Heavy neutral scalar decays into electroweak gauge bosons in the Littlest Higgs Model

Abstract

We study the heavy neutral scalar decays into standard model electroweak gauge bosons in the context of the Littlest Higgs model. We focus our attention on the $\Phi^0 \to WW, \gamma V$ processes induced at the one-loop level, with $V=\gamma, Z$. Since the branching ratios of the $\Phi^0 \to \gamma V$ decays result very suppressed, only the $\Phi^0 \to WW$ process is analyzed in the framework of possible experimental scenarios by using heavy scalar masses between 1.6 TeV until 3.3 TeV. The branching ratio for the $\Phi^0 \to WW$ decay is of the order of $10^{-3}$ throughout the interval 2 TeV $< f <$ 4 TeV, which represent the global symmetry breaking scale of the theory. Thus, it is estimated the associated production cross section for the $pp\to \Phi^0 X\to WW$, finding around ten events for $m_{\Phi^0}\approx 1.6$ TeV at best.