We discuss off-shell contributions in Higgs decays to heavy gauge bosons $H\rightarrow VV^{(*)}$ with $V\in\lbrace Z,W\rbrace$ for a standard model (SM) Higgs boson for both dominant production processes $e^+e^-\rightarrow ZH\rightarrow ZVV^{(*)}$ and $e^+e^-\rightarrow ν\barνH\rightarrow ν\barνVV^{(*)}$ at a (linear) $e^+e^-$ collider. Dependent on the centre-of-mass energy off-shell effects are sizable and important for the understanding of the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism. Moreover we shortly investigate the effects of the signal-background interference in $H\rightarrow γγ$ decays for the Higgsstrahlung initiated process $e^+e^-\rightarrow Zγγ$, where we report a similar shift in the invariant mass peak of the two photons as found for the LHC. For both effects we discuss the sensitivity to the total Higgs width.
One-loop on-shell and off-shell decays $H\rightarrow VV$ with $VV=γγ, Zγ, ZZ$ are presented in this paper. The effects of one-loop on-shell and off-shell Higgs decays in Higgs productions at $e^-e^-$ collisions are also then examined. We find that the impacts of one-loop Higgs decays are significant and they are must be taken into account at $e^-e^-$ collision.
We study the gluon fusion into pairs of off-shell Z bosons and their subsequent decay into charged lepton pairs at hadron colliders. We do not restrict the intermediate state Z bosons to the narrow width approximation but allow for arbitrary invariant masses. We compare the strength of this process with the known leading order results for q q_bar -> Z Z -> 4 l and for g g -> H -> Z Z -> 4 l .
We study the effects of gluon interference in the production and semi-leptonic decay of a t-tbar pair above threshold at the Next Linear Collider (NLC). We calculate all matrix elements to next-to-leading order and use the resulting expressions for the development of a Monte Carlo event generator. Our results show effects at the level of 10% in differential cross-sections. We thus extend previous results obtained by analytical means in the soft-gluon limit.
We show that the narrow-width approximation is insufficient for describing production of supersymmetric particles at the ILC. Especially when cuts are taken into account to extract signals using the narrow-width approximation can be wrong by an order of magnitude.
We study the effect of interference between the Standard Model Higgs boson resonance and the continuum background in the process gamma gamma -> H -> b b-bar at a photon collider. Taking into account virtual gluon exchange between the final-state quarks, we calculate the leading corrections to the height of the resonance for the case of a light (m_H < 160 GeV) Higgs boson. We find that the interference is destructive and around 0.1--0.2% of the peak height, depending on the mass of the Higgs and the scattering angle. This suppression is smaller by an order of magnitude than the anticipated expe…
Six--jet events via WW pairs, $e^+e^- \ar W^+W^- \ar q_1 \overline{q_1} q_2 \overline{q_2} g g$ are studied at tree level using helicity amplitudes. This is the dominant production mechanism for six--jet final states at Lep II energy. ISR effects are taken into account. Total production rates as a function of $y_{cut}$ are given. The relevance of these processes for the issue of colour reconnection is discussed. The cross section for five--jet production via WW pairs at Lep II is also presented.
The presence of large-mass resonances in the data collected at the Large Hadron Collider would provide direct evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model. A key challenge in current resonance searches at the LHC is the modelling of signal--background interference effects, which can severely distort the shape of the reconstructed invariant mass distribution relative to the case where there is no interference. Such effects are strongly dependent on the beyond the Standard Model theory that must be considered as unknown if one aims to minimise any theoretical bias on the search results. In this…
We show that the dominant channel proposed for the determination of the Higgs boson trilinear coupling, $pp\to HH+X$ via gluon fusion, exhibits an interference structure that is independent of the collider energy for collider energies in the range $8\,{\rm TeV}\leq \sqrt{s}\leq 100\,{\rm TeV}$ and is almost maximally destructive. This insensitivity to the collider energy remains approximately true for a variety of other two Higgs production mechanisms although the magnitude of the interference varies widely.
We discuss effects related to the fact that the final state particles of a reaction e+ e- -> t \bar{t} H are actually produced and they decay off mass shell. For the intermediate mass Higgs boson, which decays preferably into a b\bar{b}-quark pair, the reaction will be observed through reactions with 8 fermions in the final state. Such reactions, already in the lowest order of the standard model, receive contributions typically from a few dozen thousands of the Feynman diagrams, the vast majority of which constitute background to the signal of associated production of the top quark pair and Hi…
We consider top-quark mass effects in the Higgs-interference contribution to $Z$-boson pair production in gluon fusion. While this production mechanism is formally of next-to-next-to leading order, its contribution is numerically important above the top threshold $M_{ZZ}^2=4m_t^2$. This region is essential to constrain the width of the Higgs boson and good control over the top-quark mass dependence is crucial. We determine the form factors that are relevant for the interference contribution at two-loop order using a method based on a conformal mapping and Padé approximants constructed from the…
The interesting but difficult phenomenology of supersymmetric models at the LHC and ILC demands a corresponding complexity and maturity from simulation tools. This includes multi-particle final states, reducible and irreducible backgrounds, spin correlations, real emission of photons and gluons, virtual corrections etc. Most of these topics are included in the multi-particle Monte Carlo (MC) Event generators Madgraph, WHIZARD and Sherpa. A comparison of these codes is shown, with a special focus on the new release of WHIZARD. I show examples for the necessity of considering full matrix element…
The importance of off-shell contributions is discussed for $H\to VV^{(*)}$ with $V\in\{Z,W\}$ for large invariant masses $m_{VV}$ involving a standard model (SM)-like Higgs boson with $m_H=125$GeV at a linear collider (LC). Both dominant production processes $e^+e^-\to ZH\to ZVV^{(*)}$ and $e^+e^-\toν\barνH\toν\barνVV^{(*)}$ are taken into account, and the signal processes are compared with background yielding the same final state. The relative size of the off-shell contributions is strongly dependent on the centre-of-mass energy. These contributions can have an important impact on the determi…
In this talk we present results of an exact calculation of gluon radiation in top production and decay at lepton colliders, including all spin correlations and interferences. We compare properties of gluons radiated in the production and decay stages and investigate the sensitivity of interference effects to the top decay width.
Despite their inextricable quantum mechanical nature, events at a high energy particle collider experiment typically have very few unambiguous quantum signatures, due the type of data and the manner in which they are collected. We present a general analysis of one feature of quantum mechanics, interference between two orthogonal states on Hilbert space, projected onto the basis of states that span a collider experiment observable space. Identification of quantum interference can be considered as a binary discrimination between a pure state and a mixed state, and we introduce several statistica…
We study measurement of the CP property of the Higgs boson at a photon linear collider. One method where we take advantage of interference between Higgs-production and background amplitudes is proposed. A broad peak of the photon energy spectrum is helpful in observing the energy dependence of the interference effects. Numerical results for the process $γγ\to t \bar{t}$ are shown as an example.
We determine the accuracy of various approximations to the O(alpha) corrections for on-shell W-pair production. While an approximation based on the universal corrections arising from initial-state radiation, from the running of alpha, and from corrections proportional to m_t^2 fails in the Linear-Collider energy range, a high-energy approximation improved by the exact universal corrections is sufficiently good above about 500GeV. These results indicate that in Monte Carlo event generators for off-shell W-pair production the incorporation of the universal corrections is not sufficient and more …
QCD corrections to $e^+e^- \ra WW \ra q_1 \bar q_1 q_2 \bar q_2$ are computed and presented in a form which allows to impose realistic cuts on the structure of the observed events. QCD radiation substantially modifies the jet--jet invariant mass distributions from which the value of the $W$ mass will be extracted. When the range of allowed jet--jet masses is restricted, as it has been proposed in order to suppress non--$WW$ backgrounds, the total cross section is also deeply affected. If all events are forced to four jets, combining the two partons with smallest invariant mass, and the reconst…
We present a computation of QCD next-to-leading order corrections to the top production and decay process at linear colliders. The top quarks are allowed to be off-shell and the production and decay subprocesses are treated together, thus allowing for interference effects. Real gluon radiation effects as well as virtual corrections are evaluated. The framework employed for this computation is the double pole approximation (DPA).The results discussed include studies of the gluon radiation properties, interference between production- and decay- stage radiation, and top mass reconstruction.
The production of top-antitop-quark pairs at hadron colliders is interesting both in its own right as signal process, but also as background to many searches for new physics. The corresponding predictions aim at the precision level of few per cent, rendering not only the inclusion of radiative corrections of the strong and electroweak interactions relevant, but also of off-shell and finite-width effects originating from the top-quark decays t -> b W -> b l ν_l / qq'. We report on a calculation for the full process pp -> W^+ W^- b \bar{b} -> ν_e e^+ μ^- ν_μb \bar{b} at next-to-leading order QCD…
We consider interference between the Higgs signal and QCD background in $gg\rightarrow h \rightarrow γγ$ and its effect on the on-shell Higgs rate. The existence of sizable strong phases leads to destructive interference of about 2% of the on-shell cross section in the Standard Model. This effect can be enhanced by beyond the standard model physics. In particular, since it scales differently from the usual rates, the presence of interference allows indirect limits to be placed on the Higgs width in a novel way, using on-shell rate measurements. Our study motivates further QCD calculations to r…
We present details of a calculation of the cross section for hadronic top-antitop production in next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD, including the decays of the top and antitop into bottom quarks and leptons. This calculation is based on matrix elements for νe e+ μ- \barν_μb\bar{b} production and includes all non-resonant diagrams, interferences, and off-shell effects of the top quarks. Such contributions are formally suppressed by the top-quark width and turn out to be small in the inclusive cross section. However, they can be strongly enhanced in exclusive observables that play an important role…
Resonance-aware parton-shower matching for off-shell top-antitop production with semi-leptonic decays at electron-positron colliders
Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, Universität Würzburg（维尔茨堡大学理论物理与天体物理研究所）；Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Torino, and INFN, Sezione di Torino（都灵大学物理系及意大利国家核物理研究院都灵分部）；Physikalisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg（弗赖堡大学阿尔伯特·路德维希物理研究所）；Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Milano–Bicocca and INFN, Sezione di Milano–Bicocca（米兰比可卡大学物理系及意大利国家核物理研究院米兰比可卡分部）
In the $s$-channel Higgs-boson-exchange processes, the interference between the amplitudes for CP-even and CP-odd Higgs bosons is sizable, if the helicities of initial and final particles are properly fixed and if the mass difference between these bosons is not much larger than their decay widths. We discuss this interference effect in the process $μ^+ μ^-$ $\to t\bar{t}$. Examining the effects gives us information on CP-parity for Higgs bosons and on the sign of a product of the coupling constants for $Hμ^-μ^+$, $Ht\bar{t}$, $Aμ^-μ^+$ and $At\bar{t}$ vertices. The feasibility of observing the…
New heavy Majorana and Dirac neutrinos production at future electron-muon colliders are investigated. The production of a single heavy neutrino is shown to be more relevant than pair production when comparing cross sections and neutrino mass ranges. The process $e^\pm μ^\mp \longrightarrow ν \ell^{\pm} W^{\mp}$ is studied including on-shell and off-shell heavy neutrino effects. Distributions are calculated including hadronization effects and experimental cuts that suppress background, in order to have a clear signal for heavy neutral leptons.
We present predictions for $t \bar t$ and $t \bar t H$ production and decay at future lepton colliders including non-resonant and interference contributions up to next-to-leading order (NLO) in perturbative QCD. The obtained precision predictions are necessary for a future precise determination of the top-quark Yukawa coupling, and allow for top-quark phenomenology in the continuum at an unprecedented level of accuracy. Simulations are performed with the automated NLO Monte-Carlo framework WHIZARD interfaced to the OpenLoops matrix element generator.
We discuss production of Drell-Yan lepton pairs at hadron colliders in the framework of the parton Reggeization approach, which includes off-shell initial state effects in a gauge-invariant way. Other possible prescriptions to restore gauge-invariance of hard-scattering coefficient with off-shell initial-state partons are also investigated and significant differences for the resulting structure functions are found, especially for the $F_{UU}^{(\cos2ϕ)}$. We compare our numerical results for $q_T$-spectra of the lepton pair with experimental data, obtained by E-288 collaboration ($\sqrt{S}=19.4…
We present a computation of QCD next-to-leading order virtual corrections to the top production and decay process at linear colliders. The top quarks are allowed to be off-shell and the production and decay subprocesses are treated together, thus allowing for interference effects. The framework employed for our computation is the double pole approximation (DPA). We describe the implementation of this approximation for the top production and decay process and compare it with the implementation of DPA for the evaluation of QED corrections to the W pair production at LEP II. Similarities and diff…
We study the production of the Higgs in a association with a vector ($V=W,Z$) via the VBF process, VBF-VH. In the Standard Model (SM), this process exhibits tree-level destructive interference between between $W$ and $Z$ mediated processes and is thus very sensitive to deviations in Higgs couplings to vector bosons. We study this process at both the HL-LHC as well as future high energy lepton colliders. We show in particular that the scenario where Higgs couplings have the same magnitude but opposite relative sign as in the SM, a scenario that is very difficult to distinguish without interfere…
Perturbative unitarity conditions have been playing an important role by estimating the energy scale of new physics, including the Higgs mass as one of the most important examples. In this letter, we show that there is a possibility to see the hint of a new physics (top quark partner) indirectly by observing an "apparent" unitarity violation in $M_{bw}$ distribution well above top quark mass in a process of a heavy resonance decaying into a pair of top quarks.
We discuss interference in the limit $\hat{m}_{W}^2/s \rightarrow 0$ in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). Dimension six operators that contribute to $\barψ ψ\rightarrow \bar{ψ'}_1 ψ_2' \bar{ψ'}_3 ψ'_4$ scattering events can experience a suppression of interference effects with the Standard Model in this limit. This occurs for subsets of phase space in some helicity configurations. We show that approximating these scattering events by $2\rightarrow 2$ on-shell scattering results for intermediate unstable gauge bosons, and using the narrow width approximation, can miss interfere…
We present a complete description of top quark pair production in association with a jet in the dilepton channel. Our calculation is accurate to next-to-leading order in QCD (NLO) and includes all non-resonant diagrams, interferences and off-shell effects of the top quark. Moreover, non-resonant and off-shell effects due to the finite W gauge boson width are taken into account. This calculation constitutes the first fully realistic NLO computation for top quark pair production with a final state jet in hadronic collisions. Numerical results for differential distributions as well as total cross…
Top quark loops in Higgs production via gluon fusion at large invariant final state masses can induce important interference effects in searches for additional Higgs bosons as predicted in, e.g., Higgs portal scenarios and the MSSM when the heavy scalar is broad or the final state resolution is poor. Currently, the limit setting as performed by both ATLAS and CMS is based on injecting a heavy Higgs-like signal neglecting interference effects. In this paper, we perform a study of such "on-shell" interference effects in $pp\to ZZ$ and find that they lead to a $\lesssim{\cal{O}}(30%)$ width schem…
We study the interference between the amplitudes for $gg \rightarrow X \rightarrow gg$, where $X$ is a new heavy digluon resonance, and the QCD background $gg \rightarrow gg$, at the Large Hadron Collider. The interference produces a large low-mass tail and a deficit of events above the resonance mass, compared to the naive pure resonance peak. For a variety of different resonance quantum numbers and masses, we evaluate the signal-background interference contribution at leading order, including showering, hadronization, and detector effects. The resulting new physics dijet mass distribution ma…
The process of electron--positron annihilation into proton--antiproton pair is considered within the vicinity of $ψ(3770)$ resonance. The interference between the pure electromagnetic intermediate state and the $ψ(3770)$ state is evaluated. It is shown that this interference is destructive and the relative phase between these two contributions is large ($ϕ_0 \approx 250^o$).
A high luminosity Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) as a Higgs Factory will be helpful to the precision measurement of the Higgs mass. The signal-background interference effect is carefully studied for the Higgs diphoton decay mode in the associated Z boson production at the future $e^+e^-$ colliders at energy $246 {\rm GeV}$. The mass shifts go up from about $20 {\rm MeV}$ to $50 {\rm MeV}$ for the experimental mass resolution ranging from $0.8 {\rm GeV}$ to $2 {\rm GeV}$.
We discuss the measurements of the anomalous triple gauge couplings at Large Hadron Collider focusing on the contribution of the ${\cal O}_{3W}$ and ${\cal O}_{3\tilde W}$ operators. These deviations were known to be particularly hard to measure due to their suppressed interference with the SM amplitudes in the inclusive processes, leading to approximate flat directions in the space of these Wilson coefficients. We present the prospects for the measurements of these interactions at HL-LHC and HE-LHC using exclusive variables sensitive to the interference terms and taking carefully into account…
We investigate the prospects for detecting a hidden sector at an $e^+ e^-$ collider. The hidden sector is assumed to be composed of invisible particles that carry no charges under the Standard Model gauge interactions, and whose primary interactions with ordinary matter are through the Higgs portal. We consider both the cases when the decays of an on-shell Higgs into a pair of hidden sector particles are kinematically allowed, and the case when such decays are kinematically forbidden. We find that at collider energies below a TeV, the most sensitive channel involves production of an on-shell o…
The discovery potential for detecting new heavy Majorana and Dirac neutrinos at some recently proposed high energy $e^+e^-$ colliders is discussed. These new particles are suggested by grand unified theories and superstring-inspired models. For these models the production of a single heavy neutrino is shown to be more relevant than pair production when comparing cross sections and neutrino mass ranges. The process $ e^+e^- \longrightarrow ν e^{\pm} W^{\mp}$ is calculated including on-shell and off-shell heavy neutrino effects. We present a detailed study of cross sections and distributions tha…
In the framework of quantum gravity propagating in large extra dimensions, the effects of virtual Kaluza-Klein graviton and graviscalar interference with Higgs boson production amplitudes are computed at linear colliders and Higgs factories. The interference of the almost-continuous spectrum of the KK gravitons with the standard model resonant amplitude is finite and predictable in terms of the fundamental D-dimensional Plank scale M_D and the number of extra dimensions δ. We find that, for M_D ~ 1 TeV and δ=2, effects of the order of a few percent could be detected for heavy Higgs bosons (m_H…
We define a CP-asymmetric observable that is sensitive to CP-violating interactions in the gauge-boson sector. We illustrate the utility of this observable by studying how well the LHC can measure the coefficient of a particular dimension-six WWZ operator. We find that sensitivity at the 10^{-3} level is possible at the LHC with 100 fb^{-1} of integrated luminosity, which would greatly exceed the sensitivity achieved at LEP, and would rival or may even better the indirect sensitivities inferred from related operators constrained by electric dipole moment experiments.
The measurement of the charge asymmetry $A_{FB}(e^-e^+\to μ^-μ^+)$ will play an important role at the high-luminosity circular electron-positron collider FCCee considered for construction at CERN. In particular, near the Z resonance, $\sqrt{s} \simeq M_Z \pm 3.5$ GeV, $A_{FB}$ will provide a very precise value of the pure electromagnetic coupling constant $α_{QED}(M_Z)$, which is vitally important for overall tests of the Standard Model. For this purpose, $A_{FB}$ will be measured at the FCCee with an experimental error better than $δA_{FB} \simeq 3\cdot 10^{-5},$ at least a factor 100 more pr…
We study for the first time the collider reach on the derivative Higgs portal, the leading effective interaction that couples a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB) scalar Dark Matter to the Standard Model. We focus on Dark Matter pair production through an off-shell Higgs boson, which is analyzed in the vector boson fusion channel. A variety of future high-energy lepton colliders as well as hadron colliders are considered, including CLIC, a muon collider, the High-Luminosity and High-Energy versions of the LHC, and FCC-hh. Implications on the parameter space of pNGB Dark Matter are discussed. …
A substantial off-shell Higgs boson signal in the gluon fusion and vector boson fusion H --> ZZ and H --> WW channels at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facilitates a novel, complementary approach to constraining the total Higgs width Gamma_H. With LHC Run 1 data, experimental analyses by CMS and ATLAS find Gamma_H < 5.4 Gamma_H,SM and Gamma_H < [4.5,7.5] Gamma_H,SM at 95% confidence level, respectively, where Gamma_H,SM is the expected value in the Standard Model at the measured Higgs boson mass. I review the theoretical basis of the new approach and discuss its significance in comparison to …
We study the possibilities to detect Majorana neutrinos in $e^- γ$ colliders for different center of mass energies. We study the $W^- W^- l_j^{+}(l_j^+\equiv e^+ ,μ^+ ,τ^+)$ final state which are, due to leptonic number violation, a clear signature for intermediate Majorana neutrino contribution. Such a signal (final lepton have the opposite charge of the initial lepton) is not possible if the heavy neutrinos are Dirac particles. In our calculation we use the helicity formalism to obtain analytic expressions for the amplitude and we have considered that the intermediate neutrinos can be either…
In this talk we discuss gluon radiation in top production and decay. After reviewing results for hadron colliders we consider soft gluon radiation at lepton colliders and present gluon distributions that are potentially sensitive to production-decay interference effects.
We present a model-independent study of the effects of a neutral Higgs boson without definite CP-parity in the process $γγ\to t\bar{t}$ around the mass pole of the Higgs boson. Near the resonance pole, the interference between the Higgs-exchange and the continuum amplitudes can be sizable if the photon beams are polarized and helicities of the top and anti-top quarks are measured. Study of these interference effects enables one to determine the CP property of the Higgs boson completely. An example of the complete determination is demonstrated in the context of the minimal supersymmetric standa…
We derive a simple analytic expression for q \bar{q}, g g -> t \bar{t} -> b W^+ \bar{b} W^- -> b \bar{l} ν_l \bar{b} l' \bar{ν_{l'}} for on shell intermediate states with the interference effects due to the polarizations of the t and \bar{t}. We then investigate how this effect may be measured at Tevatron or other hadronic colliders.
Electroweak one-loop calculations for production of top-quark pairs at colliders are completed by providing the missing QED type contributions from real and virtual photons, where also effects from interference between QED and QCD contributions have to be taken into account. Moreover, photon-induced $t \bar{t}$ production is included as another partonic channel.
We present a method to compute off-shell effects for processes involving resonant particles at hadron colliders with the possibility to include realistic cuts on the decay products. The method is based on an effective theory approach to unstable particle production and, as an example, is applied to t-channel single top production at the LHC.
In these proceedings we discuss $t\bar{t}H$ production at the Large Hadron Collider in the Higgs characterisation model. We demonstrate the importance of off-shell effects and higher-order QCD corrections for this process and highlight the importance of single-resonant contributions for the production of a $\mathcal{CP}$-odd Higgs boson.
We show that the most popular method to simulate Bose-Einstein (BE) interference effects predicts negligible correlations between identical pions originating from the hadronic decay of different W's produced in e+e- -> W+W- -> 4 jets at typical linear collider energies.
We study the decays into six quarks of off-shell pairs of W bosons produced in electron-positron annihilations, through the O(as^2) order in the strong coupling constant. We give explicit helicity amplitude formulae. We present numerical results in the context of phenomenological analyses of relevance at LEP2 and future Linear Colliders: such as MW determinations, New Physics and Higgs searches.
We study the potential for using $eγ$\ collisions produced by backscattered laser photons to investigate WW$γ$\ couplings. We present results for Next Linear Collider energies of 500 GeV and 1 TeV. We find that where statistics allow, off W mass shell results can be quite important, complementing on W mass shell results from this and other studies. It is shown that $eγ$\ colliders would prove quite valuable in the investigations of W-boson physics.
Significant colour interference effects are expected in V(=gamma,W,Z)+jet production at hadron colliders. These directly influence the hadronic antenna patterns and can provide a valuable diagnostic tool for probing the nature of the underlying parton subprocesses. Motivated by these ideas, we present quantitative predictions for the distributions of soft particles and jets in W+jet production at the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider.
We study the effect of heavy neutral Higgs bosons on the top pair production process at photon linear colliders.The interference patterns betwenn the resonant Higgs production amplitudes and the continuum QED amplitudes are examined. The patterns are sensitive to the phase of the photon-photon-Higgs vertex which is a good probe of new charged particles.
