Diphoton excess at 750 GeV: gluon-gluon fusion or quark-antiquark annihilation?

Recently, ATLAS and CMS collaboration reported an excess in the diphoton events, which can be explained by a new resonance with mass around 750 GeV. In this work, we explored the possibility of identifying if the hypothetical new resonance is produced through gluon-gluon fusion or quark-antiquark annihilation, or tagging the beam. Three different observables for beam tagging, namely the rapidity and transverse momentum distribution of the diphoton, and one tagged bottom-jet cross section, are proposed. Combining the information gained from these observables, a clear distinction of the production mechanism for the diphoton resonance is promising.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the single top quark production via model-independent t-q-g flavor-changing neutral-current couplings at hadron colliders

We present the calculations of the complete next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD effects on the single top productions induced by model-independent $tqg$ flavor-changing neutral-current couplings at hadron colliders. Our results show that, for the $tcg$ coupling the NLO QCD corrections can enhance the total cross sections by about 60% and 30%, and for the $tug$ coupling by about 50% and 20% at the Tevatron and LHC, respectively, which means that the NLO corrections can increase the experimental sensitivity to the FCNC couplings by about 10%$-$30%. Moreover, the NLO corrections reduce the dependence of the total cross sections on the renormalization or factorization scale significantly, which lead to increased confidence on the theoretical predictions. Besides, we also evaluate the NLO corrections to several important kinematic distributions, and find that for most of them the NLO corrections are almost the same and do not change the shape of the distributions.Comment: minor changes, version published in PR

Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to tZtZ associated production via the flavor-changing neutral-current couplings at hadron colliders

We present the complete next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections to $tZ$ associated production induced by the model-independent $tqg$ and $tqZ$ flavor-changing neutral-current couplings at hadron colliders, respectively. Our results show that, for the $tuZ$ coupling the NLO QCD corrections can enhance the total cross sections by about 60% and 42%, and for the $tcZ$ coupling by about 51% and 43% at the Tevatron and LHC, respectively. The NLO corrections, for the $tug$ couplings, can enhance the total cross sections by about 27%, and by about 42% for the $tcg$ coupling at the LHC. We also consider the mixing effects between the $tqg$ and $tqZ$ couplings for this process, which can either be large or small depending on the values of the anomalous couplings. Besides, the NLO corrections reduce the dependence of the total cross sections on the renormalization or factorization scale significantly, which lead to increased confidence on the theoretical predictions. And we also evaluate the NLO corrections to several important kinematic distributions.Comment: Published version in Phys. Rev.

High cycle fatigue and ratcheting interaction of laser powder bed fusion stainless steel 316L:Fracture behaviour and stress-based modelling

Variations in the physical and mechanical properties of parts made by laser power bed fusion (L-PBF) could be affected by the choice of processing or post-processing strategies. This work examined the influence of build orientation and post-processing treatments (annealing or hot isostatic pressing) on the fatigue and fracture behaviours of L-PBF stainless steel 316L in the high cycle fatigue region, i.e. 104 – 106 cycles. Experimental results show that both factors introduce significant changes in the plastic deformation properties, which affect fatigue strength via the mechanism of fatigue-ratcheting interaction. Cyclic plasticity is characterised by hardening, which promotes mean stress insensitivity and improved fatigue resistance. Fatigue activities, involving the initiation of crack at defects and microstructural heterogeneities, are of greater relevance to the longer life region where the global deformation mode is elastic. As the simultaneous actions of ratcheting and fatigue generate complex nonlinear interactions between the alternating stress amplitude and mean stress, the fatigue properties could not be effectively predicted using traditional stress-based models. A modification to the Goodman relation was proposed to account for the added effects of cyclic plasticity and was demonstrated to produce good agreement with experimental results for both cyclic hardening and softening materials.EDB (Economic Devt. Board, S’pore)Accepted versio

Threshold Resummation Effects in Neutral Higgs Boson Production by Bottom Quark Fusion at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

We investigate the QCD effects in the production of neutral Higgs bosons via bottom quark fusion in both the standard model and the minimal supersymmetric standard model at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We include the next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections (including supersymmetric QCD) and the threshold resummation effects. We use the soft-collinear effective theory to resum the large logarithms near threshold from soft gluon emission. Our results show that the resummation effects can enhance the total cross sections by about 5% compared with the NLO results.Comment: 29pages, 14 figures, version to appear in Physical Review

A multi-wavelength observation and investigation of six infrared dark clouds

Context. Infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are ubiquitous in the Milky Way, yet they play a crucial role in breeding newly-formed stars. Aims. With the aim of further understanding the dynamics, chemistry, and evolution of IRDCs, we carried out multi-wavelength observations on a small sample. Methods. We performed new observations with the IRAM 30 m and CSO 10.4 m telescopes, with tracers ${\rm HCO^+}$, HCN, ${\rm N_2H^+}$, ${\rm C^{18}O}$, DCO$^+$, SiO, and DCN toward six IRDCs G031.97+00.07, G033.69-00.01, G034.43+00.24, G035.39-00.33, G038.95-00.47, and G053.11+00.05. Results. We investigated 44 cores including 37 cores reported in previous work and seven newly-identified cores. Toward the dense cores, we detected 6 DCO$^+$, and 5 DCN lines. Using pixel-by-pixel spectral energy distribution (SED) fits of the $\textit{Herschel}$ 70 to 500 $\mu$m, we obtained dust temperature and column density distributions of the IRDCs. We found that ${\rm N_2H^+}$ emission has a strong correlation with the dust temperature and column density distributions, while ${\rm C^{18}O}$ showed the weakest correlation. It is suggested that ${\rm N_2H^+}$ is indeed a good tracer in very dense conditions, but ${\rm C^{18}O}$ is an unreliable one, as it has a relatively low critical density and is vulnerable to freezing-out onto the surface of cold dust grains. The dynamics within IRDCs are active, with infall, outflow, and collapse; the spectra are abundant especially in deuterium species. Conclusions. We observe many blueshifted and redshifted profiles, respectively, with ${\rm HCO^+}$ and ${\rm C^{18}O}$ toward the same core. This case can be well explained by model "envelope expansion with core collapse (EECC)".Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables. To be published in A&A. The resolutions of the pictures are cut dow