We investigate in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) environment the possibility that sizeable interference effects between a {\sl heavy} charged Higgs boson signal produced via $bg\to tH^-$ (+ c.c.) scattering and decaying via $H^-\to W^- A\to W^- b\bar b$ (+ c.c.) and the irreducible background given by $bg\to t W^- b\bar b$ topologies could spoil current search approaches where the former and latter channels are treated separately. The rationale for this comes from the fact that a heavy charged Higgs state can have a large width, and so can happen for the CP-odd neutral Higgs state emerging in the ensuing decays well, which in turn enables such interferences. We conclude that effects are very significant, both at the inclusive and exclusive level (i.e., both before and after $H^\pm$ selection cuts are enforced, respectively) and typically of a destructive nature. This therefore implies that currently established LHC reaches for heavy charged Higgs bosons require some level of rescaling. However, this is possible a posteriori, as the aforementioned $H^\pm$ selection cuts shape the interference contributions at the differential level in a way similar to that of the isolated $H^\pm$ signal, so there is no need to reassess the efficiency of the individual cuts. We show such effects quantitatively by borrowing benchmarks points from different Yukawa types of a 2-Higgs Doublet Model parameter space for $H^\pm$ values starting from around 200 GeV.
The Higgs diphoton amplitude from gluon fusion at the LHC interferes with the continuum background induced by quark loops. I investigate the effect of this interference on the position of the diphoton invariant mass peak used to help determine the Higgs mass. At leading order, the interference shifts the peak towards lower mass by an amount of order 150 MeV or more, with the precise value dependent on the methods used to analyze and fit the data.
We present a general procedure for measuring the tensor structure of the coupling of the scalar Higgs-like boson recently discovered at the LHC to two Z bosons, including the effects of interference among different operators. To motivate our concern with this interference, we explore the parameter space of the couplings in the effective theory describing these interactions and illustrate the effects of interference on the differential dilepton mass distributions. Kinematic discriminants for performing coupling measurements that utilize the effects of interference are developed and described. W…
Complex parameters in the MSSM lead to mixing and interference between the two heavier neutral CP-even and CP-odd Higgs states. These effects can become very large in the case of almost degenerate states. In a CP-violating benchmark scenario, we investigate phenomenological implications of such interferences in view of the LHC searches for heavy Higgs bosons decaying to a pair of $τ$-leptons and produced in gluon fusion and in association with b-quarks. Strongly destructive effects leave parameter regions unconstrained that would be regarded as excluded if no interference terms were taken into…
At present, the simulations for hadronic Z decay used at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) neglect the effects of interference between the electroweak production of the hadronic Z boson and the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) production of $q\bar{q}$. Indeed, the diboson Monte Carlo samples are generated independently from QCD processes. The purpose of this project is to assess the validity of this simulation approach by studying these interference effects, comparing Monte Carlo samples to experimental data. In particular, regions of low transverse momenta are explored for the first time, revealing…
Signal-background interference effects are studied for H --> WW and H --> ZZ searches in gluon fusion at the LHC. More specifically, the interference in the channels with semileptonic weak boson pair decay is analysed for light and heavy Higgs masses with minimal and realistic experimental selection cuts. In the semileptonic decay modes, the interference is affected by tree-level background contributions enhanced by 1/e^2 relative to the gluon-fusion continuum background in the fully leptonic decay modes. We find that for both light and heavy Higgs masses the interference with the loop-induced…
Dijet mass distributions can be used to search for spin-0 resonances that couple to two gluons. I show that there is a substantial impact on such searches from the interference between the resonant signal and the continuum QCD background amplitudes. The signal dijet mass distribution is qualitatively modified by this interference, compared to the naive expectation from considering only the pure resonant contribution, even if the total width of the resonance is minimal and very small compared to the experimental dijet mass resolution. The impact becomes more drastic as the total width of the re…
The Higgs mass determination from diphoton events at the LHC can be affected by interference between the Higgs resonant and continuum background amplitudes with the same initial and final states. For the leading order gluon fusion process, this shift was previously found to exceed 100 MeV, with some dependence on the diphoton mass resolution and the methods used to extract and fit the peak from data. In this paper, I consider the mass shift for the process pp --> jγγ that includes an additional central jet in the final state. For cuts on the transverse momentum of the jet of 25 GeV or more, th…
A gauge invariant UV-completion for singlet fermion DM interacting with the standard model (SM) particles involves a new singlet scalar. Therefore the model contains two scalar mediators, mixtures of the SM Higgs boson and a singlet scalar boson. Collider phenomenology of the interference effect between these two scalar propagators is studied in this work. This interference effect can be either constructive or destructive in the DM production cross section depending on both singlet scalar and DM masses, and it will soften the final state jets in the full mass region. Applying the CMS mono-jet …
Interference effects are widely neglected in searches for new physics. This is the case in recent publications on searches for W'-bosons using leptonic final states. We examine the effects of interference on distributions frequently used to determine mass limits for possible W'-bosons and show that there are important qualitative effects on the behaviour of the new physics signal. There are two main consequences. Firstly, exclusion limits where interferences effects have not been considered are likely to have been overestimated. Secondly, presenting experimental results as a function of a tran…
Flavour-changing neutral-current interactions of the top quark can be searched for in top-quark pair production with one top quark decaying to an up-type quark and a neutral boson, and they can be searched for in the single production of a top quark in association with such a boson. Both processes interfere if an additional up-type quark is produced in the case of single production. The impact of these interference effects on searches for flavour-changing neutral currents at the LHC is studied for the case where the neutral boson is a photon or a $Z$ boson. Interference effects are found to be…
Many extensions of the Standard Model contain (pseudo)scalar bosons with masses in the TeV range. At hadron colliders, such particles would predominantly be produced in gluon fusion and would decay into top quark pair final sates, a signal that interferes with the large QCD background $gg \to t\bar t$. This phenomenon is of interest for searches for by the LHC experiments. Here, we consider the signal and background interference in this process and study it in various benchmark scenarios, including models with extra singlet (pseudo)scalar resonances, two-Higgs doublet models, and the minimal s…
The interference effects between an extra neutral spin-1 Z'-boson and the Standard Model background in the Drell-Yan channel at the LHC are studied in detail. The final state with two oppositely charged leptons is considered. The interference contribution to the new physics signal, currently not fully taken into account by experimental collaborations in Z'-searches and in the interpretation of the results, can be substantial. It may affect limits or discovery prospects of Z' at the LHC. As the Z'-boson interference is model-dependent, a proper treatment would a priori require a dedicated exper…
We calculate the spinor helicity amplitudes of anomalous $H\to ZZ \to 4\ell$ decay. After embedding these analytic formulas into the $\texttt{MCFM}$ package, we study the interference effects between the anomalous $gg\to H\to ZZ \to 4\ell$ process and the SM processes, which are indispensable in the Higgs off-shell region. Subsequently, the constraints on the anomalous couplings are estimated using LHC experimental data.
We discuss the production of two pion pairs in photon collisions at high energies as it can take place in ultraperipheral collisions at hadron colliders such as the LHC. We calculate the according matrix elements in kT factorization and discuss the possibility to reveal the existence of the perturbative Odderon by charge asymmetries.
We compute next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the top-bottom interference contribution to H+j production at the LHC. To achieve this, we combine the recent computation of the two-loop amplitudes for gg -> Hg and qg -> Hq, performed in the approximation of a small b-quark mass, and the numerical calculation of the squared one-loop amplitudes for gg -> Hgg and qg -> Hqg performed within OpenLoops. We find that QCD corrections to the interference are large and similar to the QCD corrections to the top-mediated Higgs production cross section. We also observe a significant reduction in the ma…
WW/ZZ interference for Higgs signal and continuum background as well as signal-background interference is studied for same-flavour l anti-nu_l anti-l nu_l final states produced in gluon-gluon scattering at the LHC for light and heavy Higgs masses with minimal and realistic experimental selection cuts. For the signal cross section, we find WW/ZZ interference effects of O(5%) at M_H = 126 GeV. For M_H >= 200 GeV, we find that WW/ZZ interference is negligible. For the gg continuum background, we also find that WW/ZZ interference is negligible. As general rule, we conclude that non-negligible WW/Z…
The analysis of hadronic vector boson decays at LHC does not normally allow for interference with QCD production. These effects are studied here using the Sherpa package and can move by several GeV/c 2 the peak positions experiments would reconstruct. However, their impact depends strongly on the kinematics involved. The shifts expected in boosted W and Z bosons, which have been the subject of experimental study, are explored for the first time. The effects in the channels examined are all very small or negligible, but this may not true if lower transverse momenta are analysed, for example in …
We present an upgraded calculation of the effects of resonance-continuum interference for the Higgs boson decaying to two photons at the Large Hadron Collider, at next-to-leading order in the strong coupling $α_S$, $O(α_S^3)$, and including transverse-momentum ($q_T$) resummation at next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. We study the importance of the interference contribution in different transverse-momentum regions, with a particular focus on the low $q_T$ region $q_T^2 << Q^2$ (with $Q^2$ being the invariant diphoton mass) where resummation becomes essential for a reliable calculation.
We compute next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections to the production of two massive electroweak bosons in gluon fusion. We consider both the prompt production process $gg \to VV$ and the production mediated by an exchange of an s-channel Higgs boson, $gg \to H^* \to V V$. We include final states with both on- and off-shell vector bosons with leptonic decays. The gluonic production of vector bosons is a loop-induced process, including both massless and massive quarks in the loop. For $gg \to ZZ$ production, we obtain the NLO QCD corrections to the massive loops through an expansion around t…
Motivated by the persistent anomalies in the semileptonic $B$-meson decays, we investigate the competency of LHC data to constrain the $R_{D^{(*)}}$-favoured parameter space in a charge $-1/3$ scalar leptoquark ($\mathcal S_1$) model. We consider some scenarios with one large free coupling to accommodate the $R_{D^{(*)}}$ anomalies. As a result, some of them dominantly yield nonresonant $ττ$ and $τν$ events at the LHC through the $t$-channel $\mathcal S_1$ exchange. So far, no experiment has searched for leptoquarks using these signatures and the relevant resonant leptoquark searches are yet t…
We propose to look for the Odderon through the production of two pion pairs in photon collisions at high energies. We calculate the corresponding matrix elements in kT-factorization and discuss the possibility to reveal the existence of the perturbative Odderon by charge asymmetries, relying on models for the generalized distribution amplitudes of pi+ pi-. The application of this strategy to ultraperipheral collisions at the LHC suffers from the difficulty to trigger on interesting events and is plagued with severe background problems in p-p mode. Electron - positron colliders like ILC seem to…
Heavy scalar and pseudoscalar resonance searches through the $gg\rightarrow S\rightarrow t\bar t$ process are challenging due to the peculiar behavior of the large interference effects with the standard model $t\bar t$ background. Such effects generate non-trivial lineshapes from additional relative phases between the signal and background amplitudes. We provide the analytic expressions for the differential cross sections to understand the interference effects in the heavy scalar signal lineshapes. We extend our study to the case of CP-violation and further consider the effect of bottom quarks…
We investigate the current LHC bounds on New Physics (NP) that contributes to $\bar B \to D^{(*)} l\barν$ for $l = (e,μ,τ)$ by considering both leptoquark (LQ) models and an effective-field-theory (EFT) Hamiltonian. Experimental analyses from $l+\text{missing}$ searches with high $p_T$ are applied to evaluate the NP constraints with respect to the Wilson coefficients. A novel point of this work is to show difference between LQs and EFT for the applicable LHC bound. In particular, we find that the EFT description is not valid to search for LQs with the mass less than $\lesssim 10\,\text{TeV}$ a…
We discuss lepton charge asymmetries in $t \bar t$ and $t \bar t γ$ production at the LHC, which can be measured in the semileptonic decay channel $t \bar t \to W^+ b \, W^- \bar b \to \ell^+ νb \, q \bar q' \bar b$ (or the charge conjugate). Considering several variants of a new physics scenario with a light colour octet, it is seen that for $t \bar t$ these asymmetries may have a sensitivity competitive with the dilepton asymmetry already measured. For $t \bar t γ$ the new leptonic asymmetries, as well as the $t \bar t$ charge asymmetry, will reach their full potential with the high luminosi…
Higgs boson production in association with a charm-quark jet proceeds through two different mechanisms - one that involves the charm Yukawa coupling and the other that involves direct Higgs coupling to gluons. The interference of the two contributions requires a helicity flip and, therefore, cannot be computed with massless charm quarks. In this paper, we consider QCD corrections to the interference contribution starting from charm-gluon collisions with massive charm quarks and taking the massless limit, $m_c \to 0$. The behavior of QCD cross sections in that limit differs from expectations ba…
The null radiation zone theorem states that, when special kinematical conditions are satisfied, all the helicity amplitudes of a parton-level subprocess where a vector current is emitted vanish due to destructive interference among different diagrams. We study the manifestation of the theorem in $pp$ collisions at the $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV LHC. The theorem predicts that the cross section for $p p \rightarrow j j γ$ events is suppressed when the transverse momenta of the two jets are similar and when the rapidity difference between the photon and the cluster of the jets is nearly zero, because the $…
We observe a generic connection between LHC Higgs data and electroweak baryogenesis: the particle that contributes to the CP odd $hgg$ or $h γγ$ vertex would provide the CP violating source during a first order phase transition. It is illustrated in the 2HDM that a common complex phase controls the lightest Higgs properties at the LHC, electric dipole moments and the CP violating source for electroweak baryogenesis. We perform a general parametrization of Higgs effective couplings and a global fit to the LHC Higgs data. Current LHC measurements prefer a nonzero phase for $\tan β\lesssim 1$ and…
We present a precise theoretical prediction for the signal-background interference process of $gg(\to h^*) \to ZZ$, which is useful to constrain the Higgs boson decay width and to measure Higgs couplings to the SM particles. The approximate NNLO $K$-factor is in the range of $2.05-2.45$ ($1.85-2.25$), depending on $M_{ZZ}$, at the 8 (13) TeV LHC. And the soft gluon resummation can increase the approximate NNLO result by about $10\%$ at both the 8 TeV and 13 TeV LHC. The theoretical uncertainties including the scale, uncalculated multi-loop amplitudes of the background and PDF$+α_s$ are roughly…
The bottom quark forward-backward asymmetry ($A_{FB}^b$) data at LEP exhibits a long-standing discrepancy with the standard model prediction. We propose a novel method to probe the $Zb\bar{b}$ interactions through $gg\to Zh$ production at the LHC, which is sensitive to the axial-vector component of the $Zb\bar{b}$ couplings. We demonstrate that the $Zh$ data collected at the 13 TeV LHC can already resolve the apparent degeneracy of the anomalous $Zb\bar{b}$ couplings implied by the LEP precision electroweak measurements, with a strong dependence on the observed distribution of the $Z$ boson tr…
It is extremely challenging to probe the charm-quark Yukawa coupling at hadron colliders primarily due to the large Standard Model (SM) background (including $h\to b\bar b$) and the lack of an effective trigger for the signal $h\to c\bar c$. We examine the feasibility of probing this coupling at the LHC via a Higgs radiative decay $h\rightarrow c\bar{c}γ$. The existence of an additional photon in the final state may help for the signal identification and background suppression. Adopting a refined triggering strategy and utilizing basic machine learning, we find that a coupling limit of about 8…
We consider Higgs boson pair production at the LHC in the $b \bar{b} W^+ W^-$ channel, with subsequent decay of the $W^+W^-$ pair into $\ell νj j$. Employing jet substructure and event reconstruction techniques, we show that strong evidence for this channel can be found at the 14 TeV LHC with 600 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity, thus improving the current reach for the production of Higgs boson pairs. This measurement will allow to probe the trilinear Higgs boson coupling $λ$.
The asymmetries in the forward region production cross section of Lambda_c^+/Lambda_c^- and Lambda_b^0/\bar{Lambda}_b^0 are predicted using the heavy quark recombination mechanism for pp collisions at 7 TeV and 14 TeV. Using non-perturbative parameters determined from various previous experiments, we find that A_p(Lambda_c^+/Lambda_c^-) ~ 1-2% and A_p(Lambda_b^0/\bar{Lambda}_b^0) ~ 1-3% in the forward region covered by the LHCb experiment.
We investigate a charge asymmetry in $t \bar t γ$ production at the LHC that provides complementary information to the measured asymmetries in $t \bar t$ production. We estimate the experimental uncertainty in its measurement at the LHC with 8 and 14 TeV. For new physics models that simultaneously reproduce the asymmetry excess in $t \bar t$ at the Tevatron and the SM-like asymmetry at the LHC, the measurement in $t \bar t γ$ at the LHC could exhibit significant deviations with respect to the SM prediction.
The measurement of Higgs self-coupling is one of the most crucial physics goals at the future colliders. At the LHC, the di-Higgs production is a main way to measure the Higgs trilinear coupling. As a complementary to the di-Higgs production, $t \bar{t} hh$ process may open a new avenue to measure di-Higgs physics at the LHC and a future 100 TeV $pp$ collider or a high energy $e^+e^-$ collider since the extra $t\bar t$ in the final states may efficiently suppress the backgrounds. However, such a kind of process is also controlled by the top-Higgs coupling. In this work, we investigate the impa…
Associated production of a baryonic Z' boson with the W boson can account for the excess in Wjj production observed by the CDF collaboration at the Tevatron. We analyze other possible channels of this Z' at the Tevatron and at the LHC, including γZ' and Z Z' with the Z' -> jj. We show that the chances of confirming this baryonic Z' is better at the Tevatron than at the LHC because of the faster growing backgrounds at the LHC. Unfortunately the current systematic uncertainties of the order of 10% cannot yield any significant excess in both γZ' and Z Z' channels at the Tevatron and also at the L…
We calculate the $\mathcal{O}(α)$ weak corrections to top quark pair production at the LHC and include anomalous electroweak interactions from dimension-six operators. The loop calculation and renormalization are consistently done within the Standard Model Effective Field Theory. Sensitivity to the involved operators is exposed through the virtual corrections, which receive enhancement from electroweak Sudakov logarithms. We investigate the prospects of using this feature for probing New Physics at the LHC that so far has only been studied in final states with on-shell sensitivity such as $t\b…
We present predictions for the hadroproduction of $t\bar{t}b\bar{b}$ final states at the LHC with collision energies $\sqrt{s}$ = 8TeV and 14TeV at NLO accuracy matched with parton shower, as obtained with PowHel+ PYTHIA. We quantify the effects of parton shower and hadronization. We find these are in general moderate except the effect of the decay of heavy particles, which can modify significantly some distributions, like that of the invariant mass of the two leading b-jets. We also show kinematic distributions obtained with cuts inspired to those recently employed by the CMS collaboration. F…
We study the production of a top-quark pair in association with one and two vector bosons, $t \bar t V$ and $t \bar t VV$ with $V=γ, Z, W^\pm$, at the LHC. We provide predictions at next-to-leading order in QCD for total cross sections and top-quark charge asymmetries as well as for differential distributions. A thorough discussion of the residual theoretical uncertainties related to missing higher orders and to parton distribution functions is presented. As an application, we calculate the total cross sections for this class of processes (together with $t \bar t H$ and $t \bar t t \bar t$ pro…
In this paper, we investigate sizeable interference effects between a heavy charged Higgs boson signal produced via $gg\to t\bar b H^-$ (+ c.c.) followed by the decay $H^-\to b\bar t$ (+ c.c.) and the irreducible background given by $gg\to t\bar t b \bar b$ topologies at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We show how such effects could spoil current $H^\pm$ searches where signal and background are normally treated separately. The reason for this is that a heavy charged Higgs boson can have a large total width, in turn enabling such interferences, altogether leading to very significant alteration…
We apply the matrix element method (MEM) to the search for non-resonant Higgs boson pair ($\textrm{HH}$) production in the channel $\textrm{HH} \to \textrm{b}\bar{\textrm{b}}\textrm{W}\textrm{W}^{*}$ at the LHC and study the separation between the $\textrm{HH}$ signal and the large irreducible background, which arises from the production of top quark pairs ($\textrm{t}\bar{\textrm{t}}$). Our study focuses on events containing two leptons (electrons or muons) in the final state. The separation between signal and background is studied for experimental conditions characteristic for the ATLAS and …
Constraining the Higgs boson properties is a cornerstone of the LHC program and future colliders. In this Snowmass contribution, we study the potential to directly probe the Higgs-top CP-structure via the $t\bar{t}h$ production at the HL-LHC, 100 TeV FCC and muon colliders. We find the limits on the CP phase ($α$) at 95% CL are $|α| \lesssim 36^\circ$ with dileptonic $t\bar t (h\to b\bar b) $ and $|α| \lesssim 25^\circ$ with combined $t\bar t (h\to γγ) $ at the HL-LHC. The 100 TeV FCC brings a significant improvement in sensitivity with $|α| \lesssim 3^\circ$ for the dileptonic $t\bar t (h\to …
This is a brief review of charge asymmetries in top-antitop quark production at the LHC. Proposed asymmetry observables in processes of associated top-pair production $t\bar t$ + jet, $t\bar t + W$, and $t\bar t + γ$ are analyzed and compared. While the focus is on standard-model predictions, we also comment on the sensitivity to possible new physics and observation prospects during the second runtime of the LHC.
We study the LHC discovery potential of the double-bottom tetraquarks $bb \bar u \bar d$, $bb \bar u \bar s$ and $bb \bar d \bar s$, the lightest of which having $J^P=1^+$, called $T^{\{bb\}}_{[\bar u \bar d]}$, $T^{\{bb\}}_{[\bar u \bar s]}$ and $T^{\{bb\}}_{[\bar d \bar s]}$, are expected to be stable against strong decays. Employing the Monte Carlo generators MadGraph5$\_$aMC@NLO and Pythia6, we simulate the process $pp\to \bar b b\bar b b$ and calculate the $b b$-diquark jet configurations, specified by the invariant mass interval $m_{bb} < M_{T^{\{bb\}}_{[\bar q \bar q']}} + ΔM$. Estimate…
An overview of the most recent measurements on top quark charge asymmetry in top quark pair production is presented. The results are obtained using data collected with ATLAS and CMS detectors in proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 8 TeV. In these studies, either dileptonic or semileptonic top pair decays are analyzed. All measurements are comparable with the standard model prediction and no sign of new physics is observed.
We compare the impact of top-quark spin polarization effects in Higgs boson production in association with top-quark pairs and in corresponding backgrounds at the LHC. Because of the spin-zero nature of the Higgs boson, one expects, in the chiral limit for the top quarks, a substantial complementarity in $t\bar t$ spin correlations for a Higgs decaying into fermions/gauge-bosons and $t\bar{t}$ spin correlations for the corresponding irreducible $t\bar t f\bar f/VV$ backgrounds. Although top mass effects in $t\bar t H$ production are in general dominant, and seriously spoil the chiral-limit exp…
The LHC program for discovery of light charged Higgs with mass 135-180 GeV has to take into account decay $H^+\to \bar{b}\,t^*\to W^+b\bar{b}$. The distribution of decay products in effective mass of $t^*=Wb$ is obtained.
We calculate, for the first time, the NNLO QCD corrections to identified heavy hadron production at hadron colliders. The calculation is based on a flexible numeric framework which allows the calculation of any distribution of a single identified heavy hadron plus jets and non-QCD particles. As a first application we provide NNLO QCD predictions for several differential distributions of $B$ hadrons in $t\bar t$ events at the LHC. Among others, these predictions are needed for the precise determination of the top quark mass. The extension of our results to other processes, like open or associat…
Baryon number violating interactions could modify the signatures of supersymmetric models at the Large Hadron Collider. In this article we investigate the predictions for the Higgs mass and the Higgs decays in a simple extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model where the local baryon and lepton numbers are spontaneously broken at the TeV scale. This theory predicts baryon number violation at the low scale which can change the current LHC bounds on the supersymmetric spectrum. Using the ATLAS and CMS bounds on the Higgs mass we show the constraints on the sfermion masses, and show t…
We study the $t\bar t b \bar b$ final state at the LHC as a probe of New Physics that couples mainly to third generation of quarks. We analyze New Physics simplified models with resonances of spin 0, 1 and 2. The sensitivity of the final states $t\bar t b\bar b$, $t\bar t t \bar t$, $b \bar b b \bar b$ and $t \bar t$ on each of these models is used to identify an important region in parameter space that is still not excluded and where $t\bar t b \bar b$ is the most sensitive final state. We indicate possible experimental hints and discuss potential issues of observables that rely mainly in Mon…
