Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Lectures in quantum gravity

  Ivano Basile, Luca Buoninfante, Francesco Di Filippo, Benjamin Knorr, Alessia Platania, Anna Tokareva

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 98 (2025) · published 7 August 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Formulating a quantum theory of gravity lies at the heart of fundamental theoretical physics. This collection of lecture notes encompasses a selection of topics that were covered in six mini-courses at the Nordita PhD school "Towards Quantum Gravity". The scope was to provide a coherent picture, from its foundation to forefront research, emphasizing connections between different areas. The lectures begin with perturbative quantum gravity and effective field theory. Subsequently, two ultraviolet-complete approaches are presented: Asymptotically safe gravity and string theory. Finally, elements of quantum effects in black hole spacetimes are discussed.

  2 citations

• Attention to the strengths of physical interactions: Transformer and graph-based event classification for particle physics experiments

  Luc Builtjes, Sascha Caron, Polina Moskvitina, Clara Nellist, Roberto Ruiz de Austri, Rob Verheyen, Zhongyi Zhang

  SciPost Phys. 19, 028 (2025) · published 28 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A major task in particle physics is the measurement of rare signal processes. Even modest improvements in background rejection, at a fixed signal efficiency, can significantly enhance the measurement sensitivity. Building on prior research by others that incorporated physical symmetries into neural networks, this work extends those ideas to include additional physics-motivated features. Specifically, we introduce energy-dependent particle interaction strengths, derived from leading-order SM predictions, into modern deep learning architectures, including Transformer Architectures (Particle Transformer), and Graph Neural Networks (Particle Net). These interaction strengths, represented as the SM interaction matrix, are incorporated into the attention matrix (transformers) and edges (graphs). Our results in event classification show that the integration of all physics-motivated features improves background rejection by $10\%-40\%$ over baseline models, with an additional gain of up to $9\%$ due to the SM interaction matrix. This study also provides one of the broadest comparisons of event classifiers to date, demonstrating how various architectures perform across this task. A simplified statistical analysis demonstrates that these enhanced architectures yield significant improvements in signal significance compared to a graph network baseline.

  1 citation

• A data-driven method to estimate the antiproton background in Mu2e

  Namitha Chithirasreemadam, Simone Donati, Pavel Murat, on behalf of the Mu2e collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 17, 025 (2025) · published 23 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Mu2e experiment will search for the CLFV process of neutrinoless, coherent conversion of muon to electron in the field of an Al nucleus. One of the expected backgrounds is antiprotons produced by the proton beam at the Production Target and annihilating in the Stopping Target to produce signal-like electrons. Although not a dominant background, it has a large uncertainty and cannot be suppressed by the timing cuts used to reduce the prompt background. However, at Mu2e energies, $p\bar{p}$ annihilation is the only source of events with multiple, simultaneous particles coming from the Stopping Target. We utilized this unique feature and developed a novel approach to reconstruct multi-track events and estimate the antiproton background.

• An alternative evaluation of the leading-order hadronic contribution to the muon $g-2$ with MUonE

  Riccardo N. Pilato

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 17, 024 (2025) · published 23 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The MUonE experiment proposes a novel approach to determine the hadronic contribution to the muon $g-2$, $a_\mu^\text{HLO}$, based on the measurement of the hadronic running of the QED coupling through the analysis of $\mu-e$ elastic scattering events. This could clarify the tensions in the current evaluations of $a_\mu^\text{HLO}$, which are limiting the comparison between theory and experiment for the muon $g-2$. The measurement will be performed at CERN’s North Area by scattering a 160 GeV muon beam on the atomic electrons of a low-Z target. The status and future plans of the experiment will be presented. Furthermore, an alternative method to extract $a_\mu^\text{HLO}$ from MUonE data will be discussed.

• Tau data-based evaluations of the hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to the muon g-2

  Pere Masjuan, Alejandro Miranda, Pablo Roig

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 17, 023 (2025) · published 23 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We review the $\tau$ data-driven computation of Euclidean windows for the hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment ($a_\mu$), which agree with the lattice results, making the difference of the $e^+e^-$ data-driven methods with them more intriguing. This conundrum needs to be solved by next year, when the final FNAL $a_\mu$ measurement will be published, in order to extract firm conclusions on possible new physics effects.

• Measurement of the muon magnetic anomaly to 0.20 ppm by the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab

  Lorenzo Cotrozzi, on behalf of the Muon g-2 collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 17, 022 (2025) · published 23 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Muon $g-2$ experiment at Fermilab aims to measure the muon magnetic moment anomaly, $a_{\mu}=(g-2)/2$, with a final accuracy of 0.14 parts per million (ppm). The experiment’s first result was published in 2021, based on data collected in 2018, and in 2023 a new result was published based on two more years of data taking, 2019 and 2020. The combination of the two results from Fermilab and the previous one from Brookhaven National Laboratory brought the uncertainty on the experimental measurement of $a_{\mu}$ to the unprecedented value of 0.19 ppm. This paper will present details about the improvements of statistical and systematic uncertainties on $a_{\mu}$ since the 2021 result.

• TAMBO: Searching for tau neutrinos in the Peruvian Andes

  William G. Thompson, on behalf of the TAMBO collaboration.

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 17, 021 (2025) · published 23 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  TAMBO is a planned next-generation neutrino observatory sensitive to 1-100 PeV Earth-skimming tau neutrinos. This tau neutrino specificity will provide a high-purity sample of astrophysical neutrinos whose locations on the sky can then be used to improve the sensitivities of all-flavor neutrino observatories. The observatory will be located in a deep canyon and will comprise an array of water-Cherenkov and plastic scintillator air-shower detectors. In this proceeding, I will summarize the current status of the updated TAMBO simulation package, which is currently being used for detector optimization and reconstruction studies.

• Status and prospects of the JUNO experiment

  Matthias Raphael Stock, on behalf of the JUNO collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 17, 020 (2025) · published 23 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multi-purpose neutrino experiment currently under construction in China. It is located 52.5 km away from two nuclear power plants in a newly constructed 700-m-deep underground laboratory. JUNO will be the largest liquid scintillator (LS) detector in the world comprising 20 kt of ultra-pure LS filled in an acrylic sphere. Its main goal is to determine the neutrino mass ordering by measuring the energy spectrum of reactor neutrinos with highest accuracy. In addition, JUNO will cover precision measurements of oscillation parameters and several aspects in the field of astroparticle physics. Data taking will start in late 2024.

• The Hyper-Kamiokande experiment: Status and prospect

  Umut Kose, on behalf of Hyper-Kamiokande collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 17, 019 (2025) · published 23 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Hyper-Kamiokande is the next-generation neutrino observatory, aiming to tackle a broad spectrum of physics programs. These include probing leptonic CP violation through long baseline accelerator neutrino oscillations, determining neutrino mass ordering, potentially discovering the proton decay, and capturing neutrinos from supernova relics, other astrophysical sources, and the sun. As the world's largest underground Cherenkov detector, Hyper-Kamiokande boasts a fiducial volume eight times that of its predecessor, Super-Kamiokande. With 258 kton of ultrapure water as its medium, Hyper-Kamiokande is scheduled to begin its groundbreaking operations in 2027, located in Kamioka, Japan. This proceeding outlines the ambitious physics program of Hyper-Kamiokande, details of the design of the detector, and provides an update on its current status.

  1 citation

• FASER experiment and first results from LHC run 3

  Umut Kose, on behalf of FASER collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 17, 018 (2025) · published 23 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  FASER is designed to search for light, extremely weakly interacting and long-lived beyond standard model particles at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Such particles, e.g., dark photons, may be produced in the high-energy proton-proton collisions at the ATLAS interaction point and then decay to visible particles in FASER, which is placed 480 m downstream and aligned with the collision axis line-of-sight. The detector covers a previously unexplored range of pseudorapidity larger than 8.8, which allows it to have sensitivity to new physics in the far-forward region. FASER also has a sub-detector called FASER$\nu$, which is specifically designed to detect and investigate high-energy collider neutrino interactions in the TeV regime, extending current cross-section measurements. In this proceeding, the FASER detector and present recent results obtained during LHC Run 3 will be introduced.