.01-0.001)$\%. We show that moving to a high-luminosity regime leads to a significant improvement on the upper bounds on the top quark FCNC couplings to a photon or a $Z$ boson.Comment: 21 Pages, 6 Figures, 8 Table

Effect of symmetry breaking of polarized light sea quarks on the nucleon and nuclear structure functions, and sum rules

In this study, we performed calculations and analyses of the structure functions of polarized nucleons and light nuclei, specifically $^3$He and $^3$H, using second-order Feynman diagrams. Our investigation focused on two main aspects: Firstly, we examined the symmetry properties of polarized light sea quarks. Secondly, we conducted a detailed investigation into the impacts of symmetry breaking on the structure functions of both nucleons and nuclei. To achieve this, we utilized the existing polarized Parton Distribution Functions (polarized PDFs) available in the literature. These PDFs were used to calculate and compare the polarized structure functions $g_1$ and $g_2$ of the nuclei. Additionally, we examined and analyzed the Bjorken and Efremov-Leader-Teryaev sum rules by utilizing the moments of the polarized structure functions. The Lorentz color force components, namely $F_E^{y,n}$ and $F_B^{y,n}$, are determined using the twist-2, twist-3, and twist-4 matrix elements. When symmetry breaking is applied, it is observed that they have similar magnitudes but opposite signs. Our theoretical predictions for the polarized structure functions of nucleons and light nuclei, taking into account the symmetry breaking of light sea quarks, exhibit better agreement with experimental data.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, 3 table

Probing four-fermion operators in the triple top production at future hadron colliders

In this paper, we study the triple top quark production at the future high-energy proton-proton colliders to probe the four-fermion interactions involving three top quarks. We employ the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) to find the upper limits at 95% CL on the Wilson coefficients of these kinds of four-fermion operators. We consider a detailed analysis with a unique signal signature of two same-sign leptons. A full simulation chain includes all the relevant backgrounds, realistic detector simulations, and a cut-based technique are taken into account. This study is presented for the HE-LHC working at the center of mass energy of 27 TeV with 15 ab −1 and FCC-hh working at the center of mass energy of 100 TeV with 30 ab −1 . We show that the future high-energy proton-proton colliders could reach an impressive sensitivity to four-fermion contact interactions involving three top quarks

Global analysis of nuclear parton distribution functions and their uncertainties at next-to-next-to-leading order

We perform a next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) analysis of nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) using neutral current charged-lepton (ℓ±+nucleus) deeply inelastic scattering (DIS) data and Drell-Yan (DY) cross-section ratios σADY/σA′DY for several nuclear targets. We study in detail the parametrizations and the atomic mass (A) dependence of the nuclear PDFs at this order. The present nuclear PDFs global analysis provides us a complete set of nuclear PDFs, f (A,Z)i(x,Q2) , with a full functional dependence on x , A, Q 2 . The uncertainties of the obtained nuclear modification factors for each parton flavour are estimated using the well-known Hessian method. The nuclear charm quark distributions are also added into the analysis. We compare the parametrization results with the available data and the results of other nuclear PDFs groups. We found our nuclear PDFs to be in reasonably good agreement with them. The estimates of errors provided by our global analysis are rather smaller than those of other groups. In general, a very good agreement is achieved. We also briefly review the recent heavy-ion collisions data including the first experimental data from the LHC proton + lead and lead + lead run which can be used in the global fits of nuclear PDFs. We highlight different aspects of the high luminosity Pb–Pb and p–Pb data which have been recorded by the CMS Collaboration

Constraining Higgs boson effective couplings at electron-positron colliders

We probe the dimension-six operators contributing to Higgs production in association with a Z boson at the future high-luminosity electron-positron colliders. Potential constraints on dimension-six operators in the Higgs sector are determined by performing a shape analysis on the differential angular distribution of the Higgs and Z boson decay products. The analysis is performed at the center-of-mass energies of 350 and 500 GeV including a realistic detector simulation and the main sources of background processes. The 68% and 95% confidence level upper limits are obtained on the contributing anomalous couplings considering only the decay of the Higgs boson into a pair of b-quarks and leptonic Z boson decay. Our results show that angular observables provide a great sensitivity to anomalous couplings, in particular, at the high-luminosity regime

Effects of next-to-leading order DGLAP evolution on generalized parton distributions of the proton and deeply virtual Compton scattering at high energy

We studied the effects of NLO Q2 evolution of generalized parton distributions (GPDs) using the aligned-jet model for the singlet quark and gluon GPDs at an initial evolution scale. We found that the skewness ratio for quarks is a slow logarithmic function of Q2, reaching rS=1.5−2 at Q2=100 GeV2 and rg≈1 for gluons in a wide range of Q2. Using the resulting GPDs, we calculated the DVCS cross section on the proton in NLO pQCD and found that this model in conjunction with modern parameterizations of proton PDFs (CJ15 and CT14) provides a good description of the available H1 and ZEUS data in a wide kinematic range