Higgs characterisation via vector-boson fusion and associated production: NLO and parton-shower effects
Vector-boson fusion and associated production at the LHC can provide key information on the strength and structure of the Higgs couplings to the Standard Model particles. Using an effective field theory approach, we study the effects of next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections matched to a parton shower on selected observables for various spin-0 hypotheses. We find that inclusion of NLO corrections is needed to reduce the theoretical uncertainties on the total rates as well as to reliably predict the shapes of the distributions. Our results are obtained in a fully automatic way via FeynRules and MadGraph5_aMC@NLO.

title: Higgs characterisation at NLO in QCD: CP properties of the top-quark Yukawa interaction
abstract: At the LHC the CP properties of the top-quark Yukawa interaction can be probed through Higgs production in gluon fusion or in association with top quarks. We consider the possibility for both CP-even and CP-odd couplings to the top quark to be present, and study CP-sensitive observables at next-to-leading order (NLO) in QCD, including parton-shower effects. We show that the inclusion of NLO corrections sizeably reduces the theoretical uncertainties, and confirm that di-jet correlations in $$H+2$$H+2 jet production through gluon fusion and correlations of the top-quark decay products in $$t\bar{t}H$$tt¯H production can provide sensitive probes of the CP nature of the Higgs interactions.

title: ILC Reference Design Report: ILC Global Design Effort and World Wide Study

title: Simulating spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ particles at colliders
abstract: Support for interactions of spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ particles is implemented in the FeynRules and ALOHA packages and tested with the MadGraph 5 and CalcHEP event generators in the context of three phenomenological applications. In the first, we implement a spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ Majorana gravitino field, as in local supersymmetric models, and study gravitino and gluino pair-production. In the second, a spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ Dirac top-quark excitation, inspired from compositeness models, is implemented. We then investigate both top-quark excitation and top-quark pair-production. In the third, a general effective operator for a spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ Dirac quark excitation is implemented, followed by a calculation of the angular distribution of the s-channel production mechanism.

title: Probing top-philic sgluons with LHC Run I data
abstract: Many theories beyond the Standard Model predict the existence of colored scalar states, known as sgluons, lying in the adjoint representation of the QCD gauge group. In scenarios where they are top-philic, sgluons are expected to be copiously pair-produced at the LHC via strong interactions with decays into pairs of top quarks or gluons. Consequently, sgluons can be sought in multijet and multitop events at the LHC. We revisit two LHC Run I analyses in which events featuring either the same-sign dileptonic decay of a four-top-quark system or its single leptonic decay are probed. Adopting a simplified model approach, we show how this reinterpretation allows us to extract simultaneous bounds on the sgluon mass and couplings.

title: TauDecay: a library to simulate polarized tau decays via FeynRules and MadGraph5
abstract: TauDecay is a library of helicity amplitudes to simulate polarized tau decays, constructed in the FeynRules and MadGraph5 framework. Together with the leptonic mode, the decay library includes the main hadronic modes, τ→ντ+π, 2π, and 3π, which are introduced as effective vertices by using FeynRules. The model file allows us to simulate tau decays when the on-shell tau production is kinematically forbidden. We also demonstrate that all possible correlations among the decay products of pair-produced taus through a Z boson and a scalar/pseudoscalar Higgs boson are produced automatically. The program has been tested carefully by making use of the standard tau decay library Tauola.

title: An H-alpha search for over-dense regions at z=2.23
abstract: We present the results of a narrow-band (H2S1, 2.121/0.021um) imaging search with WFCAM/UKIRT for H-alpha emitters around several potential signposts of rare (10^-7-10^-8 Mpc^-3) over-dense regions at z=2.23: an over-density of QSOs (2QZ cluster), a powerful, high-redshift radio galaxy (HzRG), and a concentration of submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) and optically faint radio galaxies (OFRGs). In total, we detect 137 narrow-band emitter candidates down to emission-line fluxes of 0.5-1 x 10^-16 erg s^-1 cm^-2, across a total area of 0.56 sq. degrees (2.1 x 10^5 comoving Mpc at z=2.23) in these fields. The BzK colours of the emitters suggest that at least 80% of our sample are likely to be H-alpha emitters (HAEs) at z=2.23. This is one of the largest HAE samples known at z>2. We find modest (~3-sigma) local over-densities of emitters associated with all the three targets. In the 2QZ cluster field, the emitters show a striking filamentary structure connecting four of the z=2.23 QSOs extending over 30Mpc (comoving). In the HzRG and SMG/OFRG fields, the structures appear to be smaller and seen only in the vicinities of the targets. The K-band magnitudes and the H-alpha equivalent widths of the emitters are weakly correlated with the over-density of the emitters: emitters in over-dense region are more evolved systems compared to those in under-dense regions at z=2.23. We find several examples of extended HAEs in our target fields, including a striking example with a spatial extent of 7.5 arcsec (60 kpc at z=2.23) in the 2QZ field, suggesting that these are relatively common in high-density regions. We conclude that narrow-band H-alpha surveys are efficient routes to map over-dense regions at high-z and thus to understand the relation between the growth of galaxies and their surrounding large-scale structures.