We study di-boson production via both neutral and charged current at the Large Hadron Collider, i.e. subprocesses $q\bar q\to e^+ν_e μ^-\barν_μ$ + ${\rm{c.c.}}$ and $q\bar q'\to l^+ν_l l^{'+}l^{'-}$ + ${\rm{c.c.}}$, respectively, where $q,q'$ are quarks and $l,l'=e,μ$, in all possible combinations, in the context of the 4-Dimensional Composite Higgs Model. These modes enable the production in the intermediate steps of several additional -- with respect to the Standard Model -- neutral and charged gauge bosons belonging to the spectrum of this scenario, all of which in resonant topologies. We not only find these channels to be accessible over the background but also show that, after a dedicated cut-based analysis, kinematic reconstruction of most such resonances is always possible. However, since the Electro-Weak precision data generally disfavor neutral and charged gauge boson masses below the TeV range and also their large couplings to light-fermions, these modes turn out to be relevant only for the 14 TeV option with high integrated luminosity.
Models of neutrino mass generation provide well motivated scenarios of Beyond-the-Standard-Model physics. The synergy between low energy and high energy LHC searches facilitates an effective approach to rule out, constrain or ideally pinpoint such models. In this proceedings report, we provide a brief overview of scenarios where searches at the LHC can help determine the mechanism of light neutrino masses and potentially falsify baryogenesis mechanisms.
Within the framework of a $Z'$ model with non-universal leptonic couplings, we analyze possible signatures of leptonic number violation effects at LHC. Results are described for leptonic energy distributions, both from its specific signature and events number, that could allow us to observe this class of models, under reasonable conditions at LHC.
We discuss the prospects of observing double parton scattering (DPS) processes with purely leptonic final states at the LHC. We first study same-sign W pair production, which is particularly suited for studying momentum and valence number conservation effects, followed by discussions on double Drell-Yan and production of J/psi pairs. The effects of initial state and intrinsic transverse momentum smearing on pair-wise transverse momentum balance characteristic to DPS are studied quantitatively. We also present a new technique, based on rapidity differences, to extract the DPS component from a d…
A brief summary of the calculation of the NLO QCD corrections to the process pp -> e+ ve mu- v_mu bb~ j + X is reported. This provides a complete description of the process of t-tbar + jet production with leptonic decays beyond the narrow-width approximation. Off-shell effects for top quarks and W boson decays are fully taken into account, namely all resonant and non-resonant contributions are included in the fixed-order calculation. Selected results for total and differential cross sections are shown for the case of the LHC Run I at the energy of 8 TeV.
In this paper we present the full NLO QCD + NLO EW corrections to the $Z$-boson pair production in association with a hard jet at the LHC. The subsequent $Z$-boson leptonic decays are included by adopting both the naive NWA and MadSpin methods for comparison. Since the $ZZ+{\rm jet}$ production is an important background for single Higgs boson production and new physics search at hadron colliders, the theoretical predictions with high accuracy for the hadronic production of $ZZ+{\rm jet}$ are necessary. We present the numerical results of the integrated cross section and various kinematic dist…
Top squark (stop) can be produced via QCD interaction but also the electroweak interaction at the LHC. In this paper, we investigate the observability of the associated production of stop and chargino, $pp \to \tilde{t}_1\tildeχ^-_1$, in compressed electroweakino scenario at the 14 TeV LHC. Due to the small mass-splitting between the lightest neutralino ($\tildeχ^0_1$) and chargino ($\tildeχ^-_1$), such a single stop production can give a mono-top signature through the stop decay $\tilde{t}_1 \to t \tildeχ^0_1$. Focusing on the leptonic mono-top channel, we propose a lab-frame observable $\cos…
We present the complete next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD and NLO electroweak (EW) corrections to the $W$-boson pair production associated with a hard jet at the LHC including the spin correlated $W$-boson leptonic decays. The dependence of the leading order (LO) and NLO corrected cross sections on the jet transverse momentum cut is investigated. In dealing with the subsequent resonant $W$-boson decays, we adopt the {\sc MadSpin} method where the spin correlation effect is included. We also provide the LO and NLO corrected distributions of the transverse momenta and rapidities of final products.…
We compute, for $t \bar t$ production at the LHC and at the Tevatron, several charge asymmetries to NLO QCD, including also the electromagnetic and weak-interaction corrections. We calculate these asymmetries both inclusively and with additional kinematic cuts and compare our results, where possible, with recent experimental results and with SM predictions. The $t \bar t$ asymmetries induce also corresponding asymmetries for the charged leptons from semileptonic top-quark decay. Although these asymmetries are, in the SM, smaller than the corresponding ones for top quarks, they are expected to …
We propose a strategy for distinguishing the Dirac / Majorana character of heavy neutrinos with masses below the $W$ boson mass, using purely leptonic decays at the LHC. The strategy makes use of a forward-backward asymmetry of the opposite charge lepton in the $W^{+}\rightarrow l^{+}l^{+}l^{'-}ν$ decay. In order to check the experimental feasibility of the model, we show, through a numerical analysis, that in the decay $W^{+}\rightarrow e^{+}e^{+}μ^{-}ν$ the two positrons in the final state can be distinguished for different ranges of the heavy neutrino masses. Finally, we estimated the numbe…
We present a calculation of the next-to-leading-order QCD and electroweak corrections to WWW production with leptonically decaying $\mathrm{W}$ bosons at the LHC, fully taking into account off-shell contributions, intermediary resonances, and spin correlations. The contributions of the quark-antiquark-induced electroweak correction to typical fiducial cross sections at the LHC are of the order of 5-8% and grow to tens of percent in the high-energy tails of distributions. We observe strong cancellations among the positive quark-photon and negative quark-antiquark-induced electroweak corrections…
The calculation of $t\bar{t}Z$ production including leptonic decays of both $Z$ boson and top quarks via a partially or fully off-shell calculation represents a definite step forward towards a more accurate description of events whose signatures originate from $t\bar{t}Z$ production. In this talk we review two studies that represent the state of the art of theoretical modeling of $t\bar{t}Z$ production by either performing the NLO QCD calculation of the fully decayed $pp\rightarrow e^+ν_eμ^-\barν_μb\bar{b}τ^+τ^-$ process (see Ref. [1]) or matching the NLO QCD calculation of $pp\rightarrow t\ba…
We present a phenomenology study on central exclusive production of $W^+W^-$ boson pairs in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at 14 TeV using the forward proton detectors, such as the ATLAS Forward Proton or the CMS-TOTEM Precision Proton Spectrometer detectors. Final states where at least one of the $W$ bosons decay hadronically in a large-radius jet are considered. The latter extends previous efforts that consider solely leptonic final states. A measurement of exclusive $W^+W^-$ also allows us to further constrain anomalous quartic gauge boson interactions between photons…
Most models of weak scale supersymmetry (SUSY) predict observable rates for production of SUSY matter at the CERN LHC. The SUSY collider events are expected to be rich in jets, isolated (and non-isolated) leptons and missing E_T. After first discussing the merits of mixed axion/axino vs. neutralino cold dark matter in SUSY models, I then survey prospects for detecting SUSY matter at the LHC via leptonic signatures. In the paradigm mSUGRA model, cascade decays of gluinos and squarks should yield high rates for multi-jet plus multi-lepton events, allowing values of m_{\tg}\sim 3 (1.8) TeV to be …
This is a short review of the framework proposed in \cite{Goh:2009wg} which gives rise to indirect Dark Matter (DM) signals explaining the recent cosmic-ray anomalies and links cosmic-ray signals of DM to LHC signals of a leptonic Higgs sector.The states of the leptonic Higgs doublet are lighter than about 200 GeV, yielding large 2 tau and 4 tau event rates at the LHC. For the case of annihilations, cosmic photon and neutrino signals are constrained.
We explore the potential for the discovery of a dilaton $\mathcal{O}(200-500)$ GeV in a classical scale/conformal invariant extension of the Standard Model by investigating the size of the corresponding breaking scale $Λ$ at the LHC, extending a previous analysis. In particular, we address the recent bounds on $Λ$ derived from Higgs boson searches. We investigate if such a dilaton can be produced via gluon-gluon fusion, presenting rates for its decay either into a pair of Higgs bosons or into two heavy gauge bosons, which can give rise to multi-leptonic final states. A detailed analysis via PY…
For the first time the next-to-leading-order electroweak corrections to the full off-shell production of two top quarks that decay leptonically are presented. This calculation includes all off-shell, non-resonant, and interference effects for the 6-particle phase space. While the electroweak corrections are below one per cent for the integrated cross section, they reach up to 15% in the high-transverse-momentum region of distributions. To support the results of the complete one-loop calculation, we have in addition evaluated the electroweak corrections in two different pole approximations, one…
In this paper we present the NLO QCD + NLO EW corrections to the $ZZZ$ production with subsequent $Z$-boson leptonic decays at the LHC by adopting the improved narrow width approximation, which takes into account off-shell contributions and spin correlations. Integrated cross sections at $13$, $14$, $33$ and $100~{\rm TeV}$ hadron colliders and various kinematic distributions are presented. Our numerical results show that the jet emission correction accounts for a large part of the total QCD correction, especially in the high energy region. By applying a proper cut to the jet transverse moment…
The unique forward LHCb acceptance opens the possibility for performing precision Standard Model (SM) processes in a kinematical regime beyond the reach of both ATLAS and CMS experiments. In this article we discuss the feasibility of performing $W^{\pm}j$ measurements with 14 TeV LHCb data, and find that the leptonic asymmetry at high pseudorapidity, with appropriate cuts on the associated jet, can provide a factor of three reduction on the $d$ quark PDF uncertainty in a region of Bjorken $x > 0.5$.
We compute the hadronic production of top-antitop pairs in association with a Higgs boson at next-to-leading-order QCD, including the decay of the top and antitop quark into bottom quarks and leptons. Our computation is based on full leading and next-to-leading-order matrix elements for $e^+ ν_e μ^-\barν_μb \bar{b} H(j)$ and includes all non-resonant contributions, off-shell effects and interferences. Numerical results for the integrated cross section and several differential distributions are given for the LHC operating at 13 TeV using a fixed and a dynamical factorization and renormalization…
Possibility of observing associated production of charged Higgs and W boson in the framework of MSSM at LHC is studied. Both leptonic and hadronic decays of W boson are studied while the charged Higgs boson is considered to decay to a $τ$ lepton and a neutrino. Therefore two search categories are defined based on the leptonic and hadronic final states, i.e. $\ell τ+E^{miss}_{T}$ and $jj τ+E^{miss}_{T}$ where $\ell=e$ or $μ$ and $j$ is a light jet from $W$ decay. The discovery chance of the two categories is evaluated at an integrated luminosity of 300 \invfb at LHC. It is shown that both lepto…
Isolating the scattering of longitudinal weak bosons at the LHC is an important tool to probe the ElectroWeak Symmetry Breaking mechanism. Separating polarizations of $W$ and $Z$ bosons is complicated, because of non resonant contributions and interference effects. Additional care is necessary when considering $Z$ bosons, due to the $γ/Z$ mixing in the coupling to charged leptons. We propose a method to define polarized signals in $Z\!Z$ and $W^+\!Z$ scattering at the LHC, which relies on the separation of weak boson polarizations at the amplitude level in Monte Carlo simulations. After valida…
In a composite model of the weak bosons the p-wave bosons are studied. The state with the lowest mass is identified with the boson, which might have been detected recently at the LHC. Specific properties of these excited bosons are studied, in particular their decays into weak bosons, into photons and into leptons or quarks.
We discuss the impact of anomalous WW$γ$ and WWZ couplings on WZ+jet production at next-to-leading order QCD, including full leptonic decays of the electroweak gauge bosons. While the inclusive hadronic cross sections do not exhibit any particular sensitivity to anomalous couplings once the residual QCD scale uncertainties are taken into account, the transverse momentum distributions show substantial deviations from the Standard Model, provided that the anomalous vertices are probed at large enough momentum transfers.
Some of the cleanest signals for new physics in the early runs of the LHC will involve strongly-produced particles which give rise to multiple leptons by undergoing cascade decays through weakly-interacting states to stable particles. Some of the most spectacular final states will involve three or more leptons, multiple jets and generally missing energy-momentum as well. A triad of the most interesting models of new physics which induce such signals is known to consist of (i) supersymmetry with R-parity conservation, (ii) a universal extra dimension with conservation of KK-parity and (iii) lit…
We study the anomalous $t\bar{t}Z$ couplings in the $t\bar{t}Z$ production in leptonic final state at the $13$ TeV LHC. We use the polarizations of top quarks and $Z$ boson, two-body and three-body spin correlations among the top quarks and $Z$ boson, and the cross section to probe the anomalous couplings. We estimate one parameter and simultaneous limits on the couplings of the effective vertex as well as the effective operators for a set of luminosities $150$ fb$^{-1}$, $300$ fb$^{-1}$, $1000$ fb$^{-1}$, and $3000$ fb$^{-1}$. The polarizations and the spin correlations are found to be helpfu…
The computation of the NLO QCD corrections to the cross sections for W+W- gamma and ZZgamma production in hadronic collisions is presented. We consider the case of a real photon in the final state, but include full leptonic decays of the W and Z bosons. Numerical results for the LHC and the Tevatron are obtained through a fully flexible parton level Monte Carlo based on the structure of the VBFNLO program, allowing an easy implementation of arbitrary cuts and distributions. We show the dependence on scale variations of the integrated cross sections and provide evidence that NLO QCD corrections…
We calculate, for the first time, the NNLO QCD corrections to identified heavy hadron production at hadron colliders. The calculation is based on a flexible numeric framework which allows the calculation of any distribution of a single identified heavy hadron plus jets and non-QCD particles. As a first application we provide NNLO QCD predictions for several differential distributions of $B$ hadrons in $t\bar t$ events at the LHC. Among others, these predictions are needed for the precise determination of the top quark mass. The extension of our results to other processes, like open or associat…
We present an analysis of both the Neutral Current (NC) and Charged Current (CC) Drell-Yan processes at the LHC within a 4 Dimensional realization of a Composite Higgs model studying the cross sections and taking into account the possible impact of the extra fermions present in the spectrum.
In composite Higgs models (CHMs), electroweak precision data generically push colourless composite vector resonances to a regime where they dominantly decay into pairs of light top partners. This greatly attenuates their traces in canonical collider searches, tailored for narrow resonances promptly decaying into Standard Model final states. By reinterpreting the CMS same-sign dilepton (SS2$\ell$) analysis at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), originally designed to search for top partners with electric charge $5/3$, we demonstrate its significant coverage over this kinematical regime. We also sh…
The measurements of rare leptonic and semi-leptonic B decays performed at the LHC, not showing any significant deviations from the Standard Model expectations, put strong constraints on new physics. A brief account of the impact of recent measurements is given. As a concrete example, models with partial compositeness are discussed, where tree-level flavour-changing Z couplings lead to potentially visibile effects in rare B (and K) decays that will be scrutinized experimentally in the near future.
Within a mirror type assignment for the excited composite fermions the neutrino mass term is built up from a Dirac mass, $m_*$, which gives the mass of charged lepton component of the $SU(2)$, right-handed, doublet, and a Majorana mass, $m_L$, for the left-handed component (singlet) of the excited neutrino. The mass matrix is diagonalized leading to two Majorana mass eigenstates. The active neutrino field $ν^*_R$ is thus a superposition of the two mass eigenstates with mixing coefficients which depend on the ratio $m_L/m_*$. We discuss the prospects of discovery of these physical states at the…
In a strong-coupling picture of ElectroWeak Symmetry Breaking, a composite electroweak-neutral state in the TeV mass range, carrying a global (quasi-)conserved charge, makes a plausible Dark Matter (DM) candidate, with the ongoing direct DM searches being precisely sensitive to the expected signals. To exploit the crucial interplay between direct DM searches and the LHC, we consider a composite iso-singlet vector $V$, mixed with the hypercharge gauge field, as the essential mediator of the interaction between the DM particle and the nucleus. Based on a suitable effective chiral Lagrangian, we …
Precision measurements at the LHC can provide probes of new physics, and they are complementary to direct searches. The high energy distribution of di-boson processes ($WW,WZ,Vh$) is a promising place, with the possibility of significant improvement in sensitivity as the data accumulates. We focus on the semi-leptonic final states, and make projections of the reach for future runs of the LHC with integrated luminosities of 300 fb$^{-1}$ and 3 ab$^{-1}$. We emphasize the importance of tagging the polarization of the vector bosons, in particular for the $WW$ and $WZ$ channels. We employ a combin…
We study the the impact of Run2 LHC data on general Composite Higgs scenarios, where non-linear effects, mixing with additional scalars and new fermionic degrees of freedom could simultaneously contribute to the modification of Higgs properties. We obtain new experimental limits on the scale of compositeness, the mixing with singlets and doublets with the Higgs, and the mass and mixing angle of top-partners. We also show that for scenarios where new fermionic degrees of freedom are involved in electroweak symmetry breaking, there is an interesting interplay among Higgs coupling measurements, b…
Using the 4-Dimensional Composite Higgs Model (4DCHM) realization of the minimal composite Higgs scenario, we discuss the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) sensitivity to new physics signals from multiple $Z^\prime$ and $W^\prime$ broad resonances. We illustrate the role of systematic uncertainties due to QCD effects encoded in parton distribution functions for experimental searches in leptonic channels. We show that, by reducing this systematics through the combination of high-precision measurements of Standard Model (SM) lepton-charge and forward-backward asymmetries near the SM vector-boson peak,…
We demonstrate the potential of fully leptonic cascade decays of a heavy neutral Higgs boson through vectorlike leptons as a simultaneous probe for extended Higgs sectors and extra matter particles at the LHC. The processes we explore are unique in that their event topologies lead to di-boson-like leptonic final states with a lepton pair which does not reconstruct the mass of a gauge boson. By recasting existing $2\ell + E_T^{\rm miss}$ and $3/4\ell$ searches channels using run2 data from the LHC we obtain $\textit{model independent}$ bounds on the masses of heavy scalars and vectorlike lepton…
The radial excitation of the global symmetry-breaking vacuum in composite Higgs models, called the "global Higgs", has been recently a focus of investigation. In this paper we study the prospects for detecting this composite scalar at the 13 TeV LHC. We compute the global Higgs production rates and estimate the discovery potential of a global Higgs decaying into top quark pairs and into Higgs and electroweak gauge bosons with subsequent hadronic decays. The global Higgs may also decay into fermion resonances such as top partners, providing a new window into compositeness. We show that top part…
The production of doubly charged Higgs bosons (H^{\pm\pm}) at the CERN LHC can give rise to distinctive multi-lepton signatures. The discovery potential of H^{\pm\pm} can be optimized by considering a search strategy which is sensitive to both of the dominant production mechanisms, q\bar q\to H^{++}H^{--} and q\bar {q'}\to H^{\pm\pm}H^{\mp}. We compare the discovery potential for the signatures of exactly four leptons and at least three leptons in the final state, using the same set of cuts. We have carried out fast detector simulations at the LHC for both signal and backgrounds for a wide ran…
We explore the collider prospects of neutrino non-standard interaction with a Standard Model (SM) gauge-singlet leptonic scalar $ϕ$ carrying two units of lepton-number-charge. These leptonic scalars are forbidden from interacting with the SM fermions at the renormalizable level and, if one allows for higher-dimensional operators, couple predominantly to SM neutrinos. For masses at or below the electroweak scale, $ϕ$ decays exclusively into neutrinos. Its characteristic production signature at hadron collider experiments like the LHC would be via the vector boson fusion process and leads to sam…
We explain the current Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data pointing to the discovery of a neutral Higgs boson in the context of a 4-Dimensional Composite Higgs Model (4DCHM). The full particle spectrum of this scenario is derived without any approximation and implemented in automated computational tools to enable fast phenomenological investigation. Several parameter configurations compliant with experimental constraints are presented and discussed. A $χ^2$ fit to the LHC data quantifying the consistency of the 4DCHM as a whole with experimental evidence is finally performed.
We compute the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to WZ+jet production at the Tevatron and the LHC, including decays of the electroweak bosons to light leptons with all off-shell effects taken into account. The corrections are sizable and have significant impact on the differential distributions.
We present preliminary results of the first convergent global fits of several minimal composite Higgs models. Our fits are performed using the differential evolution optimisation package $\texttt{Diver}$. A variety of physical constraints are taken into account, including a wide range of exclusion bounds on heavy resonance production from Run 2 of the LHC. As a by-product of the fits, we analyse the collider phenomenology of the lightest new up-type and down-type resonances in the viable regions of our models, finding some low-mass resonances that can be probed in future collider searches.
Composite Higgs models with a fermionic UV completion can contain additional colored states beside the usual top-partners. We focus here on a model which contains in addition SU(3) color octet top partners as well as color singlet ones. The latter can in principle serve as a dark matter candidate. We consider a particular composite Higgs model which contains SU(3) color octet top partners besides the usually considered triplet representations. Moreover, color singlet top partners are present as well which can in principle serve as dark matter candidates. We investigate the LHC phenomenology of…
We propose a minimal vector-like leptonic dark matter (DM) with renormalisable interaction in a beyond the Standard Model (SM) scenario, where the SM is augmented with a vector-like doublet and a singlet leptons. The additional fermions are odd under a discrete $Z_2$ symmetry, while the rest of the SM particles are singlets, and thus providing stability to the DM. In this scenario, we show that, the DM emerges as an admixture of the neutral component of the vector-like doublet and the singlet leptons. The singlet-doublet mixing ($\sin θ$) plays a crucial role in yielding the correct relic dens…
We study the possibility of detecting New Physics (NP) phenomena at the LHC through a new search strategy looking at the monotop (top plus missing energy) signature which is common to a variety of NP models. We focus on the leptonic top decay mode and study the discovery or exclusion reach of the 2012 LHC data for three example models. Contrary to the hadronic mode, in this case the problematic QCD multijet background can be safely neglected. We find that the key kinematic variable to suppress most of the remaining SM backgrounds is the transverse mass of the charged lepton and missing energy.…
We study the feasibility and advantages of investigating the $c\to s$ decay channel of the $B_c$ meson through the cascade decay $B_c\to B_sπ$, $B_s\to D_s\ellν$. We take into account possible contaminations coming from the vector excitations (like $B_s^*$, $D_s^*$ or $ρ$ in the intermediate stages of the cascade) too, as well as the opposite cascade $B_c\to B_s\ellν$, $B_s\to D_sπ$. We show how the $p_T$ distribution of the pion and the lepton can possibly help to differentiate between various form factor models, for which we either need more integrated luminosity at the LHC, or a high-lumino…
We show that the 4-Dimensional Composite Higgs Model (4DCHM) could provide an even better explanation than the Standard Model (SM) of the current Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data pointing to the discovery of a neutral Higgs boson. The full particle spectrum of this scenario is derived without any approximation and implemented in automated computational tools to enable fast phenomenological investigation. Several benchmark sets compliant with the aforementioned data are presented and discussed.
The discovery potential of both singlet and doublet vector-like leptons (VLLs) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) as well as at the not-so-far future muon and electron machines is explored. The focus is on a single production channel for LHC direct searches while double production signatures are proposed for the leptonic colliders. A Deep Learning algorithm to determine the discovery (or exclusion) statistical significance at the LHC is employed. While doublet VLLs can be probed up to masses of 1 TeV, their singlet counterparts have very low cross sections and can hardly be tested beyond a few…
We report on the calculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the production of W-boson pairs in association with a hard jet at the Tevatron and the LHC, which is an important source of background for Higgs and new-physics searches. Leptonic decays of the W bosons are included by applying an improved version of the narrow-width approximation that treats the W bosons as on-shell particles, but keeps the information on the W spin. Contributions from external bottom quarks are neglected, because they are either numerically suppressed or should be attributed to different processes s…
We study the phenomenology of both the Neutral Current (NC) and Charged Current (CC) Drell-Yan (DY) processes at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) within a 4 Dimensional realization of a Composite Higgs model with partial compositness by estimating the integrated and differential event rates and taking into account the possible impact of the extra fermions present in the spectrum. We show that, in certain regions of the parameters space, the multiple neutral resonances present in the model can be distinguishable and experimentally accessible in the invariant or transverse mass distributions.
We consider a model where the electroweak symmetry breaking is driven by strong dynamics, resulting in an electroweak doublet scalar condensate, and transmitted to the standard model matter fields via another electroweak doublet scalar. At low energies the effective theory therefore shares features with a type-I two Higgs doublet model. However, important differences arise due to the rich composite spectrum expected to contain new vector resonances accessible at the LHC. We carry out a systematic analysis of the vector resonance signals at LHC and find that the model remains viable, but will b…