Quantifying EFT Uncertainties in LHC Searches

Abstract

Effective Field Theory (EFT) is a general framework to parametrize the low-energy approximation to a UV model that is widely used in model-independent searches for new physics. The use of EFTs at the LHC can suffer from a 'validity' issue, since new physics amplitudes often grow with energy and the kinematic regions with the most sensitivity to new physics have the largest theoretical uncertainties. We propose a method to account for these uncertainties with the aim of producing robust model-independent results with a well-defined statistical interpretation. In this approach, one must specify the new operators being studied as well as the new physics cutoff $M$, the energy scale where the EFT approximation breaks down. At energies below $M$, the EFT uncertainties are accounted for by adding additional higher dimensional operators with coefficients that are treated as nuisance parameters. The size of the nuisances are governed by a prior likelihood function that incorporates information about dimensional analysis, naturalness, and the scale $M$. At energies above $M$, our method incorporates the lack of predictivity of the EFT, and we show that this is crucial to obtain consistent results. We perform a number of tests of this method in a simple toy model, illustrating its performance in analyses aimed at new physics exclusion as well as for discovery. The method is conveniently implemented by the technique of event reweighting and is easily ported to realistic LHC analyses. We find that the procedure converges quickly with the number of nuisance parameters and is conservative when compared to UV models. The paper gives a precise meaning and offers a principled and practical solution to the widely debated 'EFT validity issue'.