We present an analysis of the sensitivity of current and future LHC searches for new spin-0 particles in top–anti-top-quark $$ \left(t\overline{t}\right) $$ final states, focusing on generic axion-like particles (ALPs) that are coupled to top quarks and gluons. As a first step, we derive new limits on the effective ALP Lagrangian in terms of the Wilson coefficients and $$ {c}_{\overset{\sim }{G}} $$ based on the results of the CMS search using 35 9 fb 1 of data, collected at $$ \sqrt{s} $$ = 13 TeV. We then investigate how the production of an ALP with generic couplings to gluons and top quarks can be distinguished from the production of a pseudoscalar which couples to gluons exclusively via a top-quark loop. To this end, we make use of the invariant $$ t\overline{t} $$ mass distribution and angular correlations that are sensitive to the $$ t\overline{t} $$ spin correlation. Using a mass of 400 GeV as an example, we find that already the data collected during Run 2 and Run 3 of the LHC provides an interesting sensitivity to the underlying nature of a possible new particle. We also analyze the prospects for data anticipated to be collected during the high-luminosity phase of the LHC. Finally, we compare the limits obtained from the $$ t\overline{t} $$ searches to existing experimental bounds from LHC searches for narrow di-photon resonances, from measurements of the production of four top quarks, and from global analyses of ALP–SMEFT interference effects.

Germany

Afiq Anuar

Anke Biekötter

Spain

Thomas Biekötter

Alexander Grohsjean

Sven Heinemeyer

Laurids Jeppe

Christian Schwanenberger

Georg Weiglein

ALP-ine quests at the LHC: hunting axion-like particles via peaks and dips in

Searches for dark matter produced via scalar resonances in final states consisting of Standard Model (SM) particles and missing transverse momentum are of high relevance at the LHC. Motivated by dark-matter portal models, most existing searches are optimized for unbalanced decay topologies for which the missing momentum recoils against the visible SM particles. In this work, we show that existing searches are also sensitive to a wider class of models, which we characterize by a recently presented simplified model framework. We point out that searches for models with a balanced decay topology can be further improved with more dedicated analysis strategies. For this study, we investigate the feasibility of a new search for bottom-quark associated neutral Higgs production with a   <math> <mi>b</mi> <mover> <mi>b</mi> <mo>¯</mo> </mover> <mi>Z</mi> <mo>+</mo> <msubsup> <mi>p</mi> <mi>T</mi> <mtext>miss</mtext> </msubsup> </math>  $$ b\overline{b}Z+{p}_{\textrm{T}}^{\textrm{miss}} $$  final state and perform a detailed collider analysis. Our projected results in the different simplified model topologies investigated here can be easily reinterpreted in a wide range of models of physics beyond the SM, which we explicitly demonstrate for the example of the Two-Higgs-Doublet model with an additional pseudoscalar Higgs boson.

Danyer Adan

United States

Henning Bahl

Victor Lozano

A new LHC search for dark matter produced via heavy Higgs bosons using simplified models

Defect characterizes the depth of factorization of terms in differential (cyclotomic) expansions of knot polynomials, i.e. of the non-perturbative Wilson averages in the Chern-Simons theory. We prove the conjecture that the defect can be alternatively described as the degree in  $$q^{\pm 2}$$  <math> <msup> <mi>q</mi> <mrow> <mo>±</mo> <mn>2</mn> </mrow> </msup> </math>   of the fundamental Alexander polynomial, which formally corresponds to the case of no colors. We also pose a question if these Alexander polynomials can be arbitrary integer polynomials of a given degree. A first attempt to answer the latter question is a preliminary analysis of antiparallel descendants of the 2-strand torus knots, which provide a nice set of examples for all values of the defect. The answer turns out to be positive in the case of defect zero knots, what can be observed already in the case of twist knots. This proved conjecture also allows us to provide a complete set of C-polynomials for the symmetrically colored Alexander polynomials for defect zero. In this case, we achieve a complete separation of representation and knot variables.

Russia

E. Lanina

A. Morozov

Defect and degree of the Alexander polynomial

In this paper we study the group theoretic structures of colored HOMFLY polynomials in a specific limit. The group structures arise in the perturbative expansion of <math><mi>S</mi><mi>U</mi><mo>(</mo><mi>N</mi><mo>)</mo></math> Chern-Simons Wilson loops, while the limit is <math><mi>N</mi><mo>→</mo><mn>0</mn></math>. The result of the paper is twofold. First, we explain the emergence of Kadomsev-Petviashvily (KP) τ-functions. This result is an extension of what we did in [1], where a symbolic correspondence between KP equations and group factors was established. In this paper we prove that integrability of the colored Alexander polynomial is due to it's relation to soliton τ-functions. Mainly, the colored Alexander polynomial is embedded in the action of the KP generating function on the soliton τ-function. Secondly, we use this correspondence to provide a rather simple combinatoric description of the group factors in term of Young diagrams, which is otherwise described in terms of chord diagrams, where no simple description is known. This is a first step providing an explicit description of the group theoretic data of Wilson loops, which would effectively reduce them to a purely topological quantity, mainly to a collection of Vassiliev invariants.

V. Mishnyakov

A. Sleptsov

Perturbative analysis of the colored Alexander polynomial and KP soliton -functions

We describe predictions for top quark pair differential distributions at hadron colliders, by combining the next-to-next-to-leading order quantum chromodynamics calculations and next-to-leading order electroweak corrections with double resummation at the next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy of threshold logarithms and small-mass logarithms. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to present such a combination, which incorporates all known perturbative information. Numerical results are presented for the invariant-mass distribution, transverse-momentum distribution, and rapidity distributions.

Michał Czakon

Andrea Ferroglia

United Kingdom

Alexander Mitov

Davide Pagani

Andrew S. Papanastasiou

Benjamin D. Pecjak

Netherlands

Darren J. Scott

Sweden

Ioannis Tsinikos

Xing Wang

China

Li Lin Yang

Italy

Marco Zaro

Top quark pair production at complete NLO accuracy with NNLO+NNLL′ corrections in QCD L. L. Yang and X. Wang are supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11975030, 11635001, 11575004). X. Wang is also supported in part by the Cluster of Excellence PRISMA+ (project ID 39083149). D. J. S. is supported under the ERC grant ERC-STG2015-677323. The work of D. P. and I. T. is supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, in the framework of the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award Project "Event Simulation for the Large Hadron Collider at High Precision". D. P. is also supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2121"Quantum Univers" – 390833306. I. T. is also supported by the Swedish Research Council under contract number 2016-05996. The research of A. M. and A. P. has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (683211) as well as from UK STFC grants ST/L002760/1 and ST/K004883/1. The work of M. C. was supported in part by a grant of the BMBF and by the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft under grant 396021762 - TRR 257
						

We discuss the relation between knot polynomials and the KP hierarchy. Mainly, we study the scaling 1-hook property of the coloured Alexander polynomial: <math><msubsup><mrow><mi>A</mi></mrow><mrow><mi>R</mi></mrow><mrow><mi>K</mi></mrow></msubsup><mo>(</mo><mi>q</mi><mo>)</mo><mo>=</mo><msubsup><mrow><mi>A</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>[</mo><mn>1</mn><mo>]</mo></mrow><mrow><mi>K</mi></mrow></msubsup><mo>(</mo><msup><mrow><mi>q</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>|</mo><mi>R</mi><mo>|</mo></mrow></msup><mo>)</mo></math> for all 1-hook Young diagrams R. Via the Kontsevich construction, it is reformulated as a system of linear equations. It appears that the solutions of this system induce the KP equations in the Hirota form. The Alexander polynomial is a specialization of the HOMFLY polynomial, and it is a kind of a dual to the double scaling limit, which gives the special polynomial, in the sense that, while the special polynomials provide solutions to the KP hierarchy, the Alexander polynomials provide the equations of this hierarchy. This gives a new connection with integrable properties of knot polynomials and puts an interesting question about the way the KP hierarchy is encoded in the full HOMFLY polynomial.

A. Mironov

S. Mironov

Coloured Alexander polynomials and KP hierarchy

We connect two important conjectures in the theory of knot polynomials. The first one is the property $$Al_R(q) = Al_{[1]}(q^{|R|})$$ <math><mrow><mi>A</mi><msub><mi>l</mi><mi>R</mi></msub><mrow><mo>(</mo><mi>q</mi><mo>)</mo></mrow><mo>=</mo><mi>A</mi><msub><mi>l</mi><mrow><mo>[</mo><mn>1</mn><mo>]</mo></mrow></msub><mrow><mo>(</mo><msup><mi>q</mi><mrow><mo>|</mo><mi>R</mi><mo>|</mo></mrow></msup><mo>)</mo></mrow></mrow></math>  for all single hook Young diagrams R, which is known to hold for all knots. The second conjecture claims that all the mixing matrices $$U_{i}$$ <math><msub><mi>U</mi><mi>i</mi></msub></math>  in the relation $$\mathcal{R}_i = U_i\mathcal{R}_1U_i^{-1}$$ <math><mrow><msub><mi>R</mi><mi>i</mi></msub><mo>=</mo><msub><mi>U</mi><mi>i</mi></msub><msub><mi>R</mi><mn>1</mn></msub><msubsup><mi>U</mi><mi>i</mi><mrow><mo>-</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msubsup></mrow></math>  between the ith and the first generators $$\mathcal{R}_i$$ <math><msub><mi>R</mi><mi>i</mi></msub></math>  of the braid group are universally expressible through the eigenvalues of $$\mathcal{R}_1$$ <math><msub><mi>R</mi><mn>1</mn></msub></math> . Since the above property of Alexander polynomials is very well tested, this relation provides new support to the eigenvalue conjecture, especially for $$i&gt;2$$ <math><mrow><mi>i</mi><mo>&gt;</mo><mn>2</mn></mrow></math> , when its direct check by evaluation of the Racah matrices and their convolutions is technically difficult.

Eigenvalue conjecture and colored Alexander polynomials

We discuss a novel signature of dark matter production at the LHC resulting from the emission of an additional Higgs boson in the dark sector. The presence of such a dark Higgs boson is motivated simultaneously by the need to generate the masses of the particles in the dark sector and the possibility to relax constraints from the dark matter relic abundance by opening up a new annihilation channel. If the dark Higgs boson decays into Standard Model states via a small mixing with the Standard Model Higgs boson, one obtains characteristic large-radius jets in association with missing transverse momentum that can be used to efficiently discriminate signal from backgrounds. We present the sensitivities achievable in LHC searches for dark Higgs bosons with already collected data and demonstrate that such searches can probe large regions of parameter space that are inaccessible to conventional mono-jet or di-jet searches.

Michael Duerr

Felix Kahlhoefer

Bjoern Penning

Kai Schmidt-Hoberg

Hunting the dark Higgs

The prompt and non-prompt production cross-sections for ψ (2S) mesons are measured using 2.1 fb −1 of pp collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The measurement exploits the ψ (2S) → J/ψ (→ μ + μ − ) π + π − decay mode, and probes ψ (2S) mesons with transverse momenta in the range 10 ≤ p T &lt; 100 GeV and rapidity | y | &lt; 2 . 0. The results are compared to other measurements of ψ (2S) production at the LHC and to various theoretical models for prompt and non-prompt quarkonium production.

France

Georges Aad

Brad Abbott

Jalal Abdallah

Samah Abdel Khalek

Azerbaijan

Ovsat Abdinov

Rosemarie Aben

Babak Abi

Maris Abolins

Canada

Ossama AbouZeid

Israel

Halina Abramowicz

Henso Abreu

CERN

Ricardo Abreu

Yiming Abulaiti

Bobby Samir Acharya

Poland

Leszek Adamczyk

David Adams

Jahred Adelman

Stefanie Adomeit

Tim Adye

Montenegro

Tatjana Agatonovic-Jovin

Juan Antonio Aguilar-Saavedra

Switzerland

Marco Agustoni

Steven Ahlen

Faig Ahmadov

Giulio Aielli

Henrik Akerstedt

Torsten Paul Ake Åkesson

Japan

Ginga Akimoto

Andrei Akimov

Gian Luigi Alberghi

Justin Albert

Solveig Albrand

Argentina

Maria Josefina Alconada Verzini

Martin Aleksa

Igor Aleksandrov

Romania

Calin Alexa

Gideon Alexander

Gauthier Alexandre

Greece

Theodoros Alexopoulos

Muhammad Alhroob

Gianluca Alimonti

Lion Alio

John Alison

Benedict Allbrooke

Lee John Allison

Phillip Allport

John Almond

Alberto Aloisio

Denmark

Alejandro Alonso

Francisco Alonso

Cristiano Alpigiani

Andrew David Altheimer

Barbara Alvarez Gonzalez

Mariagrazia Alviggi

Katsuya Amako

Brazil

Yara Amaral Coutinho

Christoph Amelung

Dante Amidei

Portugal

Susana Patricia Amor Dos Santos

Antonio Amorim

Simone Amoroso

Nir Amram

Glenn Amundsen

Christos Anastopoulos

Lucian Stefan Ancu

Nansi Andari

Timothy Andeen

Christoph Falk Anders

Gabriel Anders

Kelby Anderson

Attilio Andreazza

George Victor Andrei

Xabier Anduaga

Stylianos Angelidakis

Ivan Angelozzi

Philipp Anger

Aaron Angerami

Francis Anghinolfi

Alexey Anisenkov

Nuno Anjos

Alberto Annovi

Ariadni Antonaki

Mario Antonelli

Alexey Antonov

Slovakia

Jaroslav Antos

Fabio Anulli

Masato Aoki

Ludovica Aperio Bella

Rudi Apolle

Giorgi Arabidze

Ignacio Aracena

Yasuo Arai

Juan Pedro Araque

Ayana Arce

Jean-Francois Arguin

Spyridon Argyropoulos

Türkiye

Metin Arik

Aaron James Armbruster

Olivier Arnaez

Vanessa Arnal

Measurement of the production cross-section of ψ (2S) → J/ψ (→ μ + μ − ) π + π − in pp collisions at s $$ \sqrt{s} $$ = 7 TeV at ATLAS