We propose a search strategy at the HL-LHC for a new neutral particle $\textit{X}$ that couples to $\textit{W}$-bosons, using the process $ p p \to W^{\pm} X (\to W^{+} W^{-}) $ with a tri-$\textit{W}$-boson final state. Focusing on events with two same-sign leptonic $\textit{W}$-boson decays into muons and a hadronically decaying $\textit{W}$-boson, our method leverages the enhanced signal-to-background discrimination achieved through a machine-learning-based multivariate analysis. Using the heavy photophobic axion-like particle (ALP) as a benchmark, we evaluate the discovery sensitivities on both production cross section times branching ratio $ \sigma(p p \to W^{\pm} X) \times \text{Br}(X \to W^{+} W^{-}) $ and the coupling $ g_{aWW} $ for particle mass over a wide range of 170–3000 GeV at the HL-LHC with center-of-mass energy $ \sqrt{s} = 14 \, \text{ TeV} $ and integrated luminosity $ {\cal{L}} = 3 \, \text{ab}^{-1} $ . Our results show significant improvements in discovery sensitivity, particularly for masses above 300 GeV, compared to existing limits derived from CMS analyses of Standard Model (SM) tri-$\textit{W}$-boson production at $ \sqrt{s} = 13 \, \text{ TeV} $ . This study demonstrates the potential of advanced selection techniques in probing the coupling of new particles to $\textit{W}$-bosons and highlights the HL-LHC's capability to explore physics beyond the SM.

China

Ying-nan Mao

Kechen Wang

Yiheng Xiong

Sensitivities of new resonance couplings to $\textit{W}$-bosons at the LHC * Ying-nan Mao and Yihen Xiong are supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12205227). Kechen Wang is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11905162), the Excellent Young Talents Program of the Wuhan University of Technology (40122102), and the research program of the Wuhan University of Technology (2020IB024). The simulation and analysis work of this article was completed with the computational cluster provided by the Theoretical Physics Group at the Department of Physics, School of Physics and Mechanics, Wuhan University of Technology

We study $ \cos2\phi $ azimuthal asymmetry in doubly longitudinally polarized proton-proton Drell-Yan collisions within the transverse momentum dependent factorization framework. The asymmetry arises from the convolution of the longitudinal transversity distribution $ h_{1L}^{\perp} $ for both protons. Using the Bacchetta-Delcarro-Pisano-Radici-Signori parameterization for the nonperturbative Sudakov form factor and the Wandzura-Wilczek approximation for collinear $ h_{1L}^{\perp} $ , we predict the double spin asymmetry $ A_{LL}^{\cos2\phi} $ at RHIC and NICA kinematics. Our results demonstrate sensitivity to sea quark distributions, with the asymmetry reaching up to 25% for maximal sea quark contributions. These predictions highlight the potential of polarized Drell-Yan measurements to probe sea quark dynamics and advance our understanding of nucleon structures.

Hui Li

Ting Hu

Liang-Liang Liu

Xiao-Yu Wang

Zhun Lu

Asymmetry ${{\boldsymbol A}_{\boldsymbol{LL}}^{\bf\cos2\boldsymbol\phi}} $ in the polarized proton-proton Drell-Yan process within TMD factorization * Hui Li is supported by Fundamental Research Program of Shanxi Province (202203021222224) and Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Normal University (JCYJ2023021). Xiao-Yu Wang is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province (242300421377, 232300421140)

The production of heavy-quark (HQ) jets is a new area that addresses the mass effect of jet quenching in heavy-ion physics. This paper presents a theoretical study of HQ jet yield suppression in Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and focuses on the energy loss of HQ jets produced by different mechanisms. The $\textit{p+p}$ baseline is provided by the generator simulation of high-energy reactions of particles (SHERPA), and the jet-medium interactions are described by the SHELL transport model, which considers the elastic and inelastic partonic energy loss in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). In $\textit{p+p}$ collisions, our numerical results indicate that the HQ jets from gluon splitting ( $ g \rightarrow Q $ -jet) are the dominant contribution at high $ p_T $ , displaying more dispersive structures than the HQ-initiated ( $ Q \rightarrow Q $ -jet). In nucleus-nucleus collisions, our calculations were consistent with the inclusive and b-jet $ R_{AA} $ recently measured by the ATLAS collaboration, revealing a remarkable manifestation of the mass effect of jet energy loss. As a result of the dispersive substructure, the $ g \rightarrow Q $ -jet loses more energy than the $ Q \rightarrow Q $ -jet in the QGP. Due to the significant contribution of $ g \rightarrow c $ -jet, the $ R_{AA} $ of $\textit{c}$-jet is comparable or even smaller than that of inclusive jet. To experimentally distinguish the $ g \rightarrow Q $ -jet and $ Q \rightarrow Q $ -jet, we propose event selection strategies based on their topological features and test their performances. By isolating the $ c \rightarrow c $ -jet, $ b \rightarrow b $ -jet, and the jets initiated by heavy quarks, we predicted that the order of their $ R_{AA} $ are in line with the mass hierarchy of energy loss. Future measurements on the $ R_{AA} $ of $ Q \rightarrow Q $ -jet and $ g \rightarrow Q $ -jet will provide a unique opportunity for testing the flavor/mass dependence of energy loss at the jet level.

Sa Wang

Shuang Li

Yao Li

Ben-Wei Zhang

Enke Wang

Probing the mass effect of heavy quark jets in high-energy nuclear collisions * Supported by the MajorProject of Basic and Applied Basic Research of Guangdong Province, China (2020B0301030008, 2023A1515011460), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11935007, 12035007, 12247127, 12375137). Sa Wang is supported by the Open Foundation of Key Laboratory of Quark and Lepton Physics (MOE) (QLPL2023P01) and the Talent Scientific Star-up Foundation of the China Three Gorges University, China (CTGU) (2024RCKJ013)

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multi-purpose neutrino experiment under construction in South China. This paper presents an updated estimate of JUNO’s sensitivity to neutrino mass ordering using the reactor antineutrinos emitted from eight nuclear reactor cores in the Taishan and Yangjiang nuclear power plants. This measurement is planned by studying the fine interference pattern caused by quasi-vacuum oscillations in the oscillated antineutrino spectrum at a baseline of 52.5 km and is completely independent of the CP violating phase and neutrino mixing angle θ $_{23}$. The sensitivity is obtained through a joint analysis of JUNO and Taishan Antineutrino Observatory (TAO) detectors utilizing the best available knowledge to date about the location and overburden of the JUNO experimental site, local and global nuclear reactors, JUNO and TAO detector responses, expected event rates and spectra of signals and backgrounds, and systematic uncertainties of analysis inputs. We find that a 3σ median sensitivity to reject the wrong mass ordering hypothesis can be reached with an exposure of about 6.5 years × 26.6 GW thermal power.

Chile

Angel Abusleme

France

Thomas Adam

Pakistan

Shakeel Ahmad

Rizwan Ahmed

Italy

Sebastiano Aiello

Muhammad Akram

Abid Aleem

Fengpeng An

Qi An

Giuseppe Andronico

JINR

Nikolay Anfimov

Vito Antonelli

Tatiana Antoshkina

Thailand

Burin Asavapibhop

João Pedro Athayde Marcondes de André

Didier Auguste

Weidong Bai

Nikita Balashov

Wander Baldini

Andrea Barresi

Davide Basilico

Eric Baussan

Marco Bellato

Marco Beretta

Antonio Bergnoli

Germany

Daniel Bick

Lukas Bieger

Svetlana Biktemerova

Thilo Birkenfeld

Iwan Morton-Blake

David Blum

Simon Blyth

Anastasia Bolshakova

Mathieu Bongrand

Taiwan

Clément Bordereau

Dominique Breton

Augusto Brigatti

Riccardo Brugnera

Riccardo Bruno

Antonio Budano

Jose Busto

Anatael Cabrera

Barbara Caccianiga

Hao Cai

Xiao Cai

Yanke Cai

Zhiyan Cai

Stéphane Callier

Antonio Cammi

Agustin Campeny

Chuanya Cao

Guofu Cao

Jun Cao

Rossella Caruso

Cédric Cerna

Vanessa Cerrone

Chi Chan

Jinfan Chang

Yun Chang

Auttakit Chatrabhuti

Chao Chen

Guoming Chen

Pingping Chen

Shaomin Chen

Yixue Chen

Yu Chen

Zhangming Chen

Zhiyuan Chen

Zikang Chen

Jie Cheng

Yaping Cheng

Yu Chin Cheng

Russia

Alexander Chepurnov

Alexey Chetverikov

Davide Chiesa

Brazil

Pietro Chimenti

Yen-Ting Chin

Ziliang Chu

Artem Chukanov

Gérard Claverie

Catia Clementi

Belgium

Barbara Clerbaux

Marta Colomer Molla

Selma Conforti DiLorenzo

Alberto Coppi

Daniele Corti

Simon Csakli

Flavio Dal Corso

United States

Olivia Dalager

Jaydeep Datta

Christophe De La Taille

Zhi Deng

Ziyan Deng

Xiaoyu Ding

Xuefeng Ding

Yayun Ding

Bayu Dirgantara

Carsten Dittrich

Sergey Dmitrievsky

Czechia

Tadeas Dohnal

Potential to identify neutrino mass ordering with reactor antineutrinos at JUNO  

We explore the decay of bound neutrons in the JUNO liquid scintillator detector into invisible particles (e.g., $$n\rightarrow 3 \nu $$ or $$nn \rightarrow 2 \nu $$ ), which do not produce an observable signal. The invisible decay includes two decay modes: $$ n \rightarrow { inv} $$ and $$ nn \rightarrow { inv} $$ . The invisible decays of -shell neutrons in $$^{12}\textrm{C}$$ will leave a highly excited residual nucleus. Subsequently, some de-excitation modes of the excited residual nuclei can produce a time- and space-correlated triple coincidence signal in the JUNO detector. Based on a full Monte Carlo simulation informed with the latest available data, we estimate all backgrounds, including inverse beta decay events of the reactor antineutrino $${\bar{\nu }}_e$$ , natural radioactivity, cosmogenic isotopes and neutral current interactions of atmospheric neutrinos. Pulse shape discrimination and multivariate analysis techniques are employed to further suppress backgrounds. With two years of exposure, JUNO is expected to give an order of magnitude improvement compared to the current best limits. After 10 years of data taking, the JUNO expected sensitivities at a 90% confidence level are $$\tau /B( n \rightarrow { inv} ) > 5.0 \times 10^{31} \, \textrm{years}$$ and $$\tau /B( nn \rightarrow { inv} ) > 1.4 \times 10^{32} \, \textrm{years}$$ .

Kai Adamowicz

João André

Iwan Blake

Steven Calvez

Xin Chen

Yiming Chen

Zelin Chen

Yu Cheng

Po-Lin Chou

Marta Molla

Selma Lorenzo

Chenyang Cui

Flavio Corso

Christophe Taille

JUNO sensitivity to invisible decay modes of neutrons

This paper presents an energy resolution study of the JUNO experiment, incorporating the latest knowledge acquired during the detector construction phase. The determination of neutrino mass ordering in JUNO requires an exceptional energy resolution better than 3% at 1 MeV. To achieve this ambitious goal, significant efforts have been undertaken in the design and production of the key components of the JUNO detector. Various factors affecting the detection of inverse beta decay signals have an impact on the energy resolution, extending beyond the statistical fluctuations of the detected number of photons, such as the properties of the liquid scintillator, performance of photomultiplier tubes, and the energy reconstruction algorithm. To account for these effects, a full JUNO simulation and reconstruction approach is employed. This enables the modeling of all relevant effects and the evaluation of associated inputs to accurately estimate the energy resolution. The results of this study reveal an energy resolution of 2.95% at 1 MeV. Furthermore, this study assesses the contribution of major effects to the overall energy resolution budget. This analysis serves as a reference for interpreting future measurements of energy resolution during JUNO data collection. Moreover, it provides a guideline for comprehending the energy resolution characteristics of liquid scintillator-based detectors.

YuChin Cheng

Selma Conforti Di Lorenzo

Prediction of energy resolution in the JUNO experiment  

The China Jinping underground Laboratory (CJPL) is an excellent location for studying solar, terrestrial, and supernova neutrinos due to its 2400-meter vertical rock overburden. Its unparalleled depth gives an opportunity to investigate the cosmic-ray muons with exceptionally high average energy at <math><mo>∼</mo><mn>360</mn><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><mi>GeV</mi></math>. This paper details a study of muon-related backgrounds based on 1178 days of data collected by the 1-ton prototype neutrino detector used for the Jinping Neutrino Experiment (JNE) since 2017. The apparent effects for the leakage of muons’ secondary particles due to detector’s finite size on the measured neutron yield are first discussed in detail. The analysis of 493 cosmic-ray muon candidates and <math><mn>13.6</mn><mo>±</mo><mn>5.7</mn></math> cosmogenic neutron candidates, along with a thorough evaluation of detection efficiency and uncertainties, gives a muon flux of <math><mrow><mo>(</mo><mn>3.56</mn><mo>±</mo><msub><mn>0.16</mn><mrow><mrow><mi>stat</mi></mrow></mrow></msub><mo>±</mo><msub><mn>0.10</mn><mrow><mrow><mi>syst</mi></mrow></mrow></msub><mo>)</mo><mo>×</mo><msup><mn>10</mn><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>10</mn></mrow></msup><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><msup><mi>cm</mi><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>2</mn></mrow></msup><mtext> </mtext><msup><mi>s</mi><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msup></mrow></math> and a cosmogenic neutron yield of <math><mrow><mo>(</mo><mn>3.37</mn><mo>±</mo><mn>1.4</mn><msub><mrow><mn>1</mn></mrow><mrow><mi>stat</mi></mrow></msub><mo>±</mo><mn>0.3</mn><msub><mrow><mn>1</mn></mrow><mrow><mi>syst</mi></mrow></msub><mo>)</mo><mo>×</mo><msup><mrow><mn>10</mn></mrow><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>4</mn></mrow></msup><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><msup><mrow><mi>μ</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msup><mtext> </mtext><msup><mrow><mi>g</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msup><mtext> </mtext><msup><mrow><mi>cm</mi></mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn></mrow></msup></mrow></math> in LAB-based liquid scintillator.

Xinshun Zhang

Jinjing Li

Wei Dou

Haoyang Fu

Ye Liang

Qian Liu

Wentai Luo

Ming Qi

Wenhui Shao

Haozhe Sun

Jian Tang

Yuyi Wang

Zhe Wang

Changxu Wei

Jun Weng

Yiyang Wu

Benda Xu

Chuang Xu

Tong Xu

Yuzi Yang

Aiqiang Zhang

Bin Zhang

Study of neutron production for 360 GeV cosmic muons

Small neutrino masses confirmed in the neutrino oscillation experiments indicate the need for new physics beyond the standard model. Seesaw mechanism is an interesting way to extend the standard model for explaining the neutrino masses. In a low-scale type-I seesaw mechanism, the tiny masses of neutrinos can be explained by heavy Majorana neutrino masses. Heavy Majorana neutrinos can lead to lepton-number-violating processes and the induced CP violation can contribute to the baryon asymmetry in the Universe. Heavy Majorana neutrinos can also lead to lepton-number-conserving processes and in this paper, we study the CP violation in lepton-number-conserving processes through heavy Majorana neutrinos at future lepton colliders. New possible observations of CP violation can also be connected to evidences of new physics beyond the standard model.

Xing-Hua Yang

Xin-Yi Zhang

CP violation in lepton-number-conserving processes through heavy Majorana neutrinos at future lepton colliders

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a large liquid scintillator detector designed to explore many topics in fundamental physics. In this study, the potential of searching for proton decay in the   $ p\to \bar{\nu} K^+ $   mode with JUNO is investigated. The kaon and its decay particles feature a clear three-fold coincidence signature that results in a high efficiency for identification. Moreover, the excellent energy resolution of JUNO permits suppression of the sizable background caused by other delayed signals. Based on these advantages, the detection efficiency for the proton decay via   $ p\to \bar{\nu} K^+ $   is 36.9% ± 4.9% with a background level of   $ p\to \bar{\nu} K^+ $     $ p\to \bar{\nu} K^+ $   events after 10 years of data collection. The estimated sensitivity based on 200 kton-years of exposure is   $ p\to \bar{\nu} K^+ $   years, which is competitive with the current best limits on the proton lifetime in this channel and complements the use of different detection technologies.