Study of Black Holes with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

We evaluate the potential of the ATLAS detector for discovering black holes produced at the LHC, as predicted in models with large extra dimensions where quantum gravity is at the TeV scale. We assume that black holes decay by Hawking evaporation to all Standard Model particles democratically. We comment on the possibility to estimate the Planck scale.Comment: 27 page

QED and QCD helicity amplitudes in parton-shower gauge

We introduce photon and gluon propagators in which the scalar polarization component is subtracted systematically by making use of the BRST invariance of the off-shell vector boson created from physical on-shell states. The propagator has the light-cone gauge form, where the spacial component of the gauge vector points along the negative of the off-shell vector boson momentum. We call the gauge as parton-shower gauge, since in collinear configurations the absolute value squared of each Feynman amplitude reproduces all the singular behaviors of the corresponding parton shower in this gauge. We introduce new HELAS codes that can be used to calculate the tree-level helicity amplitudes of arbitrary QED and QCD processes by using MadGraph. The absence of subtle gauge cancellation among Feynman amplitudes allows numerical codes to evaluate singular behaviors accurately, and helps us gaining physical insights on interference patterns.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures; v2: references added; v3: some issues clarified, a reference added, version to appear in EPJ

Helicity amplitudes without gauge cancellation for electroweak processes

We introduce 5-component representation of weak bosons, W and Z bosons of the standard model. The first four components make a Lorentz four vector, representing the transverse and longitudinal polarizations excluding the scalar component of the weak bosons. Its fifth component corresponds to the Goldstone boson. We show that this description can be extended to off-shell weak bosons, with the $5\times5$ component propagators, and prove that exactly the same scattering amplitudes are obtained by making use of the BRST (Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin) identities among two sub-amplitudes connected by one off-shell weak boson line in the unitary gauge. By replacing all weak boson vertices with those among the 5-component wavefunctions, we arrive at the expression of the electroweak scattering amplitudes, where the magnitude of each Feynman amplitude has the correct on-shell limits for all internal propagators, and hence with no artificial gauge cancellation among diagrams. We implement the 5-component weak boson propagators and their vertices in the numerical helicity amplitude calculation code HELAS (Helicity Amplitude Subroutines), so that an automatic amplitude generation program such as MadGraph can generate the scattering amplitudes without gauge cancellation. We present results for several high-energy scattering processes where subtle gauge-theory cancellation among diagrams takes place in all the other known approaches.Comment: 32 pages, 14 figures, 9 tables; v2: references adde

Potential for measuring the H^\pm W^\mp Z^0 vertex from WZ fusion at the Large Hadron Collider

We investigate the possibility of measuring the H^\pm W^\mp Z^0 vertex from the single $H^\pm$ production process via WZ fusion at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This vertex strongly depends on the structure of the Higgs sector in various new physics scenarios, so that its measurement can be useful to distinguish the models. A signal and background simulation under the expected detector performance at the LHC is done for the processes of pp \to W^\pm Z^0 X \to H^\pm X \to tbX and pp \to W^\pm Z^0 X \to H^\pm X \to W^\pm Z^0 X, and the required magnitudes of the H^\pm W^\mp Z^0 vertex for observation are evaluated. It is found that although the loop induced H^\pm W^\pm Z^0 vertex in multi-Higgs doublet models cannot be measurable, the latter process can be useful to test the model with a real and a complex triplets.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, version accepted for publication in Physical Review

Computing for Perturbative QCD - A Snowmass White Paper

We present a study on high-performance computing and large-scale distributed computing for perturbative QCD calculations.Comment: 21 pages, 5 table

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements