Probing anomalous gluon self-interaction through its interference with the Standard Model

In this work, we analysed the cancellation of the contribution to the cross-section, for the interference among the SM and the three-gluon operator, introduced in the SMEFT framework and providing modifications to the gluon vertices. The analysis is based on the idea that the interference is not necessarily positive and, even if its total cross-section is almost null, this is not necessarily true for the differential distribution, as a cancellation can occur between different phase space regions whose contributions have different signs. By generating event samples for three-jet production through the Monte Carlo simulator Madgraph5@NLO, we checked different variables which are usually taken into account in jet analysis, obtaining that some of them are sensitive to the sign of the events, and therefore it is possible to separate zones with more positive- than negative-weighted events by imposing cuts on their values. We set constraints on the value of the coefficient of the operator through the interference distributions. We checked the maximum division between positive and negative weights that can be experimentally achieved, through the matrix element weighting, obtaining that suitable cuts on certain variables can do the same job with an efficiency of almost 40%, but with easier measurements and procedures.