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Searching for QCD instantons at hadron colliders

Valentin V. Khoze, Daniel L. Milne, and Michael Spannowsky
Phys. Rev. D 103, 014017 – Published 19 January 2021

Abstract

QCD instantons are arguably the best motivated yet unobserved nonperturbative effects predicted by the Standard Model. A discovery and detailed study of instanton-generated processes at colliders would provide a new window into the phenomenological exploration of QCD and a vastly improved fundamental understanding of its nonperturbative dynamics. Building on the optical theorem, we numerically calculate the total instanton cross section from the elastic scattering amplitude, also including quantum effects arising from resummed perturbative exchanges between hard gluons in the initial state, thereby improving in accuracy on previous results. Although QCD instanton processes are predicted to be produced with a large scattering cross section at small center-of-mass partonic energies, discovering them at hadron colliders is a challenging task that requires dedicated search strategies. We evaluate the sensitivity of high-luminosity LHC runs, as well as low-luminosity LHC and Tevatron runs. We find that LHC low-luminosity runs in particular, which do not suffer from large pileup and trigger thresholds, show a very good sensitivity for discovering QCD instanton-generated processes.

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  • Received 12 October 2020
  • Accepted 1 December 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.103.014017

Published 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.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Particles & Fields

Authors & Affiliations

Valentin V. Khoze*, Daniel L. Milne, and Michael Spannowsky

  • IPPP, Department of Physics, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom

  • *valya.khoze@durham.ac.uk
  • daniel.l.milne@durham.ac.uk
  • michael.spannowsky@durham.ac.uk

Article Text

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Issue

Vol. 103, Iss. 1 — 1 January 2021

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