The LHC is exploring electroweak (EW) physics at the scale EW symmetry is broken. As the LHC and new high energy colliders push our understanding of the Standard Model to ever-higher energies, it will be possible to probe not only the breaking of but also the restoration of EW symmetry. We propose to observe EW restoration in double EW boson production via the convergence of the Goldstone boson equivalence theorem. This convergence is most easily measured in the vector boson plus Higgs production, $Vh$, which is dominated by the longitudinal polarizations. We define EW restoration by carefully taking the limit of zero Higgs vacuum expectation value (vev). EW restoration is then measured through the ratio of the $p_T^h$ distributions between $Vh$ production in the Standard Model and Goldstone boson plus Higgs production in the zero vev theory, where $p_T^h$ is the Higgs transverse momentum. As EW symmetry is restored, this ratio converges to one at high energy. We present a method to extract this ratio from collider data. With a full signal and background analysis, we demonstrate that the 14 TeV HL-LHC can confirm that this ratio converges to one to 40% precision while at the 27 TeV HE-LHC the precision will be 6%. We also investigate statistical tests to quantify the convergence at high energies. Our analysis provides a roadmap for how to stress test the Goldstone boson equivalence theorem and our understanding of spontaneously broken symmetries, in addition to confirming the restoration of EW symmetry.
Electroweak symmetry non-restoration up to high temperatures well above the electroweak scale offers new alternatives for baryogenesis. We propose a new approach for electroweak symmetry non-restoration via an inert Higgs sector that couples to the Standard Model Higgs as well as an extended scalar singlet sector. We implement renormalization group improvements and thermal resummation, necessary to evaluate the effective potential spanning over a broad range of energy scales and temperatures. We present examples of benchmark scenarios that allow for electroweak symmetry non-restoration all the…
In this letter, we show that the electroweak symmetry is restored at high temperature for Little Higgs (LH), when including dominant higher order thermal corrections, that are consequence of the non-linear nature of the scalar sector. This leads us to suggest that the LH requires a UV completion above the scale $Λ\lesssim f$.
We investigate the region of restored electroweak symmetry around a superconducting cosmic string coupled to the Weinberg-Salam model with an extra Higgs doublet. We show that the presence of the extra Higgs fields, and in particular their CP violating relative phase, does not qualitatively affect the results of Perkins and Davis[1] obtained for the standard electroweak theory. This result is neccessary to ensure the validity of some recently proposed string-mediated electroweak baryogenesis scenarios.
We explore the possibility that the electroweak phase transition happens at a scale much higher than the electroweak scale today. In this context, high scale CP-violating sources for electroweak baryogenesis are not constrained by low-energy experiments. We propose a scenario of high-scale electroweak baryogenesis linked to flavour physics. This scenario allows for a period of enhanced Yukawa couplings during the evolution of the universe, which source time-dependent CP violation. The electroweak symmetry is never restored after the high-scale phase transition due to negative contributions to …
Restoration of the electroweak symmetry at temperatures around the Higgs mass is linked to tight phenomenological constraints on many baryogenesis scenarios. A potential remedy can be found in mechanisms of electroweak symmetry non-restoration (SNR), in which symmetry breaking is extended to higher temperatures due to new states with couplings to the Standard Model. Here we show that, in the presence of a second Higgs doublet, SNR can be realized with only a handful of new fermions which can be identified as viable dark matter candidates consistent with all current observational constraints. T…
Extensions of the Higgs sector of the Standard Model allow for a rich cosmological history around the electroweak scale. We show that besides the possibility of strong first-order phase transitions, which have been thoroughly studied in the literature, also other important phenomena can occur, like the non-restoration of the electroweak symmetry or the existence of vacua in which the Universe becomes trapped, preventing a transition to the electroweak minimum. Focusing on the next-to-minimal two-Higgs-doublet model (N2HDM) of type II and taking into account the existing theoretical and experim…
The gap equation at finite temperature in the top-quark condensate scheme of electroweak symmetry breaking is proved to have the identical form in both the imaginary and the real time formalism of thermal field theory. By means of the gap equation, combined with the basic relation to define the vacuum expectation value $v$ of the effective Higgs field, we analyse the dependence on temperature T and chemical potential $μ$ of the dynamical top-quark mass as the order parameter characteristic of symmetry breaking, and obtain the $μ-T$ criticality curve for symmetry restoration. We find out that t…
It has been argued by Pisarski and Wilczek that finite temperature restoration of the chiral symmetry SU(Nf) x SU(Nf) is first-order for Nf >=3. This type of chiral symmetry with a large Nf may appear in the Higgs sector if one considers models such as walking technicolor theories. We examine the first-order restoration of the chiral symmetry from the point of view of the electroweak phase transition. The strength of the transition is estimated in SU(2) x U(1) gauged linear sigma model by means of the finite temperature effective potential at one-loop with the ring improvement. Even if the mas…
In this paper we propose a new approach for the spontaneous breaking and restoration of the $SU(3)_C$ color symmetry in the framework of electroweak symmetry non-restoration (EWSNR) at high temperature, which provides an alternative approach for the Baryogenesis. Due to the exotic high vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the SM Higgs doublet in EWSNR, the color symmetry can be spontaneous broken succeeding the electroweak phase transition whenever there is a negative quartic coupling between the SM Higgs and a scalar color triplet. The color symmetry is then restored at low temperature as the VE…
The strength of electroweak symmetry breaking may substantially differ in the early Universe compared to the present day value. In the Standard Model, the Higgs vacuum expectation value (vev) vanishes and electroweak symmetry gets restored at temperatures above $\sim 160$ GeV due to the Higgs field interactions with the high-temperature plasma. It was however shown that new light singlet scalar fields may change this behaviour. The key feature is the non-standard dependence on the Higgs vev of the new particles mass which can vanish at large Higgs vev, inducing a negative correction to the Hig…
We discuss properties of the electroweak vacuum as a function of an external magnetic field. The interest in these properties arises due to possible existence of the electromagnetically superconducting phase of QCD in the background of a sufficiently strong magnetic field. In the electroweak theory, a superconducting vacuum exists for a well defined range of magnetic background fields, and the interest of the current paper is the behaviour near the upper critical magnetic field. We determine this critical field and calculate the vacuum condensates to leading order.
I review the status of theoretical calculations relevant for electroweak physics at the Tevatron and LHC and discuss future directions. I also give a brief overview of current electroweak data and discuss future expectations.
I discuss simple extensions of the Standard Model scalar sector that can help solve the origin of matter problem and that can be probed in their cosmologically relevant parameter space at the LHC.
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.
We study the combined effects of both strong and electroweak dimension six effective operators on flavour changing top quark physics at the LHC. Analytic expressions for the cross sections and decay widths of several flavour changing processes will be presented, as well as an analysis of the feasibility of their observation at the LHC.
We study the collider phenomenology of the electroweak phase transition and electroweak baryogenesis in the framework of the effective field theory. Our study shows that the effective theory using the dimension-6 operators can enforce strong first order phase transition and provide sizable CP violation to realize a successful electroweak baryogenesis. Such dimension-6 operators can induce interesting Higgs phenomenology that can be verified at colliders such as the LHC and the planning CEPC. We then demonstrate that this effective theory can originate from vector-like quarks and the triplet Hi…
We present the complete NLO electroweak contribution of $\mathcal{O}(α^2_s α)$ to the production of diagonal squark--anti-squark pairs in proton--proton collisions. Compared to the lowest-order $\mathcal{O}(α_sα+ α^2)$ electroweak terms, the NLO contributions are also significant. We discuss the LO and NLO electroweak effects in cross sections and distributions at the LHC for the production of squarks different from top squarks, in various supersymmetric benchmark scenarios.
We analyse diffractive electroweak vector boson production in hadronic collisions and show that the single diffractive W boson production asymmetry in rapidity is a particularly good observable at the LHC to test the concept of the flavour symmetric pomeron parton distributions. It may also provide an additional constraint for the parton distribution functions in the proton.
We maintain that the search for the electroweak monopole is a key issue in the advancement of our understanding of the standard model. Unlike the Dirac monopole in electrodynamics, which is optional, the electroweak monopole should exist within the framework of the standard model. The mass of the electroweak monopole is estimated to be 5 to 7 TeV, but could be as large as 15 TeV. Above threshold its production rate at the LHC is expected to be relatively large, (1/alpha(em)2) times bigger than that of W+W- pairs. The search for the electroweak monopole is one of the prime motivations of the ne…
In this talk we survey the SSC and LHC signals and backgrounds for the physics of electroweak symmetry breaking. We study the process $pp \rightarrow WWX$ and compute the rate for the ``gold-plated'' signals $W^\pm \rightarrow \ell^\pm ν$ and $Z \rightarrow \ell^+\ell^-$ $(\ell = e,μ)$ for a wide variety of models. We use a forward jet tag and central jet veto to suppress the standard-model backgrounds. In this way we estimate the SSC and LHC sensitivities to the physics of electroweak symmetry breaking.
We report on recently computed mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to on-shell $W$ and $Z$ boson production. We use these differential predictions to estimate their impact on the $W$ boson mass determination at the LHC.
Presented are the complete NLO electroweak contributions to the production of diagonal squark--anti-squark pairs at the LHC. We discuss their effects for the production of squarks of the first two generations, in different SUSY scenarios.
We present the tree-level and next-to-leading order (NLO) electroweak (EW) contributions to squark-squark production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) within the framework of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM).
We present the complete NLO electroweak contribution to the production of diagonal squark--anti-squark pairs in proton--proton collisions. We discuss their effects for the production of squarks different from top squarks, in the SPS1a' scenario.
We calculated the electroweak contributions to the hadronic production of a squark in association with a gluino within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). Presented are complete next-to-leading order electroweak (NLO EW) corrections at O(alpha_s^2 alpha), which include real photon and real quark radiation processes. Also considered are photon induced tree level O(alpha_s alpha) contributions.
This paper has been withdrawn by the authors, due a crucial error in the Montecarlo simulation. See hep-ph/0107112 for a correct version. If interested in the validity of the effective-W approximation see hep-ph/0109059.
In this paper we compute electroweak contributions to the production of squark pairs at hadron colliders. These include the exchange of electroweak gauge bosons in the s-channel as well as electroweak gaugino exchange in the t- and/or u-channel. In many cases these can interfere with the dominant QCD contributions. As a result, we find sizable contributions to the production of two SU(2) doublet squarks. At the LHC, they amount to 10 to 20% for typical mSUGRA (or CMSSM) scenarios, but in more general scenarios they can vary between -40 and +55%, depending on size and sign of the SU(2) gaugino …
We study the effects of the extended electroweak gauge sector on the signal strengths of the Higgs boson at the LHC. Extension of the Higgs sector associate with the extension of the electroweak gauge symmetry. In our setup, there are two neutral Higgs states ($h$, $H$) and three new gauge bosons ($W'^{\pm}$, $Z'$). We assume the lightest scalar, $h$, is what LHC found and its mass is 125 GeV. We find the enhancement of $μ(gg \to h \to γγ)$. On the other hand, other decay processes are same as or smaller than the SM expectation.
The process of stop-chargino production at LHC has been calculated in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model at the complete electroweak one-loop level, assuming a mSUGRA symmetry breaking scheme. Several properties of the angular and invariant mass distributions of the basic bottom-gluon to stop-chargino amplitudes have been derived. For a meaningful collection of different benchmark points the overall electroweak one-loop effects are at most of the order of a few percent. At the realistically expected LHC accuracy, the main supersymmetric electroweak features of the process can be therefo…
We have studied the effect of one-loop logarithmic electroweak radiative corrections on WZ and $Wγ$ production processes at the LHC. We present analytical results for the leading-logarithmic electroweak corrections to the corresponding partonic processes du -> WZ, Wgamma. Using the leading-pole approximation we implement these corrections into Monte Carlo programs for $pp\to lν_l l'\bar l', lν_lγ$. We find that electroweak corrections lower the predictions by 5-20% in the physically interesting region of large transverse momentum and small rapidity separation of the gauge bosons.
In this talk we discuss the implementation of the full next-to-leading order QCD corrections to electroweak Higgs boson plus three jet production at the LHC within the Matchbox framework of the Herwig++ event generator. We also present numerical results for integrated cross sections and kinematic distributions.
Future high precision electroweak measurements require understanding of Standard Model expectations to multi-loop accuracy, both, for the predictions of production cross-sections of signal and background, as well as for pseudo-observables. I review recent results from precision calculations and summarize projections and implications for the Tevatron, the LHC, CEBAF, and the ILC.
An alternative calculation of the lowest order electroweak radiative corrections to the single W-boson production in hadron-hadron collision in the framework of the quark parton model without any absorption of the collinear quark singularity into the parton distributions is carried out. Numerical analysis under Tevatron and LHC kinematic conditions is performed.
In this work we report on the results obtained in a detailed and systematical study of the possibility to measure the parameters appearing in the electroweak chiral lagrangian. The main novelty of our approach is that we do not use the Equivalence Theorem and therefore we work explicitly with all the gauge boson degrees of freedom.
We have studied the effects of the complete logarithmic electroweak O(alpha) corrections on the production of vector-boson pairs WZ, ZZ, and WW at the LHC. These corrections are implemented into a Monte Carlo program for pp -> 4f (+γ) with final states involving four or two leptons using the double-pole approximation. We numerically investigate purely leptonic final states and find that electroweak corrections lower the predictions by 5-30% in the physically interesting region of large di-boson invariant mass and large angle of the produced vector bosons.
We investigate multi-lepton signals produced by ElectroWeakino (EWino) decays in the MSSM and the TMSSM scenarios with sfermions, gluinos and non Standard Model Higgses at the TeV scale, being the Bino electroweak-scale dark matter. We recast the present LHC constraints on EWinos for these models and we find that wide MSSM and TMSSM parameter regions prove to be allowed. We forecast the number of events expected in the signal regions of the experimental multi-lepton analyses in the next LHC runs. The correlations among these numbers will help to determine whether future deviations in multi-lep…
We analyze the potential of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to study anomalous trilinear vector-boson interactions W^+ W^- γand W^+ W^- Z through the single production of electroweak gauge bosons via the weak boson fusion processes q q -> q q W (-> \ell^\pm ν) and q q -> q q Z(-> \ell^+ \ell^-) with \ell = e or μ. After a careful study of the standard model backgrounds, we show that the single production of electroweak bosons at the LHC can provide stringent tests on deviations of these vertices from the standard model prediction. In particular, we show that single gauge boson production …
The implementation of the full next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections to electroweak Higgs boson plus three jet production at hadron colliders such as the LHC within the Matchbox NLO framework of the Herwig++ event generator is discussed. We present numerical results for integrated cross sections and kinematic distributions.
The detailed study of the Higgs boson is one of the main tasks of contemporary particle physics. Gluon fusion, the main production channel of Higgs bosons at the LHC, has been successfully modelled in QCD up to $\text{N}^3\text{LO}$. To fully exploit this unprecedented theoretical effort, sub-leading contributions, such as electroweak corrections, must be investigated. I will present the analytic calculations of the gluon- and quark-induced Higgs plus jet amplitudes in mixed QCD-electroweak corrections mediated by light quarks up to order $v α^2 α_S^{3/2}$.
The dominant contribution to the Higgs production in association with bottom quark pair at the LHC is gluon-gluon fusion parton subprocess. We present a complete calculation of the next-to-leading order (NLO) electroweak (EW) corrections to this channel. The other small contributions with quarks in the initial state are calculated at tree level. We find that the NLO EW corrections can suppress the leading order (LO) contributions significantly.
We formulate the equivalence theorem as a theoretical criterion for sensitively probing the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism, and develop a precise power counting method for the chiral Lagrangian formulated electroweak theories. Armed with these, we perform a systematic analysis on the sensitivities of the scattering processes $W^\pm W^\pm \rightarrow W^\pm W^\pm$ and $q\bar{q}'\rightarrow W^\pm Z$ for testing all possible effective bosonic operators in the chiral Lagrangian formulated electroweak theories at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The analysis shows that these two kinds …
We report on our calculation of next-to-leading-order electroweak corrections to W-boson pair production at the LHC, taking into account off-shell effects and spin correlations of the W bosons and their leptonic decays in the framework of a double-pole approximation. We study the various contributions to the electroweak corrections in detail and discuss their impact on selected observables within a realistic event-selection setup.
In a strong-coupling picture of ElectroWeak Symmetry Breaking, a composite electroweak-neutral state in the TeV mass range, carrying a global (quasi-)conserved charge, makes a plausible Dark Matter (DM) candidate, with the ongoing direct DM searches being precisely sensitive to the expected signals. To exploit the crucial interplay between direct DM searches and the LHC, we consider a composite iso-singlet vector $V$, mixed with the hypercharge gauge field, as the essential mediator of the interaction between the DM particle and the nucleus. Based on a suitable effective chiral Lagrangian, we …
The production of charm quark jets in association with electroweak gauge bosons at the LHC can be used as a tool to constrain quark parton distribution functions (PDFs). Motivated by recent measurements at the Tevatron and LHC, we calculate cross sections for $W/Z+c$, comparing these to $W/Z+\textrm{jet}$, for various PDF sets. The cross-section differences can be understood in terms of the different underlying PDFs, with the strange quark distribution being particularly important for $W+c$ production. We suggest measurements of appropriately defined ratios and comment on how these measurement…
We consider pair-production of electroweakinos promptly decaying to light gravitinos in general gauge mediation scenarios within the minimal supersymmetric standard model. Typically the presence of photons and missing transverse momentum is the key signature for this kind of scenarios. We highlight where LHC analyses which have originally been designed to probe different scenarios provide complementary constraints with respect to the dedicated searches and we present the constraints on the parameter space.
We present the first complete calculation of the one-loop electroweak effect in the process of semi-inclusive bottom-Higgs production at LHC in the MSSM. The size of the electroweak contribution depends on the choice of the final produced neutral Higgs boson, and can be relevant, in some range of the input parameters. A comparison of the one-loop results obtained in two different renormalization schemes is also performed, showing a very good NLO scheme independence. We further comment on two possible, simpler, approximations of the full NLO result, and on their reliabilty.
We describe the program KKMC-hh, which calculates Z boson processes in hadronic collisions using coherent exclusive exponentiation (CEEX) with exact second-order photonic corrections at next-to-leading log and first-order weak vertex corrections, including initial and final state photonic radiation and initial-final interference. We describe current applications to precision forward-backward asymmetry calculations for the measurement of the electroweak mixing angle at the LHC.
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 find new limits on the $λ'_{3jk}$ R-parity violating (RPV) couplings of the minimal supersymmetric standard model, using Drell-Yan differential cross sections at the LHC and electroweak precision measurements from LEP and SLC. Specifically, limits on six out of the nine $λ'_{3jk}$-couplings, with $j=1\text{ or }2$, are obtained using Drell-Yan data, with the remaining three (for $j=3$) bounded by precision electroweak data. We also update the limits on all $λ'_{ijk}$-couplings using electroweak data and find new bounds on $λ'_{132}$ and $λ'_{232}$ that are stronger than obtained elsewhere. …
We compute the complete one loop electroweak effects in the MSSM for the eight processes of single top (and single antitop) production in the $t$-channel at hadron colliders, generalizing a previous analysis performed for the dominant $dt$ final state. The results are quite similar for all processes, showing an impressively large Standard Model effect and a generally modest genuine SUSY contribution in the mSUGRA scenario. The one loop effect on the total rate is shown and the possibility of measuring it at LHC is discussed.
Radiative corrections of strong and electroweak interactions are presented at next-to-leading order for the production of a Higgs boson plus two hard jets via weak interactions at the LHC. The calculation includes all weak-boson fusion and quark-antiquark annihilation diagrams as well as the corresponding interferences. The electroweak corrections, which are discussed here for the first time, reduce the cross sections by 5%, and thus are of the same order of magnitude as the QCD corrections. As argued in previous papers, where s-channel diagrams and interferences were neglected, the QCD correc…
We compute the complete electroweak one-loop effect on the process of $t$-channel single top production at LHC in the Standard Model and in the MSSM within the mSUGRA symmetry breaking scheme. We find that the one-loop electroweak SM effect is large, and decreases the cross section of an amount that is of the same size as that of the NLO QCD one. The genuine SUSY effect in the mSUGRA scheme, for a general choice of benchmark points, is rather small. It might become large and visible in more general scenarios around thresholds involving light stop and neutralino mass values.
We analyse diffractive weak boson production in $pp$ collisions. We show that the measurement of $W$ boson production asymmetry in the diffractive $pp$ collisions is a valuable method to test the concept of the flavour symmetric pomeron parton distributions.
