In this work, we analyse and demonstrate possible strategies to explore extended Higgs sector of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). In particular we concentrate on heavy Higgs decays to electroweakinos. We analyse the Higgs to electroweakino decays in the allowed MSSM parameter space after taking into account 13 TeV LHC searches for supersymmetric particles and phenomenological constraints such as flavour physics, Higgs measurements and dark matter constraints. We explore some novel aspects of these Higgs decays. The final states resulting from Higgs to electroweakino decays will have backgrounds arising from the Standard Model as well as direct electroweakino production at the LHC. We demonstrate explicit kinematical differences between Higgs to electroweakino decays and associated backgrounds. Furthermore, we demonstrate for a few specific example points, optimised analysis search strategies at the high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) run. Finally, we comment on possible search strategies for heavy Higgs decays to exotic final states, where the lightest chargino is long lived and leads to a disappearing track at the LHC.
We study the impact of a hidden sector beyond the Standard Model, e.g. a Hidden Valley model, on factorial moments and cumulants of multiplicity distributions in multiparticle production with a special emphasis on the prospects for LHC results.
In this talk, I describe the general characteristics of radiative neutrino mass models that can be probed at the LHC. I then cover the constraints on a new, explicit model of this type.
We demonstrate that the detection of the SM and MSSM Higgs bosons will be possible at the LHC via $t\anti t b\anti b$ and $b\anti b b\anti b$ final state, provided $b$-tagging can be performed with good efficiency and purity.
Following a general introduction to open questions beyond the Standard Model, the prospects for addressing them in the new era opened up by the LHC are reviewed. Sample highlights are given of ways in which the LHC is already probing beyond previous experiments, including the searches for supersymmetry, quark and gluon substructure and microscopic black holes.
Most signatures of new physics in colliders have been studied so far on the transverse plane with respect to the beam direction. In this work however we study the impact of a hidden sector beyond the Standard Model (SM) on inclusive (pseudo)rapidity correlations and moments of the multiplicity distributions, with special emphasis in the LHC results.
We investigate the sensitivity of the heavy ion mode of the LHC to anomalous Higgs boson couplings to photons, H-photon-photon, through the analysis of the processes photon photon to b anti-b and photon photon to photon photon in peripheral heavy ion collisions. We suggest cuts to improve the signal over background ratio and determine the capability of LHC to impose bounds on anomalous couplings by searching for a Higgs boson signal in these modes.
The detection of the theoretically expected dark matter is central to particle physics and cosmology. Current fashionable supersymmetric models provide a natural dark matter candidate which is the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). The theoretically obtained event rates are usually very low or even undetectable. So the experimentalists would like to exploit special signatures like the directional rates and the modulation effect. We study these signatures in the present paper focusing on a specific class of non-isothermal models involving flows of caustic rings.
These TASI lectures consider low mass hidden sectors from Hidden Valleys, Quirks and Unparticles. We show how each corresponds to a different limit of the same class of models: hidden sectors with non-abelian gauge groups with mass gaps well below a TeV that communicate to the Standard Model through weak scale suppressed higher dimension operators. We provide concrete examples of such models and discuss LHC signatures. Lastly we turn to discussing the application of Hidden Valleys to dark matter sectors.
Weak boson fusion is a copious source of intermediate mass Higgs bosons at the LHC, with a rate sigma*B(H -> gamma gamma) of up to 9 fb. The additional very energetic forward jets in these events provide for a unique signature. A parton level analysis of the dominant backgrounds demonstrates that this channel allows the observation of H -> gamma gamma in a low background environment, with modest luminosity.
In this paper we investigate the LHC potential for discovering doubly-charged vector bileptons considering the measurable process $p,p$ $\rightarrow$ $e^{\mp}e^{\mp}μ^{\pm}μ^{\pm} X$. We perform the study using four different bilepton masses and three different exotics quark masses. Minimal LHC integrated luminosities needed for discovering and for setting limits on bilepton masses are obtained for both 7 TeV and 14 TeV center-of-mass energies. We find that these spectacular signatures can be observed at the LHC in the next years up to a bilepton mass of order of 1 TeV.
We discuss the feasibility of seeing a Higgs boson which decays to four bottom quarks through a pair of (pseudo-)scalars at the LHCb experiment to argue that the use of b-physics triggers and off-line vertex reconstruction, as opposed to jet triggers with b tagging, may be more effective for this signal. Focusing on inclusive production for the Higgs, we find that for light scalar masses below 20 GeV, signal reconstruction efficiencies of order a few percent may be enough for LHCb to find evidence for a Higgs with a dominant 4b decay channel.
We analyze the decays to muons of a light dilaton produced via vector boson fusion at the LHC. We investigate models in which the electroweak symmetry breaking is triggered by a spontaneously broken, approximately conformal sector. Taking into account the possibility of shifts in the dilaton Yukawa couplings to muons, we find a rather promising scenario for the conformal model search in the channel, with the possibility for a dilaton discovery at a delivered luminosity of 100 fb-1 at the LHC or, alternatively, for an extension of the exclusion zone in the model parameter space, until now fixed…
Using a peculiar version of the SU(3)L x U(1)N electroweak model, we investigate the production of doubly charged Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. Our results include branching ratio calculations for the doubly charged Higgs and for one of the neutral scalar bosons of the model.
We summarize the status of various supersymmetric models in view of the existing LHC data. A particular focus is on the implications of the measured Higgs mass on these models which gives important constraints. We consider here minimal and non-mininal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model.
The production of a neutral, CP even Higgs via weak boson fusion and decay H -> tau tau at the LHC is studied for the Standard Model and MSSM, utilizing a parton level Monte Carlo analysis. This channel allows a 5 sigma observation of a Standard Model Higgs with an integrated luminosity of about 30 fb^-1, and provides a direct measurement of the H-tau-tau coupling. For the MSSM case, a highly significant signal for at least one of the Higgs bosons with reasonable luminosity is possible over the entire physical parameter space which will be left unexplored by LEP2.
We discuss the prospects of searching for the neutral Higgs bosons of the triplet model in central exclusive production at the LHC. A detailed Monte Carlo analysis is presented for six benchmark scenarios for the Higgs boson, $H_1^{0}$, these cover $m_{H_1^0}=$~120, 150 GeV and doublet-triplet mixing of $c_H=$~0.2, 0.5 or 0.8. We find that, for appropriate values of $c_H$, an excellent Higgs mass measurement is possible for the neutral Higgs in the triplet model, and discuss how to distinguish the triplet model Higgs boson from the Higgs boson of the Standard Model.
We consider LHC searches for dark matter in the mono-Higgs channel using the tools of effective field theory. This channel takes unique advantage of the presence of $SU(2)_L$ breaking in those operators to avoid the need for any initial-state radiation, usually necessary to tag the production of invisible particles. We find that sensitivities to parameters describing dark matter interactions with standard model particles are comparable to those from monojet searches for a subset of the usually-considered operators, and we present for the first time bounds from collider searches on operators wh…
Supersymmetric theories with bilinear R-parity violation can give rise to the observed neutrino masses and mixings. One important feature of such models is that the lightest supersymmetric particle might have a sufficiently large lifetime to give rise to detached vertices. Working in the framework of supergravity models we analyze the potential of the LHCb experiment to search for supersymmetric models exhibiting bilinear R-parity violation. We show that the LHCb experiment can probe a large fraction of the $m_0 \otimes m_{1/2}$ being able to explore gluino masses up to 1.3 TeV. The LHCb disco…
The $αm_t^2/m_W^2$ order supersymmetric electroweak corrections arising from loops of chargino, neutralino, and squark to top quark pair production by $gg$ fusion at LHC are calculated in the minimal supersymmetric model. We found that the corrections amount about a few percent.
Heavy Neutral Leptons are naturally present in many well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model. If their mass is of few dozens of GeVs, they can be long-lived and lead to events with displaced vertices, giving rise to promising signatures due to the low background. We revisit the opportunities offered by the LHC to discover these long-lived states via searches with displaced vertices. We study in particular the implication on the parameter space sensitivity when all mixings to active flavors are taken into account.
We search for supersymmetric standard model realizations with extra singlets and extra $ U(1)$ using the heterotic string compactification on the $ Z_{6-II}$ orbifold with two Wilson lines. We analyze the vacuum restabilization mechanism for three representative Pati-Salam string models obtained in the literature and present detailed results for the effective superpotential compatible with the string selection rules. An automated selection of semi-realistic vacua along flat directions in the non-Abelian singlet modes field space is performed by requiring the presence of massless pairs of elect…
We discuss the feasibility of the observation of the signal from $B_c$ mesons in the ATLAS experiment of the LHC collider at a luminosity of ${\approx}\ 10^{33}$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$. In particular we address the decay mode $B_c{\rightarrow}J/ψπ$ followed by the leptonic decay $J/ψ{\rightarrow}μ^+μ^-$, which should permit an accurate measurement of the $B_c$ mass. We performed a Monte Carlo study of the signal and background concluding that a precision of $40$ MeV for the $B_c$ mass could be achieved after one year of running.
Despite rather long-term theoretical and experimental studies, the hypothesis of the non-zero intrinsic (or valence-like) heavy quark component of the proton distribution functions has not yet been confirmed or rejected. The LHC with $pp$-collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 7--14 TeV will obviously supply extra unique information concerning the above-mentioned component of the proton. To use the LHC potential, first of all, one should select the parton-level (sub)processes (and final-state signatures) that are most sensitive to the intrinsic heavy quark contributions. To this end inclusive production of…
We discuss various phenomenological aspects of supersymmetric models beyond the MSSM. A particular focus is on models which can correctly explain neutrino data and the possiblities of LHC to identify the underlying scenario.
In the light of recent experimental results from IceCube, LHC searches for scalar leptoquark, and the flavor anomalies $R_K$ and $R_{K^*}$, we analyze two scalar leptoquark models with hypercharge $Y=1/6$ and $Y=7/6$. We consider the 53 high-energy starting events from IceCube and perform a statistical analysis, taking into account both the Standard Model and leptoquark contribution together. The lighter leptoquark states that are in agreement with IceCube are strongly constrained from LHC di-lepton+dijet search. Heavier leptoquarks in the TeV mass range are in agreement both with IceCube and …
The supersymmetric extension to the Standard Model offers a promising cold dark matter candidate, the lightest neutralino. I will review the prospects for the detection of this candidate in both accelerator and direct detection searches.
In a generic supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, there will be lepton flavor violation at a neutral gaugino vertex due to misalignment between the lepton Yukawa couplings and the slepton soft masses. Sleptons produced at the LHC through the cascade decays of squarks and gluinos can give a sizable number of events with 4 leptons. This channel could give a clean signature of supersymmetric lepton flavor violation under conditions which are identified.
Upon assuming the $B-L$ Supersymmetric Standard Model (BLSSM) as theoretical framework accommodating a multi-Higgs sector, we assess the scope of the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) in accessing charged Higgs bosons ($H^\pm$) produced in pairs from $Z'$ decays. We show that, by pursuing both di-jet and tau-neutrino decays, several signals can be established for $H^\pm$ masses ranging from about $M_{W}$ to above $m_t$ and $Z'$ masses between 2.5 TeV and 3.5 TeV. The discovery can be attained, even in a background free environment in some cases, owing to the fact that the very mas…
We present a strategy for searching for heavy neutrinos at the Large Hadron Collider using the MoEDAL Experiment's MAPP detector. We hypothesize the heavy neutrino to be a member of a fourth generation lepton doublet, with the electric dipole moment (EDM) introduced within a dimension-five operator. In this model the heavy neutrino is produced in association with a heavy lepton. According to our current experimental and theoretical understanding, the electric dipole moment of this heavy neutrino may be as high as $10^{-15}$ $e$ cm. Taking advantage of the sensitivity of MoEDAL detector, we exa…
Composite Higgs models predict the existence of resonances. We study in detail the collider phenomenology of both the vector and fermionic resonances, including the possibility of both of them being light and within the reach of the LHC. We present current constraints from di-boson, di-lepton resonance searches and top partner pair searches on a set of simplified benchmark models based on the minimal coset $SO(5)/SO(4)$, and make projections for the reach of the HL-LHC. We find that the cascade decay channels for the vector resonances into top partners, or vice versa, can play an important rol…
We compute the total cross section and the transverse momentum distribution for single charged slepton and sneutrino production at hadronic colliders including NLO supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric QCD corrections. The supersymmetric QCD corrections can be substantial. We also resum the gluon transverse momentum distribution and compare our results with two Monte Carlo generators. We compute branching ratios of the supersymmetric decays of the slepton and determine event rates for the like-sign dimuon final state at the Tevatron and at the LHC.
In this paper we review the hadroproduction mechanisms of double-charm baryons for the different experimental environments and reinterpret the SELEX and LHCb results.
We show that the gauge singlet scalar boson in low-energy supersymmetric model may behave as the standard model (SM) Higgs boson if the singlet couples to (heavy) vector-like colored particles. In this case, the SM-Higgs-like signal at the LHC can be mimicked by the singlet production process for wide range of the singlet mass.
We present a complete calculation of weak boson fusion production of colorless supersymmetric particles at the LHC, using the new matrix element generator SUSY-MadGraph. The cross sections are small, generally at the attobarn level, with a few notable exceptions which might provide additional supersymmetric parameter measurements. We discuss in detail how to consistently define supersymmetric weak couplings to preserve unitarity of weak gauge boson scattering amplitudes to fermions, and derive sum rules for weak supersymmetric couplings.
Multiple production of Higgs particles is essential to study Higgs self-couplings at future high-energy colliders. In this paper we calculated the resonance contributions to the production of three lightest neutral supersymmetric Higgs bosons in gluon fusion at LHC. The cross sections due to trilinear Higgs couplings is sizeable but the measurement of the quartic coupling hhhH(h) seems to be impossible.
We reexamine the prospects for searching for a neutral Higgs boson in the intermediate-mass range and physics beyond the standard model, using the proton- and ion-beam facilities of the LHC to study coherent two-photon processes. Considering realistic design luminosities for the different ion beams, we find that beams of light-to-medium size ions like calcium will give the highest production rates. With a suitable trigger and assuming a b-quark identification efficiency of $30\%$ and a $b{\bar b}$ mass resolution of 10 GeV one could expect to see a Higgs signal in the $b{\bar b}$ channel with …
The existence of an axion-like particle (ALP) would induce anomalous scattering of light by light. This process can be probed at the Large Hadron Collider in central exclusive production of photon pairs in proton-proton collisions by tagging the surviving protons using forward proton detectors. Using a detailed simulation, we estimate the expected bounds on the ALP--photon coupling for a wide range of masses. We show that the proposed search is competitive and complementary to other collider bounds for masses above 600 GeV, especially for resonant ALP production between 600 GeV and 2 TeV. Our …
We consider a dark sector containing a pair of almost degenerate states coupled to the Standard Model through a dark photon mediator. This set-up constitutes a simple realization of the inelastic dark matter scenario. The heaviest dark state is long-lived, in the limit of a small kinetic mixing among the dark photon and the Standard Model hypercharge gauge boson, and/or of a small mass splitting among the dark states. We study the prospects for detection of this scenario at proposed LHC experiments dedicated to search for long-lived particles, namely FASER, MATHUSLA, CODEX-b, AL3X, MAPP, ANUBI…
We analyze the lepton flavor violating decays $τ\rightarrow Pl$ ($P=π,η,η';\;l=e,μ$) in the scenario of the minimal R-symmetric supersymmetric standard model. The prediction on the branching ratios BR$(τ\rightarrow P e)$ and BR$(τ\rightarrow P μ)$ is affected by the mass insertion parameters $δ^{13}$ and $δ^{23}$, respectively. These parameters are constrained by the experimental bounds on the branching ratios BR($τ\rightarrow e (μ) γ$) and BR($τ\rightarrow 3e(μ)$). The result shows $Z$ penguin dominates the prediction on BR($τ\rightarrow Pl$) in a large region of the parameter space. The bran…
We investigate the LHC signals of a minimal supersymmetric hidden valley. Our theory consists of the supersymmetric Standard Model along with a light hidden U(1)_x gauge multiplet and a pair of hidden chiral superfields that spontaneously break the new Abelian gauge symmetry near a GeV. The visible and hidden sectors interact exclusively through supersymmetric gauge kinetic mixing. We perform a thorough examination of the hidden decay cascades initiated by the lightest Standard Model superpartner and we study the range of LHC signals they can produce. In particular, we find parameter regions t…
Over the last years, new physics in terms of a novel weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) has come more and more under pressure from experimental null results. While the remaining WIMP parameter space will be probed by next generation dark matter experiments, models of light new physics have become increasingly popular over the last decade. In an effort to explore the parameter space of such light physics, a myriad of custom designed high-precision/low-energy experiments has been proposed. In this note, however, I argue that existing LHC multipurpose experiments like ATALS and CMS have a…
Fermion masses may arise via mixing of elementary fermions with composite fermions of a strong sector in scenarios of strongly-coupled electroweak symmetry breaking. The strong sector may contain leptoquark states with masses as light as several hundred GeV. In the present study we focus on the scalar modes of such leptoquarks since their bosonic couplings are determined completely and hence their production cross sections only depend on their masses. We study all the possible gauge-invariant non-derivative and single-derivative couplings of the scalar leptoquarks to the quarks and leptons, wh…
There seem to be recently an evidence for $C = -1$ odderon exchange in proton-proton elastic scattering at high energies. Here we discuss three different central-exclusive-production processes $pp \to pp (ϕ\to K^{+}K^{-})$, $pp \to pp (ϕ\to μ^{+}μ^{-})$, and $pp \to pp ϕϕ\to pp K^{+}K^{-}K^{+}K^{-}$, as a possible source of information for soft odderon exchange. The theoretical results are calculated within the tensor-pomeron and vector-odderon model for soft reactions. We include absorptive corrections at the amplitude level. To describe the low-energy data measured in the past by the WA102 c…
We consider a supersymmetric type III seesaw, where the additional heavy states are embedded into complete SU(5) representations to preserve gauge coupling unification. Complying with phenomenological and experimental constraints strongly tightens the viable parameter space of the model. In particular, one expects very characteristic signals of lepton flavour violation both at low-energies and at the LHC, which offer the possibility of falsifying the model.
The CP-odd Higgs boson $A^0$ of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) and Two Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM) will usually decay into the heaviest possible fermion -- antifermion pair available. The $A^0 \to VV$ decay where, $V =γ, Z, W^\pm$, and gluons are of particular interest as they are not allowed at tree level and hence they may offer information about the underlying new physics that enters at one loop level. In this paper all branching ratios of the CP-odd Higgs boson $A^0$ both in the MSSM and 2HDM are presented for this channel including all relevant Standard Model (SM) and MSS…
In this article we review the mechanisms in several supersymmetric models for producing gluinos at the LHC and its potential for discovering them. We focus on the MSSM and its left-right extensions. We study in detail the strong sector of both models. Moreover, we obtain the total cross section and differential distributions. We also make an analysis of their uncertainties, such as the gluino and squark masses, which are related to the soft SUSY breaking parameters.
We consider a scenario inspired by natural supersymmetry, where neutrino data is explained within a low-scale seesaw scenario. We extend the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model by adding light right-handed neutrinos and their superpartners, the R-sneutrinos, and consider the lightest neutralinos to be higgsino-like. We consider the possibilities of having either an R-sneutrino or a higgsino as lightest supersymmetric particle. Assuming that squarks and gauginos are heavy, we systematically evaluate the bounds on slepton masses due to existing LHC data.
We discuss the double-parton scattering (DPS) effects in four-jet production at the LHC. A special attention is given to the optimization of kinematical conditions in order to enhance the relative contribution of DPS in four-jet sample. The calculations of single-parton and double-parton scattering components are done in the high-energy (or $k_{T}$)-factorization approach. Here we follow our recent developments of relevant methods and tools that are implemented in the AVHLIB Monte Carlo library. Several differential distributions are calculated and carefully discussed in the context of recent …
We consider minimal supergravity (mSUGRA) models with an additional R-parity violating operator at the grand unification scale. This can change the supersymmetric spectrum leading on the one hand to a sneutrino, smuon or squark as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). On the other hand, a wide parameter region is reopened, where the scalar tau is the LSP. It is vital to know the nature of the LSP, because supersymmetric particles normally cascade decay down to the LSP at collider experiments. We investigate in detail the conditions leading to non-neutralino LSP scenarios. We also present…
At the LHC, a generic supersymmetric cascade can be a source of top quark. Specifically third generation squarks and gluino are the major sources of top quark which could also be boosted. In this article, we have shown that jet substructure algorithm can be very useful in identifying such boosted top quarks in the cascade. We take inclusive three jets plus zero lepton plus missing energy final state and try to reconstruct at least one hadronically decaying top quark by using top tagging techniques which has good prospect at the LHC.
We compute the rates for pp annihilation into chargino-pairs via Drell-Yan process taking into account the effects of supersymmetric soft phases, at proton-proton collider. In particular, the phase of the mu parameter gains direct accessibility via the production of dissimilar charginos. The phases of the trilinear soft masses do not have a significant effect on the cross sections.
Weak boson fusion is a copious source of intermediate mass Higgs bosons at the LHC. The additional very energetic forward jets in these events provide for powerful background suppression tools. We analyze the $H \to ττ$ decay mode for the Standard Model Higgs boson. A parton level analysis of the dominant physics backgrounds (mainly $Z \to ττ$ and Drell-Yan production of $τ$'s) and of reducible backgrounds (from $W+$ jet and $b\bar{b}$ production in association with two jets and subsequent leptonic decays) demonstrates that this channel allows the observation of $H \to ττ$ in a low background …
We compute, in the MSSM framework, the total electroweak contributions at one loop for the process pp -> tW+X, initiated by the parton process bg -> tW. The supersymmetric effect is analyzed for various choices of the SUSY benchmark points. Choosing realistic unpolarized and polarized experimental quantities, we show the size of the various effects and discuss their dependence on the MSSM parameters.
We discuss the feasibility of the observation of the signal from $B_c$ mesons in the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. In particular, we address the decay mode $B_c{\rightarrow}J/ψπ$ followed by the leptonic decay $J/ψ{\rightarrow}μ^+μ^-$, which should permit an accurate measurement of the $B_c$ mass. We performed a Monte Carlo study of the signal and background concluding that a precision of $\approx$ 1 MeV for the $B_c$ mass could be achieved after one year of running at $\lq\lq$low" luminosity. The semileptonic decay $B_c{\rightarrow}J/ψ μ^+ν_μ$ is also considered for a possible extraction of ${…
We study models of supersymmetric grand unification based on the SO(10) gauge group. We investigate scenarios of non-universal gaugino masses including models containing a mixture of two representations of hidden sector chiral superfields. We analyse the effect of excluding mu from the fine-tuning measure, and confront the results with low energy constraints, including the Higgs boson mass, dark matter relic density and supersymmetry bounds. We also determine high scale Yukawa coupling ratios and confront the results with theoretical predictions. Finally, we present two additional benchmarks t…
We discuss the possible enhancement of the tau lepton events at LHC when the left-handed stau doublet becomes light (which can be even lighter than the right-handed stau). This is illustrated in the constrained supersymmetric seesaw model where the slepton doublet mass is suppressed by the effects of a large neutrino Yukawa coupling. We study a few representative parameter sets in the sneutrino coannihilation regions where the tau sneutrino is NLSP and the stau coannihilation regions where the stau is NLSP both of which yield the thermal neutralino LSP abundance determined by WMAP.
