We study the feasibility of observing an invisibly decaying Z' at the LHC through the process pp -> ZZ' -> l+l-XX*, where X is any neutral, (quasi-) stable particle, whether a Standard Model (SM) neutrino or a new state. The measurement of the invisible width through this process facilitates both a model independent measurement of Gamma_{Z' -> \bar{nu} nu} and potentially detection of light neutral hidden states. Such particles appear in many models where the Z' is a messenger to a hidden sector, and also if dark matter is charged under the U(1)' of the Z'. We find that with as few as 30 fb^-1 of data the invisibly decaying Z' can be observed at 5 sigma over SM background for a 1 TeV Z' with reasonable couplings. If the Z' does not couple to leptons and therefore cannot be observed in the Drell-Yan channel, this process becomes a discovery mode. For reasonable hidden sector couplings, masses up to 2 TeV can be probed at the LHC. If the Z' does couple to leptons, then the rate for this invisible decay is predicted by on-peak data and the presence of additional hidden states can be searched for. With 100 fb^-1 of data, the presence of excess decays to hidden states can be excluded at 95% C.L. if they comprise 20-30% of the total invisible cross section.
The Higgs particle can have dominantly invisible decay in a large class of Majoron models as well as some SUSY models. The LEP signal and mass limit for a Higgs particle undergoing invisible decay are explored. They are found to be very similar to those for the standard model decay. The best signatures and discovery limit for an invisibly decaying Higgs particle at the LHC are also discussed. (Invited Talk at the XXIXth Rencontres de Moriond on QCD and High Energy Hadronic Interactions, Méribel, France, 19--26 March 1994.)
In this thesis we study the prospects for observing the invisibly decaying Higgs boson in the associated $t\bar tH$ production at the LHC. The results of the Monte Carlo simulations of signal and background processes show that there is a possibility of observing the statistically significant number of signal events required for the discovery. Moreover, the analysis can be further improved to reduce the number of false reconstructions of the $W$ boson. The analysis of the $t \bar t H$ production is independent of the model in which the Higgs boson decays into the invisible channel. There are se…
We discuss the possibility of detecting a Higgs boson in electron-positron collider experiments if large extra dimensions are realized in nature. In such a case, the Higgs boson can decay invisibly by oscillating into a graviscalar Kaluza-Klein (KK) tower. We show that the search for such a Higgs at an $e^+ e^-$ linear collider entails more complications than are usually thought of in relation to an invisibly decaying Higgs.
A straightforward new technique is introduced which enables measurement at hadron colliders of an analytical combination of the masses of pair-produced semi-invisibly decaying particles and their invisible decay products. The new technique makes use of the invariance under contra-linear Lorentz boosts of a simple combination of the transverse momentum components of the aggregate visible products of each decay chain. In the general case where the invariant masses of the visible decay products are non-zero it is shown that in principle the masses of both the initial particles from the hard scatt…
The Higgs particle can decay dominantly into an invisible channel in the Majoron models. We have explored the prospect of detecting such a Higgs particle at LHC via its associated production with a gluon, Z or W boson. While the signal/background ratio is too small for the first process, the latter two provide viable signatures for detecting such a Higgs particle.
Higgs bosons can have a substantial ``invisible'' branching ratio in many extensions of the Standard Model, such as models where the Higgs bosons decay predominantly into light or massless weakly interacting Goldstone bosons. In this work, we examine the production mechanisms and backgrounds for invisibly decaying Higgs bosons at the Next Linear $e^+e^-$ Collider operating in the modes $e^+e^-$, $eγ$, and $γγ$. We demonstrate that such machine is much more efficient to survey for invisibly decaying Higgs bosons than the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
We discuss the possibility of detecting a Higgs boson in future collider experiments if large extra dimensions are realized in nature. In such a case, the Higgs boson can decay invisibly by oscillating into a graviscalar Kaluza-Klein (KK) tower. We show that the search for such a Higgs at an $e^+ e^-$ linear collider entails more complications than are usually thought of in relation to an invisibly decaying Higgs, the main sources of such complications being the simultaneous presence of a continuum graviton production and the broadening of the Higgs peak. We discuss possible ways of overcoming…
In the Majoron models the $SU(2)$ doublet Higgs can decay invisibly into a Majoron pair via its mixing with a singlet. An analysis of the LEP data shows the invisible decay mode to be more visible than the SM decay. For these models, the dominantly doublet Higgs $H$ is shown to have a mass limit within $\pm 6$ GeV of the SM limit irrespective of the model parameters. But the dominantly singlet one $S$ can be arbitrarily light for sufficiently small mixing angle.
We consider the collider phenomenology of a singlet Majoron model with softly broken lepton number. Lepton number is spontaneously broken when the real part of a new singlet scalar develops vacuum expectation value. With the additional soft terms violating lepton numbers, the imaginary part of this singlet scalar becomes a massive pseudo-Majoron which can account for the dark matter. In presence of the coupling of the pseudo-Majoron with the Standard Model (SM) Higgs, the SM Higgs mostly decays into a pair of pseudo-Majorons, giving rise to missing transverse energy signals at a hadron collide…
The prospects for observing an invisibly decaying Higgs boson in the t anti-t H production at LHC are discussed. An isolated lepton, reconstructed hadronic top-quark decay, two identified b-jets and large missing transverse energy are proposed as the final state signature for event selection. Only the Standard Model backgrounds are taken into account. It is shown that the t anti-t Z, t anti-t W, b anti-b Z and b anti-b W backgrounds can individually be suppressed below the signal expectation. The dominant source of background remains the t anti-t production. The key for observability will be a…
We discuss how the mass of new physics particles involved in a pair of short decay chains leading to two invisible particles, for example slepton pair production, followed by the decay into two leptons and two neutralinos, may be measured in central exclusive production (CEP) with forward proton tagging. We show how the existing mass measurement strategies in CEP may be improved by making full use of the mass-shell constraints, and demonstrate that, with around 30 signal events, the masses of the slepton and neutralino can be measured with an accuracy of a few GeV.
We demonstrate that an invisibly decaying Higgs boson with Standard Model coupling strength to top--anti-top can be detected at the LHC for masses up to about 250 GeV.
Working in the context of a proposal for collisional dark matter, we derive bounds on the Higgs boson coupling $g^{\prime}$ to a stable light scalar particle, which we refer to as phion ($ϕ$), required to solve problems with small scale structure formation which arise in collisionless dark matter models. We discuss the behaviour of the phion in the early universe for different ranges of its mass. We find that a phion in the mass range of 100 MeV is excluded and that a phion in the mass range of 1 GeV requires a large coupling constant, $g^{\prime} \gsim 2$, and $m_h \lsim 130$ GeV in order to …
Formulae are derived for the positions of end-points in the invariant mass and transverse mass distributions obtained from the products of heavy states decaying to pairs of semi-invisibly decaying lighter states. Formulae are derived both for the special case where the two decay chains are identical and the more general case where they are different. The formulae are tested with a simple case study of heavy SUSY higgs particles decaying to gauginos at the LHC.
Motivated by evidence for the existence of dark matter, many new physics models predict the pair production of new particles, followed by the decays into two invisible particles, leading to a momentum imbalance in the visible system. For the cases where all four components of the vector sum of the two `missing' momenta are measured from the momentum imbalance, we present analytic solutions of the final state system in terms of measureable momenta, with the mass shell constraints taken into account. We then introduce new variables which allow the masses involved in the new physics process, incl…
The search for heavy Higgs bosons at the LHC represents an intense experimental program, carried out by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, which includes the hunt for invisible Higgs decays and dark matter candidates. No significant deviations from the SM backgrounds have been observed in any of these searches, imposing significant constraints on the parameter space of different new physics models with an extended Higgs sector. Here we discuss an alternative search strategy for heavy Higgs bosons decaying invisibly at the LHC, focusing on the pair production of a heavy scalar $H$ together with …
We consider the possibility that the heavier CP-even Higgs boson~($H^0$) in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) decays invisibly into neutralinos in the light of the recent discovery of the 126 GeV resonance at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). For this purpose we consider the minimal supersymmetric standard model with universal, non-universal and arbitrary boundary conditions on the supersymmetry breaking gaugino mass parameters at the grand unified scale. Typically, scenarios with universal and nonuniversal gaugino masses do not allow invisible decays of the lightest Higgs b…
Many extensions of the standard electroweak model Higgs sector suggest that the main Higgs decay channel is "invisible", for example, $h \to J J$ where $J$ denotes the majoron, a weakly interacting pseudoscalar Goldstone boson associated to the spontaneous violation of lepton number. In many of these models the Higgs boson may also be produced in association to a massive pseudoscalar boson (HA), in addition to the standard Bjorken mechanism (HZ). We describe a general strategy to determine limits from LEP data on the masses and couplings of such Higgs bosons, using the existing data on acoplan…
We revisit mass determination techniques for the minimum symmetric event topology, namely $X$ pair production followed by $X \to \ell N$, where $X$ and $N$ are unknown particles with the masses to be measured, and $N$ is an invisible particle, concentrating on the case where $X$ is pair produced from a resonance. We consider separate scenarios, with different initial constraints on the invisible particle momenta, and present a systematic method to identify the kinematically allowed mass regions in the $(m_N, m_X)$ plane. These allowed regions exhibit a cusp structure at the true mass point, wh…
We study the possibility of observing an `invisible' Higgs boson in central exclusive diffractive production at the LHC. We evaluate the cross section using, as a simple example, the Standard Model with a heavy fourth generation, where the invisible decay mode $H \to ν_4 \barν_4$ dominates, with the heavy neutrino mass $M(ν_4) \simeq 50$ GeV. We discuss the possible requirements on trigger conditions and the background processes.
A light Higgs boson with substantial branching ratio into invisible channels can occur in a variety of models with: light neutralinos, spontaneously broken lepton number, radiatively generated neutrino masses, additional singlet scalar(s) and/or right handed neutrinos in the extra dimensions of TeV scale gravity. We study the observability of the WH and ZH modes at LHC with H decaying invisibly, by carrying out a detailed simulation with two event generators HERWIG and PYTHIA and realistic detector simulations (GETJET and CMSJET). We find that the signal with `single lepton plus missing $E_T$'…
A Higgs boson lighter than 2 m_W that decays mostly into invisible channels (e.g., dark matter particles) is theoretically well-motivated. We study the prospects for discovery of such an invisible Higgs, h_inv, at the LHC and the Tevatron in three production modes: (1) in association with a Z, (2) through Weak Boson Fusion (WBF), and (3) accompanied by a jet. In the Z+h_inv channel, we show that the LHC can yield a discovery signal above 5 sigma with 10 fb-1 of integrated luminosity for a Higgs mass of 120 GeV. With 30 fb-1 the discovery reach extends up to a Higgs mass of 160 GeV. We also stu…
We introduce a variable useful for measuring masses of particles pair produced at hadron colliders, where each particle decays to one particle that is directly observable and another particle whose existence can only be inferred from missing transverse momenta. This variable is closely related to the transverse mass variable commonly used for measuring the $W$ mass at hadron colliders, and like the transverse mass our variable extracts masses in a reasonably model independent way. Without considering either backgrounds or measurement errors we consider how our variable would perform measuring …
A class of extra dimensional models with a warped metric predict tunneling of a massive particle localized on our brane and escaping into additional dimensions. The experimental signature of this effect is the disappearance of the particle from our world, i.e. the particle $\to invisible$ decay. We point out that measurements of $Z\prime \to invisible$ decay width of a new heavy gauge boson $Z\prime$ at the CERN LHC can be effectively used to probe the existence of large extra dimensions. This result enhances motivations for a more sensitive search and study for this decay mode and suggests ad…
The discovery of the Higgs boson suggests that also neutrinos get their mass from spontaneous symmetry breaking. In the simplest ungauged lepton number scheme, the Standard Model (SM) Higgs has now two other partners: a massive CP-even, as well as the massless Nambu-Goldstone boson, called majoron. For weak-scale breaking of lepton number the invisible decays of the CP- even Higgs bosons to the majoron lead to potentially copious sources of events with large missing energy. Using LHC results we study how the constraints on invisible decays of the Higgs boson restrict the relevant parameters, s…
We discuss the possibility of identifying invisible objects (e.g. dark matter) via missing mass in Central Exclusive Processes; that is, in events where only forward protons are detected at the LHC. We show that the signal must have a cross section greater than 0.25 fb in order that it can be detected. We estimate the huge background caused by soft proton dissociation and evaluate the requirements of the detector `veto' system needed to sufficiently suppress these events. In addition, we discuss the related process leading to the possible identification of the particles from the so-called `com…
The invisible signals of right-handed sneutrino decays originating from a Z' are analysed at the Large Hadron Collider. The possibility of accessing these events helps disentangling the B-L extension of Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model from more popular scenarios of Supersymmetry. We assess the scope of the CERN machine in establishing the aforementioned signatures when accompanied by mono-jet, single-photon or Z-radiation probes through sophisticated signal-to-background simulations carried out in presence of parton shower, hadronisation as well as detector effects. We find substantial s…
Assuming flat universal extra dimensions, we demonstrate that for a light Higgs boson the process $pp\to W^*W^* +X \to Higgs,graviscalars +X \to invisible+X$ will be observable at the $5 σ$ level at the LHC for the portion of the Higgs-graviscalar mixing ($ξ$) and effective Planck mass ($M_D$) parameter space where channels relying on visible Higgs decays fail to achieve a $5 σ$ signal. Further, we show that even for very modest values of $ξ$ the invisible decay signal probes to higher $M_D$ than does the ($ξ$-independent) jets/$\gam$ + missing energy signal from graviton radiation. We also di…
In many theories of physics beyond the Standard Model, from extra dimensions to Hidden Valleys and models of dark matter, Z' bosons mediate between Standard Model particles and hidden sector states. We study the feasibility of observing such hidden states through an invisibly decaying Z' at the LHC. We focus on the process pp -> γZ' -> γX X*, where X is any neutral, (quasi-) stable particle, whether a Standard Model (SM) neutrino or a new state. This complements a previous study using pp -> Z Z' -> l+ l- X X*. Only the Z' mass and two effective charges are needed to describe this process. If t…
The galactic center excess of gamma ray photons can be naturally explained by light Majorana fermions in combination with a pseudoscalar mediator. The NMSSM provides exactly these ingredients. We show that for neutralinos with a significant singlino component the galactic center excess can be linked to invisible decays of the Standard-Model-like Higgs at the LHC. We find predictions for invisible Higgs branching ratios in excess of 50 percent, easily accessible at the LHC. Constraining the NMSSM through GUT-scale boundary conditions only slightly affects this expectation. Our results complemen…
We present a general solution to the long standing problem of determining the masses of pair-produced, semi-invisibly decaying particles at hadron colliders. We define two new transverse kinematic variables, $M_{CT_\perp}$ and $M_{CT_\parallel}$, which are suitable one-dimensional projections of the contransverse mass $M_{CT}$. We derive analytical formulas for the boundaries of the kinematically allowed regions in the $(M_{CT_\perp},M_{CT_\parallel})$ and $(M_{CT_\perp},M_{CT})$ parameter planes, and introduce suitable variables $D_{CT_\parallel}$ and $D_{CT}$ to measure the distance to those…
Neutrino mass generation through the Higgs mechanism not only suggests the need to reconsider the physics of electroweak symmetry breaking from a new perspective, but also provides a new theoretically consistent and experimentally viable paradigm. We illustrate this by describing the main features of the electroweak symmetry breaking sector of the simplest type-II seesaw model with spontaneous breaking of lepton number. After reviewing the relevant "theoretical" and astrophysical restrictions on the Higgs sector, we perform an analysis of the sensitivities of Higgs boson searches at the ongoin…
In large extra dimension models the presence of an interaction between the Ricci scalar curvature and the Higgs doublet of the Standard Model can give rise to an invisible decay of the Higgs to Kaluza Klein graviscalars. The corresponding invisible width can cause a suppression of the LHC rates of a light Higgs in the visible channels below 5 sigma in some regions of the parameter space of the model. However in such regions the Higgs can be discovered through its invisible decay. The combination of the measurements done at the LHC and the LC can determine to some accuracy the parameters of the…
We show prospects on a search for invisible decays of a Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). This search is performed on a Higgs boson produced in association with a Z boson. We expect that the branching ratio of 17-22% (6-14%) could be excluded at 95% confidence level with 300 fb^{-1} (3000 fb^{-1}) of data at sqrt(s)=14 TeV. The range indicates different assumptions on the control of systematic uncertainties. Interpretations with Higgs-portal dark matter models are also considered.
We add fermions to an abelian-gauged hidden sector. We show that the lightest can be the dark matter with the right thermal relic abundance, and discovery is within reach of upcoming dark matter detectors. We also show that these fermions change Higgs boson phenomenology at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and in particular could induce a large invisible width to the lightest Higgs boson state. Such an invisibly decaying Higgs boson can be discovered with good significance in the vector boson fusion channel at the LHC.
We develop techniques to determine the mass scale of invisible particles pair-produced at hadron colliders. We employ the constrained mass variable m_2C, which provides an event-by-event lower-bound to the mass scale given a mass difference. We complement this variable with a new variable m_2C,UB which provides an additional upper bound to the mass scale, and demonstrate its utility with a realistic case study of a supersymmetry model. These variables together effectively quantify the `kink' in the function Max m_T2 which has been proposed as a mass-determination technique for collider-produce…
To know the total width of the recently discovered Higgs boson particle, it is important to measure the invisible decay width of the Higgs boson. However, the signal for this measurement at the LHC, i.e., a charged lepton pair and missing energy in the final state, cannot be definitely understood as the product of the intermediate produced $Z$ and $H$ bosons due to the possible interaction between dark matter and a $Z$ boson or quarks, which can be described by representative effective operators. First, we consider the relic abundance, the LUX direct detection experiment and the result of sear…
Within the framework of a constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (cMSSM) augmented by an MSSM singlet-pair sector to account for the non-zero neutrino masses by inverse seesaw mechanism, the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) can be a mixed sneutrino with mass as small as 50 GeV, satisfying all existing constraints, thus qualifying as a light dark matter candidate. We study the possibility of the lightest neutral Higgs boson in this model decaying invisibly into a pair of sneutrino LSPs, thereby giving rise to novel missing energy signatures at the LHC. We perform a two-paramete…
We reconsider Higgs boson invisible decays into Dark Matter in the light of recent Higgs searches at the LHC. Present hints in the CMS and ATLAS data favor a non-standard Higgs boson with approximately 50% invisible branching ratio, and mass around 143 GeV. This situation can be realized within the simplest thermal scalar singlet Dark Matter model, predicting a Dark Matter mass around 50 GeV and direct detection cross section just below present bound. The present runs of the Xenon100 and LHC experiments can test this possibility.
We further develop the constrained mass variable techniques to determine the mass scale of invisible particles pair-produced at hadron colliders. We introduce the constrained mass variable M_3C which provides an event-by-event lower bound and upper bound to the mass scale given the two mass differences between the lightest three new particle states. This variable is most appropriate for short symmetric cascade decays involving two-body decays and on-shell intermediate states which end in standard-model particles and two dark-matter particles. An important feature of the constrained mass variab…
We point out that vector boson fusion (VBF) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can lead to useful signals for charginos and neutralinos in supersymmetric scenarios where these particles are almost invisible. The proposed signals are just two forward jets with missing transverse energy. It is shown that in this way one can put by far the strongest constraint on the parameter space of a theory with anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking (AMSB) at the LHC. In addition, scenarios where the lightest neutralinos and charginos are Higgsino-like can give signals of the above type.
The discovery of a 126 GeV Higgs like scalar at the LHC along with the non observation of the supersymmetric particles, has in turn lead to constraining various supersymmetric models through the Higgs data. We here consider the case of both MSSM, as well its extension containing an additional chiral singlet superfield, NMSSM. We concentrate on the case where we identify the second lightest Higgs boson as the 126 GeV state discovered at the CERN LHC and consider the invisible decays of the low mass Higgs bosons in both MSSM and NMSSM. We find that in case of the MSSM with universal boundary con…
The LHC is well on track toward the discovery or exclusion of a light Standard Model (SM)-like Higgs boson. Such a Higgs has a very small SM width and can easily have large branching fractions to physics beyond the SM, making Higgs decays an excellent opportunity to observe new physics. Decays into collider-invisible particles are particularly interesting as they are theoretically well motivated and relatively clean experimentally. In this work we estimate the potential of the 7 and 8 TeV LHC to observe an invisible Higgs branching fraction. We analyze three channels that can be used to direct…
In this paper, we study the observability of an invisible Higgs boson at Fermilab Tevatron and CERN LHC through the production channel $ q \bar{q} \to Z H \to \ell^+\ell^-+ \ptmiss $, where $\ptmiss$ is reconstructed from the $\ell^+\ell^-$ with $\ell=e$ or $μ$. A new strategy is proposed to eliminate the largest irreducible background, namely $ q \bar{q} \to Z(\to \ell^+\ell^-) Z(\to ν\barν)$. This strategy utilizes the precise measurements of $ q \bar{q} \to Z(\to \ell^+\ell^-) Z(\to \ell^+\ell^-)$. For $m_H=120$ GeV and with luminosity $30 fb^{-1}$ at Tevatron, a $5σ$ observation of the inv…
We suggest trying to count the number of invisible particles produced in missing energy events at the LHC, arguing that multiple production of such particles provides evidence that they constitute stable Dark Matter and that counting them could yield further insights into the nature of Dark Matter. We propose a method to count invisible particles, based on fitting the shapes of certain transverse- or invariant-mass distributions, discuss various effects that may affect the measurement, and simulate the use of the method to count neutrinos in Standard Model processes and Dark Matter candidates …
We study the decay of the $Z$ vector boson into a photon and a massless (invisible) dark photon in high-energy collisions. The photon can be used as trigger for the event, while the dark photon is detected indirectly as missing momentum in the event final state. We investigate the possibility of searching for such a dark photon at the LHC, HL-LHC and future lepton colliders, and compare the respective sensitivities. As expected, the best result is found for the lepton colliders running at the $Z$ mass, FCC-ee and CEPC, with a final sensitivity to branching ratios of order $O(10^{-11})$. We als…
In the context of Left-Right symmetry, we revisit the Keung-Senjanović production of right-handed $W_R$ bosons and heavy neutrinos $N$ at high energy colliders. We develop a multi-binned sensitivity measure and use it to estimate the sensitivity for the entire range of $N$ masses, spanning the standard and merged prompt signals, displaced vertices and the invisible $N$ region. The estimated sensitivity of the LHC with 300/fb integrated luminosity ranges from 5 to beyond 7 TeV, while the future 33(100) TeV collider's reach with 3/ab extends to 12(26) TeV.
Vector boson fusion proposed initially as an alternative channel for finding heavy Higgs has now established itself as a crucial search scheme to probe different properties of the Higgs boson or for new physics. We explore the merit of deep-learning entirely from the low-level calorimeter data in the search for invisibly decaying Higgs. Such an effort supersedes decades-old faith in the remarkable event kinematics and radiation pattern as a signature to the absence of any color exchange between incoming partons in the vector boson fusion mechanism. We investigate among different neural network…
We examine the parameter space of the purely phenomenological minimal super- symmetric standard model (MSSM), without assuming any supersymmetry breaking scheme. We find that a large region of the parameter space can indeed yield the lightest neutral Higgs mass around 125 GeV, as suggested by the recent ATLAS data, and also lead to event rates around, or slightly higher than, the standard model expectation in the two-photon and four-lepton channels. Using a lightest neutralino that is considerably lighter than the Higgs, we find that the 'invisible' decay of the Higgs into a pair of neutralino…
New physics coupled to the Higgs boson may hide it in the standard decay channels to be investigated at LHC. We consider the models where new invisible dominant decay modes of the Higgs boson are responsible for this hiding. We propose to study at LHC the weak boson production associated with heavy quarks: our analysis revealed that boson pair invariant mass distribution is sensitive to both mass and width of the invisible Higgs boson, if it is not too far from the weak boson pair threshold. We present tree-level results for the most relevant cases of top quarks and of bottom quarks in Standar…
In the large extra dimension model of Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Dvali the presence of an interaction between the Ricci scalar curvature and the Higgs doublet of the Standard Model makes a light Higgs boson observable at LHC at the 5 sigma level through the fusion process pp-> W*W* +X -> Higgs, graviscalars +X -> invisible+X for the portion of the Higgs-graviscalar mixing (xi) and effective Planck mass (M_D) parameter space where channels relying on visible Higgs decays fail to achieve a 5 sigma signal. However even if the LHC has a good chance of seeing a signal, it will not be able to dete…
We consider extending the Standard Model by an anomaly-free and possibly flavour non-universal $U(1)_X$ gauge symmetry, whose breaking gives a $Z^\prime$ boson that does not affect electroweak precision observables at tree-level or via 1-loop renormalisation group (RG) running. Provided it does not also couple to electrons, such a $Z^\prime$ boson would be largely invisible to an electroweak precision machine like FCC-ee or CEPC (up to small finite 1-loop matching contributions that we quantify). We show that, while this class of $Z^\prime$ models can also evade tests of quark flavour violatio…
Higgs boson production in association with a $Z$-boson at the LHC is analysed, both in the Standard Model and in Simplified Model extensions for Dark Matter. We focus on $H\rightarrow$invisibles searches and show that loop-induced components for both the signal and background present phenomenologically relevant contributions to the $\mathcal{BR}(H\rightarrow\textit{inv})$ limits. In addition, the constraining power of this channel to Simplified Models for Dark Matter with scalar and pseudo-scalar mediators $ϕ$ and $A$ is discussed and compared with non-collider constraints. We find that with $…
The observation of new physics events with large missing transverse energy at the LHC would potentially serve as evidence for the direct production of dark matter. A crucial step toward verifying such evidence is the measurement of the would-be dark matter mass. If, for example, the invisible particles are found to have masses consistent with zero, it may prove very challenging to ascertain whether light dark matter or neutrinos are being observed. We assume that new invisible particles are pair-produced in a ttbar-like topology and use two MT2-based methods to measure the masses of the partic…
Many extensions of the Standard Model (SM) predict new neutral vector bosons at energies accessible by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We study an extension of the SM with new chiral fermions subject to non-trivial anomaly cancellations. If the new fermions have SM charges, but are too heavy to be created at LHC, and the SM fermions are not charged under the extra gauge field, one would expect that this new sector remains completely invisible at LHC. We show, however, that a non-trivial anomaly cancellation between the new heavy fermions may give rise to observable effects in the gauge boson …
We consider a simple, yet generic scenario in which a new heavy $Z'$ gauge boson couples both to SM fermions and to dark matter. In this framework we confront the best LHC limits on an extra gauge boson $Z'$ to the constraints on couplings to dark matter from direct detection experiments. In particular we show that the LHC searches for resonant production of dileptons and the recent exclusion limits obtained by the LUX collaboration give complementary constraints. Together, they impose strong bounds on the invisible branching ratio and exclude a large part of the parameter space for generic $Z…
