No Arabic abstract
We consider extensions of the standard model based on open strings ending on D-branes, with gauge bosons due to strings attached to stacks of D-branes and chiral matter due to strings stretching between intersecting D-branes. Assuming that the fundamental string mass scale is in the TeV range and the theory is weakly coupled, we discuss possible signals of string physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In such D-brane constructions, the dominant contributions to full-fledged string amplitudes for all the common QCD parton subprocesses leading to dijets are completely independent of the details of compactification, and can be evaluated in a parameter-free manner. We make use of these amplitudes evaluated near the first resonant pole to determine the discovery potential of LHC for the first Regge excitations of the quark and gluon. Remarkably, the reach of LHC after a few years of running can be as high as 6.8 TeV. Even after the first 100 pb^{-1} of integrated luminosity, string scales as high as 4.0 TeV can be discovered. For string scales as high as 5.0 TeV, observations of resonant structures in pp to {rm direct} gamma + jet can provide interesting corroboration for string physics at the TeV-scale.
New strategy for resonance search in dijet events at the LHC is discussed. The main distribution used for a bump search is the dijet invariant mass distribution with appropriated cuts. The crucial cut, which is applied to maximize signal significance, is on (pseudo)rapidity difference between the two jets. This is due to the exponential growing of the QCD background contribution with this variable. Usually it is assumed that signal from almost all exotic models populates the central dijet rapidity region y_{1,2} ~ 0 and |y_1-y_2| ~ 0. By contrast, the excited bosons do not contribute into this region, but produce an excess of dijet events over the almost flat QCD background in chi = exp|y_1-y_2| away from this region. Therefore, different sets of cuts should be applied for new physics search depending on the searched resonance properties. In order to confirm the bump and reveal the resonance nature various angular distributions should be used in addition. In particular, for the excited bosons the special choice of parameters could lead to a dip in the centrality ratio distribution over the dijet invariant mass instead of a bump, expected in the most exotic models.
Using QCD calculations of the cross section of inclusive dijet photoproduction in Pb-Pb ultraperipheral collisions in the LHC kinematics as pseudo-data, we study the effect of including these data using the Bayesian reweighting technique on nCTEQ15, nCTEQ15np, and EPPS16 nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs). We find that, depending on the assumed error of the pseudo-data, it leads to a significant reduction of the nPDF uncertainties at small values of the momentum fraction $x_A$. Taking the error to be 5%, the uncertainty of nCTEQ15 and nCTEQ15np nPDFs reduces approximately by a factor of two at $x_A=10^{-3}$. At the same time, the reweighting effect on EPPS16 nPDFs is much smaller due to the higher value of the tolerance and a more flexible parametrization form.
Weak-scale supersymmetry remains to be one of the best-motivated theories of physics beyond the Standard Model. We evaluate the sensitivities of the High Luminosity (HL) and High Energy (HE) upgrades of the LHC to gluinos and stops, decaying through the simplified topologies $tilde{g} to q bar{q} chi^0$, $tilde{g} to t bar{t} chi^0$ and $tilde{t} to t tilde{chi}^0$. Our HL-LHC analyses improve on existing experimental projections by optimizing the acceptance of kinematic variables. The HE-LHC studies represent the first 27 TeV analyses. We find that the HL-(HE-)LHC with 3 ab$^{-1}$ (15 ab$^{-1}$) of integrated luminosity will be sensitive to the masses of gluinos and stops at 3.2 (5.7) TeV and 1.5 (2.7) TeV, respectively, decaying to massless neutralinos.
Extensions of the standard model with universal extra dimensions are interesting both as phenomenological templates as well as model-building fertile ground. For instance, they are one the prototypes for theories exhibiting compressed spectra, leading to difficult searches at the LHC since the decay products of new states are soft and immersed in a large standard model background. Here we study the phenomenology at the LHC of theories with two universal extra dimensions. We obtain the current bound by using the production of second level excitations of electroweak gauge bosons decaying to a pair of leptons and study the reach of the LHC Run~II in this channel. We also introduce a new channel originating in higher dimensional operators and resulting in the single production of a second level quark excitation. Its subsequent decay into a hard jet and lepton pair resonance would allow the identification of a more model-specific process, unlike the more generic vector resonance signal. We show that the sensitivity of this channel to the compactification scale is very similar to the one obtained using the vector resonance.
We present a next-to-leading order QCD calculation of inclusive dijet photoproduction in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC and show that the results agree very well with various kinematic distributions measured by the ATLAS collaboration. The effect of including these data in nCTEQ or EPPS16 nuclear parton density functions (nPDFs) is then studied using the Bayesian reweighting technique. For an assumed total error of 5% on the final data, its inclusion would lead to a significant reduction of the nPDF uncertainties of up to a factor of two at small values of the parton momentum fraction. As an outlook, we discuss future analyes of diffractive nPDFs, which are so far completely unknown.