Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• LFV searches by ATLAS and CMS experiments

  Luca Fiorini

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 16, 020 (2025) · published 15 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The appearance of lepton-flavour-violating processes in LHC proton-proton collisions is one of the possible ways that new physics beyond the Standard Model could manifest itself. This proceeding summarizes the most recent searches for lepton-flavour-violating processes and tests of lepton flavour universality with the ATLAS and CMS detectors, using proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV.

• Overview of quarkonium production with ALICE at the LHC

  Hushnud Hushnud on behalf of the ALICE collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 007 (2023) · published 28 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  ALICE is a general purpose experiment designed to investigate nucleus-nucleus collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located at CERN. The ALICE detector is optimized for the reconstruction of quarkonia through the dimuon decay channel at foward rapidity as well as the dielectron decay channel at midrapidity. In this contribution, quarkonium measurements performed by the ALICE collaboration at both midrapidity and forward rapidity for various energies and colliding systems (pp, p-Pb and Pb-Pb), will be discussed and compared to theory.

• New determination of the production cross section for secondary positrons and electrons in the Galaxy

  Luca Orusa, Mattia Di Mauro, Fiorenza Donato, Michael Korsmeier

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 006 (2023) · published 28 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The cosmic-ray fluxes of electrons and positrons ($e^{±}$) are measured with high precision by the space-borne particle spectrometer AMS-02. To infer a precise interpretation of the production processes for $e^{±}$ in our Galaxy, it is necessary to have an accurate description of the secondary component, produced by the interaction of cosmic-ray proton and helium with the interstellar medium atoms. We determine new analytical functions of the Lorentz invariant cross section for the production of $e^±$ by fitting data from collider experiments. The total differential cross section $d\sigma/dT_{e^±}(p+p→ e^±+X)$ is predicted with an uncertainty of about 5-7% in the energies relevant for AMS-02 positron flux. For further information about this work refer to [Phys. Rev. D 105, 123021 (2022)].

• Lepton flavour universality tests and lepton flavour violation searches at LHCb

  Sara Celani

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 16, 021 (2025) · published 15 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics represents our most fundamental knowledge of elementary particles and their interactions. One of the cardinal properties of the SM which has been thoroughly studied during the past years is the so-called Lepton Flavour Universality (LFU): W and Z bosons are predicted to be equally coupled to the three lepton generations. Hints for deviations from LFU have been found by the LHCb collaboration in $b\to s\ell\ell$ and $b\to c\ell\nu$ decays, sparking great interest and further motivating the searches for lepton flavour violating processes. A general review of these results is presented, including prospects in view of the LHC and LHCb upgrade.

• Threshold improved $Z H$ production at the LHC

  Goutam Das, Chinmoy Dey, Meduri C. Kumar, Kajal Samanta

  SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 14 (2025) · published 1 December 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present precise theoretical results for the $ZH$ production cross section and invariant mass distribution at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) taking into account the effects of soft gluons. We improve both quark-initiated and gluon-initiated subprocesses through threshold resummation within the QCD framework and present combined results relevant for $13.6$ TeV LHC.

• New 2- and 3-loop heavy flavor corrections to unpolarized and polarized deep-inelastic scattering

  Jakob Ablinger, Johannes Blümlein, Abilio De Freitas, Marco Saragnese, Carsten Schneider, Kay Schoenwald

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 137 (2022) · published 14 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A survey is given on the new 2– and 3–loop results for the heavy flavor contributions to deep–inelastic scattering in the unpolarized and the polarized case. We also discuss related new mathematical aspects applied in these calculations.

• Dynamically restoring conformal invariance in (integrable) $\sigma$-models

  Rigers Aliaj, Konstantinos Sfetsos, Konstantinos Siampos

  SciPost Phys. 14, 043 (2023) · published 21 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Integrable $\lambda$-deformed $\sigma$-models are characterized by an underlying current algebra/coset model CFT deformed, at the infinitesimal level, by current/parafermion bilinears. We promote the deformation parameters to dynamical functions of time introduced as an extra coordinate. It is conceivable that by appropriately constraining them, the beta-functions vanish and consequently the $\sigma$-model stays conformal. Remarkably, we explicitly materialize this scenario in several cases having a single and even multiple deformation parameters. These generically obey a system of non-linear second-order ordinary differential equations. They are solved by the fixed points of the RG flow of the original $\sigma$-model. Moreover, by appropriately choosing initial conditions we may even interpolate between the RG fixed points as the time varies from the far past to the far future. Finally, we present an extension of our analysis to the Yang--Baxter deformed PCMs.

• Electronic structure of liquid xenon in the context of light dark matter direct detection

  Riccardo Catena, Luca Marin, Marek Matas, Nicola A. Spaldin, Einar Urdshals

  SciPost Phys. 19, 064 (2025) · published 3 September 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a description of the electronic structure of xenon within the density-functional theory formalism with the goal of accurately modeling dark-matter-induced ionisation in liquid xenon detectors. We compare the calculated electronic structures of the atomic, liquid and crystalline solid phases, and find that the electronic charge density and its derivatives in momentum space are similar in the atom and the liquid, consistent with the weak interatomic van der Waals bonding. The only notable difference is a band broadening of the highest occupied $5p$ levels, reflected in the densities of states of the condensed phases, as a result of the inter-atomic interactions. We therefore use the calculated density of states of the liquid phase, combined with the standard literature approach for the isolated atom, to recompute ionisation rates and exclusion limit curves for the XENON10 and XENON1T experiments. We find that the broadening of the 5$p$ levels induced by the liquid phase is relevant only for dark matter masses below 6 MeV, where it increases the ionisation rate relative to that of the isolated atom. For most of the explored mass range, the energies of the discrete 4$d$ and 5$s$ levels have the strongest effect on the rate. Our findings suggest a simple scheme for calculating dark matter-electron scattering rates in liquid noble gas detectors, using the calculated values for the atom weighted by the density of states of the condensed phase.

• Emergent Kitaev materials in synthetic Fermi-Hubbard bilayers

  Daniel González-Cuadra, Alejandro Bermudez

  SciPost Phys. 19, 130 (2025) · published 18 November 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the emergence of bond-directional spin-spin interactions in a synthetic Fermi-Hubbard bilayer that can be realized with ultracold fermions in Raman optical lattices. The model exploits synthetic dimensions to couple two honeycomb layers, each corresponding to a different hyperfine atomic state, via Raman-assisted tunneling and, moreover, via an inter-layer Hubbard repulsion due to the cold-atom scattering. In the strong-coupling regime at half filling, we derive effective spin Hamiltonians for the kinetic exchange featuring Kitaev, Heisenberg, off-diagonal exchange ($\Gamma$-couplings), as well as tunable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. We identify specific configurations that generate both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic Kitaev couplings with various perturbations of relevance to Kitaev materials, providing a tunable platform that can explore how quantum spin liquids emerge from itinerant fermion systems. We analyze the Fermi-liquid and Mott-insulating phases, highlighting a correspondence between Dirac and Majorana quasi-particles, with possible phase transitions thereof. In an extreme anisotropic limit, we show that the model reduces to an inter-layer ribbon in a quasi-1D ladder, allowing for a numerical study of the correlated ground state using matrix product states. We find a transition from a symmetry-protected topological insulator to a Kitaev-like regime characterized by nonlocal string order. Our results establish that cold-atom quantum simulators based on Raman optical lattices can be a playground for extended Kitaev models, bridging itinerant fermionic systems and spin-liquid physics.

• Vinberg's T-algebras: From exceptional periodicity to black hole entropy

  Alessio Marrani

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 14, 035 (2023) · published 24 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce the so-called Magic Star (MS) projection within the root lattice of finite-dimensional exceptional Lie algebras, and relate it to rank-3 simple and semi-simple Jordan algebras. By relying on the Bott periodicity of reality and conjugacy properties of spinor representations, we present the so-called Exceptional Periodicity (EP) algebras, which are finite-dimensional algebras, violating the Jacobi identity, and providing an alternative with respect to Kac-Moody infinite-dimensional Lie algebras. Remarkably, also EP algebras can be characterized in terms of a MS projection, exploiting special Vinberg T-algebras, a class of generalized Hermitian matrix algebras introduced by Vinberg in the '60s within his theory of homogeneous convex cones. As physical applications, we highlight the role of the invariant norm of special Vinberg T-algebras in Maxwell-Einstein-scalar theories in 5 space-time dimensions, in which the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of extremal black strings can be expressed in terms of the cubic polynomial norm of the T-algebras.