Accelerator Neutrinos

Abstract:

The current laws of physics do not explain the observed imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe. Sakharov proposed that an explanation would require the violation of CP symmetry between matter and antimatter. The only CP violation observed so far is in the weak interactions of quarks, and it is too small to explain the matter-antimatter imbalance of the universe. It has been shown that CP violation in the lepton sector could generate the matter-antimatter disparity through the process called leptogenesis. The quantum mixing of neutrinos, the neutral leptons in the Standard Model, provides a potential source of CP violation through a complex phase dCP, which may have consequences for theoretical models of leptogenesis. This CP violation can be measured in muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations and the corresponding antineutrino oscillations, which are experimentally accessible with accelerator-produced beams as established by the T2K experiment. Until now, the value of dCP has not been significantly constrained by neutrino oscillation experiments. Here the T2K collaboration reports a measurement that favors large enhancement of the neutrino oscillation probability, excluding values of dCP which result in a large enhancement of the observed anti-neutrino oscillation probability at three standard deviations (3 sigma). The 3 sigma confidence level interval for dCP, which is cyclic and repeats every 2pi, is [-3.41,-0.03] for the so-called normal mass ordering, and [-2.54,-0.32] for the inverted mass ordering. Our results show an indication of CP violation in the lepton sector. Herein we establish methods for sensitive searches for matter-antimatter asymmetry in neutrino oscillations using accelerator-produced neutrino beams. Future measurements with larger data samples will determine whether the leptonic CP violation is larger than the quark sector CP violation.

Abstract:

This Letter presents a measurement of prompt charged-particle production in proton-oxygen interactions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=9.62\mathrm{TeV}$ center-of-mass energy with the ATLAS detector, corresponding to $634\mu {\mathrm{b}}^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity. A total of $246\times {10}^6$ selected events have at least one track with transverse momentum $p_{\mathrm{T}}>500\mathrm{MeV}$ and pseudorapidity $|\eta |<2.5$ . The measured fiducial proton-oxygen cross section is ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{fid}.}^{p\mathrm{O}}=396\pm 6(\exp .)\pm 9(\mathrm{lumi}.)\mathrm{mb}$ and the extrapolated inelastic proton-air cross section is ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{inel}.}^{p+\mathrm{air}}=406\pm 6(\exp .)\pm 9(\mathrm{lumi}.)\pm 28(\mathrm{th}.)\mathrm{mb}$ . Measurements of charged-particle multiplicity, $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ , and $\eta$ distributions are an order-of-magnitude more precise than differences between hadronic-interaction models. These results enable improved modeling of cosmic-ray air showers, which is important for astroparticle physics.

Abstract:

Entanglement is a key property of quantum systems. In this Letter the first measurements of quantum entanglement between spins in pairs of $Z$ bosons are reported, using proton-proton collision data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at center-of-mass energies of 13 and 13.6 TeV, recorded with the ATLAS detector. Measurements of angular observables sensitive to $Z{Z}^{*}$ spin-density-matrix elements in the $H\to Z{Z}^{*}\to {\ell }^{+}{\ell }^{-}{\ell }^{+}{\ell }^{-}$ process yield coefficients $C_{2,1,2,-1}=-0.71\pm 0.45$ and $C_{2,2,2,-2}=0.08\pm 0.44$ , consistent with their Standard Model predictions. A complementary hypothesis test using the full angular distribution, and relying on several Standard Model assumptions in the decays, provides substantially higher sensitivity to quantum correlations and disfavors the separable-state hypothesis at a significance of 4.7 standard deviations (expected $4.9\sigma$ ) relative to the entangled Standard Model hypothesis. These results provide strong evidence of quantum entanglement between massive bosons (spin qutrits) at the electroweak scale.

Abstract:

This Letter presents the first evidence of the simultaneous production of two $Z$ bosons and one photon with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The measurement is performed using the full Run-2 dataset, recorded from 2015 to 2018, of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $140{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ . The fully leptonic final state with four leptons and one photon is analyzed, $pp\to ZZ\gamma \to {\ell }^{+}{\ell }^{-}{\ell }^{\prime +}{\ell }^{\prime -}\gamma$ with $\ell ,{\ell }^{\prime }=e$ or $\mu$ . This final state is measured in a fiducial region where photon final-state radiation is minimized, and the photon has a transverse momentum of $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\gamma }>20\mathrm{GeV}$ . Eight events are selected, with a background estimate of $0.92\pm 0.15$ . This results in an observed (expected) significance of the $ZZ\gamma$ final state of $4.4\sigma$ ( $4.0\sigma$ ). The measured cross section for $pp\to ZZ\gamma \to {\ell }^{+}{\ell }^{-}{\ell }^{\prime +}{\ell }^{\prime -}\gamma$ in the fiducial region is ${\sigma }_{ZZ\gamma }=0.144_{-0.051}^{+0.065}{(\mathrm{stat})}_{-0.004}^{+0.008}(\mathrm{syst})\mathrm{fb}$ , in agreement with the standard model prediction of ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{fid}}^{\mathrm{SM}}=0.130\pm 0.006\mathrm{fb}$ .

Abstract:

This Letter reports on the first evidence of inclusive Higgs-boson production at high transverse momentum in the $b\overline{b}$ final state, reconstructed in a single large-radius jet. The results are based on proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at a center-of-mass energies of 13 and 13.6 TeV, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of $301{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ . The study profits from the large background suppression provided by the use of a new transformer-based algorithm for jet identification and the sharper mass and transverse momentum, $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ , resolution from a dedicated regression model. The yield relative to the standard model prediction for Higgs bosons produced at $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ larger than 450 GeV is measured to be $1.53\pm 0.2{7)}_{-0.27}^{+0.33}\pm 0.17$ , where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is experimental systematic, and the third accounts for theory systematic, corresponding to an observed (expected) significance of $3.8\sigma (2.5\sigma )$ relative to the background-only hypothesis. Results are also obtained in three Higgs boson $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ intervals and found to be compatible with standard model predictions, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is experimental systematic, and the third accounts for theory systematic.