Prof. Gavin Salam FRS

Abstract:

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) Study is aimed at assessing the physics potential and the technical feasibility of a new collider with centre-of-mass energies, in the hadron-hadron collision mode, seven times larger than the nominal LHC energies. Operating such machine with heavy ions is an option that is being considered in the accelerator design studies. It would provide, for example, Pb-Pb and p-Pb collisions at sqrt{s_NN} = 39 and 63 TeV, respectively, per nucleon-nucleon collision, with integrated luminosities above 30 nb^-1 per month for Pb-Pb. This is a report by the working group on heavy-ion physics of the FCC Study. First ideas on the physics opportunities with heavy ions at the FCC are presented, covering the physics of the Quark-Gluon Plasma, of gluon saturation, of photon-induced collisions, as well as connections with other fields of high-energy physics.

Abstract:

We present new results for the jet-veto efficiency and zero-jet cross section in Higgs production through gluon fusion. We incorporate the N3LO corrections to the total cross section, the NNLO corrections to the 1-jet rate, NNLL resummation for the jet p t and LL resummation for the jet radius dependence. Our results include known finite-mass corrections and are obtained using the jet-veto efficiency method, updated relative to earlier work to take into account what has been learnt from the new precision calculations that we include. For 13 TeV collisions and using our default choice for the renormalisation and factorisation scales, μ 0 = m H /2, the matched prediction for the jet-veto efficiency increases the pure N3LO prediction by about 2% and the two have comparable uncertainties. Relative to NNLO+NNLL results, the new prediction is 2% smaller and the uncertainty reduces from about 10% to a few percent. Results are also presented for the central scale μ 0 = m H .

Abstract:

This document provides a writeup of all contributions to the workshop on "High precision measurements of $\alpha_s$: From LHC to FCC-ee" held at CERN, Oct. 12--13, 2015. The workshop explored in depth the latest developments on the determination of the QCD coupling $\alpha_s$ from 15 methods where high precision measurements are (or will be) available. Those include low-energy observables: (i) lattice QCD, (ii) pion decay factor, (iii) quarkonia and (iv) $\tau$ decays, (v) soft parton-to-hadron fragmentation functions, as well as high-energy observables: (vi) global fits of parton distribution functions, (vii) hard parton-to-hadron fragmentation functions, (viii) jets in $e^\pm$p DIS and $\gamma$-p photoproduction, (ix) photon structure function in $\gamma$-$\gamma$, (x) event shapes and (xi) jet cross sections in $e^+e^-$ collisions, (xii) W boson and (xiii) Z boson decays, and (xiv) jets and (xv) top-quark cross sections in proton-(anti)proton collisions. The current status of the theoretical and experimental uncertainties associated to each extraction method, the improvements expected from LHC data in the coming years, and future perspectives achievable in $e^+e^-$ collisions at the Future Circular Collider (FCC-ee) with $\cal{O}$(1--100 ab$^{-1}$) integrated luminosities yielding 10$^{12}$ Z bosons and jets, and 10$^{8}$ W bosons and $\tau$ leptons, are thoroughly reviewed. The current uncertainty of the (preliminary) 2015 strong coupling world-average value, $\alpha_s(m_Z)$ = 0.1177 $\pm$ 0.0013, is about 1\%. Some participants believed this may be reduced by a factor of three in the near future by including novel high-precision observables, although this opinion was not universally shared. At the FCC-ee facility, a factor of ten reduction in the $\alpha_s$ uncertainty should be possible, mostly thanks to the huge Z and W data samples available.