Supersymmetric models with low electroweak fine-tuning contain light higgsinos with mass not too far from m_h\simeq 125 GeV, while other sparticles can be much heavier. In the R-parity conserving MSSM, the lightest neutralino is then a higgsino-like WIMP (albeit with non-negligible gaugino components), with thermal relic density well below measured values. This leaves room for axions (or other, perhaps not as well motivated, stable particles) to function as co-dark matter particles. The local WIMP abundance is then expected to be below standard estimates, and direct and indirect detection rates must be accordingly rescaled. We calculate rescaled direct and indirect higgsino-like WIMP detection rates in SUSY models that fulfil the electroweak naturalness condition. In spite of the rescaling, we find that ton-scale noble liquid detectors can probe the entire higgsino-like WIMP parameter space, so that these experiments should either discover WIMPs or exclude the concept of electroweak naturalness in R-parity conserving natural SUSY models. Prospects for spin-dependent or indirect detection are more limited due in part to the rescaling effect.
We investigate the discovery potential of Kaluza-Klein gluons as a dijet resonance at hadron colliders with different center-of-mass energies, from 14 TeV to 33 TeV to 100 TeV. We also present the current bounds from dijet searches at UA2, Tevatron, and LHC.
I investigate the sensitivity of future hadron colliders to di-jet resonances arising from Z' or coloron models. The projected discovery potential and exclusion limits for these resonances is presented in the coupling vs. mass plane, which highlights both the increased mass reach from higher energy machines as well as the improved coupling sensivity from larger luminosity.
Dark matter particles can be observably produced at intensity-frontier experiments, and opportunities in the next decade will explore important parameter space motivated by thermal DM models, the dark sector paradigm, and anomalies in data. This whitepaper describes the motivations, detection strategies, prospects and challenges for such searches, as well as synergies and complementarity both within RF6 and across HEP.
If one simultaneously invokes the SUSY solution to the gauge hierarchy problem and the PQ solution to the strong CP problem, then one might expect mixed axion/neutralino dark matter (DM), i.e. two dark matter particles. In this case, dark matter production involves oscillation production of axions, thermal and non-thermal neutralino production and thermal and non-thermal production of axinos and saxions. The latter particles may feed additional neutralinos into the cosmic soup, or dilute all relics via additional entropy production, or feed dark radiation into the cosmos. Depending on the SUSY…
Super-weakly interacting massive particles produced in the late decays of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are generic in large regions of supersymmetric parameter space and other frameworks for physics beyond the standard model. If their masses are similar to that of the decaying WIMP, then they could naturally account for all of the cosmological dark matter abundance. Their astrophysical consequences and collider signatures are distinct and different from WIMP candidates. In particular, they could modify Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, distort the Cosmic Microwave Background, reduce ga…
We examine the discovery reach of LHC14 for supersymmetry for integrated luminosity ranging from 0.3 to 3 ab^{-1}. In models with gaugino mass unification and M_1,\ M_2<< |μ| (as for mSUGRA/CMSSM), we find a reach of LHC14 with 3 ab^{-1} for gluino pair production extends to m_{\tg} 2.3 TeV while the reach via \tw_1\tz_2 \to W h +ETmiss extends to m_{\tg}\sim 2.6 TeV.
We show that the electroweak fine-tuning parameter Δ_{\rm EW} derived from the well-known electroweak symmetry breaking condition written in terms of weak scale parameters leads to {\it a bound on fine-tuning in the MSSM} and explain its utility for phenomenological analyses. We argue that a small magnitude of the mu parameter, and the concomitant presence of light higgsinos, is the most basic consequence of naturalness in SUSY models, and list the resulting implications of this for experiments at the LHC and at future e^+e^- colliders.
We summarize the remarkable recent progress in ultra-high energy cosmic ray physics and astronomy enabled by the current generation of cosmic ray observatories. We discuss the primary objectives for future measurements and describe the plans for near-term enhancements of existing experiments as well as the next generation of observatories.
The dilepton final states, e+e- and mu+mu-, are the most clear channels for new heavy neutral resonances search. Their advantage is that the main irreducible background from the Standard Model Drell-Yan process contributes usually two orders of magnitude lower than the expected signal under the peak region. In this paper we are focused on the search of the excited neutral bosons Z*. At present only the ATLAS Collaboration is looking for such excitations at LHC. We compare our evaluations with the official collaboration results at 7 TeV, and present our estimations at higher centre-of-mass ener…
We present a summary of results for SUSY Simplified Model searches at future proton colliders: the 14 TeV LHC as well as a 33 TeV proton collider and a 100 TeV proton collider. Upper limits and discovery significances are provided for the gluino-neutralino (for both light and heavy flavor decays), squark-neutralino, and gluino-squark Simplified Model planes. Events are processed with the Snowmass combined detector and Standard Model backgrounds are computed using the Snowmass samples. We place emphasis on comparisons between different collider scenarios, along with the lessons learned regardin…
We investigate the prospects for discovery or exclusion of additional Higgs scalars at the 14 TeV and 33 TeV LHC in the context of theories with two Higgs doublets. We focus on the modes with the largest production rates at hadron colliders, namely gluon fusion production of a heavy CP-even scalar H or a heavy CP-odd pseudoscalar A. We consider the sensitivity of the decay channels H to ZZ to 4l, and A to Zh with Z to ll and h to bb or h to tautau.
Randall-Sundrum models are models of quark flavor, because they explain the hierarchies in the quark masses and mixings in terms of order one localization parameters of extra dimensional wavefunctions. The same small numbers which generate the light quark masses suppress contributions to flavor violating tree level amplitudes. In this note we update universal constraints from electroweak precision parameters and demonstrate how future measurements of flavor violation in ultra rare decay channels of Kaons and B mesons will constrain the parameter space of this type of models. We show how collid…
In this whitepaper, I describe modern applications of effective field theory (EFT) techniques to classical and quantum gravity, with relevance to problems in astrophysics and cosmology. As in applications of EFT to high-energy, nuclear, or condensed matter physics, the Wilsonian paradigm based on decoupling of short distance scales via renormalization group evolution remains a powerful organizing principle in the context of gravity. However, the presence of spacetime geometry brings in new elements ( non-trivial time-dependence, cosmological or black hole event horizons) which necessitate the …
The precision measurement of the W boson mass is an important milestone for the LHC physics program in the coming years. An accurate measurement of $M_W$ allows to perform stringent consistency tests of the Standard Model by means of global electroweak fits, which in turn are sensitive to New Physics at scales potentially higher than the ones explored in direct searches. From the theoretical point of view, our limited knowledge of PDFs will be one of the dominant sources of uncertainty in ongoing and future LHC determinations of $M_W$. In this whitepaper, we have quantified the impact of PDF u…
In this whitepaper, we consider the model of heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) as an example to explore the potential of new physics searches at the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). We propose two broad categories of search strategies depending on the HNL lifetime: direct searches for the prompt decay of HNLs with a short lifetime and displaced vertex searches for long-lived ones. After identifying the most promising signals and the corresponding backgrounds, we perform a detailed simulation to estimate the sensitivity of the EIC to HNLs, accounting for detector thresholds, resolutions, and geometric a…
This document describes the novel techniques used to simulate the common Snowmass 2013 Energy Frontier Standard Model backgrounds for future hadron colliders. The purpose of many Energy Frontier studies is to explore the reach of high luminosity data sets at a variety of high energy colliders. The generation of high statistics samples which accurately model large integrated luminosities for multiple center-of-mass energies and pile-up environments is not possible using an unweighted event generation strategy -- an approach which relies on event weighting was necessary. Even with these improvem…
We consider the modifications to squark production in the presence of a naturally heavier Dirac gluino. First generation squark production is highly suppressed, providing an interesting but challenging signal find or rule out. No dedicated searches for supersymmetry with a Dirac gluino have been performed, however a reinterpretation of a "decoupled gluino" simplified model suggests the bounds on a common first and second generation squark mass is much smaller than in the MSSM: $\lsim 850$ GeV for a massless LSP, and no bound for an LSP heavier than about 300 GeV. We compare and contrast the sq…
While the conventional searches for the Higgs boson focus on its decays to Standard Model (SM) particles: gamma gamma, ZZ, WW, bb and tau tau, in this study, we explore the decays A --> HZ or H --> AZ. Such decays could appear in the exotic decay of the observed SM-like Higgs h --> AZ with a light A, or for extra Higgses in beyond the SM new physics scenarios with an extended Higgs sector. We study the exclusion bounds as well as discovery reach at the LHC for various combinations of (m_A, m_H) for the process: gg --> A/H --> HZ/AZ --> bbll for l =e, mu. We find that for 14 TeV LHC with 300 fb…
In this whitepaper, I give a short summary on possible channels of low-mass scenarios and their discovery potential at future $e^+e^-$ colliders. This is a summary of talks I recently gave at the CEPC workshop, FCC week and ECFA future collider workshop.
Vector boson fusion (VBF) processes at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) provide a unique opportunity to search for new physics with electroweak couplings. Two studies are presented: (i) A search of supersymmetric dark matter in the final state of two VBF jets and large missing transverse energy is presented at 14 TeV. Prospects for determining the dark matter relic density are studied for the cases of Wino and Bino-Higgsino dark matter. The LHC could probe Wino dark matter with mass up to approximately 600 GeV with a luminosity of 1000 fb$^{-1}$. (ii) A search for the chargino/neutralino system…
Imposing electroweak scale naturalness constraints (low Δ_{EW}) on SUSY models leads to mass spectra characterized by light higgsinos ~100-300 GeV, highly mixed top-squarks and gluinos at the 1-5 TeV scale and allows for m_h ~125 GeV. First and second generation squarks can easily live at the 5-20 TeV scale, thus providing at least a partial solution to the SUSY flavor/CP problems. For such models at the LHC, gluino pair production is followed by cascade decays to t- and b-quark rich final states along with multileptons. The reach of LHC14 with 300 fb^{-1} is computed to be around m_{\tg} 1.8 …
We examine the NMSSM at the cosmic frontier in the post Higgs discovery world. For DM relic abundance consistent with measurement, we find the neutralino can either be singlino or bino dominated. Wino and higgsino DM generally yield a lower abundance, but offer opportunities of detection at IceCube. For both cases, future SI direct detection experiments cover a majority of the model, including nearly all of the bino and higgsino scenarios.
In this Snowmass whitepaper, we describe the impact of ongoing and proposed intensity frontier experiments on the parameter space of the Minimally Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We extend a set of phenomenological MSSM (pMSSM) models to include non-zero CP-violating phases and study the sensitivity of various flavor observables in these scenarios Future electric dipole moment and rare meson decay experiments can have a strong impact on the viability of these models that is relatively independent of the detailed superpartner spectrum. In particular, we find that these experiments have th…
