Perturbative calculations for processes involving heavy flavours can be carried out using two approaches: the massive and the massless schemes. These schemes can also be combined to leverage their respective strengths. Additionally, both massive and massless frameworks can be supplemented by soft-gluon resummation. However, matching resummed calculations across the two schemes presents significant challenges, primarily due to the non-commutativity of the soft and small mass limits. The consistent resummation of mass and soft logarithms has been recently achieved at next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) accuracy. In this paper, we consider heavy-quark fragmentation functions in electron-positron collisions and we extend this framework to achieve the so-called NLL $$^\prime $$ accuracy, which accounts for finite terms in the soft limit.

Italy

Andrea Ghira

Lorenzo Mai

Simone Marzani

Bridging massive and massless schemes for soft gluon resummation in heavy-flavour production in $$e^+e^-$$ collisions

We present a comprehensive study of energy correlation functions and jet angularities for heavy-flavour QCD jets. In particular, we discuss the possibility of using these observables to expose the dead cone effect, i.e. the suppression of collinear QCD radiation around massive quarks, and to investigate the sensitivity of different observable definitions to the presence of quark masses. Our calculations are presented as all-order resummed predictions at next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy, matched to (partial) fixed-order results to obtain a better description of the transition around the dead cone threshold. We also compare our analytic results with Pythia, Herwig and Sherpa Monte Carlo predictions to estimate the impact of non-perturbative contributions such as hadronisation, underlying events and -hadron decays.

Spain

Prasanna Dhani

United States

Oleh Fedkevych

France

Gregory Soyez

Heavy flavour jet substructure

We consider the fragmentation of heavy quarks into heavy-flavoured hadrons, specifically the production of charmed mesons in  $$e^+e^-$$  <math> <mrow> <msup> <mi>e</mi> <mo>+</mo> </msup> <msup> <mi>e</mi> <mo>-</mo> </msup> </mrow> </math>   collisions, at different centre-of-mass energies. We focus our attention on the ratio of moments of the  $$D^{*+}$$  <math> <mmultiscripts> <mi>D</mi> <mrow></mrow> <mrow> <mrow></mrow> <mo>∗</mo> <mo>+</mo> </mrow> </mmultiscripts> </math>   energy spectrum measured by ALEPH and CLEO. This ratio is believed to provide us with a direct test of perturbative QCD evolution because hadronisation effects should cancel between the numerator and denominator. However, state-of-the-art calculations based on standard (final-state) collinear factorisation fail to describe the experimental data. We show that this discrepancy is considerably reduced if heavy-quark threshold effects are accounted for not only in DGLAP evolution, as it is usually done, but also in the resummed coefficient functions.

Matteo Cacciari

Giovanni Ridolfi

An improved description of charm fragmentation data

We study hadronic jets that are tagged as heavy-flavoured, i.e. they contain either beauty or charm. In particular, we consider heavy-flavour jets that have been groomed with the Soft Drop algorithm. In order to achieve a deeper understanding of these objects, we apply resummed perturbation theory to jets initiated by a massive quark and we perform analytic calculations for two variables that characterise Soft Drop jets, namely the opening angle and the momentum fraction of the splitting that passes Soft Drop. We compare our findings to Monte Carlo simulations. Furthermore, we investigate the correlation between the Soft Drop energy fraction and alternative observables that aim to probe heavy-quark fragmentation functions.

Switzerland

Simone Caletti

On heavy-flavour jets with Soft Drop

Quantum Chromodynamics, the theory of quarks and gluons, whose interactions can be described by a local SU(3) gauge symmetry with charges called “color quantum numbers”, is reviewed; the goal of this review is to provide advanced Ph.D. students a comprehensive handbook, helpful for their research. When QCD was “discovered” 50 years ago, the idea that quarks could exist, but not be observed, left most physicists unconvinced. Then, with the discovery of charmonium in 1974 and the explanation of its excited states using the Cornell potential, consisting of the sum of a Coulomb-like attraction and a long range linear confining potential, the theory was suddenly widely accepted. This paradigm shift is now referred to as the November revolution. It had been anticipated by the observation of scaling in deep inelastic scattering, and was followed by the discovery of gluons in three-jet events. The parameters of QCD include the running coupling constant,  $$\alpha _s(Q^2)$$  <math> <mrow> <msub> <mi>α</mi> <mi>s</mi> </msub> <mrow> <mo>(</mo> <msup> <mi>Q</mi> <mn>2</mn> </msup> <mo>)</mo> </mrow> </mrow> </math>  , that varies with the energy scale  $$Q^2$$  <math> <msup> <mi>Q</mi> <mn>2</mn> </msup> </math>   characterising the interaction, and six quark masses. QCD cannot be solved analytically, at least not yet, and the large value of  $$\alpha _s$$  <math> <msub> <mi>α</mi> <mi>s</mi> </msub> </math>   at low momentum transfers limits perturbative calculations to the high-energy region where  $$Q^2\gg \varLambda _{{\textrm{QCD}}} ^2\simeq $$  <math> <mrow> <msup> <mi>Q</mi> <mn>2</mn> </msup> <mo>≫</mo> <msubsup> <mi>Λ</mi> <mrow> <mtext>QCD</mtext> </mrow> <mn>2</mn> </msubsup> <mo>≃</mo> </mrow> </math>   (250 MeV) $$^2$$  <math> <msup> <mrow></mrow> <mn>2</mn> </msup> </math>  . Lattice QCD (LQCD), numerical calculations on a discretized space-time lattice, is discussed in detail, the dynamics of the QCD vacuum is visualized, and the expected spectra of mesons and baryons are displayed. Progress in lattice calculations of the structure of nucleons and of quantities related to the phase diagram of dense and hot (or cold) hadronic matter are reviewed. Methods and examples of how to calculate hadronic corrections to weak matrix elements on a lattice are outlined. The wide variety of analytical approximations currently in use, and the accuracy of these approximations, are reviewed. These methods range from the Bethe–Salpeter, Dyson–Schwinger coupled relativistic equations, which are formulated in both Minkowski or Euclidean spaces, to expansions of multi-quark states in a set of basis functions using light-front coordinates, to the AdS/QCD method that imbeds 4-dimensional QCD in a 5-dimensional deSitter space, allowing confinement and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking to be described in a novel way. Models that assume the number of colors is very large, i.e. make use of the large  $$N_c$$  <math> <msub> <mi>N</mi> <mi>c</mi> </msub> </math>  -limit, give unique insights. Many other techniques that are tailored to specific problems, such as perturbative expansions for high energy scattering or approximate calculations using the operator product expansion are discussed. The very powerful effective field theory techniques that are successful for low energy nuclear systems (chiral effective theory), or for non-relativistic systems involving heavy quarks, or the treatment of gluon exchanges between energetic, collinear partons encountered in jets, are discussed. The spectroscopy of mesons and baryons has played an important historical role in the development of QCD. The famous X,Y,Z states – and the discovery of pentaquarks – have revolutionized hadron spectroscopy; their status and interpretation are reviewed as well as recent progress in the identification of glueballs and hybrids in light-meson spectroscopy. These exotic states add to the spectrum of expected  $$q{{\bar{q}}}$$  <math> <mrow> <mi>q</mi> <mover> <mrow> <mi>q</mi> </mrow> <mrow> <mo>¯</mo> </mrow> </mover> </mrow> </math>   mesons and qqq baryons. The progress in understanding excitations of light and heavy baryons is discussed. The nucleon as the lightest baryon is discussed extensively, its form factors, its partonic structure and the status of the attempt to determine a three-dimensional picture of the parton distribution. An experimental program to study the phase diagram of QCD at high temperature and density started with fixed target experiments in various laboratories in the second half of the 1980s, and then, in this century, with colliders. QCD thermodynamics at high temperature became accessible to LQCD, and numerical results on chiral and deconfinement transitions and properties of the deconfined and chirally restored form of strongly interacting matter, called the Quark–Gluon Plasma (QGP), have become very precise by now. These results can now be confronted with experimental data that are sensitive to the nature of the phase transition. There is clear evidence that the QGP phase is created. This phase of QCD matter can already be characterized by some properties that indicate, within a temperature range of a few times the pseudocritical temperature, the medium behaves like a near ideal liquid. Experimental observables are presented that demonstrate deconfinement. High and ultrahigh density QCD matter at moderate and low temperatures shows interesting features and new phases that are of astrophysical relevance. They are reviewed here and some of the astrophysical implications are discussed. Perturbative QCD and methods to describe the different aspects of scattering processes are discussed. The primary parton–parton scattering in a collision is calculated in perturbative QCD with increasing complexity. The radiation of soft gluons can spoil the perturbative convergence, this can be cured by resummation techniques, which are also described here. Realistic descriptions of QCD scattering events need to model the cascade of quark and gluon splittings until hadron formation sets in, which is done by parton showers. The full event simulation can be performed with Monte Carlo event generators, which simulate the full chain from the hard interaction to the hadronic final states, including the modelling of non-perturbative components. The contribution of the LEP experiments (and of earlier collider experiments) to the study of jets is reviewed. Correlations between jets and the shape of jets had allowed the collaborations to determine the “color factors” – invariants of the SU(3) color group governing the strength of quark–gluon and gluon–gluon interactions. The calculated jet production rates (using perturbative QCD) are shown to agree precisely with data, for jet energies spanning more than five orders of magnitude. The production of jets recoiling against a vector boson,  $$W^\pm $$  <math> <msup> <mi>W</mi> <mo>±</mo> </msup> </math>   or Z, is shown to be well understood. The discovery of the Higgs boson was certainly an important milestone in the development of high-energy physics. The couplings of the Higgs boson to massive vector bosons and fermions that have been measured so far support its interpretation as mass-generating boson as predicted by the Standard Model. The study of the Higgs boson recoiling against hadronic jets (without or with heavy flavors) or against vector bosons is also highlighted. Apart from the description of hard interactions taking place at high energies, the understanding of “soft QCD” is also very important. In this respect, Pomeron – and Odderon – exchange, soft and hard diffraction are discussed. Weak decays of quarks and leptons, the quark mixing matrix and the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon are processes which are governed by weak interactions. However, corrections by strong interactions are important, and these are reviewed. As the measured values are incompatible with (most of) the predictions, the question arises: are these discrepancies first hints for New Physics beyond the Standard Model? This volume concludes with a description of future facilities or important upgrades of existing facilities which improve their luminosity by orders of magnitude. The best is yet to come!

Franz Gross

Germany

Eberhard Klempt

Stanley Brodsky

Andrzej Buras

Volker Burkert

Gudrun Heinrich

Karl Jakobs

Curtis Meyer

Kostas Orginos

Michael Strickland

Johanna Stachel

Giulia Zanderighi

Nora Brambilla

Peter Braun-Munzinger

Daniel Britzger

Simon Capstick

Tom Cohen

Volker Crede

Martha Constantinou

United Kingdom

Christine Davies

Luigi Debbio

Achim Denig

Carleton DeTar

Alexandre Deur

Russia

Latvia

Yuri Dokshitzer

Hans Dosch

Jozef Dudek

Monica Dunford

Evgeny Epelbaum

Miguel Escobedo

Harald Fritzsch

Japan

Kenji Fukushima

Paolo Gambino

Canada

Sweden

Dag Gillberg

Steven Gottlieb

CERN

Per Grafstrom

Massimiliano Grazzini

Boris Grube

JINR

Alexey Guskov

Toru Iijima

Xiangdong Ji

Frithjof Karsch

Stefan Kluth

John Kogut

Frank Krauss

Shunzo Kumano

Australia

Derek Leinweber

Heinrich Leutwyler

China

Hai-Bo Li

Yang Li

Bogdan Malaescu

Chiara Mariotti

Pieter Maris

Wally Melnitchouk

Johan Messchendorp

Harvey Meyer

Ryan Mitchell

Chandan Mondal

Frank Nerling

Sebastian Neubert

Marco Pappagallo

Saori Pastore

José Peláez

Andrew Puckett

Jianwei Qiu

Klaus Rabbertz

Alberto Ramos

Patrizia Rossi

Azerbaijan

Anar Rustamov

Andreas Schäfer

Stefan Scherer

Matthias Schindler

Steven Schramm

Mikhail Shifman

Edward Shuryak

Torbjörn Sjöstrand

George Sterman

Iain Stewart

Joachim Stroth

Eric Swanson

Costa Rica

Guy Téramond

Ulrike Thoma

Antonio Vairo

Danny Dyk

James Vary

Javier Virto

Marcel Vos

Christian Weiss

Markus Wobisch

Sau Wu

Christopher Young

Feng Yuan

Xingbo Zhao

Xiaorong Zhou

50 Years of quantum chromodynamics

Perturbative calculations for processes that involve heavy flavours can be performed in two approaches: the massive scheme and the massless one. The former enables one to fully account for the heavy-quark kinematics, while the latter allows one to resum potentially-large mass logarithms. Furthermore, the two schemes can be combined to take advantage of the virtues of each of them. Both massive and massless calculations can be supplemented by soft-gluon resummation. However matching between massive and massless resummed calculations is difficult, essentially because of the non-commutativity of the soft and massless limits. In this paper, we develop a formalism to combine resummed massive and massless calculations. We obtain an all-order expression that consistently resums both mass and soft logarithms to next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. We perform detailed calculations for the decay of the Higgs into a heavy-quark pair, and discuss the applications of this formalism to different processes.

A consistent resummation of mass and soft logarithms in processes with heavy flavours

We study the issue of separating hadronic jets that contain bottom quarks (<math><mi>b</mi></math> jets) from jets featuring light partons only. We develop a novel approach to <math><mi>b</mi></math> tagging that exploits the application of QCD-inspired jet substructure observables such as one-dimensional jet angularities and the two-dimensional primary Lund plane. We demonstrate that these observables can be used as inputs to modern machine-learning algorithms to efficiently separate <math><mi>b</mi></math> jets from light ones. In order to test our tagging procedure, we consider simulated events where a <math><mi>Z</mi></math> boson is produced in association with jets and show that using jet angularities as an input for a deep neural network, as well as using images obtained from the primary Lund jet plane as input to a convolutional neural network, one can achieve tagging accuracy comparable with the accuracy of conventional track-based taggers. We argue that the complementary usage of the track-based taggers together with the ones based upon QCD-inspired observables could improve <math><mi>b</mi></math>-tagging accuracy.

Charanjit K. Khosa

Federico Sforza

Identification of <math><mi>b</mi></math> jets using QCD-inspired observables

An intuitive definition of the partonic flavor of a jet in quantum chromodynamics is often only well-defined in the deep ultraviolet, where the strong force becomes a free theory and a jet consists of a single parton. However, measurements are performed in the infrared, where a jet consists of numerous particles and requires an algorithmic procedure to define their phase space boundaries. To connect these two regimes, we introduce a novel and simple partonic jet flavor definition in the infrared. We define the jet flavor to be the net flavor of the partons that lie exactly along the direction of the Winner-Take-All recombination scheme axis of the jet, which is safe to all orders under emissions of soft particles, but is not collinear safe. Collinear divergences can be absorbed into a perturbative fragmentation function that describes the evolution of the jet flavor from the ultraviolet to the infrared. The evolution equations are linear and a small modification to traditional DGLAP and we solve them to leading-logarithmic accuracy. The evolution equations exhibit fixed points in the deep infrared, we demonstrate quantitative agreement with parton shower simulations, and we present various infrared and collinear safe observables that are sensitive to this flavor definition.

Andrew Larkoski

Daniel Reichelt

A fragmentation approach to jet flavor

Observables involving heavy quarks can be computed in perturbative QCD in two different approximation schemes: either the quark mass dependence is fully retained, or it is retained only where needed to regulate the collinear singularity. The two schemes have different advantages and drawbacks. In particular, it is known that the structure of large logarithms arising from soft emissions is different in the two approaches. We investigate the origin of this difference in some detail, focussing on a few specific processes. We show that it is related to the non-commutativity of the small-mass and soft-emission limits. Finally, we perform the resummation of soft-emission logarithms to next-to-leading accuracy in the case of Higgs decay into a b   <math> <mover> <mi>b</mi> <mo>¯</mo> </mover> </math>  $$ \overline{b} $$  pair, in the scheme in which the quark mass dependence is fully accounted for.

Daniele Gaggero

Soft logarithms in processes with heavy quarks

An infrared and collinear (IRC) safe definition of the partonic flavour of a jet is vital for precision predictions of quantum chromodynamics at colliders. Jet flavour definitions have been presented in the literature, but they are typically defined through modification of the jet algorithm to be sensitive to partonic flavour at every stage of the clustering. While this does ensure that the sum of flavours in a jet is IRC safe, a flavour-sensitive clustering procedure is difficult to apply to realistic data. We introduce a distinct and novel approach to jet flavour that can be applied to a collection of partons defined by any algorithm. Our definition of jet flavour is the sum of flavours of all partons that remain after Soft Drop grooming, reclustered with the    algorithm. We prove that this prescription is IRC safe through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO), and so can interface with the most precise fixed-order calculations for jets available at present. We validate the IRC safety of this definition with numeric fixed-order codes and further show that jet flavour with Soft Drop reclustered with a generalised  $$k_T$$  <math> <msub> <mi>k</mi> <mi>T</mi> </msub> </math>   algorithm fails to be IRC safe at NNLO.

Practical jet flavour through NNLO