New physics searches at kaon and hyperon factories.

Rare meson decays are among the most sensitive probes of both heavy and light new physics. Among them, new physics searches using kaons benefit from their small total decay widths and the availability of very large datasets. On the other hand, useful complementary information is provided by hyperon decay measurements. We summarize the relevant phenomenological models and the status of the searches in a comprehensive list of kaon and hyperon decay channels. We identify new search strategies for under-explored signatures, and demonstrate that the improved sensitivities from current and next-generation experiments could lead to a qualitative leap in the exploration of light dark sectors.

Resummation of Super-Leading Logarithms.

Jet cross sections at high-energy colliders exhibit intricate patterns of logarithmically enhanced higher-order corrections. In particular, so-called nonglobal logarithms emerge from soft radiation emitted off energetic partons inside jets. While this is a single-logarithmic effect at lepton colliders, at hadron colliders phase factors in the amplitudes lead to double-logarithmic corrections starting at four-loop order. This effect was discovered a long time ago, but not much is known about the higher-order behavior of these terms and their process dependence. We derive, for the first time, the all-order structure of these "super-leading logarithms" for generic 2→l scattering processes at hadron colliders and resum them in closed form.

Consistent Treatment of Axions in the Weak Chiral Lagrangian.

We present a consistent implementation of weak decays involving an axion or axionlike particle in the context of an effective chiral Lagrangian. We argue that previous treatments of such processes have used an incorrect representation of the flavor-changing quark currents in the chiral theory. As an application, we derive model-independent results for the decays K^{-}→π^{-}a and π^{-}→e^{-}ν[over ¯]_{e}a at leading order in the chiral expansion and for arbitrary axion couplings and mass. In particular, we find that the K^{-}→π^{-}a branching ratio is almost 40 times larger than previously estimated.

Axionlike Particles, Lepton-Flavor Violation, and a New Explanation of a_{µ} and a_{e}.

Axionlike particles (ALPs) with lepton-flavor-violating couplings can be probed in exotic muon and tau decays. The sensitivity of different experiments depends strongly on the ALP mass and its couplings to leptons and photons. For ALPs that can be resonantly produced, the sensitivity of three-body decays such as µâ†’3e and τ→3µ exceeds by many orders of magnitude that of radiative decays like µâ†’eγ and τ→µÎ³. Searches for these two types of processes are therefore highly complementary. We discuss experimental constraints on ALPs with a single dominant lepton-flavor-violating coupling. Allowing for one or more such couplings offers qualitatively new ways to explain the anomalies related to the magnetic moments of the muon or the electron. The explanation of both anomalies requires lepton-flavor-nonuniversal or lepton-flavor-violating ALP couplings.

LHC as an Axion Factory: Probing an Axion Explanation for (g-2)_{µ} with Exotic Higgs Decays.

We argue that a large region of so-far unconstrained parameter space for axionlike particles (ALPs), where their couplings to the standard model are of order (0.01-1) TeV^{-1}, can be explored by searches for the exotic Higgs decays h→Za and h→aa in run 2 of the LHC. Almost the complete region in which ALPs can explain the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon can be probed by searches for these decays with subsequent decay a→γγ, even if the relevant couplings are loop suppressed and the a→γγ branching ratio is less than 1.

Analyzing the CP Nature of a New Scalar Particle via S→Zh Decays.

Scalar particles S that are singlets under the standard model gauge group are generic features of many models of fundamental physics, in particular, as possible mediators to a hidden sector. We show that the decay S→Zh provides a powerful probe of the CP nature of the scalar, because it is allowed only if S has CP-odd interactions. We perform a model-independent analysis of this decay using an effective Lagrangian and compute the relevant Wilson coefficients arising from integrating out heavy fermions to one-loop order.

Effective Field Theory for Jet Processes.

Processes involving narrow jets receive perturbative corrections enhanced by logarithms of the jet opening angle and the ratio of the energies inside and outside the jets. Analyzing cone-jet processes in effective field theory, we find that in addition to soft and collinear fields their description requires degrees of freedom that are simultaneously soft and collinear to the jets. These collinear-soft particles can resolve individual collinear partons, leading to a complicated multi-Wilson-line structure of the associated operators at higher orders. Our effective field theory provides, for the first time, a factorization formula for a cone-jet process, which fully separates the physics at different energy scales. Its renormalization-group equations control all logarithmically enhanced higher-order terms, in particular also the nonglobal logarithms.

Minimal Leptoquark Explanation for the R_{D

We show that by adding a single new scalar particle to the standard model, a TeV-scale leptoquark with the quantum numbers of a right-handed down quark, one can explain in a natural way three of the most striking anomalies of particle physics: the violation of lepton universality in B[over ¯]→K[over ¯]ℓ^{+}ℓ^{-} decays, the enhanced B[over ¯]→D^{(*)}τν[over ¯] decay rates, and the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. Constraints from other precision measurements in the flavor sector can be satisfied without fine-tuning. Our model predicts enhanced B[over ¯]→K[over ¯]^{(*)}νν[over ¯] decay rates and a new-physics contribution to B_{s}-B[over ¯]_{s} mixing close to the current central fit value.

Automated NNLL [Formula: see text] NLO resummation for jet-veto cross sections.

In electroweak-boson production processes with a jet veto, higher-order corrections are enhanced by logarithms of the veto scale over the invariant mass of the boson system. In this paper, we resum these Sudakov logarithms at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy and match our predictions to next-to-leading-order (NLO) fixed-order results. We perform the calculation in an automated way, for arbitrary electroweak final states and in the presence of kinematic cuts on the leptons produced in the decays of the electroweak bosons. The resummation is based on a factorization theorem for the cross sections into hard functions, which encode the virtual corrections to the boson production process, and beam functions, which describe the low-[Formula: see text] emissions collinear to the beams. The one-loop hard functions for arbitrary processes are calculated using the MadGraph5_aMC@NLO framework, while the beam functions are process independent. We perform the resummation for a variety of processes, in particular for [Formula: see text] pair production followed by leptonic decays of the [Formula: see text] bosons.

Dipole operator constraints on composite Higgs models.

Flavour- and CP-violating electromagnetic or chromomagnetic dipole operators in the quark sector are generated in a large class of new physics models and are strongly constrained by measurements of the neutron electric dipole moment and observables sensitive to flavour-changing neutral currents, such as the [Formula: see text] branching ratio and [Formula: see text]. After a model-independent discussion of the relevant constraints, we analyze these effects in models with partial compositeness, where the quarks get their masses by mixing with vector-like composite fermions. These scenarios can be seen as the low-energy limit of composite Higgs or warped extra dimensional models. We study different choices for the electroweak representations of the composite fermions motivated by electroweak precision tests as well as different flavour structures, including flavour anarchy and [Formula: see text] or [Formula: see text] flavour symmetries in the strong sector. In models with "wrong-chirality" Yukawa couplings, we find a strong bound from the neutron electric dipole moment, irrespective of the flavour structure. In the case of flavour anarchy, we also find strong bounds from flavour-violating dipoles, while these constraints are mild in the flavour-symmetric models.

Higgs decay into two photons in a warped extra dimension.

A detailed five-dimensional calculation of the Higgs-boson decay into two photons is performed in both the minimal and the custodially protected Randall-Sundrum (RS) model, where the Standard Model (SM) fields propagate in the bulk and the scalar sector lives on or near the IR brane. It is explicitly shown that the [Formula: see text] gauge invariance of the sum of diagrams involving bosonic fields in the SM also applies to the case of these RS scenarios. An exact expression for the [Formula: see text] amplitude in terms of the five-dimensional (5D) gauge-boson and fermion propagators is presented, which includes the full dependence on the Higgs-boson mass. Closed expressions for the 5D [Formula: see text]-boson propagators in the minimal and the custodial RS model are derived, which are valid to all orders in [Formula: see text]. In contrast to the fermion case, the result for the bosonic contributions to the [Formula: see text] amplitude is insensitive to the details of the localization of the Higgs profile on or near the IR brane. The various RS predictions for the rate of the [Formula: see text] process are compared with the latest LHC data, and exclusion regions for the RS model parameters are derived.

Solution to the flavor problem of warped extra-dimension models.

A minimal solution to the flavor problem of warped extra-dimension models, i.e., the excessive mixed-chirality contribution to CP violation in K-K ¯ mixing arising from Kaluza-Klein (KK) gluon exchange, is proposed. Extending the strong-interaction gauge group in the bulk by an additional SU(3), and breaking this symmetry to QCD via boundary conditions, the constraints arising from the ε(K) parameter are significantly relaxed. As a result, KK scales M(KK)~2 TeV are consistent with all flavor observables without significant fine-tuning. The model predicts an extended Higgs sector featuring massive color-octet scalars and a tower of KK pseudoaxial gluon resonances, whose existence is not in conflict with recent LHC dijet bounds.

Long-distance dominance of the CP asymmetry in B→X(s,d)γ decays.

We show that in the standard model the parametrically leading (by a factor 1/α(s)) contribution to the inclusive CP asymmetry in B→X(s,d)γ decays arises from a long-distance effect in the interference of the electromagnetic dipole amplitude with the amplitude for an up-quark penguin transition accompanied by soft gluon emission. Using model estimates for the associated hadronic parameter Λ(17)(u), we predict a value in the range -0.6% < A(X(s)γ)(SM) < 2.8%. In view of current experimental data, a future precision measurement of the flavor-averaged CP asymmetry would signal the presence of new physics only if a value below -2% was found. A cleaner probe of new physics is offered by the difference of the CP asymmetries in charged versus neutral B→X(s,d)γ decays.

Infrared singularities of scattering amplitudes in perturbative QCD.

An exact formula is derived for the infrared singularities of dimensionally regularized scattering amplitudes in massless QCD with an arbitrary number of loops and legs. It is based on the conjecture that the anomalous-dimension matrix of n-jet operators in soft-collinear effective theory is fully determined by three functions of alpha{s}, which can be extracted from known perturbative results for the quark and gluon form factors. This allows us to predict the three-loop coefficients of all 1/;{k} poles for arbitrary n-parton scattering amplitudes, generalizing existing two-loop results.

Two-loop divergences of QCD scattering amplitudes with massive partons.

We provide a complete description of the two-loop infrared singularities of scattering amplitudes with an arbitrary number of massive and massless partons in non-Abelian gauge theories. To this end, we calculate the two universal functions that completely specify the structure of three-parton correlations in the soft anomalous-dimension matrix at two-loop order in closed analytic form. Both functions are found to be suppressed like O(m(4)/s(2)) in the limit of small parton masses, in accordance with mass factorization theorems. On the other hand, they are unsuppressed near the threshold for pair production of two heavy particles. As an application, we calculate the two-loop anomalous-dimension matrix for qq --> tt near threshold and show that it is not diagonal in the s-channel singlet-octet basis.

Analysis of B(B-->Xsgamma) at next-to-next-to-leading order with a cut on photon energy.

By combining a recent estimate of the total B-->X(s)gamma branching fraction at O(alpha(s)2) with a detailed analysis of the effects of a cut E(gamma)>or=1.6 GeV on photon energy, a prediction for the partial B-->Xsgamma branching fraction at next-to-next-to-leading order in renormalization-group improved perturbation theory is obtained, in which contributions from all relevant scales are factorized. The result B(B-->Xsgamma)=(2.98+/-0.26) x 10(-4) is about 1.4 sigma lower than the experimental world average. This opens a window for significant new physics contributions in rare radiative B decays.

Threshold resummation in momentum space from effective field theory.

Methods from soft-collinear effective theory are used to perform the threshold resummation of Sudakov logarithms for the deep-inelastic structure function F2(x,Q2) in the end-point region x-->1 directly in momentum space. An explicit all-order formula is derived, which expresses the short-distance coefficient function C in the convolution F2 = C multiply sign in circle phi q in terms of Wilson coefficients and anomalous dimensions defined in the effective theory. Contributions associated with the physical scales Q2 and Q2(1-x) are separated from nonperturbative hadronic physics in a transparent way. A crucial ingredient to the momentum-space resummation is the exact solution to the integro-differential evolution equation for the jet function, which is derived. The methods developed in this Letter can be applied to many other hard QCD processes.

Proposal for a precision measurement of |Vub|.

A new method for a precision measurement of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element |V(ub)| is discussed, which combines good theoretical control with high efficiency and a powerful discrimination against charm background. The resulting combined theoretical uncertainty on |V(ub)| is estimated to be 10%.

Renormalization-group evolution of the B-meson light-cone distribution amplitude.

An integro-differential equation governing the evolution of the leading-order B-meson light-cone distribution amplitude is derived. The anomalous dimension in this equation contains a logarithm of the renormalization scale, whose coefficient is identified with the cusp anomalous dimension of Wilson loops. The exact solution of the evolution equation is obtained, from which the asymptotic behavior of the distribution amplitude is derived. These results can be used to resum Sudakov logarithms entering the hard-scattering kernels in QCD factorization theorems for exclusive B decays.