If you liked the recent CMS anomaly detection search, check out this paper for more details & validations!

I particularly like this 'rediscovery' of boosted top quarks with anomaly detection!
Left = before AD, right = after AD

Its also not a black box! You can visualize all the dimensions you are fitting

We show the method (HI-SIGMA) gives sensitivity gains as compared to other approaches, and comes with a data-driven background estimate (DNN fit does not)

This is the highlight plot. The x-axis is the significance from a normal resonance search, and the y-axis the significance achieved after our anomaly cut

Our method can improve from a 1-2 sigma excess (looks like noise) to 5 sigma excess (discovery) !

There is really a full program of searches you can do, considering different resonance types (dimuon, diphoton, dijet, etc)

In this paper we looked at the more challenging di-tau resonances
We showed our method can work on 3 signal models with quite different topologies

CMS is seeing an unexpected excess of top quarks in their data. But what is causing it?

Signs are pointing to 'toponium' an unstable bound state of two top quarks, which was previously thought impossible to form!

Read more in the newest ParticleBites!
www.particlebites.com?p=10001

Surprisingly, the question with the largest agreement was that 70% preferred to prioritize muon collider R&D over Higgs factory construction

When we specifically asked people to rank different options, there was a lot variation, but two with muon collider R&D came out on top

(lower = better)

What collider do early career particle physicists in the US want?

We surveyed 100+, check out our input to the European strategy to find out!

Short answer : Lots of variety of opinion, but highest enthusiasm for a @muoncollider.bsky.social

arxiv.org/abs/2503.22834

CMS has a new result out fresh today for Moriond!
"Observation of a pseudoscalar excess at the top quark pair production threshold"

Very much looks like the discovery of toponium, a short-lived top - anti-top bound state

arxiv.org/abs/2503.22382

Standing up for science! On a cold wet Chicago day

It seems like the magnets needed for FCC-hh could be ready by ~2055 (or even earlier) ?!

I had thought the magnets were main reason hh couldn't start until ~2070

I successfully discovered micro black holes won the Nobel (peace) prize 🏆

Small Hadron Collider arcade game!

After many years I recently got to visit @cmsexperiment.bsky.social 😍

This plot compares the limits on 4 different signal models from the different ML anomaly detection methods (colors) to standard approaches

Up to a 6x sensitivity gain!