• Physics:  High-Energy Physics - Experiment  •  High-Energy Physics - Phenomenology

  Simplified Template Cross Sections -- Stage 1.1 and 1.2

  by Nicolas Berger, Claudia Bertella, Matteo Bonanomi, Nihal Brahimi, Thomas P. Calvet, Milene Calvetti, Valerio Dao, Marco Delmastro, Michael Duehrssen-Debling, Paolo Francavilla, Yacine Haddad, Sarah Heim, Jelena Jovicevic, Oleh Kivernyk, Maria Moreno Llacer, Jonathon M. Langford, Changqiao Li, Giovanni Marchiori, Josh A. McFayden, Johannes K. L. Michel, Predrag Milenovic, Carlo E. Pandini, Edward Scott, Frank J. Tackmann, Kerstin Tackmann, Lorenzo Viliani, Meng Xiao, Hongtao Yang

  Version 1 (latest version)
  Submitted July 11, 2025, 3:35 p.m. to SciPost Physics Community Reports · latest activity: Dec. 4, 2025, 11:29 a.m.

Series contained in this Journal

• LHC Higgs Working Group Reports

• Snowmass white paper: The cosmological bootstrap

  Daniel Baumann, Daniel Green, Austin Joyce, Enrico Pajer, Guilherme L. Pimentel, Charlotte Sleight, Massimo Taronna

  SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 1 (2024) · published 23 July 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This white paper summarizes recent progress in the cosmological bootstrap, an approach to the study of the statistics of primordial fluctuations from consistency with unitarity, locality and symmetry assumptions. We review the key ideas of the bootstrap method, with an eye towards future directions and ambitions of the program. Focusing on recent progress involving de Sitter and quasi-de Sitter backgrounds, we highlight the role of singularities and unitarity in constraining the form of the correlators. We also discuss nonperturbative formulations of the bootstrap, connections to anti-de Sitter space, and potential implications for holography.

  33 citations

• Possible causes of false general relativity violations in gravitational wave observations

  Anuradha Gupta, K. G. Arun, Enrico Barausse, Laura Bernard, Emanuele Berti, Sajad A. Bhat, Alessandra Buonanno, Vitor Cardoso, Shun Yin Cheung, Teagan A. Clarke, Sayantani Datta, Arnab Dhani, Jose María Ezquiaga, Ish Gupta, Nir Guttman, Tanja Hinderer, Qian Hu, Justin Janquart, Nathan K. Johnson-McDaniel, Rahul Kashyap, N. V. Krishnendu, Paul D. Lasky, Andrew Lundgren, Elisa Maggio, Parthapratim Mahapatra, Andrea Maselli, Purnima Narayan, Alex B. Nielsen, Laura K. Nuttall, Paolo Pani, Lachlan Passenger, Ethan Payne, Lorenzo Pompili, Luca Reali, Pankaj Saini, Anuradha Samajdar, Shubhanshu Tiwari, Hui Tong, Chris Van Den Broeck, Kent Yagi, Huan Yang, Nicolás Yunes, B. S. Sathyaprakash

  SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 5 (2025) · published 13 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  General relativity (GR) has proven to be a highly successful theory of gravity since its inception. The theory has thrivingly passed numerous experimental tests, predominantly in weak gravity, low relative speeds, and linear regimes, but also in the strong-field and very low-speed regimes with binary pulsars. Observable gravitational waves (GWs) originate from regions of spacetime where gravity is extremely strong, making them a unique tool for testing GR, in previously inaccessible regions of large curvature, relativistic speeds, and strong gravity. Since their first detection, GWs have been extensively used to test GR, but no deviations have been found so far. Given GR's tremendous success in explaining current astronomical observations and laboratory experiments, accepting any deviation from it requires a very high level of statistical confidence and consistency of the deviation across GW sources. In this paper, we compile a comprehensive list of potential causes that can lead to a false identification of a GR violation in standard tests of GR on data from current and future ground-based GW detectors. These causes include detector noise, signal overlaps, gaps in the data, detector calibration, source model inaccuracy, missing physics in the source and in the underlying environment model, source misidentification, and mismodeling of the astrophysical population. We also provide a rough estimate of when each of these causes will become important for tests of GR for different detector sensitivities. We argue that each of these causes should be thoroughly investigated, quantified, and ruled out before claiming a GR violation in GW observations.

  25 citations

• Effective field theory descriptions of Higgs boson pair production

  Lina Alasfar, Luca Cadamuro, Christina Dimitriadi, Arnaud Ferrari, Ramona Gröber, Gudrun Heinrich, Tom Ingebretsen Carlson, Jannis Lang, Serhat Ördek, Laura Pereira Sánchez, Ludovic Scyboz, Jörgen Sjölin

  SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 2 (2024) · published 16 October 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Higgs boson pair production is traditionally considered to be of particular interest for a measurement of the trilinear Higgs self-coupling. Yet it can offer insights into other couplings as well, since -- in an effective field theory (EFT) parameterisation of potential new physics -- both the production cross section and kinematical properties of the Higgs boson pair depend on various other Wilson coefficients of EFT operators. This note summarises the ongoing efforts related to the development of EFT tools for Higgs boson pair production in gluon fusion, and provides recommendations for the use of distinct EFT parameterisations in the Higgs boson pair production process. This document also outlines where further efforts are needed and provides a detailed analysis of theoretical uncertainties. Additionally, benchmark scenarios are updated. We also re-derive a parameterisation of the next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections in terms of the EFT Wilson coefficients both for the total cross section and the distribution in the invariant mass of the Higgs boson pair, providing for the first time also the covariance matrix. A reweighting procedure making use of the newly derived coefficients is validated, which can be used to significantly speed up experimental analyses.

  9 citations

• Radiative corrections and Monte Carlo tools for low-energy hadronic cross sections in $e^+ e^-$ collisions

  Riccardo Aliberti, Paolo Beltrame, Ettore Budassi, Carlo M. Carloni Calame, Gilberto Colangelo, Lorenzo Cotrozzi, Achim Denig, Anna Driutti, Tim Engel, Lois Flower, Andrea Gurgone, Martin Hoferichter, Fedor Ignatov, Sophie Kollatzsch, Bastian Kubis, Andrzej Kupść, Fabian Lange, Alberto Lusiani, Stefan E. Müller, Jérémy Paltrinieri, Pau Petit Rosàs, Fulvio Piccinini, Alan Price, Lorenzo Punzi, Marco Rocco, Olga Shekhovtsova, Andrzej Siódmok, Adrian Signer, Giovanni Stagnitto, Peter Stoffer, Thomas Teubner, William J. Torres Bobadilla, Francesco P. Ucci, Yannick Ulrich, Graziano Venanzoni

  SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 9 (2025) · published 25 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present the results of Phase I of an ongoing review of Monte Carlo tools relevant for low-energy hadronic cross sections. This includes a detailed comparison of Monte Carlo codes for electron–positron scattering into a muon pair, pion pair, and electron pair, for scan and radiative-return experiments. After discussing the various approaches that are used and effects that are included, we show differential cross sections obtained with AfkQed, BabaYaga@NLO, KKMC, MCGPJ, McMule, Phokhara, and Sherpa, for scenarios that are inspired by experiments providing input for the dispersive evaluation of the hadronic vacuum polarisation.

  4 citations

• Les Houches guide to reusable ML models in LHC analyses

  Jack Y. Araz, Andy Buckley, Gregor Kasieczka, Jan Kieseler, Sabine Kraml, Anders Kvellestad, Andre Lessa, Tomasz Procter, Are Raklev, Humberto Reyes-Gonzalez, Krzysztof Rolbiecki, Sezen Sekmen, Gokhan Unel

  SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 3 (2024) · published 6 November 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  With the increasing usage of machine-learning in high-energy physics analyses, the publication of the trained models in a reusable form has become a crucial question for analysis preservation and reuse. The complexity of these models creates practical issues for both reporting them accurately and for ensuring the stability of their behaviours in different environments and over extended timescales. In this note we discuss the current state of affairs, highlighting specific practical issues and focusing on the most promising technical and strategic approaches to ensure trustworthy analysis-preservation. This material originated from discussions in the LHC Reinterpretation Forum and the 2023 PhysTeV workshop at Les Houches.

  3 citations