A bottom-up approach within the electroweak effective theory: constraining heavy resonances

Abstract

The LHC has confirmed the existence of a mass gap between the known particles and possible new states. Effective field theory is then the appropriate tool to search for low-energy signals of physics beyond the Standard Model. We adopt the general formalism of the electroweak effective theory, with a non-linear realization of the electroweak symmetry breaking, where the Higgs is a singlet with independent couplings. At higher energies we consider a generic resonance Lagrangian which follows the above-mentioned non-linear realization and couples the light particles to bosonic heavy resonances with $J^P=0^\pm$ and $J^P=1^\pm$. Integrating out the resonances and assuming a proper short-distance behavior, it is possible to determine or to constrain most of the bosonic low-energy constants in terms of resonance masses. Therefore, the current experimental bounds on these bosonic low-energy constants allow us to constrain the resonance masses above the TeV scale, by following a typical bottom-up approach, i.e., the fit of the low-energy constants to precise experimental data enables us to learn about the high-energy scales, the underlying theory behind the Standard Model.