We apply an orthogonalization procedure on the effective field theory of large scale structure (EFT of LSS) shapes, relevant for the angle-averaged bispectrum and non-Gaussian covariance of the matter power spectrum at one loop. Assuming natural-sized EFT parameters, this identifies a linear combination of EFT shapes - referred to as the principal shape - that gives the dominant contribution for the whole kinematic plane, with subdominant combinations suppressed by a few orders of magnitude. For the covariance, our orthogonal transformation is in excellent agreement with a principal component analysis applied to available data. Additionally we find that, for both observables, the coefficients of the principal shapes are well approximated by the EFT coefficients appearing in the squeezed limit, and are thus measurable from power spectrum response functions. Employing data from N-body simulations for the growth-only response, we measure the single EFT coefficient describing the angle-averaged bispectrum with O(10%) precision. These methods of shape orthogonalization and measurement of coefficients from response functions are valuable tools for developing the EFT of LSS framework, and can be applied to more general observables.

In collider physics, jet algorithms are a ubiquitous tool for clustering particles into discrete jet objects. Event shapes offer an alternative way to characterize jets, and one can define a jet multiplicity event shape, which can take on fractional values, using the framework of “jets without jets”. In this paper, we perform the first analytic studies of fractional jet multiplicity Ñjet in the context of e⁺e⁻ collisions. We use fixed-order QCD to understand the Ñjet cross section at order αs², and we introduce a candidate factorization theorem to capture certain higher-order effects. The resulting distributions have a hybrid jet algorithm/event shape behavior which agrees with parton shower Monte Carlo generators. The Ñjet observable does not satisfy ordinary soft-collinear factorization, and the Ñjet cross section exhibits a number of unique features, including the absence of collinear logarithms and the presence of soft logarithms that are purely non-global. Additionally, we find novel divergences connected to the energy sharing between emissions, which are reminiscent of rapidity divergences encountered in other applications. Given these interesting properties of fractional jet multiplicity, we advocate for future measurements and calculations of Ñjet at hadron colliders like the LHC.

Standard QCD resummation techniques provide precise predictions for the spectrum and the cumulant of a given observable. The integrated spectrum and the cumulant differ by higher-order terms which, however, can be numerically significant. In this paper we propose a method, which we call the σ-improved scheme, to resolve this issue. It consists of two steps: (i) include higher-order terms in the spectrum to improve the agreement with the cumulant central value, and (ii) employ profile scales that encode correlations between different points to give robust uncertainty estimates for the integrated spectrum. We provide a generic algorithm for determining such profile scales, and show the application to the thrust distribution in e+e- collisions at NLL′+NLO and NNLL′+NNLO.

We compute the connected four point correlation function (the trispectrum in Fourier space) of cosmological density perturbations at one-loop order in Standard Perturbation Theory (SPT) and the Effective Field Theory of Large Scale Structure (EFT of LSS). This paper is a companion to our earlier work on the non-Gaussian covariance of the matter power spectrum, which corresponds to a particular wavenumber configuration of the trispectrum. In the present calculation, we highlight and clarify some of the subtle aspects of the EFT framework that arise at third order in perturbation theory for general wavenumber configurations of the trispectrum. We consistently incorporate vorticity and non-locality in time into the EFT counterterms and lay out a complete basis of building blocks for the stress tensor. We show predictions for the one-loop SPT trispectrum and the EFT contributions, focusing on configurations which have particular relevance for using LSS to constrain primordial non-Gaussianity.

We compute the non-Gaussian contribution to the covariance of the matter power spectrum at one-loop order in standard perturbation theory (SPT), using the framework of the effective field theory (EFT) of large scale structure (LSS). The complete one-loop contributions are evaluated for the first time, including the leading EFT corrections that involve seven independent operators, of which four appear in the power spectrum and bispectrum. We compare the non-Gaussian part of the one-loop covariance computed with both SPT and EFT of LSS to two separate simulations. In one simulation, we find that the one-loop prediction from SPT reproduces the simulation well to ki+kj∼0.25 h/Mpc, while in the other simulation we find a substantial improvement of EFT of LSS (with one free parameter) over SPT, more than doubling the range of k where the theory accurately reproduces the simulation. The disagreement between these two simulations points to unaccounted for systematics, highlighting the need for improved numerical and analytic understanding of the covariance.