Probing EFT breakdown in the tails of $W^+ W^-$ observables

Abstract

In this letter, we test clipping effective field theory (EFT) simulations as a method of ensuring EFT validity. The procedure imposes that, at the level of the simulation, the invariant mass of a $W^+W^-$ pair $M_{WW}$ is less than the new physics scale $\Lambda$. We compare this to two other methods, comparison bin by bin of dimension-6 and dimension-8 squared contributions and implementing a cut on data. We find that setting $M_{WW} < \Lambda$ is not strict enough to ensure that the hierarchy of EFT operators is respected for dimension-6 and dimension-8 contributions. We also show that, even when using a stricter cut on $M_{WW}$, due to different correlations between $M_{WW}$ and $M_{e\mu}$ at different EFT orders, the bins in $M_{e\mu}$ (the invariant mass of the leptons originating from $W$ decays) used in an EFT fit may not truly be in the regime of EFT validity when performing a dimension-6 fit with $M_{WW} < \Lambda$. We also explore the correlations of three transverse mass observables: $M_{T1}, M_{T2}$ and $M_{T3}$, finding that $M_{T1}$ and $M_{T3}$ follow the $M_{WW}$ distribution more closely than $M_{e\mu}$. We present sensitivity studies using both the $M_{T3}$ distribution and $M_{e\mu}$ distribution. We test implementing an experimental cut on $M_{T3}$ in place of clipping the EFT simulation at $M_{WW} < \Lambda$. We finally comment that adding $M_{WW} < \Lambda$ cuts only to the EFT simulation could be interpreted as modifying the SMEFT expansion by a form factor and could therefore impact the model independence of EFT fits under this procedure.