The LHC Olympics 2020 a community challenge for anomaly detection in high energy physics.

A new paradigm for data-driven, model-agnostic new physics searches at colliders is emerging, and aims to leverage recent breakthroughs in anomaly detection and machine learning. In order to develop and benchmark new anomaly detection methods within this framework, it is essential to have standard datasets. To this end, we have created the LHC Olympics 2020, a community challenge accompanied by a set of simulated collider events.

Shedding light on CP violation in the charm system via D→Vγ decays.

Recent evidence for direct CP violation in nonleptonic charm decays cannot be easily accommodated within the standard model. On the other hand, it fits well in new physics models generating CP violating ΔC=1 chromomagnetic dipole operators. We show that in these frameworks sizable direct CP asymmetries in radiative D→P(+)P(-)γ decays (P=π, K), with M(PP) close to the ρ or the φ peak, can be expected.

Implications of lepton flavor universality violations in B decays.

Present measurements of b→cτν and b→uτν transitions differ from the standard model predictions of lepton flavor universality by almost 4σ. We examine new physics interpretations of this anomaly. An effective field theory analysis shows that minimal flavor violating models are not preferred as an explanation, but are also not yet excluded.

Probing new top physics at the LHCb experiment.

We suggest that top quark physics can be studied at the LHCb experiment and that top quark production could be observed. Since LHCb covers a large pseudorapidity region in the forward direction, it has unique abilities to probe new physics in the top quark sector. Furthermore, we demonstrate that LHCb may be able to measure a t ̄t production rate asymmetry and, thus, indirectly probe an anomalous forward-backward t ̄t asymmetry in the forward region, a possibility suggested by the enhanced forward-backward asymmetry reported by the CDF experiment.

Flavor changing neutral coupling mediated radiative top quark decays at next-to-leading order in QCD.

We compute the branching ratios for the rare top quark decays t→cγ and t→cZ mediated by effective flavor changing neutral couplings at next-to-leading order in QCD, including the effects due to operator mixing. After resumming contributions of the order of [α{s}log(Λ/m{t})]{n}, where Λ is the scale at which the effective operators are generated, using renormalization group methods, we compute finite matrix element corrections and study the effects of experimental kinematic cuts on the extracted branching ratios. We find that the t→cγ decay can also be used to probe the effective operators mediating t→cg processes, since the latter can naturally contribute 10% or more to the radiative decay.