Probing SUSY effects in KS0→μ+μ−K_S^0\rightarrow\mu^+\mu^-

We explore supersymmetric contributions to the decay $K_S^0\rightarrow\mu^+\mu^-$, in light of current experimental data. The Standard Model (SM) predicts $\mathcal{B}(K_S^0\rightarrow\mu^+\mu^-)\approx5\times 10^{-12}$. We find that contributions arising from flavour violating Higgs penguins can enhance the branching fraction up to $\approx 35\times 10^{-12}$ within different scenarios of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), as well as suppress it down to $\approx 0.78\times 10^{-12}$. Regions with fine-tuned parameters can bring the branching fraction up to the current experimental upper bound, $8\times 10^{-10}$. The mass degeneracy of the heavy Higgs bosons in MSSM induces correlations between $\mathcal{B}(K_S^0\rightarrow\mu^+\mu^-)$ and $\mathcal{B}(K_L^0\rightarrow\mu^+\mu^-)$. Predictions for the $CP$ asymmetry in $K^0\rightarrow\mu^+\mu^-$ decays in the context of MSSM are also given, and can be up to eight times bigger than in the SM.Comment: 36 pages, 31 fig

Understanding whether local employment charters could support fairer employment practices:Research Briefing Note

Employment charters are voluntary initiatives that attempt to describe ‘good’ employment practices and to engage and recognise those employers that meet or aspire to meet these practices. They can operate at different spatial scales, ranging from international and national accreditation schemes to local charters that focus on engaging employers in specific regions or cities. The latter are the focus of this briefing paper. At least six city-regions in England had local employment charters at the time of our research. These areas alone account for over a fifth (21 per cent) of the resident working-age population (based on ONS 2022 population estimates), highlighting the potential reach and significance of these voluntary initiatives in terms of setting employment standards, although the number of employers directly accredited with local schemes is still relatively small. Despite their popularity with policymakers, there is only limited research on local employment charters. A few studies have explored issues relating to the design, implementation and evaluation of charters, reflecting demand from policymakers for toolkits and support to develop local policy initiatives (e.g. Crozier, 2022). But several years into the implementation of some of these charter initiatives, and as more areas look to develop their own, we argue that it is time to revisit some more foundational questions around what local charters are for, and how far they can support ‘good work’ agendas. It remains to be seen which employers can and will engage substantively with these initiatives, how employer commitments might be validated and the good employment criteria enforced, and how local charters will be integrated with local authority commissioning and procurement practices (TUC, 2022). The local charters that have emerged so far within the UK have been conceived predominantly as employer engagement tools, adopting language and approaches designed to appeal to employer interests and priorities and emphasising the value that employers can derive from being part of the initiative. This contrasts with approaches emphasising the engagement of other constituents, like citizens and employees, as a route to influencing employer engagement (Scott, Baylor and Spaulding, 2016; Johnson, Herman and Hughes, 2022). This briefing paper shares findings from a scoping study involving key informants in the North West of England (2022-2023) which explored how local charter initiatives could influence employers to improve their employment practices. Participants in the study shared their views on:1) How voluntary local employment charters could influence employers to change their employment practices? 2) What types of employers local charters could engage and influence?Alongside this study, we have also developed a series of case studies of the charters that have been introduced across six city regions in England. These encompass the Fair Work Standard (London); Good Employment Charter (West of England); Good Work Pledge (North of Tyne Combined Authority); Fair Employment Charter (Liverpool City Region Combined Authority); Good Employment Charter (Greater Manchester) and the Fair Work Charter (West Yorkshire Combined Authority). The case studies are published separately. Our conversations with policymakers, union representatives and campaigners indicate that while there are some potential ‘win-win’ outcomes from promoting good employment practices, there are also some key tensions that should be more clearly acknowledged. In particular, one point of divergence relates to what would be the most effective and meaningful way to engage with employers in order to secure improvements in employment practices. On the one hand, employment charter initiatives could set consistent, clear and relatively high standards of practice that employers could be required to meet from the outset, creating a clear dividing line between those employers who were engaged in some way with the initiative and those who are not. On the other, these initiatives could prioritise engaging as many employers as possible with few or no specific red lines (e.g. around paying the living wage) so that the charter provides an opportunity to work with employers to secure hopefully more substantive commitments down the road.There are challenges and trade-offs associated with both of these viewpoints. One problem with the former strategy of setting a consistent standard is that the principles of employment that the charter promotes may not be particularly stretching in some sectors, or indeed may only describe a minimum set of commitments for certain types of work; whilst in other sectors they may be viewed as being too stringent. A more incremental, flexible strategy of engaging with employers and working with them to change their employment practices, in contrast, relies on sustained commitment from both policymakers and employers. Whether charters can simultaneously offer a ‘safe space’ to employers to share information and change their practices whilst also operating in a more regulatory way appears as a fundamental tension in existing visions for these initiatives. We return to these different views on how to engage employers and secure change in the conclusion to this paper

Quantum Computing for High-Energy Physics: State of the Art and Challenges. Summary of the QC4HEP Working Group

Quantum computers offer an intriguing path for a paradigmatic change of computing in the natural sciences and beyond, with the potential for achieving a so-called quantum advantage, namely a significant (in some cases exponential) speed-up of numerical simulations. The rapid development of hardware devices with various realizations of qubits enables the execution of small scale but representative applications on quantum computers. In particular, the high-energy physics community plays a pivotal role in accessing the power of quantum computing, since the field is a driving source for challenging computational problems. This concerns, on the theoretical side, the exploration of models which are very hard or even impossible to address with classical techniques and, on the experimental side, the enormous data challenge of newly emerging experiments, such as the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider. In this roadmap paper, led by CERN, DESY and IBM, we provide the status of high-energy physics quantum computations and give examples for theoretical and experimental target benchmark applications, which can be addressed in the near future. Having the IBM 100 x 100 challenge in mind, where possible, we also provide resource estimates for the examples given using error mitigated quantum computing

Les droits disciplinaires des fonctions publiques : « unification », « harmonisation » ou « distanciation ». A propos de la loi du 26 avril 2016 relative à la déontologie et aux droits et obligations des fonctionnaires

The production of tt‾ , W+bb‾ and W+cc‾ is studied in the forward region of proton–proton collisions collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV by the LHCb experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.98±0.02 fb−1 . The W bosons are reconstructed in the decays W→ℓν , where ℓ denotes muon or electron, while the b and c quarks are reconstructed as jets. All measured cross-sections are in agreement with next-to-leading-order Standard Model predictions.The production of $t\overline{t}$, $W+b\overline{b}$ and $W+c\overline{c}$ is studied in the forward region of proton-proton collisions collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV by the LHCb experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.98 $\pm$ 0.02 \mbox{fb}^{-1}. The $W$ bosons are reconstructed in the decays $W\rightarrow\ell\nu$, where $\ell$ denotes muon or electron, while the $b$ and $c$ quarks are reconstructed as jets. All measured cross-sections are in agreement with next-to-leading-order Standard Model predictions

Physics case for an LHCb Upgrade II - Opportunities in flavour physics, and beyond, in the HL-LHC era

The LHCb Upgrade II will fully exploit the flavour-physics opportunities of the HL-LHC, and study additional physics topics that take advantage of the forward acceptance of the LHCb spectrometer. The LHCb Upgrade I will begin operation in 2020. Consolidation will occur, and modest enhancements of the Upgrade I detector will be installed, in Long Shutdown 3 of the LHC (2025) and these are discussed here. The main Upgrade II detector will be installed in long shutdown 4 of the LHC (2030) and will build on the strengths of the current LHCb experiment and the Upgrade I. It will operate at a luminosity up to 2×1034 cm−2s−1, ten times that of the Upgrade I detector. New detector components will improve the intrinsic performance of the experiment in certain key areas. An Expression Of Interest proposing Upgrade II was submitted in February 2017. The physics case for the Upgrade II is presented here in more depth. CP-violating phases will be measured with precisions unattainable at any other envisaged facility. The experiment will probe b → sl+l−and b → dl+l− transitions in both muon and electron decays in modes not accessible at Upgrade I. Minimal flavour violation will be tested with a precision measurement of the ratio of B(B0 → μ+μ−)/B(Bs → μ+μ−). Probing charm CP violation at the 10−5 level may result in its long sought discovery. Major advances in hadron spectroscopy will be possible, which will be powerful probes of low energy QCD. Upgrade II potentially will have the highest sensitivity of all the LHC experiments on the Higgs to charm-quark couplings. Generically, the new physics mass scale probed, for fixed couplings, will almost double compared with the pre-HL-LHC era; this extended reach for flavour physics is similar to that which would be achieved by the HE-LHC proposal for the energy frontier

LHCb upgrade software and computing : technical design report

This document reports the Research and Development activities that are carried out in the software and computing domains in view of the upgrade of the LHCb experiment. The implementation of a full software trigger implies major changes in the core software framework, in the event data model, and in the reconstruction algorithms. The increase of the data volumes for both real and simulated datasets requires a corresponding scaling of the distributed computing infrastructure. An implementation plan in both domains is presented, together with a risk assessment analysis

Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in ZZ-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against a $Z$ boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 $< p_{\textrm{T}} < 100$ GeV and in the pseudorapidity range $2.5 < \eta < 4$. The data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb$^{-1}$. Triple differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb public pages

Study of the B−→Λc+Λˉc−K−B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-} decay

The decay $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ is studied in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment. In the $\Lambda_{c}^+ K^{-}$ system, the $\Xi_{c}(2930)^{0}$ state observed at the BaBar and Belle experiments is resolved into two narrower states, $\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}$ and $\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}$, whose masses and widths are measured to be $$m(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = 2924.5 \pm 0.4 \pm 1.1 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ m(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = 2938.5 \pm 0.9 \pm 2.3 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = \phantom{000}4.8 \pm 0.9 \pm 1.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},\\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = \phantom{00}11.0 \pm 1.9 \pm 7.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},$$ where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic. The results are consistent with a previous LHCb measurement using a prompt $\Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ sample. Evidence of a new $\Xi_{c}(2880)^{0}$ state is found with a local significance of $3.8\,\sigma$, whose mass and width are measured to be $2881.8 \pm 3.1 \pm 8.5\,\mathrm{MeV}$ and $12.4 \pm 5.3 \pm 5.8 \,\mathrm{MeV}$, respectively. In addition, evidence of a new decay mode $\Xi_{c}(2790)^{0} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ is found with a significance of $3.7\,\sigma$. The relative branching fraction of $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ with respect to the $B^{-} \to D^{+} D^{-} K^{-}$ decay is measured to be $2.36 \pm 0.11 \pm 0.22 \pm 0.25$, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic and the third originates from the branching fractions of charm hadron decays.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-028.html (LHCb public pages

Measurement of the ratios of branching fractions R(D∗)\mathcal{R}(D^{*}) and R(D0)\mathcal{R}(D^{0})

The ratios of branching fractions $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})\equiv\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to D^{*}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to D^{*}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})\equiv\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to D^{0}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to D^{0}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ are measured, assuming isospin symmetry, using a sample of proton-proton collision data corresponding to 3.0 fb${ }^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity recorded by the LHCb experiment during 2011 and 2012. The tau lepton is identified in the decay mode $\tau^{-}\to\mu^{-}\nu_{\tau}\bar{\nu}_{\mu}$. The measured values are $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})=0.281\pm0.018\pm0.024$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})=0.441\pm0.060\pm0.066$, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The correlation between these measurements is $\rho=-0.43$. Results are consistent with the current average of these quantities and are at a combined 1.9 standard deviations from the predictions based on lepton flavor universality in the Standard Model.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-039.html (LHCb public pages

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