An experiment for electron-hadron scattering at the LHC

Novel considerations are presented on the physics, apparatus and accelerator designs for a future, luminous, energy frontier electron-hadron (eh) scattering experiment at the LHC in the thirties for which key physics topics and their relation to the hadron-hadron HL-LHC physics programme are discussed. Demands are derived set by these physics topics on the design of the LHeC detector, a corresponding update of which is described. Optimisations on the accelerator design, especially the interaction region (IR), are presented. Initial accelerator considerations indicate that a common IR is possible to be built which alternately could serve eh and hh collisions while other experiments would stay on hh in either condition. A forward-backward symmetrised option of the LHeC detector is sketched which would permit extending the LHeC physics programme to also include aspects of hadron-hadron physics. The vision of a joint eh and hh physics experiment is shown to open new prospects for solving fundamental problems of high energy heavy-ion physics including the partonic structure of nuclei and the emergence of hydrodynamics in quantum field theory while the genuine TeV scale DIS physics is of unprecedented rank.

Concept of circular-linear energy recovery accelerator to probe the energy frontier

Energy-frontier accelerators provide powerful tools performing high precision measurements confirming the fundamentals of the physics and broadening new research horizons. Such machines are either driven by circular or linear accelerators. The circular machines, having the centre-of-mass (CM) energy values reaching 200 GeV (for leptons) and above, experience beam energy loss and quality dilution, for example, due to synchrotron radiation, limiting the overall CM energy achievable and requiring a constant energy top-up to compensate the loss and the beam quality dilution. Linear colliders overcome these limitations, while the finite capabilities of generating high average current beams limits the luminosity. This is partially compensated by the quality of the colliding beams. In this work, we suggest a novel design of circular-linear accelerator based on the merging of the “non-emitting”, low-energy storage rings and energy recovery linear accelerators. We suggest using the recently considered dual-axis asymmetric cavities to enable the operation of such a system, and in particular the energy recovery from spent, high-intensity beams. The machine considered, under the scope of the SNOWMASS-2021 initiative, can be potentially used to reach ultimate energy frontiers in high-energy physics as well as to drive next generation light sources. The merging of circular and linear systems, and applications of dual axes cavities, should allow the maintaining of high beam quality, high luminosity, and high energy efficiency, while offering a flexible energy management and opening clear opportunity for reducing the running cost. We note that the numbers shown in the paper are for illustration purpose and can be improved further.

RF system challenges for future $$\hbox {e}^+ \hbox {e}^-$$ circular colliders

The RF system is the centrepiece of any future circular lepton collider. In particular, the system is required to support the high intensity beams needed for pushing the luminosity at the lower energy regimes of future energy-frontier circular lepton colliders (e.g. for operation in the Z peak and at the WW threshold). Capturing, storing the beam and replacing energy losses from synchrotron radiation demand low frequency, low shunt resistance cavities, low number of cells and high RF power per cell. Controlling the beam both transversely and longitudinally requires sophisticated beam control and timing systems. Additional RF systems are used to ensure transverse stability (feedback systems) and to increase the luminosity (crab cavities). Operation at high energies (such as the ZH and $${\mathrm{t}{\overline{\mathrm{t}}}}$$ t t ¯ threshold) requires a very large accelerating voltage, since synchrotron radiation leads to significantly higher energy losses per turn which must be compensated. Since the RF system is to be optimised in size and energy efficiency for varying demands for the different operational modes, the spectrum of R&D challenges covers a wide range of technologies.

FCC: Building on the shoulders of giants

The plethora of open questions in particle physics, the new chapter opened by the Higgs boson, and the lack of clear theoretical guidance as to where new theory could lie call for a broad and diverse experimental programme boosting the intensity and energy-frontier. The proposed FCC-integrated programme consisting of a luminosity-frontier highest-energy lepton collider followed by an energy-frontier hadron collider promises the most far-reaching particle physics programme that foreseeable technology can deliver. In this essay, particular emphasis is given to the lessons from the predecessor of the LHC, LEP, which was commissioned in 1989 and finished operation in November 2000.

Direct discovery of new light states at the FCCee

Light new states are ubiquitous in many models that address fundamental outstanding questions within the standard model (SM). The FCCee provides an excellent opportunity to probe these new particles with masses between 1 and $$100\,$$ 100 GeV and their electroweak couplings. Here we discuss the theory motivations for axion-like particles and heavy neutral leptons and detail the potential of direct discovery at the FCCee. We highlight that our current understanding requires light new states to be embedded within a bigger theory framework and thus the complementarity of the precision frontier at the FCCee and the high energy frontier of the FCChh program.

Pulling the Higgs and top needles from the jet stack with feature extended supervised tagging

Jet tagging has become an essential tool for new physics searches at the high-energy frontier. For jets that contain energetic charged leptons we introduce Feature Extended Supervised Tagging (FEST) which, in addition to jet substructure, considers the features of the charged lepton within the jet. With this method we build dedicated taggers to discriminate among boosted $$H \rightarrow \ell \nu q {\bar{q}}$$ H → ℓ ν q q ¯ , $$t \rightarrow \ell \nu b$$ t → ℓ ν b , and QCD jets (with $$\ell $$ ℓ an electron or muon). The taggers have an impressive performance, allowing for overall light jet rejection factors of $$10^4-10^5$$ 10 4 - 10 5 , for top quark/Higgs boson efficiencies of 0.5. The taggers are also excellent in the discrimination of Higgs bosons from top quarks and vice versa, for example rejecting top quarks by factors of 100–300 for Higgs boson efficiencies of 0.5. We demonstrate the potential of these taggers to improve the sensitivity to new physics by using as example a search for a new $$Z'$$ Z ′ boson decaying into ZH, in the fully-hadronic final state.

Addressing the CKM unitarity problem with a vector-like up quark

We point out that hints of deviations from unitarity in the first row of the CKM matrix may be explained by the presence of a single vector-like top. We study how the stringent experimental constraints arising from CP Violation in the kaon sector and from meson mixing such as $$ {D}^0\hbox{-} {\overline{D}}^0,{K}^0\hbox{-} {\overline{K}}^0 $$ D 0 ‐ D ¯ 0 , K 0 ‐ K ¯ 0 and $$ {B}_{d,s}^0\hbox{-} {\overline{B}}_{d,s}^0 $$ B d , s 0 ‐ B ¯ d , s 0 can be satisfied in the proposed framework. In order for the deviations from unitarity to be of the required size while keeping the theory perturbative, the new top quark should have a mass mT ≲ 7 TeV which could be probed in upcoming experiments at the energy frontier.

The present and future of four top operators

We study the phenomenology of a strongly-interacting top quark at future hadron and lepton colliders, showing that the characteristic four-top contact operators give rise to the most significant effects. We demonstrate the extraordinary potential of a 100 TeV proton-proton collider to directly test such non-standard interactions in four-top production, a process that we thoroughly analyze in the same-sign dilepton and trilepton channels, and explore in the fully hadronic channel. Furthermore, high-energy electron-positron colliders, such as CLIC or the ILC, are shown to exhibit an indirect yet remarkable sensitivity to four-top operators, since these constitute, via renormalization group evolution, the leading new-physics deformations in top-quark pair production. We investigate the impact of our results on the parameter space of composite Higgs models with a strongly-coupled (right-handed) top quark, finding that four-top probes provide the best sensitivity on the compositeness scale at the future energy frontier. In addition, we investigate mild yet persisting LHC excesses in multilepton plus jets final states, showing that they can be consistently described in the effective field theory of such a new-physics scenario.