No Arabic abstract
We perform a phenomenological study of $Z$ plus jet, Higgs plus jet and di-jet production at the Large Hadron Collider. We investigate in particular the dependence of the leading jet cross section on the jet radius as a function of the jet transverse momentum. Theoretical predictions are obtained using perturbative QCD calculations at the next-to and next-to-next-to-leading order, using a range of renormalization and factorization scales. The fixed order predictions are compared to results obtained from matching next-to-leading order calculations to parton showers. A study of the scale dependence as a function of the jet radius is used to provide a better estimate of the scale uncertainty for small jet sizes. The non-perturbative corrections as a function of jet radius are estimated from different generators.
We present the achievements of the last years of the experimental and theoretical groups working on hadronic cross section measurements at the low energy e+e- colliders in Beijing, Frascati, Ithaca, Novosibirsk, Stanford and Tsukuba and on tau decays. We sketch the prospects in these fields for the years to come. We emphasise the status and the precision of the Monte Carlo generators used to analyse the hadronic cross section measurements obtained as well with energy scans as with radiative return, to determine luminosities and tau decays. The radiative corrections fully or approximately implemented in the various codes and the contribution of the vacuum polarisation are discussed.
Now that the Higgs particle has been observed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC, the next endeavour would be to probe its fundamental properties and to measure its couplings to fermions and gauge bosons with the highest possible accuracy. However, the measurements will be limited by significant theoretical uncertainties that affect the production cross section in the main production channels as well as by experimental systematical errors. Following earlier work, we propose in this paper to consider ratios of Higgs production cross sections times decay branching ratios in which most of the theoretical uncertainties and some systematical errors, such as the ones due to the luminosity measurement and the Higgs decay branching fractions, cancel out. The couplings of the Higgs particle could be then probed in a way that will be mostly limited by the statistical accuracy achievable at the LHC and accuracies at the percent level are foreseen for some of the ratios at the end of the LHC run. At the theoretical level, these ratios are also interesting as they do not involve the ambiguities that affect the Higgs total decay width in new physics scenarios. To illustrate how these ratios can be used to determine the Higgs couplings, we perform a rough analysis of the recent ATLAS and CMS data which shows that there is presently no significant deviation from the Standard Model expectation.
Amplitudes derived from scattering data on elementary targets are basic inputs to neutrino-nucleus cross section predictions. A prominent example is the isovector axial nucleon form factor, $F_A(q^2)$, which controls charged current signal processes at accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiments. Previous extractions of $F_A$ from neutrino-deuteron scattering data rely on a dipole shape assumption that introduces an unquantified error. A new analysis of world data for neutrino-deuteron scattering is performed using a model-independent, and systematically improvable, representation of $F_A$. A complete error budget for the nucleon isovector axial radius leads to $r_A^2=0.46(22) ,{rm fm}^2$, with a much larger uncertainty than determined in the original analyses. The quasielastic neutrino-neutron cross section is determined as $sigma( u_mu n to mu^- p)big|_{E_ u =1,{rm GeV}} = 10.1(0.9) times 10^{-39}{rm cm}^2$. The propagation of nucleon-level constraints and uncertainties to nuclear cross sections is illustrated using MINERvA data and the GENIE event generator. These techniques can be readily extended to other amplitudes and processes.
The unitarity of the $S$-matrix requires that the absorptive part of the elastic scattering amplitude receives contributions from both the inelastic and the elastic channels. We explore this unitarity condition in order to describe, in a connected way, hadron-hadron observables like the total and elastic differential cross sections, the ratio of the real to imaginary part of the forward scattering amplitude and the inclusive multiplicity distributions in full phase space, over a large range of energies. We introduce non-perturbative QCD effects in the forward scattering amplitude by using the infrared QCD effective charge dependent on the dynamical gluon mass. In our analysis we pay special attention to the theoretical uncertainties in the predictions due to this mass scale variation. We also present quantitative predictions for the $H_{q}$ moments at high energies. Our results reproduce the moment oscillations observed in experimental data, and are consistent with the behavior predicted by QCD.
We present precise predictions for the production of a Higgs boson in association with a hadronic jet and a $mathrm{W}$ boson at hadron colliders. The behaviour of QCD corrections are studied for fiducial cross sections and distributions of the charged gauge boson and jet-related observables. The inclusive process (at least one resolved jet) and the exclusive process (exactly one resolved jet) are contrasted and discussed. The inclusion of QCD corrections up to $mathcal{O}(alpha_{text{s}}^3)$ leads to a clear stabilisation of the predictions and contributes substantially to a reduction of remaining theoretical uncertainties.