J. Chinellato

Using data collected at the Pierre Auger Observatory during the past 3.7 years, we demonstrated a correlation between the arrival directions of cosmic rays with energy above 6 × 10 19 electron volts and the positions of active galactic nuclei (AGN) lying within ∼75 megaparsecs. We rejected the hypothesis of an isotropic distribution of these cosmic rays with at least a 99% confidence level from a prescribed a priori test. The correlation we observed is compatible with the hypothesis that the highest-energy particles originate from nearby extragalactic sources whose flux has not been substantially reduced by interaction with the cosmic background radiation. AGN or objects having a similar spatial distribution are possible sources.

Cosmic rays are atomic nuclei arriving from outer space that reach the highest energies observed in nature. Clues to their origin come from studying the distribution of their arrival directions. Using $3 \times 10^4$ cosmic rays above $8 \times 10^{18}$ electron volts, recorded with the Pierre Auger Observatory from a total exposure of 76,800 square kilometers steradian year, we report an anisotropy in the arrival directions. The anisotropy, detected at more than the 5.2$\sigma$ level of significance, can be described by a dipole with an amplitude of $6.5_{-0.9}^{+1.3}$% towards right ascension $\alpha_{d} = 100 \pm 10$ degrees and declination $\delta_{d} = -24_{-13}^{+12}$ degrees. That direction indicates an extragalactic origin for these ultra-high energy particles.

In this work we present the interpretation of the energy spectrum and mass composition data as measured by the Pierre Auger Collaboration above $6 \times 10^{17}$ eV. We use an astrophysical model with two extragalactic source populations to model the hardening of the cosmic-ray flux at around $5\times 10^{18}$ eV (the so-called "ankle" feature) as a transition between these two components. We find our data to be well reproduced if sources above the ankle emit a mixed composition with a hard spectrum and a low rigidity cutoff. The component below the ankle is required to have a very soft spectrum and a mix of protons and intermediate-mass nuclei. The origin of this intermediate-mass component is not well constrained and it could originate from either Galactic or extragalactic sources. To the aim of evaluating our capability to constrain astrophysical models, we discuss the impact on the fit results of the main experimental systematic uncertainties and of the assumptions about quantities affecting the air shower development as well as the propagation and redshift distribution of injected ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs).

Measurements are presented of the Bs0→μ+μ− branching fraction and effective lifetime, as well as results of a search for the B0→μ+μ− decay in proton-proton collisions at s=13TeV at the LHC. The analysis is based on data collected with the CMS detector in 2016–2018 corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 140fb−1. The branching fraction of the Bs0→μ+μ− decay and the effective Bs0 meson lifetime are the most precise single measurements to date. No evidence for the B0→μ+μ− decay has been found. All results are found to be consistent with the standard model predictions and previous measurements.

At the start of Run 2 in 2015, the LHC delivered proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. During Run 2 (years 2015-2018) the LHC eventually reached a luminosity of 2.1 $\times$ 10$^{34}$ cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$, almost three times that reached during Run 1 (2009-2013) and a factor of two larger than the LHC design value, leading to events with up to a mean of about 50 simultaneous inelastic proton-proton collisions per bunch crossing (pileup). The CMS Level-1 trigger was upgraded prior to 2016 to improve the selection of physics events in the challenging conditions posed by the second run of the LHC. This paper describes the performance of the CMS Level-1 trigger upgrade during the data taking period of 2016-2018. The upgraded trigger implements pattern recognition and boosted decision tree regression techniques for muon reconstruction, includes pileup subtraction for jets and energy sums, and incorporates pileup-dependent isolation requirements for electrons and tau leptons. In addition, the new trigger calculates high-level quantities such as the invariant mass of pairs of reconstructed particles. The upgrade reduces the trigger rate from background processes and improves the trigger efficiency for a wide variety of physics signals.

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.

The emission of radio waves from air showers has been attributed to the so-called geomagnetic emission process. At frequencies around 50 MHz this process leads to coherent radiation which can be observed with rather simple setups. The direction of the electric field induced by this emission process depends only on the local magnetic field vector and on the incoming direction of the air shower. We report on measurements of the electric field vector where, in addition to this geomagnetic component, another component has been observed which cannot be described by the geomagnetic emission process. The data provide strong evidence that the other electric field component is polarized radially with respect to the shower axis, in agreement with predictions made by Askaryan who described radio emission from particle showers due to a negative charge-excess in the front of the shower. Our results are compared to calculations which include the radiation mechanism induced by this charge-excess process.

We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of 15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.

Neutrinos with energies above $10^{17}$ eV are detectable with the Surface Detector Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The identification is efficiently performed for neutrinos of all flavors interacting in the atmosphere at large zenith angles, as well as for Earth-skimming $\tau$ neutrinos with nearly tangential trajectories relative to the earth. No neutrino candidates were found in $\sim\,14.7$ years of data taken up to 31 August 2018. This leads to restrictive upper bounds on their flux. The $90\%$ C.L. single-flavor limit to the diffuse flux of ultra-high-energy neutrinos with an $E_\nu^{-2}$ spectrum in the energy range $1.0 \times 10^{17}~{\rm eV} - 2.5 \times 10^{19}~{\rm eV}$ is $E^2 {\rm d}N_\nu/{\rm d}E_\nu < 4.4 \times 10^{-9}~{\rm GeV~cm^{-2}~s^{-1}~sr^{-1}}$, placing strong constraints on several models of neutrino production at EeV energies and on the properties of the sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

A search for narrow and broad resonances with masses greater than 1.8 TeV decaying to a pair of jets is presented. The search uses proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s} =$ 13 TeV collected at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb$^{-1}$. The background arising from standard model processes is predicted with the fit method used in previous publications and with a new method. The dijet invariant mass spectrum is well described by both data-driven methods, and no significant evidence for the production of new particles is observed. Model independent upper limits are reported on the production cross sections of narrow resonances, and broad resonances with widths up to 55% of the resonance mass. Limits are presented on the masses of narrow resonances from various models: string resonances, scalar diquarks, axigluons, colorons, excited quarks, color-octet scalars, W' and Z' bosons, Randall-Sundrum gravitons, and dark matter mediators. The limits on narrow resonances are improved by 200 to 800 GeV relative to those reported in previous CMS dijet resonance searches. The limits on dark matter mediators are presented as a function of the resonance mass and width, and on the associated coupling strength as a function of the mediator mass. These limits exclude at 95% confidence level a dark matter mediator with a mass of 1.8 TeV and width 1% of its mass or higher, up to one with a mass of 4.8 TeV and a width 45% of its mass or higher.

A measurement of the mass of the Higgs boson in the diphoton decay channel is presented. This analysis is based on 35.9 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data collected during the 2016 LHC running period, with the CMS detector at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. A refined detector calibration and new analysis techniques have been used to improve the precision of this measurement. The Higgs boson mass is measured to be $m_\mathrm{H} =$ 125.78 $\pm$ 0.26 GeV. This is combined with a measurement of $m_\mathrm{H}$ already performed in the H $\to$ ZZ $\to$ 4$\ell$ decay channel using the same data set, giving $m_\mathrm{H} =$ 125.46 $\pm$ 0.16 GeV. This result, when further combined with an earlier measurement of $m_\mathrm{H}$ using data collected in 2011 and 2012 with the CMS detector, gives a value for the Higgs boson mass of $m_\mathrm{H} =$ 125.38 $\pm$ 0.14 GeV. This is currently the most precise measurement of the mass of the Higgs boson.

Machine-learning (ML) techniques are explored to identify and classify hadronic decays of highly Lorentz-boosted W/Z/Higgs bosons and top quarks. Techniques without ML have also been evaluated and are included for comparison. The identification performances of a variety of algorithms are characterized in simulated events and directly compared with data. The algorithms are validated using proton-proton collision data at √s = 13TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. Systematic uncertainties are assessed by comparing the results obtained using simulation and collision data. The new techniques studied in this paper provide significant performance improvements over non-ML techniques, reducing the background rate by up to an order of magnitude at the same signal efficiency.

A search is presented for a narrow resonance decaying to a pair of oppositely charged muons using $\sqrt{s}=13\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$ proton-proton collision data recorded at the LHC. In the 45--75 and 110--200 GeV resonance mass ranges, the search is based on conventional triggering and event reconstruction techniques. In the 11.5--45 GeV mass range, the search uses data collected with dimuon triggers with low transverse momentum thresholds, recorded at high rate by storing a reduced amount of trigger-level information. The data correspond to integrated luminosities of 137 and $96.6\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for conventional and high-rate triggering, respectively. No significant resonant peaks are observed in the probed mass ranges. The search sets the most stringent constraints to date on a dark photon in the $\ensuremath{\sim}30--75$ and 110--200 GeV mass ranges.

With increasing instantaneous luminosity at the LHC come additional reconstruction challenges. At high luminosity, many collisions occur simultaneously within one proton-proton bunch crossing. The isolation of an interesting collision from the additional "pileup" collisions is needed for effective physics performance. In the CMS Collaboration, several techniques capable of mitigating the impact of these pileup collisions have been developed. Such methods include charged-hadron subtraction, pileup jet identification, isospin-based neutral particle "$\delta\beta$" correction, and, most recently, pileup per particle identification. This paper surveys the performance of these techniques for jet and missing transverse momentum reconstruction, as well as muon isolation. The analysis makes use of data corresponding to 35.9 fb$^{-1}$ collected with the CMS experiment in 2016 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The performance of each algorithm is discussed for up to 70 simultaneous collisions per bunch crossing. Significant improvements are found in the identification of pileup jets, the jet energy, mass, and angular resolution, missing transverse momentum resolution, and muon isolation when using pileup per particle identification.

We present the first measurement of the fluctuations in the number of muons in extensive air showers produced by ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. We find that the measured fluctuations are in good agreement with predictions from air shower simulations. This observation provides new insights into the origin of the previously reported deficit of muons in air shower simulations and constrains models of hadronic interactions at ultrahigh energies. Our measurement is compatible with the muon deficit originating from small deviations in the predictions from hadronic interaction models of particle production that accumulate as the showers develop.

Production cross sections of the Higgs boson are measured in the H $\to$ ZZ $\to$ $4\ell$ ($\ell$ $=$ e, $\mu$) decay channel. A data sample of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected by the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb$^{-1}$ is used. The signal strength modifier $\mu$, defined as the ratio of the Higgs boson production rate in the $4\ell$ channel to the standard model (SM) expectation, is measured to be $\mu$ $=$ 0.94 $\pm$ 0.07 (stat) ${}^{+0.09}_{-0.08}$ (syst) at a fixed value of $m_\mathrm{H}$ $=$ 125.38 GeV. The signal strength modifiers for the individual Higgs boson production modes are also reported. The inclusive fiducial cross section for the H $\to$ $4\ell$ process is measured to be 2.84 $^{+0.23}_{-0.22}$ (stat) ${}^{+0.26}_{-0.21}$ (syst) fb, which is compatible with the SM prediction of 2.84 $\pm$ 0.15 fb for the same fiducial region. Differential cross sections as a function of the transverse momentum and rapidity of the Higgs boson, the number of associated jets, and the transverse momentum of the leading associated jet are measured. A new set of cross section measurements in mutually exclusive categories targeted to identify production mechanisms and kinematical features of the events is presented. The results are in agreement with the SM predictions.

The first evidence for X(3872) production in relativistic heavy ion collisions is reported. The X(3872) production is studied in lead-lead (Pb-Pb) collisions at a center-of-mass energy of sNN=5.02 TeV per nucleon pair, using the decay chain X(3872)→J/ψπ+π−→μ+μ−π+π−. The data were recorded with the CMS detector in 2018 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 1.7 nb−1. The measurement is performed in the rapidity and transverse momentum ranges |y|<1.6 and 15<pT<50 GeV/c. The significance of the inclusive X(3872) signal is 4.2 standard deviations. The prompt X(3872) to ψ2S yield ratio is found to be ρPb−Pb=1.08±0.49(stat)±0.52(syst), to be compared with typical values of 0.1 for pp collisions. This result provides a unique experimental input to theoretical models of the X(3872) production mechanism, and of the nature of this exotic state.Received 25 February 2021Revised 2 September 2021Accepted 22 December 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.032001Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.© 2022 CERN, for the CMS CollaborationPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasParticle & resonance productionQuark-gluon plasmaRelativistic heavy-ion collisionsTechniquesHadron collidersParticles & FieldsNuclear Physics

A bstract Three searches are presented for signatures of physics beyond the standard model (SM) in ττ final states in proton-proton collisions at the LHC, using a data sample collected with the CMS detector at $$ \sqrt{s} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> = 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb − 1 . Upper limits at 95% confidence level (CL) are set on the products of the branching fraction for the decay into τ leptons and the cross sections for the production of a new boson ϕ , in addition to the H(125) boson, via gluon fusion (gg ϕ ) or in association with b quarks, ranging from $$ \mathcal{O} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>O</mml:mi> </mml:math> (10 pb) for a mass of 60 GeV to 0.3 fb for a mass of 3.5 TeV each. The data reveal two excesses for gg ϕ production with local p -values equivalent to about three standard deviations at m ϕ = 0 . 1 and 1.2 TeV. In a search for t -channel exchange of a vector leptoquark U 1 , 95% CL upper limits are set on the dimensionless U 1 leptoquark coupling to quarks and τ leptons ranging from 1 for a mass of 1 TeV to 6 for a mass of 5 TeV, depending on the scenario. In the interpretations of the $$ {M}_{\textrm{h}}^{125} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:mi>h</mml:mi> <mml:mn>125</mml:mn> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> and $$ {M}_{\textrm{h},\textrm{EFT}}^{125} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>h</mml:mi> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mi>EFT</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>125</mml:mn> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> minimal supersymmetric SM benchmark scenarios, additional Higgs bosons with masses below 350 GeV are excluded at 95% CL.

The first observation of the tt[over ¯]H process in a single Higgs boson decay channel with the full reconstruction of the final state (H→γγ) is presented, with a significance of 6.6 standard deviations (σ). The CP structure of Higgs boson couplings to fermions is measured, resulting in an exclusion of the pure CP-odd structure of the top Yukawa coupling at 3.2σ. The measurements are based on a sample of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy sqrt[s]=13 TeV collected by the CMS detector at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb^{-1}. The cross section times branching fraction of the tt[over ¯]H process is measured to be σ_{tt[over ¯]H}B_{γγ}=1.56_{-0.32}^{+0.34} fb, which is compatible with the standard model prediction of 1.13_{-0.11}^{+0.08} fb. The fractional contribution of the CP-odd component is measured to be f_{CP}^{Htt}=0.00±0.33.

A tagging algorithm to identify jets that are significantly displaced from the proton-proton (pp) collision region in the CMS detector at the LHC is presented. Displaced jets can arise from the decays of long-lived particles (LLPs), which are predicted by several theoretical extensions of the standard model. The tagger is a multiclass classifier based on a deep neural network, which is parameterised according to the proper decay length $\mathrm{c}\tau_0$ of the LLP. A novel scheme is defined to reliably label jets from LLP decays for supervised learning. Samples of pp collision data, recorded by the CMS detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, and simulated events are used to train the neural network. Domain adaptation by backward propagation is performed to improve the simulation modelling of the jet class probability distributions observed in pp collision data. The potential performance of the tagger is demonstrated with a search for long-lived gluinos, a manifestation of split supersymmetric models. The tagger provides a rejection factor of 10 000 for jets from standard model processes, while maintaining an LLP jet tagging efficiency of 30-80% for gluinos with 1 mm $\leq$ $c\tau_0$ $\leq$ 10 m. The expected coverage of the parameter space for split supersymmetry is presented.

A search for production of the supersymmetric partners of the top quark, top squarks, is presented. The search is based on proton-proton collision events containing multiple jets, no leptons, and large transverse momentum imbalance. The data were collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb$^{-1}$. The targeted signal production scenarios are direct and gluino-mediated top squark production, including scenarios in which the top squark and neutralino masses are nearly degenerate. The search utilizes novel algorithms based on deep neural networks that identify hadronically decaying top quarks and W bosons, which are expected in many of the targeted signal models. No statistically significant excess of events is observed relative to the expectation from the standard model, and limits on the top squark production cross section are obtained in the context of simplified supersymmetric models for various production and decay modes. Exclusion limits as high as 1310 GeV are established at the 95% confidence level on the mass of the top squark for direct top squark production models, and as high as 2260 GeV on the mass of the gluino for gluino-mediated top squark production models. These results represent a significant improvement over the results of previous searches for supersymmetry by CMS in the same final state.

A search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a charm quark-antiquark pair, H→cc[over ¯], produced in association with a leptonically decaying V (W or Z) boson is presented. The search is performed with proton-proton collisions at sqrt[s]=13 TeV collected by the CMS experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb^{-1}. Novel charm jet identification and analysis methods using machine learning techniques are employed. The analysis is validated by searching for Z→cc[over ¯] in VZ events, leading to its first observation at a hadron collider with a significance of 5.7 standard deviations. The observed (expected) upper limit on σ(VH)B(H→cc[over ¯]) is 0.94 (0.50_{-0.15}^{+0.22})pb at 95% confidence level (C.L.), corresponding to 14 (7.6_{-2.3}^{+3.4}) times the standard model prediction. For the Higgs-charm Yukawa coupling modifier, κ_{c}, the observed (expected) 95% C.L. interval is 1.1<|κ_{c}|<5.5 (|κ_{c}|<3.4), the most stringent constraint to date.

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA), part of the Pierre Auger Observatory, is currently the largest array of radio antenna stations deployed for the detection of cosmic rays, spanning an area of 17 km2 with 153 radio stations. It detects the radio emission of extensive air showers produced by cosmic rays in the 30–80 MHz band. Here, we report the AERA measurements of the depth of the shower maximum (Xmax), a probe for mass composition, at cosmic-ray energies between 1017.5 and 1018.8 eV, which show agreement with earlier measurements with the fluorescence technique at the Pierre Auger Observatory. We show advancements in the method for radio Xmax reconstruction by comparison to dedicated sets of corsika/coreas air-shower simulations, including steps of reconstruction-bias identification and correction, which is of particular importance for irregular or sparse radio arrays. Using the largest set of radio air-shower measurements to date, we show the radio Xmax resolution as a function of energy, reaching a resolution better than 15 g cm−2 at the highest energies, demonstrating that radio Xmax measurements are competitive with the established high-precision fluorescence technique. In addition, we developed a procedure for performing an extensive data-driven study of systematic uncertainties, including the effects of acceptance bias, reconstruction bias, and the investigation of possible residual biases. These results have been cross-checked with air showers measured independently with both the radio and fluorescence techniques, a setup unique to the Pierre Auger Observatory.11 MoreReceived 30 March 2023Accepted 24 October 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.022002Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasCosmic ray composition & spectraCosmic rays & astroparticlesParticle interactionsTechniquesCosmic ray & astroparticle detectorsGravitation, Cosmology & AstrophysicsParticles & FieldsNuclear Physics

A bstract The polarization of τ leptons is measured using leptonic and hadronic τ lepton decays in Z → τ + τ − events in proton-proton collisions at $$ \sqrt{s} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> = 13 TeV recorded by CMS at the CERN LHC with an integrated luminosity of 36.3 fb − 1 . The measured τ − lepton polarization at the Z boson mass pole is $$ {\mathcal{P}}_{\tau}\left(\textrm{Z}\right) $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>P</mml:mi> <mml:mi>τ</mml:mi> </mml:msub> <mml:mfenced> <mml:mi>Z</mml:mi> </mml:mfenced> </mml:math> = −0.144 ± 0.006 (stat) ± 0.014 (syst) = −0.144 ± 0.015, in good agreement with the measurement of the τ lepton asymmetry parameter of A τ = 0.1439 ± 0.0043 = $$ -{\mathcal{P}}_{\tau}\left(\textrm{Z}\right) $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>P</mml:mi> <mml:mi>τ</mml:mi> </mml:msub> <mml:mfenced> <mml:mi>Z</mml:mi> </mml:mfenced> </mml:math> at LEP. The τ lepton polarization depends on the ratio of the vector to axial-vector couplings of the τ leptons in the neutral current expression, and thus on the effective weak mixing angle sin 2 $$ {\theta}_{\textrm{W}}^{\textrm{eff}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>θ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>W</mml:mi> <mml:mi>eff</mml:mi> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> , independently of the Z boson production mechanism. The obtained value sin 2 $$ {\theta}_{\textrm{W}}^{\textrm{eff}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>θ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>W</mml:mi> <mml:mi>eff</mml:mi> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> = 0.2319 ± 0 . 0008(stat) ± 0 . 0018(syst) = 0 . 2319 ± 0 . 0019 is in good agreement with measurements at e + e − colliders.

A bstract The production of prompt $$ {\Lambda}_{\textrm{c}}^{+} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>Λ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> baryons is measured via the exclusive decay channel $$ {\Lambda}_{\textrm{c}}^{+}\to p{\textrm{K}}^{-}{\pi}^{+} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>Λ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:msubsup> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mi>p</mml:mi> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>K</mml:mi> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> </mml:msup> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>π</mml:mi> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:msup> </mml:math> at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV, using proton-proton (pp) and lead-lead (PbPb) collision data collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC. The pp and PbPb data were obtained in 2017 and 2018 with integrated luminosities of 252 and 0.607 nb − 1 , respectively. The measurements are performed within the $$ {\Lambda}_{\textrm{c}}^{+} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>Λ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> rapidity interval | y | &lt; 1 with transverse momentum ( p T ) ranges of 3–30 and 6–40 GeV/ c for pp and PbPb collisions, respectively. Compared to the yields in pp collisions scaled by the expected number of nucleon-nucleon interactions, the observed yields of $$ {\Lambda}_{\textrm{c}}^{+} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>Λ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> with p T &gt; 10 GeV/ c are strongly suppressed in PbPb collisions. The level of suppression depends significantly on the collision centrality. The $$ {\Lambda}_{\textrm{c}}^{+} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>Λ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> / D 0 production ratio is similar in PbPb and pp collisions at p T &gt; 10 GeV/ c , suggesting that the coalescence process does not play a dominant role in prompt $$ {\Lambda}_{\textrm{c}}^{+} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>Λ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> baryon production at higher p T .

The first search for scalar leptoquarks produced in τ-lepton–quark collisions is presented. It is based on a set of proton-proton collision data recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1. The reconstructed final state consists of a jet, significant missing transverse momentum, and a τ lepton reconstructed through its hadronic or leptonic decays. Limits are set on the product of the leptoquark production cross section and branching fraction and interpreted as exclusions in the plane of the leptoquark mass and the leptoquark-τ-quark coupling strength.Received 11 August 2023Accepted 19 December 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.061801Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.© 2024 CERN, for the CMS CollaborationPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Physical SystemsLeptoquarksTau leptonsTechniquesHadron collidersParticles & Fields

A search is reported for near-threshold structures in the J/ψJ/ψ invariant mass spectrum produced in proton-proton collisions at sqrt[s]=13 TeV from data collected by the CMS experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 135 fb^{-1}. Three structures are found, and a model with quantum interference among these structures provides a good description of the data. A new structure is observed with a local significance above 5 standard deviations at a mass of 6638_{-38}^{+43}(stat)_{-31}^{+16}(syst) MeV. Another structure with even higher significance is found at a mass of 6847_{-28}^{+44}(stat)_{-20}^{+48}(syst) MeV, which is consistent with the X(6900) resonance reported by the LHCb experiment and confirmed by the ATLAS experiment. Evidence for another new structure, with a local significance of 4.7 standard deviations, is found at a mass of 7134_{-25}^{+48}(stat)_{-15}^{+41}(syst) MeV. Results are also reported for a model without interference, which does not fit the data as well and shows mass shifts up to 150 MeV relative to the model with interference.

The observation of WWγ production in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 138 fb^{-1} is presented. The observed (expected) significance is 5.6 (5.1) standard deviations. Events are selected by requiring exactly two leptons (one electron and one muon) of opposite charge, moderate missing transverse momentum, and a photon. The measured fiducial cross section for WWγ is 5.9±0.8(stat)±0.8(syst)±0.7(modeling) fb, in agreement with the next-to-leading order quantum chromodynamics prediction. The analysis is extended with a search for the associated production of the Higgs boson and a photon, which is generated by a coupling of the Higgs boson to light quarks. The result is used to constrain the Higgs boson couplings to light quarks.

The Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory is sensitive to neutrinos of all flavors above 0.1 EeV. These interact through charged and neutral currents in the atmosphere giving rise to extensive air showers. When interacting deeply in the atmosphere at nearly horizontal incidence, neutrinos can be distinguished from regular hadronic cosmic rays by the broad time structure of their shower signals in the water-Cherenkov detectors. In this paper we present for the first time an analysis based on down-going neutrinos. We describe the search procedure, the possible sources of background, the method to compute the exposure and the associated systematic uncertainties. No candidate neutrinos have been found in data collected from 1 January 2004 to 31 May 2010. Assuming an E−2 differential energy spectrum the limit on the single-flavor neutrino is E2dN/dE<1.74×10−7GeVcm−2s−1sr−1 at 90% C.L. in the energy range 1×1017eV<E<1×1020eV.7 MoreReceived 16 August 2011Corrected 5 January 2012DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.84.122005© 2011 American Physical Society

The CMS detector at the LHC has recorded events from proton-proton collisions, with muon momenta reaching up to 1.8 TeV in the collected dimuon samples. These high-momentum muons allow direct access to new regimes in physics beyond the standard model. Because the physics and reconstruction of these muons are different from those of their lower-momentum counterparts, this paper presents for the first time dedicated studies of efficiencies, momentum assignment, resolution, scale, and showering of very high momentum muons produced at the LHC. These studies are performed using the 2016 and 2017 data sets of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} =$ 13 TeV with integrated luminosities of 36.3 and 42.1 fb$^{-1}$, respectively.

The fiducial cross section for Y(1S) pair production in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV in the region where both Y(1S) mesons have an absolute rapidity below 2.0 is measured to be 79±11(stat)±6(syst)±3(B) pb assuming the mesons are produced unpolarized. The last uncertainty corresponds to the uncertainty in the Y(1S) meson dimuon branching fraction. The measurement is performed in the final state with four muons using proton-proton collision data collected in 2016 by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9fb−1. This process serves as a standard model reference in a search for narrow resonances decaying to Y(1S)μ+μ− in the same final state. Such a resonance could indicate the existence of a tetraquark that is a bound state of two b quarks and two b¯ antiquarks. The tetraquark search is performed for masses in the vicinity of four times the bottom quark mass, between 17.5 and 19.5 GeV, while a generic search for other resonances is performed for masses between 16.5 and 27 GeV. No significant excess of events compatible with a narrow resonance is observed in the data. Limits on the production cross section times branching fraction to four muons via an intermediate Y(1S) resonance are set as a function of the resonance mass.

Measurement of the fiducial inclusive and differential production cross sections of the Higgs boson in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} =$ 13 TeV are performed using events where the Higgs boson decays into a pair of W bosons that subsequently decay into a final state with an electron, a muon, and a pair of neutrinos. The analysis is based on data collected with the CMS detector at the LHC during 2016-2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb$^{-1}$. Production cross sections are measured as a function of the transverse momentum of the Higgs boson and the associated jet multiplicity. The Higgs boson signal is extracted and simultaneously unfolded to correct for selection efficiency and resolution effects using maximum-likelihood fits to the observed distributions in data. The integrated fiducial cross section is measured to be 86.5 $\pm$ 9.5 fb, consistent with the Standard Model expectation of 82.5 $\pm$ 4.2 fb. No significant deviation from the Standard Model expectations is observed in the differential measurements.

Measurements of the second Fourier harmonic coefficient ($v_2$) of the azimuthal distributions of prompt and nonprompt D$^0$ mesons produced in pp and pPb collisions are presented. Nonprompt D$^0$ mesons come from beauty hadron decays. The data samples are collected by the CMS experiment at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies of 13 and 8.16 TeV, respectively. In high multiplicity pp collisions, $v_2$ signals for prompt charm hadrons are reported for the first time, and are found to be comparable to those for light-flavor hadron species over a transverse momentum ($p_\mathrm{T}$) range of 2-6 GeV. Compared at similar event multiplicities, the prompt D$^0$ meson $v_2$ values in pp and pPb collisions are similar in magnitude. The $v_2$ values for open beauty hadrons are extracted for the first time via nonprompt D$^0$ mesons in pPb collisions. For $p_\mathrm{T}$ in the range of 2-5 GeV, the results suggest that $v_2$ for nonprompt D$^0$ mesons are smaller than those for prompt D$^0$ mesons. These new measurements indicate a positive charm hadron $v_2$ in pp collisions and suggest a mass dependence in $v_2$ between charm and beauty hadrons in the pPb system. These results provide insights into the origin of heavy-flavor quark collectivity in small systems.

A bstract A search is presented for vector-like T and B quark-antiquark pairs produced in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. Data were collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC in 2016–2018, with an integrated luminosity of 138 fb − 1 . Events are separated into single-lepton, same-sign charge dilepton, and multi-lepton channels. In the analysis of the single-lepton channel a multilayer neural network and jet identification techniques are employed to select signal events, while the same-sign dilepton and multilepton channels rely on the high-energy signature of the signal to distinguish it from standard model backgrounds. The data are consistent with standard model background predictions, and the production of vector-like quark pairs is excluded at 95% confidence level for T quark masses up to 1.54 TeV and B quark masses up to 1.56 TeV, depending on the branching fractions assumed, with maximal sensitivity to decay modes that include multiple top quarks. The limits obtained in this search are the strongest limits to date for $$ \textrm{T}\overline{\textrm{T}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:math> production, excluding masses below 1.48 TeV for all decays to third generation quarks, and are the strongest limits to date for $$ \textrm{B}\overline{\textrm{B}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>B</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>B</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:math> production with B quark decays to tW.

Production cross sections of the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a pair of W bosons are measured in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The analysis targets Higgs bosons produced via gluon fusion, vector boson fusion, and in association with a W or Z boson. Candidate events are required to have at least two charged leptons and moderate missing transverse momentum, targeting events with at least one leptonically decaying W boson originating from the Higgs boson. Results are presented in the form of inclusive and differential cross sections in the simplified template cross section framework, as well as couplings of the Higgs boson to vector bosons and fermions. The data set collected by the CMS detector during 2016-2018 is used, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. The signal strength modifier $\mu$, defined as the ratio of the observed production rate in a given decay channel to the standard model expectation, is measured to be $\mu$ = 0.95 $^{+0.10}_{-0.09}$. All results are found to be compatible with the standard model within the uncertainties.

A search for the lepton-flavor violating decay of the Higgs boson and potential additional Higgs bosons with a mass in the range 110--160 GeV to an ${e}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\mu}}^{\ensuremath{\mp}}$ pair is presented. The search is performed with a proton-proton collision dataset at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $138\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$. No excess is observed for the Higgs boson. The observed (expected) upper limit on the ${e}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\mu}}^{\ensuremath{\mp}}$ branching fraction for it is determined to be $4.4(4.7)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}5}$ at 95% confidence level, the most stringent limit set thus far from direct searches. The largest excess of events over the expected background in the full mass range of the search is observed at an ${e}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\mu}}^{\ensuremath{\mp}}$ invariant mass of approximately 146 GeV with a local (global) significance of 3.8 (2.8) standard deviations.

Abstract A search for decays to invisible particles of Higgs bosons produced in association with a top-antitop quark pair or a vector boson, which both decay to a fully hadronic final state, has been performed using proton-proton collision data collected at $${\sqrt{s}=13\,\text {Te}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> </mml:msqrt> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>13</mml:mn> <mml:mspace /> <mml:mtext>Te</mml:mtext> <mml:mspace /> <mml:mtext>V</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 $$\,\text {fb}^{-1}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mspace /> <mml:msup> <mml:mtext>fb</mml:mtext> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . The 95% confidence level upper limit set on the branching fraction of the 125 $$\,\text {Ge}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mspace /> <mml:mtext>Ge</mml:mtext> <mml:mspace /> <mml:mtext>V</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> Higgs boson to invisible particles, $${\mathcal {B}({\textrm{H}} \rightarrow \text {inv})}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>B</mml:mi> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mtext>H</mml:mtext> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mtext>inv</mml:mtext> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , is 0.54 (0.39 expected), assuming standard model production cross sections. The results of this analysis are combined with previous $${\mathcal {B}({\textrm{H}} \rightarrow \text {inv})}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>B</mml:mi> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mtext>H</mml:mtext> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mtext>inv</mml:mtext> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> searches carried out at $${\sqrt{s}=7}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> </mml:msqrt> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>7</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , 8, and 13 $$\,\text {Te}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mspace /> <mml:mtext>Te</mml:mtext> <mml:mspace /> <mml:mtext>V</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> in complementary production modes. The combined upper limit at 95% confidence level on $${\mathcal {B}({\textrm{H}} \rightarrow \text {inv})}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>B</mml:mi> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mtext>H</mml:mtext> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mtext>inv</mml:mtext> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> is 0.15 (0.08 expected).

The observation of the production of four top quarks in proton-proton collisions is reported, based on a data sample collected by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV in 2016–2018 at the CERN LHC and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138fb−1. Events with two same-sign, three, or four charged leptons (electrons and muons) and additional jets are analyzed. Compared to previous results in these channels, updated identification techniques for charged leptons and jets originating from the hadronization of b quarks, as well as a revised multivariate analysis strategy to distinguish the signal process from the main backgrounds, lead to an improved expected signal significance of 4.9 standard deviations above the background-only hypothesis. Four top quark production is observed with a significance of 5.6 standard deviations, and its cross section is measured to be 17.7−3.5+3.7(stat)−1.9+2.3(syst)fb, in agreement with the available standard model predictions.

With the Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we have observed the radio emission from 561 extensive air showers with zenith angles between 60$^\circ$ and 84$^\circ$. In contrast to air showers with more vertical incidence, these inclined air showers illuminate large ground areas of several km$^2$ with radio signals detectable in the 30 to 80\,MHz band. A comparison of the measured radio-signal amplitudes with Monte Carlo simulations of a subset of 50 events for which we reconstruct the energy using the Auger surface detector shows agreement within the uncertainties of the current analysis. As expected for forward-beamed radio emission undergoing no significant absorption or scattering in the atmosphere, the area illuminated by radio signals grows with the zenith angle of the air shower. Inclined air showers with EeV energies are thus measurable with sparse radio-antenna arrays with grid sizes of a km or more. This is particularly attractive as radio detection provides direct access to the energy in the electromagnetic cascade of an air shower, which in case of inclined air showers is not accessible by arrays of particle detectors on the ground.

A study of excited $\Lambda_\mathrm{b}^0$ baryons is reported, based on a data sample collected in 2016-2018 with the CMS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of up to 140 fb$^{-1}$. The existence of four excited $\Lambda_\mathrm{b}^0$ states: $\Lambda_\mathrm{b}$(5912)$^0$, $\Lambda_\mathrm{b}$(5920)$^0$, $\Lambda_\mathrm{b}$(6146)$^0$, and $\Lambda_\mathrm{b}$(6152)$^0$ in the $\Lambda_\mathrm{b}^0\pi^+\pi^-$ mass spectrum is confirmed, and their masses are measured. The $\Lambda_\mathrm{b}^0\pi^+\pi^-$ mass distribution exhibits a broad excess of events in the region of 6040-6100 MeV, whose origin cannot be discerned with the present data.

A bstract A search for physics beyond the standard model in events with at least three charged leptons (electrons or muons) is presented. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb − 1 of proton-proton collisions at $$ \sqrt{s} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> = 13 TeV, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2016–2018. The two targeted signal processes are pair production of type-III seesaw heavy fermions and production of a light scalar or pseudoscalar boson in association with a pair of top quarks. The heavy fermions may be manifested as an excess of events with large values of leptonic transverse momenta or missing transverse momentum. The light scalars or pseudoscalars may create a localized excess in the dilepton mass spectra. The results exclude heavy fermions of the type-III seesaw model for masses below 880 GeV at 95% confidence level in the scenario of equal branching fractions to each lepton flavor. This is the most restrictive limit on the flavor-democratic scenario of the type-III seesaw model to date. Assuming a Yukawa coupling of unit strength to top quarks, branching fractions of new scalar (pseudoscalar) bosons to dielectrons or dimuons above 0.004 (0.03) and 0.04 (0.03) are excluded at 95% confidence level for masses in the range 15–75 and 108–340 GeV, respectively. These are the first limits in these channels on an extension of the standard model with scalar or pseudoscalar particles.

A bstract A direct search for the standard model Higgs boson, H, produced in association with a vector boson, V (W or Z), and decaying to a charm quark pair is presented. The search uses a data set of proton-proton collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb − 1 , collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2016, at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The search is carried out in mutually exclusive channels targeting specific decays of the vector bosons: W → ℓ ν , Z → ℓℓ, and Z → νν , where ℓ is an electron or a muon. To fully exploit the topology of the H boson decay, two strategies are followed. In the first one, targeting lower vector boson transverse momentum, the H boson candidate is reconstructed via two resolved jets arising from the two charm quarks from the H boson decay. A second strategy identifies the case where the two charm quark jets from the H boson decay merge to form a single jet, which generally only occurs when the vector boson has higher transverse momentum. Both strategies make use of novel methods for charm jet identification, while jet substructure techniques are also exploited to suppress the background in the merged-jet topology. The two analyses are combined to yield a 95% confidence level observed (expected) upper limit on the cross section $$ \sigma \left(\mathrm{VH}\right)\mathrm{\mathcal{B}}\left(\mathrm{H}\to \mathrm{c}\overline{\mathrm{c}}\right) $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>σ</mml:mi> <mml:mfenced> <mml:mi>VH</mml:mi> </mml:mfenced> <mml:mi>ℬ</mml:mi> <mml:mfenced> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>H</mml:mi> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:mrow> </mml:mfenced> </mml:math> of 4.5 $$ \left({2.4}_{-0.7}^{+1.0}\right) $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mfenced> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mn>2.4</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.7</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1.0</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:mfenced> </mml:math> pb, corresponding to 70 (37) times the standard model prediction.

The second-order Fourier coefficients ($v_2$) characterizing the azimuthal distribution of $\Upsilon$(1S) and $\Upsilon$(2S) mesons arising from PbPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} =$ 5.02 TeV are studied. The $\Upsilon$ mesons are reconstructed in their dimuon decay channel, as measured by the CMS detector. The data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 1.7 nb$^{-1}$. The scalar product method is used to extract the $v_2$ coefficients of the azimuthal distribution. Results are reported for the rapidity range $|y|$ $\lt$ 2.4, with the transverse momentum 0 $\lt$ $p_\mathrm{T}$ $\lt$ 50 GeV/$c$, and in three centrality ranges of 10-30%, 30-50% and 50-90%. In contrast to the J/$\psi$ mesons, the measured $v_2$ values for the $\Upsilon$ mesons are found to be consistent with zero.

A search for pairs of dijet resonances with the same mass is conducted in final states with at least four jets. Results are presented separately for the case where the four jet production proceeds via an intermediate resonant state and for nonresonant production. The search uses a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$ collected by the CMS detector in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV. Model-independent limits, at 95% confidence level, are reported on the production cross section of four-jet and dijet resonances. These first LHC limits on resonant pair production of dijet resonances via high mass intermediate states are applied to a signal model of diquarks that decay into pairs of vector-like quarks, excluding diquark masses below 7.6 TeV for a particular model scenario. There are two events in the tails of the distributions, each with a four-jet mass of 8 TeV and an average dijet mass of 2 TeV, resulting in local and global significances of 3.9 and 1.6 standard deviations, respectively, if interpreted as a signal. The nonresonant search excludes pair production of top squarks with masses between 0.50 TeV to 0.77 TeV, with the exception of a small interval between 0.52 and 0.58 TeV, for supersymmetric $R$-parity-violating decays to quark pairs, significantly extending previous limits. Here, the most significant excess above the predicted background occurs at an average dijet mass of 0.95 TeV, for which the local and global significances are 3.6 and 2.5 standard deviations, respectively.

We present a new analysis for estimating the depth of the maximum of air-shower profiles, max , to investigate the evolution of the ultra-high-energy cosmic ray mass composition from 3 to 100 EeV.We use a recently developed deep-learning-based technique for the reconstruction of max from the data of the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory.To avoid systematic uncertainties arising from hadronic interaction models in the simulation of surface detector data, we calibrate the new reconstruction technique with observations of the fluorescence detector.Using the novel analysis, we have a 10-fold increase of statistics at > 5 EeV with respect to fluorescence detector data.We are able, for the first time, to study the evolution of the mean and standard deviation of the max distributions up to 100 EeV.We find an excellent agreement with fluorescence observations and confirm the increase of the mean logarithmic mass ⟨ln( )⟩ and a decrease of the max fluctuations with energy.The max measurement at the highest -so far inaccessible -energies is consistent with a pure mass composition and a mean logarithmic mass of around ∼ 3 (estimated using the Sibyll 2.3d and the EPOS-LHC hadronic interaction models).Furthermore, with the increase in statistics, we find indications for a structure beyond a constant elongation rate in the evolution of max .

The origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), particles from outer space with energies ≥ 1 EeV, is still unknown, though the near-isotropy of their arrival direction distribution excludes a dominant Galactic contribution, and interactions with background photons prevent them from travelling cosmologically large distances.This suggests that their sources must be searched for in nearby galaxy groups and clusters.Deflections by intergalactic and Galactic magnetic fields are expected to hinder such searches but not preclude them altogether.So far, the only anisotropy detected with statistical significance ≥ 5 is a modulation in right ascension in the data from the Pierre Auger Observatory at ≥ 8 EeV interpretable as a 7% dipole moment.Various hints for higher-energy, smaller-scale anisotropies have been reported.UHECR arrival direction data from both the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array experiment have been searched for anisotropies by a working group with members from both collaborations; combining the two datasets requires a cross-calibration procedure due to the different systematic uncertainties on energy measurements but allows us to perform analyses that are less model-dependent than what can be done with partial sky coverage.We report a significant dipole pointing away from the Galactic Center and a ∼4.6 anisotropy found when comparing the directions of UHECRs with a catalog of starburst galaxies.

After nearly 20 years of data-taking, the measurements made with the Pierre Auger Observatory represent the largest collection of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) data so far assembled from a single instrument.Exploring this data set led to a deeper understanding of the UHECR flux and many surprises.In particular, studies aiming to investigate and leverage the mass composition of UHECRs have played an important role in empowering discovery.This contribution will present an overview of the analyses of primary mass composition carried out during the first phase of the Observatory.The overview includes analyses derived from measurements made by the surface, fluorescence, and radio detectors covering energies ranging from 0.1 EeV up to 100 EeV.Special attention will be given to recent advances and results to provide a complete picture of UHECR mass composition at the Observatory as it moves to its next phase, AugerPrime.Additionally, specific updates will be given to studies focusing on mass trends from surface detector rise-times, max dependent anisotropies, and UHECR beam characterization using the correlation between max and signal amplitudes at the ground.

The production of a top quark-antiquark pair in association with a W boson ($\mathrm{t\bar{t}}$W) is measured in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The analyzed data was recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. Events with two or three leptons (electrons and muons) and additional jets are selected. In events with two leptons, a multiclass neural network is used to distinguish between the signal and background processes. Events with three leptons are categorized based on the number of jets and of jets originating from b quark hadronization, and the lepton charges. The inclusive $\mathrm{t\bar{t}}$W production cross section in the full phase space is measured to be 868 $\pm$ 40 (stat) $\pm$ 51 (syst) fb. The $\mathrm{t\bar{t}}$W$^+$ and $\mathrm{t\bar{t}}$W$^-$ cross sections are also measured as 553 $\pm$ 30 (stat) $\pm$ 30 (syst) and 343 $\pm$ 26 (stat) $\pm$ 25 (syst) fb, respectively, and the corresponding ratio of the two cross sections is found to be 1.61 $\pm$ 0.15 (stat) $^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$ (syst). The measured cross sections are larger than but consistent with the standard model predictions within two standard deviations, and represent the most precise measurement of these cross sections to date.

With the Surface Detector array (SD) of the Pierre Auger Observatory we can detect neutrinos with energy between 1017 eV and 1020 eV from point-like sources across the sky, from close to the Southern Celestial Pole up to 60o in declination, with peak sensitivities at declinations around ∼ −53o and ∼+55o, and an unmatched sensitivity for arrival directions in the Northern hemisphere. A search has been performed for highly-inclined air showers induced by neutrinos of all flavours with no candidate events found in data taken between 1 Jan 2004 and 31 Aug 2018. Upper limits on the neutrino flux from point-like steady sources have been derived as a function of source declination. An unrivaled sensitivity is achieved in searches for transient sources with emission lasting over an hour or less, if they occur within the field of view corresponding to the zenith angle range between 60o and 95o where the SD of the Pierre Auger Observatory is most sensitive to neutrinos.

Jet production in lead-lead (PbPb) and proton-proton (pp) collisions at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV is studied with the CMS detector at the LHC, using PbPb and pp data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of 404 $\mu$b$^{-1}$ and 27.4 pb$^{-1}$, respectively. Jets with different areas are reconstructed using the anti-$k_\mathrm{T}$ algorithm by varying the distance parameter $R$. The measurements are performed using jets with transverse momenta ($p_\mathrm{T}$) greater than 200 GeV and in a pseudorapidity range of $|\eta|$ $\lt$ 2. To reveal the medium modification of the jet spectra in PbPb collisions, the properly normalized ratio of spectra from PbPb and pp data is used to extract jet nuclear modification factors as functions of the PbPb collision centrality, $p_\mathrm{T}$ and, for the first time, as a function of $R$ up to 1.0. For the most central collisions, a strong suppression is observed for high-$p_\mathrm{T}$ jets reconstructed with all distance parameters, implying that a significant amount of jet energy is scattered to large angles. The dependence of jet suppression on $R$ is expected to be sensitive to both the jet energy loss mechanism and the medium response, and so the data are compared to several modern event generators and analytic calculations. The models considered do not fully reproduce the data.

Abstract We describe a method to obtain point and dispersion estimates for the energies of jets arising from b quarks produced in proton–proton collisions at an energy of $$\sqrt{s}=13\,\text {TeV} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msqrt><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:msqrt><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>13</mml:mn><mml:mspace /><mml:mtext>TeV</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:math> at the CERN LHC. The algorithm is trained on a large sample of simulated b jets and validated on data recorded by the CMS detector in 2017 corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 41 $$\,\text {fb}^{-1}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mspace /><mml:msup><mml:mtext>fb</mml:mtext><mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:math> . A multivariate regression algorithm based on a deep feed-forward neural network employs jet composition and shape information, and the properties of reconstructed secondary vertices associated with the jet. The results of the algorithm are used to improve the sensitivity of analyses that make use of b jets in the final state, such as the observation of Higgs boson decay to $$\hbox {b}\bar{\hbox {b}}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>b</mml:mtext><mml:mover><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>b</mml:mtext></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>¯</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mover></mml:mrow></mml:math> .

More than half a century after the discovery of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), their origin is still an open question.The study of anisotropies in the arrival directions of such particles is an essential ingredient to solve this puzzle.We update our previous analysis of large-scale anisotropies observed by the Pierre Auger Observatory using the latest data collected before the AugerPrime upgrade.We select events with zenith angles up to 80 degrees, implying a sky coverage of 85%, and energies above 4 EeV, for which the surface detector of the Observatory is fully efficient.Dipolar and quadrupolar amplitudes are evaluated through a combined Fourier analysis of the event count rate in right ascension and azimuth.The analysis is performed in three energy bins with boundaries at 4, 8, 16 and 32 EeV and two additional cumulative bins with energies above 8 and 32 EeV.The most significant signal is a dipolar modulation in right ascension for energies above 8 EeV, as previously reported, with statistical significance of 6.6.Additionally, we report the measurements of the angular power spectrum for the same energy bins with the same dataset.

Production cross sections of $\Upsilon$(1S), $\Upsilon$(2S), and $\Upsilon$(3S) states decaying into \muplusmuminus in proton-lead (pPb) collisions are reported using data collected by the CMS experiment at$\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV. A comparison is made with corresponding cross sections obtained with pp data measured at the same collision energy and scaled by the Pb nucleus mass number. The nuclear modification factor for $\Upsilon$(1S) is found to be $R_\mathrm{pPb}(\Upsilon(1S))$ = 0.806 $\pm$ 0.024 (stat) $\pm$ 0.059 (syst). Similar results for the excited states indicate a sequential suppression pattern, such that $R_\mathrm{pPb}(\Upsilon(1S)) \gt R_\mathrm{pPb}(\Upsilon(2S)) \gt R_\mathrm{pPb}(\Upsilon(3S))$. The suppression is much less pronounced in pPb than in PbPb collisions, and independent of transverse momentum $p_\mathrm{T}^\Upsilon$ and center-of-mass rapidity $y_\mathrm{CM}^\Upsilon$ of the individual $\Upsilon$ state in the studied range $p_\mathrm{T}^\Upsilon \lt $ 30 GeV$/c$ and $\vert y_\mathrm{CM}^\Upsilon\vert \lt$ 1.93. Models that incorporate sequential suppression of bottomonia in pPb collisions are in better agreement with the data than those which only assume initial-state modifications.

Production cross sections of , , and states decaying into in proton-lead (pPb) collisions are reported using data collected by the CMS experiment at sNN=5.02TeV. A comparison is made with corresponding cross sections obtained with pp data measured at the same collision energy and scaled by the Pb nucleus mass number. The nuclear modification factor for is found to be . Similar results for the excited states indicate a sequential suppression pattern, such that . The suppression of all states is much less pronounced in pPb than in PbPb collisions, and independent of transverse momentum and center-of-mass rapidity of the individual state in the studied range and . Models that incorporate final-state effects of bottomonia in pPb collisions are in better agreement with the data than those which only assume initial-state modifications.

The first search exploiting the vector boson fusion process to probe heavy Majorana neutrinos and the Weinberg operator at the LHC is presented. The search is performed in the same-sign dimuon final state using a proton-proton collision dataset recorded at sqrt[s]=13 TeV, collected with the CMS detector and corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 138 fb^{-1}. The results are found to agree with the predictions of the standard model. For heavy Majorana neutrinos, constraints on the squared mixing element between the muon and the heavy neutrino are derived in the heavy neutrino mass range 50 GeV-25 TeV; for masses above 650 GeV these are the most stringent constraints from searches at the LHC to date. A first test of the Weinberg operator at colliders provides an observed upper limit at 95% confidence level on the effective μμ Majorana neutrino mass of 10.8 GeV.

A search for nonresonant Higgs boson (H) pair production via gluon and vector boson (V) fusion is performed in the four-bottom-quark final state, using proton-proton collision data at 13 TeV corresponding to 138 fb^{-1} collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The analysis targets Lorentz-boosted H pairs identified using a graph neural network. It constrains the strengths relative to the standard model of the H self-coupling and the quartic VVHH couplings, κ_{2V}, excluding κ_{2V}=0 for the first time, with a significance of 6.3 standard deviations when other H couplings are fixed to their standard model values.

In this work, we present an estimate of the cosmic-ray mass composition from the distributions of the depth of the shower maximum ( max ) measured by the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory.We discuss the sensitivity of the mass composition measurements to the uncertainties in the properties of the hadronic interactions, particularly in the predictions of the particle interaction cross-sections.For this purpose, we adjust the fractions of cosmic-ray mass groups to fit the data with max distributions from air shower simulations.We modify the protonproton cross-sections at ultra-high energies, and the corresponding air shower simulations with rescaled nucleus-air cross-sections are obtained via Glauber theory.We compare the energydependent composition of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays obtained for the different extrapolations of the proton-proton cross-sections from low-energy accelerator data.

The Pierre Auger Observatory has begun a major Upgrade of its already impressive capabilities, with an emphasis on improved mass composition determination using the surface detectors of the Observatory. Known as AugerPrime, the upgrade will include new 4 m$^2$ plastic scintillator detectors on top of all 1660 water-Cherenkov detectors, updated and more flexible surface detector electronics, a large array of buried muon detectors, and an extended duty cycle for operations of the fluorescence detectors. This Preliminary Design Report was produced by the Collaboration in April 2015 as an internal document and information for funding agencies. It outlines the scientific and technical case for AugerPrime. We now release it to the public via the arXiv server. We invite you to review the large number of fundamental results already achieved by the Observatory and our plans for the future.

Abstract The parton-level top quark (t) forward-backward asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric $$ \left({\hat{d}}_{\mathrm{t}}\right) $$ and chromomagnetic $$ \left({\hat{\mu}}_{\mathrm{t}}\right) $$ moments have been measured using LHC pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected in the CMS detector in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. The linearized variable $$ {A}_{\mathrm{FB}}^{(1)} $$ is used to approximate the asymmetry. Candidate $$ \mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}} $$ events decaying to a muon or electron and jets in final states with low and high Lorentz boosts are selected and reconstructed using a fit of the kinematic distributions of the decay products to those expected for $$ \mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}} $$ final states. The values found for the parameters are $$ {A}_{\mathrm{FB}}^{(1)}={0.048}_{-0.087}^{+0.095}{\left(\mathrm{stat}\right)}_{-0.029}^{+0.020}\left(\mathrm{syst}\right),{\hat{\mu}}_{\mathrm{t}}=-{0.024}_{-0.009}^{+0.013}{\left(\mathrm{stat}\right)}_{-0.011}^{+0.016}\left(\mathrm{syst}\right), $$ and a limit is placed on the magnitude of $$ \left|{\hat{d}}_{\mathrm{t}}\right| $$ < 0.03 at 95% confidence level.

A data sample of events from proton-proton collisions with at least two jets, and two isolated same-sign or three or more charged leptons, is studied in a search for signatures of new physics phenomena. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 137fb-1 at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeV , collected in 2016-2018 by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The search is performed using a total of 168 signal regions defined using several kinematic variables. The properties of the events are found to be consistent with the expectations from standard model processes. Exclusion limits at 95% confidence level are set on cross sections for the pair production of gluinos or squarks for various decay scenarios in the context of supersymmetric models conserving or violating R parity. The observed lower mass limits are as large as 2.1TeV for gluinos and 0.9TeV for top and bottom squarks. To facilitate reinterpretations, model-independent limits are provided in a set of simplified signal regions.

Results are reported from a search for new physics beyond the standard model in proton-proton collisions in final states with a single lepton; multiple jets, including at least one jet tagged as originating from the hadronization of a bottom quark; and large missing transverse momentum. The search uses a sample of proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s}=13\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$, corresponding to $137\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$, recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The signal region is divided into categories characterized by the total number of jets, the number of bottom quark jets, the missing transverse momentum, and the sum of masses of large-radius jets. The observed event yields in the signal regions are consistent with estimates of standard model backgrounds based on event yields in the control regions. The results are interpreted in the context of simplified models of supersymmetry involving gluino pair production in which each gluino decays into a top quark-antiquark pair and a stable, unobserved neutralino, which generates missing transverse momentum in the event. Scenarios with gluino masses up to about 2150 GeV are excluded at 95% confidence level (or more) for neutralino masses up to 700 GeV. The highest excluded neutralino mass is about 1250 GeV, which holds for gluino masses around 1850 GeV.

A bstract The momentum-weighted sum of the electric charges of particles inside a jet, known as jet charge, is sensitive to the electric charge of the particle initiating the parton shower. This paper presents jet charge distributions in $$ \sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> <mml:mi>NN</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> = 5 . 02 TeV lead-lead (PbPb) and proton-proton (pp) collisions recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC. These data correspond to integrated luminosities of 404 μ b − 1 and 27.4 pb − 1 for PbPb and pp collisions, respectively. Leveraging the sensitivity of the jet charge to fundamental differences in the electric charges of quarks and gluons, the jet charge distributions from simulated events are used as templates to extract the quark- and gluon-like jet fractions from data. The modification of these jet fractions is examined by comparing pp and PbPb data as a function of the overlap of the colliding Pb nuclei (centrality). This measurement tests the color charge dependence of jet energy loss due to interactions with the quark-gluon plasma. No significant modification between different centrality classes and with respect to pp results is observed in the extracted quark- and gluon-like jet fractions.

The combined fit of the energy spectrum and mass composition data above 5 • 10 18 eV suggested the presence of extragalactic sources ejecting ultra-high-energy cosmic rays with relatively low maximum energies, hard spectral indices and mixed chemical compositions, dominated by the contribution of intermediate mass groups.Here we present an extension of the fit to lower energies, to include the feature observed near 5 • 10 18 eV in the all-particle energy spectrum, the so-called ankle.We show that it is possible to generate such a change of slope assuming that the flux below the ankle is provided by the superposition of different contributions.The simplest extension of this sort consists of introducing a supplemental extragalactic component at low energy, characterised by different physical parameters with respect to the one being dominant above the ankle: such a component may originate from a different population of sources or be provided by interactions occurring in the acceleration sites.In this framework we also explore the possibility of including the end of a Galactic contribution at low energies.The fit suggests that these scenarios provide a reasonable description of the measurements across the ankle, without significantly affecting the interpretation obtained for the above-ankle region.In order to evaluate our capability to constrain the source models, we finally discuss the impact of the main experimental systematic uncertainties and of the theoretical models choice on the fit results.

We present measurements of the reduction of light output by plastic scintillators irradiated in the CMS detector during the 8 TeV run of the Large Hadron Collider and show that they indicate a strong dose rate effect. The damage for a given dose is larger for lower dose rate exposures. The results agree with previous measurements of dose rate effects, but are stronger due to the very low dose rates probed. We show that the scaling with dose rate is consistent with that expected from diffusion effects.

A bstract The ratios of the production cross sections between the excited ϒ(2S) and ϒ(3S) mesons and the ϒ(1S) ground state, detected via their decay into two muons, are studied as a function of the number of charged particles in the event. The data are from proton-proton collisions at $$ \sqrt{s} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> = 7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.8 fb − 1 , collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. Evidence of a decrease in these ratios as a function of the particle multiplicity is observed, more pronounced at low transverse momentum $$ {p}_{\mathrm{T}}^{\upmu \upmu} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>p</mml:mi> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> <mml:mi>μμ</mml:mi> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> . For ϒ(nS) mesons with $$ {p}_{\mathrm{T}}^{\upmu \upmu} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>p</mml:mi> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> <mml:mi>μμ</mml:mi> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> &gt; 7 GeV, where most of the data were collected, the correlation with multiplicity is studied as a function of the underlying event transverse sphericity and the number of particles in a cone around the ϒ(nS) direction. The ratios are found to be multiplicity independent for jet-like events. The mean $$ {p}_{\mathrm{T}}^{\upmu \upmu} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>p</mml:mi> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> <mml:mi>μμ</mml:mi> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> values for the ϒ(nS) states as a function of particle multiplicity are also measured and found to grow more steeply as their mass increases.

The first evidence for X(3872) production in relativistic heavy ion collisions is reported. The X(3872) production is studied in lead-lead (PbPb) collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} =$ 5.02 TeV per nucleon pair, using the decay chain X(3872) $\to$ J$/ψ\, π^+π^- \to$ $μ^+μ^-π^+π^-$. The data were recorded with the CMS detector in 2018 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 1.7 nb$^{-1}$. The measurement is performed in the rapidity and transverse momentum ranges $|y|$ $\lt$ 1.6 and 15 $\lt$ $p_\mathrm{T}$ $\lt$ 50 GeV$/c$. The significance of the inclusive X(3872) signal is 4.2 standard deviations. The prompt X(3872) to $ψ$(2S) yield ratio is found to be $ρ^\mathrm{PbPb} = $ 1.08 $\pm$ 0.49 (stat) $\pm$ 0.52 (syst), to be compared with typical values of 0.1 for pp collisions. This result provides a unique experimental input to theoretical models of the X(3872) production mechanism, and of the nature of this exotic state.

Since its full commissioning in 2008, the Pierre Auger Observatory has consistently demonstrated its scientific productivity.A major upgrade of the Surface Detector array (SD) improves the capabilities of measuring the different components of extensive air showers.One of the elements of the upgrade consists of new Scintillator Surface Detectors (SSD) placed on top of the Water-Cherenkov stations of the SD.At the Observatory, the integration of the SSD components and their deployment in the array is well advanced.In this paper, the main challenges and characteristics of the construction and installation will be reviewed.Started in 2016, an Engineering Array of twelve upgraded stations has been taking data in the field.In March 2019, a preproduction array of 77 SSDs started data acquisition with an adapted version of non-upgraded electronics.It is collecting events and proving the goodness of SSD design.Since December 2020, the upgraded electronics boards are being deployed in the field together with the photomultiplier tubes, increasing the number of SSD detectors, which are taking data continuosly with good stability.In this paper, the-long term performance of a subset of stations acquiring data for more than two years will be discussed.The data collected so far demonstrate the quality of the new detectors and the physics potential of the upgrade project.

A fiducial cross section for W$\gamma$ production in proton-proton collisions is measured at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV in 137 fb$^{-1}$ of data collected using the CMS detector at the LHC. The W $\to$ e$\nu$ and $\mu\nu$ decay modes are used in a maximum-likelihood fit to the lepton-photon invariant mass distribution to extract the combined cross section. The measured cross section is compared with theoretical expectations at next-to-leading order in quantum chromodynamics. In addition, 95% confidence level intervals are reported for anomalous triple-gauge couplings within the framework of effective field theory.

A search for the nonresonant production of Higgs boson pairs (HH ) via gluon-gluon and vector boson fusion processes in final states with two bottom quarks and two tau leptons is presented. The search uses data from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of s=13TeV recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138fb−1. Events in which at least one tau lepton decays hadronically are considered and multiple machine learning techniques are used to identify and extract the signal. The data are found to be consistent, within uncertainties, with the standard model (SM) predictions. Upper limits on the HH production cross section are set to constrain the parameter space for anomalous Higgs boson couplings. The observed (expected) upper limit at 95% confidence level corresponds to 3.3 (5.2) times the SM prediction for the inclusive HH cross section and to 124 (154) times the SM prediction for the vector boson fusion HH cross section. At 95% confidence level, the Higgs field self-coupling is constrained to be within −1.7 and 8.7 times the SM expectation, and the coupling of two Higgs bosons to two vector bosons is constrained to be within −0.4 and 2.6 times the SM expectation.

The combined fit of the measured energy spectrum and shower maximum depth distributions of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays is known to constrain the parameters of astrophysical models with homogeneous source distributions. Studies of the distribution of the cosmic-ray arrival directions show a better agreement with models in which a fraction of the flux is non-isotropic and associated with the nearby radio galaxy Centaurus A or with catalogs such as that of starburst galaxies. Here, we present a novel combination of both analyses by a simultaneous fit of arrival directions, energy spectrum, and composition data measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory. We find that a model containing a flux contribution from the starburst galaxy catalog of around 20% at 40 EeV with a magnetic field blurring of around $20^\circ$ for a rigidity of 10 EV provides a fair simultaneous description of all three observables. The starburst galaxy model is favored with a significance of $4.5\sigma$ (considering experimental systematic effects) compared to a reference model with only homogeneously distributed background sources. By investigating a scenario with Centaurus A as a single source in combination with the homogeneous background, we confirm that this region of the sky provides the dominant contribution to the observed anisotropy signal. Models containing a catalog of jetted active galactic nuclei whose flux scales with the $\gamma$-ray emission are, however, disfavored as they cannot adequately describe the measured arrival directions.

Abstract A measurement of the jet mass distribution in hadronic decays of Lorentz-boosted top quarks is presented. The measurement is performed in the lepton + jets channel of top quark pair production ( $$\hbox {t}\overline{\hbox {t}}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mtext>t</mml:mtext> <mml:mover> <mml:mtext>t</mml:mtext> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ) events, where the lepton is an electron or muon. The products of the hadronic top quark decay are reconstructed using a single large-radius jet with transverse momentum greater than 400 $$\,\text {Ge}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mspace /> <mml:mtext>Ge</mml:mtext> <mml:mspace /> <mml:mtext>V</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . The data were collected with the CMS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collisions and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 $$\,\text {fb}^{-1}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mspace /> <mml:msup> <mml:mtext>fb</mml:mtext> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . The differential $$\hbox {t}\overline{\hbox {t}}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mtext>t</mml:mtext> <mml:mover> <mml:mtext>t</mml:mtext> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> production cross section as a function of the jet mass is unfolded to the particle level and is used to extract the top quark mass. The jet mass scale is calibrated using the hadronic W boson decay within the large-radius jet. The uncertainties in the modelling of the final state radiation are reduced by studying angular correlations in the jet substructure. These developments lead to a significant increase in precision, and a top quark mass of $$173.06 \pm 0.84\,\text {Ge}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>173.06</mml:mn> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.84</mml:mn> <mml:mspace /> <mml:mtext>Ge</mml:mtext> <mml:mspace /> <mml:mtext>V</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> .

Results are presented from a search for CP violation in top quark pair production, using proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The data used for this analysis consist of final states with two charged leptons collected by the CMS experiment, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb$^{-1}$. The search uses two observables, $\mathcal{O}_1$ and $\mathcal{O}_3$, which are Lorentz scalars. The observable $\mathcal{O}_1$ is constructed from the four-momenta of the charged leptons and the reconstructed top quarks, while $\mathcal{O}_3$ consists of the four-momenta of the charged leptons and the b quarks originating from the top quarks. Asymmetries in these observables are sensitive to CP violation, and their measurement is used to determine the chromoelectric dipole moment of the top quark. The results are consistent with the expectation from the standard model.

A search for new heavy resonances decaying to WW, WZ, ZZ, WH, or ZH boson pairs in the all-jets final state is presented. The analysis is based on proton-proton collision data recorded by the CMS detector in 2016–2018 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1. The search is sensitive to resonances with masses between 1.3 and 6TeV, decaying to bosons that are highly Lorentz-boosted such that each of the bosons forms a single large-radius jet. Machine learning techniques are employed to identify such jets. No significant excess over the estimated standard model background is observed. A maximum local significance of 3.6 standard deviations, corresponding to a global significance of 2.3 standard deviations, is observed at masses of 2.1 and 2.9 TeV. In a heavy vector triplet model, spin-1 Z′ and W′ resonances with masses below 4.8TeV are excluded at the 95% confidence level (CL). These limits are the most stringent to date. In a bulk graviton model, spin-2 gravitons and spin-0 radions with masses below 1.4 and 2.7TeV, respectively, are excluded at 95% CL. Production of heavy resonances through vector boson fusion is constrained with upper cross section limits at 95% CL as low as 0.1 fb.

The first study of the shapes of jets arising from bottom (b) quarks in heavy ion collisions is presented. Jet shapes are studied using charged hadron constituents as a function of their radial distance from the jet axis. Lead-lead (PbPb) collision data at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV were recorded by the CMS detector at the LHC, with an integrated luminosity of 1.69 nb$^{-1}$. Compared to proton-proton collisions, a redistribution of the energy in b jets to larger distances from the jet axis is observed in PbPb collisions. This medium-induced redistribution is found to be substantially larger for b jets than for inclusive jets.

A bstract Measurements of the inclusive and normalised differential cross sections are presented for the production of single top quarks in association with a W boson in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The data used were recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC during 2016–2018, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb − 1 . Events containing one electron and one muon in the final state are analysed. For the inclusive measurement, a multivariate discriminant, exploiting the kinematic properties of the events is used to separate the signal from the dominant $$ \textrm{t}\overline{\textrm{t}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:math> background. A cross section of $$ 79.2\pm 0.9{\left(\textrm{stat}\right)}_{-8.0}^{+7.7}\left(\textrm{syst}\right)\pm 1.2\left(\textrm{lumi}\right) $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mn>79.2</mml:mn> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.9</mml:mn> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mfenced> <mml:mtext>stat</mml:mtext> </mml:mfenced> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>8.0</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>7.7</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> <mml:mfenced> <mml:mtext>syst</mml:mtext> </mml:mfenced> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1.2</mml:mn> <mml:mfenced> <mml:mtext>lumi</mml:mtext> </mml:mfenced> </mml:math> pb is obtained, consistent with the predictions of the standard model. For the differential measurements, a fiducial region is defined according to the detector acceptance, and the requirement of exactly one jet coming from the fragmentation of a bottom quark. The resulting distributions are unfolded to particle level and agree with the predictions at next-to-leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics.

A bstract The measurements of the inclusive and differential fiducial cross sections of the Higgs boson decaying to a pair of photons are presented. The analysis is performed using proton-proton collisions data recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb − 1 . The inclusive fiducial cross section is measured to be $$ {\sigma}_{\textrm{fid}}={73.4}_{-5.3}^{+5.4}{\left(\textrm{stat}\right)}_{-2.2}^{+2.4}\left(\textrm{syst}\right) $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>σ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>fid</mml:mi> </mml:msub> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mn>73.4</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>5.3</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>5.4</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mfenced> <mml:mtext>stat</mml:mtext> </mml:mfenced> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2.2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2.4</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> <mml:mfenced> <mml:mtext>syst</mml:mtext> </mml:mfenced> </mml:math> fb, in agreement with the standard model expectation of 75 . 4 ± 4 . 1 fb. The measurements are also performed in fiducial regions targeting different production modes and as function of several observables describing the diphoton system, the number of additional jets present in the event, and other kinematic observables. Two double differential measurements are performed. No significant deviations from the standard model expectations are observed.

The production of four top quarks ($\mathrm{t\bar{t}t\bar{t}}$) is studied with LHC proton-proton collision data samples collected by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, and corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 138 fb$^{-1}$. Events that have no leptons (all-hadronic), one lepton, or two opposite-sign leptons (where lepton refers only to prompt electrons or prompt muons) are considered. This is the first $\mathrm{t\bar{t}t\bar{t}}$ measurement that includes the all-hadronic final state. The observed significance of the $\mathrm{t\bar{t}t\bar{t}}$ signal in these final states of 3.9 standard deviations (1.5 expected) provides evidence for $\mathrm{t\bar{t}t\bar{t}}$ production, with a measured cross section of 36 $^{+12}_{-11}$ fb. Combined with earlier CMS results in other final states, the signal significance is 4.0 standard deviations (3.2 expected). The combination returns an observed cross section of 17 $\pm$ 4 (stat) $\pm$ 3 (syst) fb, which is consistent with the standard model prediction.

The Pierre Auger Observatory (Auger) and the Telescope Array (TA), located, respectively, in the Southern and Northern hemispheres, are the largest ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) observatories.The Auger and TA Collaborations have collected unprecedented statistics providing us with a unique opportunity to search for the differences between the UHECR energy spectra and mass compositions in the complementary sky regions.To correctly attribute such differences to the properties of the UHECR sources or propagation, the systematic effects in the measurements of each observatory should be considered properly.In this context, the task of the Auger -TA mass composition working group is to identify possible differences of astrophysical origin in the measurements of the depth of the maximum of air-shower profiles, max , performed at both observatories using the fluorescence technique.Due to distinct approaches to event selection and analysis at Auger and TA, the working group uses a specially designed method to transfer the Auger max distributions into the TA detector.To this end, dedicated air-shower and detector simulations for the TA Black Rock Mesa and Long Ridge fluorescence detector stations were performed with the Sibyll 2.3d hadronic interaction model.From the comparison of the first two moments and the shapes of max distributions for energies above 10 18.2 eV, no significant differences between the Auger and TA measurements were found.

The search for anisotropies in the arrival directions of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays plays a key role in the efforts to understand their origin.The observed first-harmonic modulation in right ascension (R.A.) above 8 EeV, detected by the Pierre Auger Observatory with a current significance of 6.9, suggests an extragalactic origin above this energy.Furthermore, there are indications, at the ∼4 significance level, of anisotropies at intermediate angular scales, which are obtained when comparing the arrival directions against the distribution of potential sources from astrophysical catalogs, in particular that of nearby starburst galaxies, and around the Centaurus region.In this contribution, we present the status of the different searches for anisotropies at small, intermediate and large angular scales.We use the latest available data set, with 19 years of operation that has yielded 135, 000 km 2 yr sr of accumulated exposure, covering the sky at declinations from -90 • to 45 • .At small and intermediate scales, we report updates of the all-sky blind search for localized excesses, the study around the Centaurus region, and the likelihood analysis with catalogs of candidate sources.We have also studied the regions of the sky from which the Telescope Array Collaboration has reported hints of excesses in their data and we find no significant effects in the same directions with a data set of comparable size.At large angular scales, the dipolar and quadrupolar amplitudes in energy bins are updated.We discuss the prospects of these searches, both in regards to increases in statistics and in relation to the future inclusion of event-by-event mass estimators in these analyses through the upgrade of the Observatory, AugerPrime.

The observation of primary photons with energies around 10 16 eV would be particularly interesting after the discovery of Galactic gamma-ray sources with spectra extending into the PeV range.Since photons are connected to the acceleration of charged particles, searches for photons enhance the multi-messenger understanding of cosmic-ray sources as well as of transient astrophysical phenomena, while offering wealthy connections to neutrino astronomy and dark matter.Additionally, diffuse photon fluxes are expected from cosmic-ray interactions with Galactic matter and background radiation fields.Previously, the energy domain between 1 PeV and 200 PeV was only explored from the Northern Hemisphere.The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest astroparticle experiment in operation and, thanks to its location, has a sizable exposure to the Southern sky, including the Galactic center region.In this contribution, we present the first search for photons from the Southern hemisphere between 50 and 200 PeV exploiting the Auger data acquired during ∼ 4 yr of operation.We describe the method to discriminate photons against the dominating hadronic background; it is based on the measurements of air showers taken with the low-energy extension of the Pierre Auger Observatory composed by 19 water-Cherenkov detectors spanning ∼ 2 km 2 and an Underground Muon Detector.The search for a diffuse flux of photons is presented and its results are interpreted according to theoretical model predictions.This study extends the range of Auger photon searches to almost four decades in energy.

The Pierre Auger Observatory uses fluorescence telescopes in conjunction with ground level particle detectors to measure high-energy cosmic rays and reconstruct, with greater precision, their arrival direction, their energy and the depth of shower maximum.The depth of shower maximum is important to infer cosmic ray mass composition.The fluorescence detector is capable of directly measuring the longitudinal shower development, which is used to reconstruct the cosmic ray energy and the atmospheric depth of shower maximum.However, given the limited field of view of the fluorescence detector, the shower profile is not always fully contained within the detector observation volume.Therefore, considerations need to be taken in order to reconstruct some events.In this contribution we will describe the method that the Pierre Auger Collaboration uses to reconstruct the longitudinal profiles of showers and present the details of its performance, namely its resolution and systematic uncertainties.

The measurements by the Pierre Auger Observatory of the energy spectrum and mass composition of cosmic rays can be interpreted assuming the presence of two extragalactic source populations, one dominating the flux at energies above a few EeV and the other below.To fit the data ignoring magnetic field effects, the high-energy population needs to accelerate a mixture of nuclei with very hard spectra, at odds with the approximate -2 shape expected from diffusive shock acceleration.The presence of turbulent extragalactic magnetic fields in the region between the closest sources and the Earth can significantly modify the observed CR spectrum with respect to that emitted by the sources, reducing the flux of low-rigidity particles that reach the Earth.We here take into account this magnetic horizon effect in the combined fit of the spectrum and shower depth distributions, exploring the possibility that a spectrum for the high-energy population sources with a shape closer to -2 be able to explain the observations.We find that a large inter-source separation s and a large magnetic field RMS amplitude within the Local Supercluster region, such that rms ≃ 100 nG (40 Mpc/ s ) √︁ 25 kpc/ coh , are needed to interpret the data within this scenario, where coh is the magnetic field coherence length.

The distribution of aerosols in the atmosphere above cosmic ray fluorescence detectors must be well characterised in order to precisely recover extensive air shower properties such as the calorimetric energy, , and depth of shower maximum, max .The Pierre Auger Observatory uses two centrally located laser facilities to measure the vertical aerosol optical depth profile (VAOD) every hour.It is assumed that the night with the clearest atmosphere each year is effectively aerosol free and that it is an appropriate reference to set the absolute scale of VAOD throughout that year.We review the successes of this method and its associated sources of systematic uncertainty, then present a new cross-check of measured VAOD using air shower events observed in stereo mode.Special attention is paid to quantifying the uncertainties on this result.As the technique is only sensitive to VAOD bias at a fixed altitude, we combine it with a study of aerosol profiles independently measured using a less-sensitive Raman lidar system.This allows us to derive a complete model of the upper limit on the possible bias in the average measured VAOD, which we attribute primarily to an uncertainty on whether the annual reference nights are completely aerosol free.We formulate a correction for this bias and apply it retroactively to all VAOD measurements, then repeat the analysis of the complete air shower dataset and discuss the small but significant effect of this new correction on and max .This correction is now fully integrated into the Auger analysis chain.

A measurement is presented for the electroweak production of a W boson, a photon (γ), and two jets (j) in proton-proton collisions. The leptonic decay of the W boson is selected by requiring one identified electron or muon and large missing transverse momentum. The two jets are required to have large invariant dijet mass and large separation in pseudorapidity. The measurement is performed with the data collected by the CMS detector at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1. The cross section for the electroweak Wγjj production is 23.5+4.9−4.7 fb, whereas the total cross section for Wγjj production is 113±13 fb. Differential cross sections are also measured with the distributions unfolded to the particle level. All results are in agreement with the standard model expectations. Constraints are placed on anomalous quartic gauge couplings (aQGCs) in terms of dimension-8 effective field theory operators. These are the most stringent limits to date on the aQGCs parameters fM,2–5/Λ4 and fT,6–7/Λ4.Received 23 December 2022Accepted 1 March 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.108.032017Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.© 2023 CERN, for the CMS CollaborationPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Physical SystemsW & Z bosonsTechniquesHadron collidersParticles & Fields

A search for the lepton-flavor violating decay of the Higgs boson and potential additional Higgs bosons with a mass in the range 110-160 GeV to an e$^{\pm}μ^{\mp}$ pair is presented. The search is performed with a proton-proton collision dataset at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. No excess is observed for the Higgs boson. The observed (expected) upper limit on the e$^{\pm}μ^{\mp}$ branching fraction for it is determined to be 4.4 (4.7) $\times$ 10$^{-5}$ at 95% confidence level, the most stringent limit set thus far from direct searches. The largest excess of events over the expected background in the full mass range of the search is observed at an e$^{\pm}μ^{\mp}$ invariant mass of approximately 146 GeV with a local (global) significance of 3.8 (2.8) standard deviations.

We present an observation of photon-photon production of τ lepton pairs in ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions. The measurement is based on a data sample with an integrated luminosity of 404 μb^{-1} collected by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.02 TeV. The γγ→τ^{+}τ^{-} process is observed for τ^{+}τ^{-} events with a muon and three charged hadrons in the final state. The measured fiducial cross section is σ(γγ→τ^{+}τ^{-})=4.8±0.6(stat)±0.5(syst) μb, where the second (third) term corresponds to the statistical (systematic) uncertainty in σ(γγ→τ^{+}τ^{-}) in agreement with leading-order QED predictions. Using σ(γγ→τ^{+}τ^{-}), we estimate a model-dependent value of the anomalous magnetic moment of the τ lepton of a_{τ}=0.001_{-0.089}^{+0.055}.

A bstract The second-order ( v 2 ) and third-order ( v 3 ) Fourier coefficients describing the azimuthal anisotropy of prompt and nonprompt (from b-hadron decays) J / ψ, as well as prompt ψ(2S) mesons are measured in lead-lead collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of $$ \sqrt{s_{\textrm{NN}}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> <mml:mi>NN</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> = 5 . 02 TeV. The analysis uses a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.61 nb − 1 recorded with the CMS detector. The J / ψ and ψ(2S) mesons are reconstructed using their dimuon decay channel. The v 2 and v 3 coefficients are extracted using the scalar product method and studied as functions of meson transverse momentum and collision centrality. The measured v 2 values for prompt J / ψ mesons are found to be larger than those for nonprompt J / ψ mesons. The prompt J / ψ v 2 values at high p T are found to be underpredicted by a model incorporating only parton energy loss effects in a quark-gluon plasma medium. Prompt and nonprompt J / ψ meson v 3 and prompt ψ(2S) v 2 and v 3 values are also reported for the first time, providing new information about heavy quark interactions in the hot and dense medium created in heavy ion collisions.

The mass of the top quark is measured in 36.3fb-1 of LHC proton-proton collision data collected with the CMS detector at s=13TeV. The measurement uses a sample of top quark pair candidate events containing one isolated electron or muon and at least four jets in the final state. For each event, the mass is reconstructed from a kinematic fit of the decay products to a top quark pair hypothesis. A profile likelihood method is applied using up to four observables per event to extract the top quark mass. The top quark mass is measured to be 171.77±0.37GeV. This approach significantly improves the precision over previous measurements.

A bstract A measurement of the Higgs boson (H) production via vector boson fusion (VBF) and its decay into a bottom quark-antiquark pair ( $$ \textrm{b}\overline{\textrm{b}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>b</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>b</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:math> ) is presented using proton-proton collision data recorded by the CMS experiment at $$ \sqrt{s} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> = 13 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 90.8 fb − 1 . Treating the gluon-gluon fusion process as a background and constraining its rate to the value expected in the standard model (SM) within uncertainties, the signal strength of the VBF process, defined as the ratio of the observed signal rate to that predicted by the SM, is measured to be $$ {\mu}_{\textrm{Hb}\overline{\textrm{b}}}^{\textrm{qqh}}={1.01}_{-0.46}^{+0.55} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>μ</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>Hb</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>b</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi>qqh</mml:mi> </mml:msubsup> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mn>1.01</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.46</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.55</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> . The VBF signal is observed with a significance of 2.4 standard deviations relative to the background prediction, while the expected significance is 2.7 standard deviations. Considering inclusive Higgs boson production and decay into bottom quarks, the signal strength is measured to be $$ {\mu}_{\textrm{Hb}\overline{\textrm{b}}}^{\textrm{incl}.}={0.99}_{-0.41}^{+0.48} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>μ</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>Hb</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>b</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mtext>incl</mml:mtext> <mml:mo>.</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mn>0.99</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.41</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.48</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> , corresponding to an observed (expected) significance of 2.6 (2.9) standard deviations.

Abstract The identification of prompt and isolated muons, as well as muons from heavy-flavour hadron decays, is an important task. We developed two multivariate techniques to provide highly efficient identification for muons with transverse momentum greater than 10 GeV. One provides a continuous variable as an alternative to a cut-based identification selection and offers a better discrimination power against misidentified muons. The other one selects prompt and isolated muons by using isolation requirements to reduce the contamination from nonprompt muons arising in heavy-flavour hadron decays. Both algorithms are developed using 59.7 fb -1 of proton-proton collisions data at a centre-of-mass energy of √(s)=13 TeV collected in 2018 with the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC.

A bstract A search for dark matter particles is performed using events with a pair of W bosons and large missing transverse momentum. Candidate events are selected by requiring one or two leptons ( ℓ = electrons or muons). The analysis is based on proton-proton collision data collected at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV by the CMS experiment at the LHC and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb − 1 . No significant excess over the expected standard model background is observed in the ℓν qq and 2 ℓ 2 ν final states of the W + W − boson pair. Limits are set on dark matter production in the context of a simplified dark Higgs model, with a dark Higgs boson mass above the W + W − mass threshold. The dark matter phase space is probed in the mass range 100–300 GeV, extending the scope of previous searches. Current exclusion limits are improved in the range of dark Higgs masses from 160 to 250 GeV, for a dark matter mass of 200 GeV.

Dark matter particles could be superheavy, provided their lifetime is much longer than the age of the universe. Using the sensitivity of the Pierre Auger Observatory to ultra-high energy neutrinos and photons, we constrain a specific extension of the Standard Model of particle physics that meets the lifetime requirement for a superheavy particle by coupling it to a sector of ultra-light sterile neutrinos. Our results show that, for a typical dark coupling constant of 0.1, the mixing angle $\theta_m$ between active and sterile neutrinos must satisfy, roughly, $\theta_m \lesssim 1.5\times 10^{-6}(M_X/10^9~\mathrm{GeV})^{-2}$ for a mass $M_X$ of the dark-matter particle between $10^8$ and $10^{11}~$GeV.

The combined interpretation of the spectrum and composition measurements plays a key role in the quest for the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). The Pierre Auger Observatory, thanks to its huge exposure, provides the most precise measurement of the energy spectrum of UHECRs and the most reliable information on their composition, exploiting the distributions of the depth of maximum of the showers in the atmosphere. A combined fit of a simple astrophysical model of UHECR sources to the spectrum and mass composition measurements is used to evaluate the constraining power of the data measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory on the source properties. We find that our data across the “ankle” feature are well reproduced if two extragalactic populations of sources are considered, one emitting a very soft spectrum which dominates the region below the ankle, and the other taking over at energies above the ankle, with an intermediate mixed composition, a hard spectrum and a low rigidity cutoff. Interestingly, similar results can also be obtained if the medium-mass contribution at lower energy is provided by an additional Galactic component.

The measurement of Z boson production is presented as a method to determine the integrated luminosity of CMS data sets. The analysis uses proton-proton collision data, recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC in 2017 at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeV. Events with Z bosons decaying into a pair of muons are selected. The total number of Z bosons produced in a fiducial volume is determined, together with the identification efficiencies and correlations from the same data set, in small intervals of 20pb-1 of integrated luminosity, thus facilitating the efficiency and rate measurement as a function of time and instantaneous luminosity. Using the ratio of the efficiency-corrected numbers of Z bosons, the precisely measured integrated luminosity of one data set is used to determine the luminosity of another. For the first time, a full quantitative uncertainty analysis of the use of Z bosons for the integrated luminosity measurement is performed. The uncertainty in the extrapolation between two data sets, recorded in 2017 at low and high instantaneous luminosity, is less than 0.5%. We show that the Z boson rate measurement constitutes a precise method, complementary to traditional methods, with the potential to improve the measurement of the integrated luminosity.

The strange quark content of the proton is probed through the measurement of the production cross section for a W boson and a charm (c) quark in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeV. The analysis uses a data sample corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 138fb-1 collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The W bosons are identified through their leptonic decays to an electron or a muon, and a neutrino. Charm jets are tagged using the presence of a muon or a secondary vertex inside the jet. The W+c production cross section and the cross section ratio Rc±=σ(W++c¯)/σ(W-+c) are measured inclusively and differentially as functions of the transverse momentum and the pseudorapidity of the lepton originating from the W boson decay. The precision of the measurements is improved with respect to previous studies, reaching 1% in Rc±=0.950±0.005(stat)±0.010(syst). The measurements are compared with theoretical predictions up to next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics.

Measurements of anisotropic arrival directions of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays provide important information for identifying their sources. On large scales, cosmic rays with energies above $8 \, \mathrm{EeV}$ reveal a dipolar flux modulation in right ascension with a significance of $6.9\sigma$, with the dipole direction pointing $113^\circ$ away from the Galactic center. This observation is explained by extragalactic origins. Also, model-independent searches for small- and intermediate-scale overdensities have been performed in order to unveil astrophysically interesting regions. On these scales, no statistically significant features could be detected. However, intermediate-scale analyses comparing the measured arrival directions with potential source catalogs show indications for a coincidence of the measured arrival directions with catalogs of starburst galaxies and the Centaurus~A region. In this contribution, an overview of the studies regarding anisotropies of the arrival directions of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory on different angular scales is presented and the current results are discussed.

A test of lepton flavor universality in B$^{\pm}$ $\to$ K$^{\pm}\mu^+\mu^-$ and B$^{\pm}$ $\to$ K$^{\pm}$e$^+$e$^-$ decays, as well as a measurement of differential and integrated branching fractions of a nonresonant B$^{\pm}$ $\to$ K$^{\pm}\mu^+\mu^-$ decay are presented. The analysis is made possible by a dedicated data set of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV recorded in 2018, by the CMS experiment at the LHC, using a special high-rate data stream designed for collecting about 10 billion unbiased b hadron decays. The ratio of the branching fractions $\mathcal{B}$(B$^{\pm}$ $\to$ K$^{\pm}\mu^+\mu^-$) to $\mathcal{B}$(B$^{\pm}$ $\to$ K$^{\pm}$e$^+$e$^-$) is determined from the measured double ratio $R$(K) of these decays to the respective branching fractions of the B$^\pm$ $\to$ J/$\psi$K$^\pm$ with J/$\psi$ $\to$ $\mu^+\mu^-$ and e$^+$e$^-$ decays, which allow for significant cancellation of systematic uncertainties. The ratio $R$(K) is measured in the range 1.1 $\lt q^2 \lt$ 6.0 GeV$^2$, where $q$ is the invariant mass of the lepton pair, and is found to be $R$(K) = 0.78$^{+0.47}_{-0.23}$, in agreement with the standard model expectation $R$(K) $\approx$ 1. This measurement is limited by the statistical precision of the electron channel. The integrated branching fraction in the same $q^2$ range, $\mathcal{B}$(B$^{\pm}$ $\to$ K$^{\pm}\mu^+\mu^-$) = (12.42 $\pm$ 0.68) $\times$ 10$^{-8}$, is consistent with the present world-average value and has a comparable precision.

Ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions create a strongly interacting state of hot and dense quark-gluon matter that exhibits a remarkable collective flow behavior with minimal viscous dissipation. To gain deeper insights into its intrinsic nature and fundamental degrees of freedom, we extracted the speed of sound in this medium created using lead-lead (PbPb) collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV. The data were recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 0.607 nb$^{-1}$. The measurement is performed by studying the multiplicity dependence of the average transverse momentum of charged particles emitted in head-on PbPb collisions. Our findings reveal that the speed of sound in this matter is nearly half the speed of light, with a squared value of 0.241 $\pm$ 0.002 (stat) $\pm$ 0.016 (syst) in natural units. The effective medium temperature, estimated using the mean transverse momentum, is 219 $\pm$ 8 (syst) MeV. The measured squared speed of sound at this temperature aligns precisely with predictions from lattice quantum chromodynamic (QCD) calculations. This result provides a stringent constraint on the equation of state of the created medium and direct evidence for a deconfined QCD phase being attained in relativistic nuclear collisions.

A search for dark matter in events with a displaced nonresonant muon pair and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is performed using an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1 of proton-proton (pp) collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV produced by the LHC in 2016–2018. No significant excess over the predicted backgrounds is observed. Upper limits are set on the product of the inelastic dark matter production cross section σ(pp→A′→χ1χ2) and the decay branching fraction B(χ2→χ1μ+μ−), where A′ is a dark photon and χ1 and χ2 are states in the dark sector with near mass degeneracy. This is the first dedicated collider search for inelastic dark matter.Received 19 May 2023Revised 24 September 2023Accepted 29 November 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.041802Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.© 2024 CERN, for the CMS CollaborationPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasDark matterPhysical SystemsHypothetical particlesTechniquesHadron collidersParticles & Fields