The forward physics facility at the high-luminosity LHC

High energy collisions at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce a large number of particles along the beam collision axis, outside of the acceptance of existing LHC experiments. The proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF), to be located several hundred meters from the ATLAS interaction point and shielded by concrete and rock, will host a suite of experiments to probe standard model (SM) processes and search for physics beyond the standard model (BSM). In this report, we review the status of the civil engineering plans and the experiments to explore the diverse physics signals that can be uniquely probed in the forward region. FPF experiments will be sensitive to a broad range of BSM physics through searches for new particle scattering or decay signatures and deviations from SM expectations in high statistics analyses with TeV neutrinos in this low-background environment. High statistics neutrino detection will also provide valuable data for fundamental topics in perturbative and non-perturbative QCD and in weak interactions. Experiments at the FPF will enable synergies between forward particle production at the LHC and astroparticle physics to be exploited. We report here on these physics topics, on infrastructure, detector, and simulation studies, and on future directions to realize the FPF's physics potential

A model-independent analysis of b -> s mu(+)mu(-) transitions with GAMBIT 's FlavBit

The search for flavour-changing neutral current effects in B-meson decays is a powerful probe of physics beyond the Standard Model. Deviations from SM behaviour are often quantified by extracting the preferred values of the Wilson coefficients of an operator product expansion. We use the FlavBit module of the GAMBIT package to perform a simultaneous global fit of the Wilson coefficients C₇, C₉, and C¹⁰ using a combination of all current data on b→sμ⁺μ⁻ transitions. We further extend previous analyses by accounting for the correlated theoretical uncertainties at each point in the Wilson coefficient parameter space, rather than deriving the uncertainties from a Standard Model calculation. We find that the best fit deviates from the SM value with a significance of 6.6σ. The largest deviation is associated with a vector coupling of muons to b and s quarks.Jihyun Bhom, Marcin Chrzaszcz, Farvah Mahmoudi, Markus T. Prim, Pat Scott, Martin Whit

Thermal (wimps) and the scale of new physics: global fits of Dirac dark matter effective field theories

We assess the status of a wide class of WIMP dark matter (DM) models in light of the latest experimental results using the global fitting framework GAMBIT. We perform a global analysis of effective field theory (EFT) operators describing the interactions between a gauge-singlet Dirac fermion and the Standard Model quarks, the gluons and the photon. In this bottom-up approach, we simultaneously vary the coefficients of 14 such operators up to dimension 7, along with the DM mass, the scale of new physics and several nuisance parameters. Our likelihood functions include the latest data from Planck, direct and indirect detection experiments, and the LHC. For DM masses below 100 GeV, we find that it is impossible to satisfy all constraints simultaneously while maintaining EFT validity at LHC energies. For new physics scales around 1 TeV, our results are influenced by several small excesses in the LHC data and depend on the prescription that we adopt to ensure EFT validity. Furthermore, we find large regions of viable parameter space where the EFT is valid and the relic density can be reproduced, implying that WIMPs can still account for the DM of the universe while being consistent with the latest data.GAMBIT Collaboration, Peter Athron, Neal Avis Kozar, Csaba Balázs, Ankit Beniwal, a, Sanjay Bloor, b, Torsten Bringmann, Joachim Brod, Christopher Chang, Jonathan M. Cornell, Ben Farmer, Andrew Fowlie, Tomás E. Gonzalo, c, Will Handley, Felix Kahlhoefer, d, Anders Kvellestad, Farvah Mahmoudi, Markus T. Prim, Are Raklev, Janina J. Renk, Andre Scaffidi, Pat Scott, Patrick Stöcker, Aaron C. Vincent, Martin White, Sebastian Wild, Jure Zupa

Averages of bb-hadron, cc-hadron, and τ\tau-lepton properties as of 2021

This paper reports world averages of measurements of $b$-hadron, $c$-hadron, and $\tau$-lepton properties obtained by the Heavy Flavour Averaging Group using results available before April 2021. In rare cases, significant results obtained several months later are also used. For the averaging, common input parameters used in the various analyses are adjusted (rescaled) to common values, and known correlations are taken into account. The averages include branching fractions, lifetimes, neutral meson mixing parameters, CP violation parameters, parameters of semileptonic decays, and Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements

Search for the decay <math display="inline"><msubsup><mi>B</mi><mi>s</mi><mn>0</mn></msubsup><mo stretchy="false">→</mo><msup><mi>η</mi><mo>′</mo></msup><msubsup><mi>K</mi><mi>S</mi><mn>0</mn></msubsup></math>

International audienceWe report the results of the first search for the decay Bs0→η′KS0 using 121.4  fb-1 of data collected at the ϒ(5S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e+e- collider. We observe no signal and set a 90% confidence-level upper limit of 8.16×10-6 on the Bs0→η′KS0 branching fraction