## First Evidence the Higgs Talks to Other Generations

Article Titles: “Measurement of Higgs boson decay to a pair of muons in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(S) = 13 TeV” and “A search for the dimuon decay of the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector”

Authors: The CMS Collaboration and The ATLAS Collaboration, respectively

References: CDS: CMS-PAS-HIG-19-006 and arxiv:2007.07830, respectively

Like parents who wonder if millennials have ever read a book by someone outside their generation, physicists have been wondering if the Higgs communicates with matter particles outside the 3rd generation. Since its discovery in 2012, phycists at the LHC experiments have been studying the Higgs in a variety of ways. However despite the fact that matter seems to be structured into 3 distinct ‘generations’ we have so far only seen the Higgs talking to the 3rd generation. In the Standard Model, the different generations of matter are 3 identical copies of the same kinds of particles, just with each generation having heavier masses. Due to the fact that the Higgs interacts with particles in proportion to their mass, this means it has been much easier to measure the Higgs talking to the third and heaviest generation of mater particles. But in order to test whether the Higgs boson really behaves exactly like the Standard Model predicts or has slight deviations -(indicating new physics), it is important to measure its interactions with particles from the other generations too. The 2nd generation particle the Higgs decays most often to is the charm quark, but the experimental difficulty of identifying charm quarks makes this an extremely difficult channel to probe (though it is being tried).

The best candidate for spotting the Higgs talking to the 2nd generation is by looking for the Higgs decaying to two muons which is exactly what ATLAS and CMS both did in their recent publications. However this is no easy task. Besides being notoriously difficult to produce, the Higgs only decays to dimuons two out of every 10,000 times it is produced. Additionally, there is a much larger background of Z bosons decaying to dimuon pairs that further hides the signal.

CMS and ATLAS try to make the most of their data by splitting up events into multiple categories by applying cuts that target different the different ways Higgs bosons are produced: the fusion of two gluons, two vector bosons, two top quarks or radiated from a vector boson. Some of these categories are then further sub-divided to try and squeeze out as much signal as possible. Gluon fusion produces the most Higgs bosons, but it also the hardest to distinguish from the Z boson production background. The vector boson fusion process produces the 2nd most Higgs and is a more distinctive signature so it contributes the most to the overall measurement. In each of these sub-categories a separate machine learning classifier is trained to distinguish Higgs boson decays from background events. All together CMS uses 14 different categories of events and ATLAS uses 20. Backgrounds are estimated using both simulation and data-driven techniques, with slightly different methods in each category. To extract the overall amount of signal present, both CMS and ATLAS fit all of their respective categories at once with a single parameter controlling the strength of a Higgs boson signal.

At the end of the day, CMS and ATLAS are able to report evidence of Higgs decay to dimuons with a significance of 3-sigma and 2-sigma respectively (chalk up 1 point for CMS in their eternal rivalry!). Both of them find an amount of signal in agreement with the Standard Model prediction.

CMS’s first evidence of this decay allows them to measuring the strength of the Higgs coupling to muons as compared to the Standard Model prediction. One can see this latest muon measurement sits right on the Standard Model prediction, and probes the Higgs’ coupling to a particle with much smaller mass than any of the other measurements.

As CMS and ATLAS collect more data and refine their techniques, they will certainly try to push their precision up to the 5-sigma level needed to claim discovery of the Higgs’s interaction with the 2nd generation. They will be on the lookout for any deviations from the expected behavior of the SM Higgs, which could indicate new physics!

Older ATLAS Press Release “ATLAS searches for rare Higgs boson decays into muon pairs

Cern Courier Article “The Higgs adventure: five years in

Particle Bites Post “Studying the Higgs via Top Quark Couplings

Blog Post from Matt Strassler on “How the Higgs Field Works

## A simple matter

Article title: Evidence of A Simple Dark Sector from XENON1T Anomaly

Authors: Cheng-Wei Chiang, Bo-Qiang Lu

Reference: arXiv:2007.06401

As with many anomalies in the high-energy universe, particle physicists are rushed off their feet to come up with new, and often somewhat often complicated models to explain them. With the recent detection of an excess in electron recoil events in the 1-7 keV region from the XENON1T experiment (see Oz’s post in case you missed it), one can ask whether even the simplest of models can even still fit the bill. Although still at 3.5 sigma evidence – not quite yet in the ‘discovery’ realm – there is still great opportunity to test the predictability and robustness of our most rudimentary dark matter ideas.

The paper in question considers would could be one of the simplest dark sectors with the introduction of only two more fundamental particles – a dark photon and a dark fermion. The dark fermion plays the role of the dark matter (or part of it) which communicates with our familiar Standard Model particles, namely the electron, through the dark photon. In the language of particle physics, the dark sector particles actually carries a kind of ‘dark charge’, much like the electron carries what we know as the electric charge. The (almost massless) dark photon is special in the sense that it can interact with both the visible and dark sector – and as opposed to visible photons, and have a very long mean free path able to reach the detector on Earth. An important parameter describing how much the ordinary and dark photon ‘mix’ together is usually described by $\varepsilon$. But how does this fit into the context of the XENON 1T excess?

The idea is that the dark fermions annihilate into pairs of dark photons (seen in Fig. 1) which excite electrons when they hit the detector material, much like a dark version of the photoelectric effect – only much more difficult to observe. The processes above remain exclusive, without annihilating straight to Standard Model particles, as long as the dark matter mass remains less than the lightest charged particle, the electron. With the electron at a few hundred keV, we should be fine in the range of the XENON excess.

What we are ultimately interested in is the rate at which the dark matter interacts with the detector, which in high-energy physics are highly calculable:

$\frac{d R}{d \Delta E}= 1.737 \times 10^{40}\left(f_{\chi} \alpha^{\prime}\right)^{2} \epsilon(E)\left(\frac{\mathrm{keV}}{m_{\chi}}\right)^{4}\left(\frac{\sigma_{\gamma}\left(m_{\chi}\right)}{\mathrm{barns}}\right) \frac{1}{\sqrt{2 \pi} \sigma} e^{-\frac{\left(E-m_{\chi}\right)^{2}}{2 \sigma^{2}}}$

where $f_{\chi}$ is the fraction of dark matter represented by $\chi$, $\alpha'=\varepsilon e^2_{X} / (4\pi)$, $\epsilon(E)$ is the efficiency factor for the XENON 1T experiment and $\sigma_{\gamma}$ is the photoelectric cross section.

Figure 2 shows the favoured regions for the dark fermion explanation fot the XENON excess. The dashed green lines represent only a 1% fraction of dark fermion matter for the universe, whilst the solid lines are to explain the entire dark matter content. Upper limits from the XENON 1T data is shown in blue, with a bunch of other astrophysical contraints (namely red giants, red dwarfs and horizontal branch star) far above the preffered regions.

This plot actually raises another important question: How sensitive are these results to the fraction of dark matter represented by this model? For that we need to specify how the dark matter is actually created in the first place – with the two most probably well-known mechanisms the ‘freeze-out’ and the ‘freeze-in’ (follow the links to previous posts!)

The first important point to note from the above figures is that the freeze-out mechanism doesn’t even depend on the mixing between the visible and dark sector i.e. the vertical axes. However, recall that the relic density in freeze-out is determined by the rate of annihlation into SM fermions – which is of course forbidden here for the mass of fermionic DM. The freeze-in works a little differently since there are two processes that can contribute to populating the relic density of DM: SM charged fermion annihlations and dark photon annihilations. It turns out that the charged fermion channel dominates for larger values of $e_X$ and in of course then becomes insensitive to the mixing parameter $\varepsilon$ and hence dark photon annihilations.

Of course it has been emphasized in previous posts that the only way to really get a good test of these models is with more data. But the advantage of simple models like these are that they are readily available in the physicist’s arsenal when anomalies like these pop up (and they do!)

## Charmonium-onium: A fully charmed tetraquark

Paper Title: Observation of structure in the $J/\psi$-pair mass spectrum

Authors: LHCb Collaboration

Reference: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.16957.pdf

The Announcement

The LHCb collaboration reports a 5-sigma resonance at 6.9 GeV, consistent with predictions of a fully-charmed tetraquark state.

The Background

One of the ways quarks interact with each other is the strong nuclear force. This force is unlike the electroweak or gravitational forces in that the interaction strength increases with the separation between quarks, until it sharply falls off at roughly $10^{-15}$m. We say that the strong force is “confined” due to this sharp drop off. It is also dissimilar to the other forces in that the Strong force is non-perturbative. For perturbation theory to work well, the more complex a Feynman diagram becomes, the less it should contribute to the process. In the strong interaction though, each successive diagram contributes more than the previous one. Despite these challenges, physicists have still made sense organizing the zoo of quarks and bound states that come from particle collisions.

The quark ($q$) model [1,2] classifies hadrons into Mesons ($q \bar{q}$) and Baryons ($qqq$ or $\bar{q}\bar{q}\bar{q}$). It also allows for the existence of exotic hadrons like the tetraquark ($qq\bar{q}\bar{q}$) or pentaquark ($qqq\bar{q}\bar{q}\bar{q}$). The first evidence for an exotic hardon of this nature came in 2003 from the Belle Collaboration [1]. According to the LHCb collaboration, “all hadrons observed to date, including those of exotic nature, contain at most two heavy charm ($c$) or bottom ($b$) quarks, whereas many QCD-motivated phenomenological models also predict the existence of states consisting of four heavy quarks.” In this paper, the LHCb reports evidence of a $cc\bar{c}\bar{c}$ state, the first fully charmed tetraquark state.

The Method

Perhaps the simplest way to form a fully charmed tetraquark state, $T_{ cc \bar{c}\bar{c}}$ from now on, is to form two charmonium states ($J/\psi$) which then themselves form a bound state. This search focuses on pairs of charmonium that are produced from two separate interactions, as opposed to resonant production through a single interaction. This is advantageous because “the distribution of any di-$J/\psi$ observable can be constructed using the kinematics from single $J/\psi$ production.” In other words, independent $J/\psi$ production reduces the amount of work it takes to construct observables.

Once $J/\psi$ is formed, the most useful decay it undergoes is into pairs of muons with about a 6% branching ratio [2]. To form $J/\psi$ candidates, the di-muon invariant mass must be between $3.0 - 3.2$GeV. To form a di-$J/\psi$ candidate, the $T_{ cc \bar{c}\bar{c}}$, all four muons are required to have originated from the same proton-proton collision point. This eliminates the possibility of associating two $J/\psi$s from two different proton collisions.

The Findings

When the dust settles, the LHCb finds a $5-\sigma$ resonance at $m_{\text{di}- J/\psi} = 6905 \pm 11 \pm 7$ MeV with a width of $\Gamma = 80 \pm 19 \pm 33$ MeV. This resonance is just above twice the $J/\psi$ mass.

References

## Crystals are dark matter’s best friends

Article title: “Development of ultra-pure NaI(Tl) detector for COSINE-200 experiment”

Authors: B.J. Park et el.

Reference: arxiv:2004.06287

The landscape of direct detection of dark matter is a perplexing one; all experiments have so far come up with deafening silence, except for a single one which promises a symphony. This is the DAMA/LIBRA experiment in Gran Sasso, Italy, which has been seeing an annual modulation in its signal for two decades now.

Such an annual modulation is as dark-matter-like as it gets. First proposed by Katherine Freese in 1987, it would be the result of earth’s motion inside the galactic halo of dark matter in the same direction as the sun for half of the year and in the opposite direction during the other half. However, DAMA/LIBRA’s results are in conflict with other experiments – but with the catch that none of those used the same setup. The way to settle this is obviously to build more experiments with the DAMA/LIBRA setup. This is an ongoing effort which ultimately focuses on the crystals at its heart.

The specific crystals are made of the scintillating material thallium-doped sodium iodide, NaI(Tl). Dark matter particles, and particularly WIMPs, would collide elastically with atomic nuclei and the recoil would give off photons, which would eventually be captured by photomultiplier tubes at the ends of each crystal.

Right now a number of NaI(Tl)-based experiments are at various stages of preparation around the world, with COSINE-100 at the Yangyang mountain, S.Korea, already producing negative results. However, these are still not on equal footing with DAMA/LIBRA’s because of higher backgrounds at COSINE-100. What is the collaboration to do, then? The answer is focus even more on the crystals and how they are prepared.

Over the last couple of years some serious R&D went into growing better crystals for COSINE-200, the planned upgrade of COSINE-100. Yes, a crystal is something that can and does grow. A seed placed inside the raw material, in this case NaI(Tl) powder, leads it to organize itself around the seed’s structure over the next hours or days.

In COSINE-100 the most annoying backgrounds came from within the crystals themselves because of the production process, because of natural radioactivity, and because of cosmogenically induced isotopes. Let’s see how each of these was tackled during the experiment’s mission towards a radiopure upgrade.

Improved techniques of growing and preparing the crystals reduced contamination from the materials of the grower device and from the ambient environment. At the same time different raw materials were tried out to put the inherent contamination under control.

Among a handful of naturally present radioactive isotopes particular care was given to 40K. 40K can decay characteristically to an X-ray of 3.2keV and a γ-ray of 1,460keV, a combination convenient for tagging it to a large extent. The tagging is done with the help of 2,000 liters of liquid scintillator surrounding the crystals. However, if the γ-ray escapes the crystal then the left-behind X-ray will mimic the expected signal from WIMPs… Eventually the dangerous 40K was brought down to levels comparable to those in DAMA/LIBRA through the investigation of various techniques and first materials.

But the main source of radioactive background in COSINE-100 was isotopes such as 3H or 22Na created inside the crystals by cosmic ray muons, after their production. Now, their abundance was reduced significantly by two simple moves: the crystals were grown locally at a very low altitude and installed underground within a few weeks (instead of being transported from a lab at 1,400 meters above sea in Colorado). Moreover, most of the remaining cosmogenic background is to decay away within a couple of years.

Where are these efforts standing? The energy range of interest for testing the DAMA/LIBRA signal is 1-6keV. This corresponds to a background target of 1 count/kg/day/keV. After the crystals R&D, the achieved contamination was less than about 0.34 counts. In short, everything is ready for COSINE-100 to upgrade to COSINE-200 and test the annual modulation without the previous ambiguities that stood in the way.