Suppression of excited-state effects in lattice determination of nucleon electromagnetic form factors
We study the ability of a variety of fitting techniques to extract the ground state matrix elements of the vector current from ratios of nucleon three- and two-point functions that contain contaminations from excited states. Extending our high-statistics study of nucleon form factors, we are able to demonstrate that the treatment of excited-state contributions in conjunction with approaching the physical pion mass has a significant impact on the $Q^2$-dependence of the form factors.

title: Hadronic contribution to the lepton anomalous magnetic moment and pion form factor in lattice QCD
abstract: The Mainz lattice QCD group is currently carrying out simulations of lattice QCD with the aim of making predictions for a wide range of phenomenologically relevant Standard Model properties. Here we present progress in understanding and controlling systematic effects in the computation of the pion vector form factor and the leading hadronic contribution to the lepton anomalous magnetic moment.

title: The leading disconnected contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon
abstract: The hadronic vacuum polarization can be determined from the vector correlator in a mixed time-momentum representation. We explicitly calculate the disconnected contribution to the vector correlator, both in the $N_f = 2$ theory and with an additional quenched strange quark, using non-perturbatively $O(a)$-improved Wilson fermions. All-to-all propagators are computed using stochastic sources and a generalized hopping parameter expansion. Combining the result with the dominant connected contribution, we are able to estimate an upper bound for the systematic error that arises from neglecting the disconnected contribution in the determination of $(g-2)_\mu$.

title: Excited state systematics in extracting nucleon electromagnetic form factors
abstract: We present updated preliminary results for the nucleon electromagnetic form factors for nonperturbatively O(a) improved Wilson fermions in N f = 2 QCD measured on the CLS ensembles. The use of the summed operator insertion method allows us to suppress the influence of excited states in our measurements. A study of the effect that excited state contaminations have on the Q2 dependence of the extracted nucleon form factors may then be made through comparisons of the summation method to standard plateau fits, as well as to excited state fits.

title: Study of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon computed from the Adler function
abstract: We compute the Adler function on the lattice from vacuum polarization data with twisted boundary conditions using numerical derivatives. The study is based on CLS ensembles with two flavours of $O(a)$ improved Wilson fermions. We extrapolate the lattice data for the Adler function to the continuum limit and to the physical pion mass and analyze its dependence on the momentum transfer. We discuss the application of this method to the extraction of the $u,d$ contribution to $a_\mu^{\mathrm{HLO}}$.

title: The shape of covariantly smeared sources in lattice QCD
abstract: A bstractCovariantly smeared sources are commonly used in lattice QCD to enhance the projection onto the ground state. Here we investigate the dependence of their shape on the gauge field background and find that the presence of localized concentrations of magnetic field can lead to strong distortions which reduce the smearing radii achievable by iterative smearing prescriptions. In particular, as a → 0, iterative procedures like Jacobi smearing require increasingly large iteration counts in order to reach physically-sized smearing radii rsm ~ 0.5 fm, and the resulting sources are strongly distorted. To bypass this issue, we propose a covariant smearing procedure (“free-form smearing”) that allows us to create arbitrarily shaped sources, including in particular Gaussians of arbitrary radius.

title: QCD Corrections to Vector Boson Pair Production via Weak Boson Fusion
abstract: NLO-QCD corrections to vector boson pair production via weak boson fusion have recently been calculated and implemented into flexible parton-level Monte-Carlo programs. These allow for the computation of cross sections and kinematical distributions within realistic experimental cuts. We summarize the basic elements of the calculation and review phenomenological results for the LHC.

title: Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to W+W? production via vector-boson fusion
abstract: Vector-boson fusion processes constitute an important class of reactions at hadron colliders, both for signals and backgrounds of new physics in the electroweak interactions. We consider what is commonly referred to as W+W− production via vector-boson fusion (with subsequent leptonic decay of the Ws), or, more precisely, e+νe μ−μ + 2 jets production in proton-proton scattering, with all resonant and non-resonant Feynman diagrams and spin correlations of the final-state leptons included, in the phase-space regions which are dominated by t-channel electroweak-boson exchange. We compute the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to this process, at order α6αs. The QCD corrections are modest, changing total cross sections by less than 10%. Remaining scale uncertainties are below 2%. A fully-flexible next-to-leading order partonic Monte Carlo program allows to demonstrate these features for cross sections within typical vector-boson-fusion acceptance cuts. Modest corrections are also found for distributions.

title: Hard exclusive photoproduction of Phi and J/Psi mesons
abstract: We calculate the leading-order perturbative contribution to gamma p -> M(V) p, with M(v) being a Phi or J/Psi meson, in the kinematic region of large energy and scattering angle.

title: Release Note -- Vbfnlo-2.6.0
abstract: Vbfnlo is a flexible parton level Monte Carlo program for the simulation of vector boson fusion (VBF), double and triple vector boson (plus jet) production in hadronic collisions at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the strong coupling constant, as well as Higgs boson plus two jet production via gluon fusion at the one-loop level. This note briefly describes the main additional features and processes that have been added in the new release ‐ Vbfnlo Version 2.6.0. At NLO QCD diboson production (W , WZ, ZZ, Z and ), same-sign W pair production via vector boson fusion and the process Wj have been implemented (for which oneloop tensor integrals up to six-point functions are included). In addition, gluon induced diboson production can be studied separately at the leading order (oneloop) level. The diboson processes WW, WZ and W can be run with anomalous gauge boson couplings, and anomalous couplings between a Higgs and a pair of gauge bosons is included in WW, ZZ, Z and diboson production. The code has also been extended to include anomalous gauge boson couplings for single vector boson production via VBF, and a spin-2 model has been implemented for diboson pair production via vector boson fusion.

title: Observing strongly interacting vector boson systems at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
abstract: We explore the potential of the CERN Large Hadron Collider to access a strongly interacting electroweak symmetry breaking sector via weak boson scattering with W{sup +}W{sup -}jj, ZZjj, and W{sup {+-}}Zjj final states. As examples of models with scalar or vector resonances we concentrate on a scenario with a heavy Higgs boson and on a warped Higgsless Kaluza-Klein model of narrow spin-one resonances. The signal and the most prominent background processes are evaluated using exact tree-level matrix elements including full off-shell and finite width effects for final states with two tagging jets and four leptons. Using double forward jet-tagging techniques, we derive dedicated cuts on the observable jets and charged leptons to suppress standard model backgrounds. We demonstrate that the LHC has substantial sensitivity to strong interactions in the electroweak symmetry breaking sector.