arXiv subjects

Adam Martin

Publications and source records attributed to Adam Martin.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Testing CDF's Dijet Excess and Technicolor at the LHC

Under the assumption that the dijet excess seen by the CDF Collaboration near 150 Gev in Wjj production is due to the lightest technipion of the low-scale technicolor process $ρ_T \rightarrow W π_T$, we study its observability in LHC detectors with 1-5 fb^{-1} of data. We find that cuts similar to those employed by CDF are unlikely to confirm its signal. We propose cuts tailored to the LSTC hypothesis and its backgrounds at the LHC that can reveal $π_T \rightarrow jj$. We also stress the importance at the LHC of the isospin-related channel $ρ^{\pm}_T \rightarrow Zπ^{\pm}_T \rightarrow \ell\ell jj$ and the all-lepton mode $ρ^{pm}_T \rightarrow WZ \rightarrow 3\ell + ν$.

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arXiv2011

Quirks at the Tevatron and Beyond

We consider the physics and collider phenomenology of quirks that transform nontrivially under QCD color, SU(2)_W as well as an SU(N)_{ic} infracolor group. Our main motivation is to show that the recent Wjj excess observed by CDF naturally arises in quirky models. The basic pattern is that several different quirky states can be produced, some of which beta-decay during or after spin-down, leaving the lightest electrically neutral quirks to hadronize into a meson that subsequently decays into gluon jets. We analyze LEP II, Tevatron, UA2, and electroweak precision constraints, identifying the simplest viable models: scalar quirks ("squirks") transforming as color triplets, SU(2)_W triplets and singlets, all with vanishing hypercharge. We calculate production cross sections, weak decay, spin-down, meson decay rates, and estimate efficiencies. The novel features of our quirky model includes: quirkonium decay proceeds into a pair of gluon jets, without a b-jet component; there is essentially no associated Zjj or gamma+jj signal; and there are potentially new (parameter-dependent) contributions to dijet production, multi-W production plus jets, W+gamma, gamma+gamma resonance signals, and monojet signals. There may be either underlying event from low energy QCD deposition resulting from quirky spin-down, and/or qualitatively modified event kinematics from infraglueball emission.

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arXiv2011

NLO predictions for a lepton, missing transverse momentum and dijets at the Tevatron

n this letter we investigate the various processes that can contribute to a final state consisting of a lepton, missing transverse momentum and two jets at Next to Leading Order (NLO) at the Tevatron. In particular we consider the production of W/Z + 2 jets, diboson pairs, single top and the tt process with both fully leptonic and semi-leptonic decays. We present distributions for the invariant mass of the dijet system and normalisations of the various processes, accurate to NLO.

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arXiv2011

The Gold-Plated Channel for Supersymmetric Higgs via Higgsphilic Z'

The lightest CP-even Higgs boson in weak-scale supersymmetry can be discovered spectacularly early, even from 1 inverse fb of data at 7 TeV LHC, if it decays to a pair of light Z', which in turn, decays to a pair of hard and "isolated" leptons. These Z' must have infinitesimal couplings to light fermions in order to be consistent with precision electroweak constraints, while they have mild to moderate couplings to Higgs. Hence they are Higgsphilic. A Z' with these properties appears at the electroweak scale in the "viable" gravity mediated supersymmetry breaking. We construct an effective model to extract the Z' phenomenology. Even in a decoupled limit where all gauginos and sfermions are heavy and supersymmetry production is purely electroweak, we find that the Higgs boson as well as supersymmetry can be found early through the discovery of Z' in samples of events with 4 leptons and 4 leptons + missing energy respectively. Additionally, in cases where the Z' is long-lived, we show that the trigger menus employed at the ATLAS detector to find long lived particles are capable of finding thousands of Higgs events from 1 inverse fb of data.

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arXiv2011

Top-Higgs and Top-pion phenomenology in the Top Triangle Moose model

We discuss the deconstructed version of a topcolor-assisted technicolor model wherein the mechanism of top quark mass generation is separated from the rest of electroweak symmetry breaking. The minimal deconstructed version of this scenario is a "triangle moose" model, where the top quark gets its mass from coupling to a top-Higgs field, while the gauge boson masses are generated from a Higgsless sector. The spectrum of the model includes scalar (top-Higgs) and pseudoscalar (top-pion) states. In this paper, we study the properties of these particles, discuss their production mechanisms and decay modes, and suggest how best to search for them at the LHC.

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arXiv2011

A Light Scalar in Low-Scale Technicolor

In addition to the narrow spin-one resonances $ρ_T$, $ω_T$ and $a_T$ occurring in low-scale technicolor, there will be relatively narrow scalars in the mass range 200 to 600--700 GeV. We study the lightest isoscalar state, $σ_T$. In several important respects it is like a heavy Higgs boson with a small vev. It may be discovered with high luminosity at the LHC where it is produced via weak boson fusion and likely has substantial $W^+ W^-$ and $Z^0Z^0$ decay modes.

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arXiv2010

Topological Pions

We study the collider signatures of new pions, composite particles which emerge from a TeV-scale, confining gauge theory with vector-like matter. Similar to the neutral pion in QCD, these new pions mainly decay into a pair of standard model (SM) gauge bosons via triangular anomaly diagrams. One of the new pions, which decays to a gluon plus a photon, has excellent discovery potential at the LHC.

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arXiv2010

Higgs Discovery through Top-Partners using Jet Substructure

Top-partners -- vector-like quarks which mix predominantly with the top quark -- are simple extensions of the standard model present in many theories of new physics such as little Higgs models, topcolor models, and extra dimensions. Through renormalizable mixing with the top quark, these top-partners inherit couplings to the Higgs boson. Higgs bosons produced from the decay of top-partners are often highly boosted and ideal candidates for analyses based on jet substructure. Using substructure methods, we show that light Higgs bosons decaying to b b-bar can be discovered at the 14 TeV LHC with less than 10 inverse fb for top-partner masses up to 1 TeV.

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arXiv2010

Discovering Higgs Bosons of the MSSM using Jet Substructure

We present a qualitatively new approach to discover Higgs bosons of the MSSM at the LHC using jet substructure techniques applied to boosted Higgs decays. These techniques are ideally suited to the MSSM, since the lightest Higgs boson overwhelmingly decays to $b\bar{b}$ throughout the entire parameter space, while the heavier neutral Higgs bosons, if light enough to be produced in a cascade, also predominantly decay to $b\bar{b}$. The Higgs production we consider arises from superpartner production where superpartners cascade decay into Higgs bosons. We study this mode of Higgs production for several superpartner hierarchies: $m_{\tilde{q}}, m_{\tilde g} > m_{\tilde{W},\tilde{B}} > m_h + μ$; $m_{\tilde{q}}, m_{\tilde g} > m_{\tilde{W},\tilde{B}} > m_{h,H,A} + μ$; and $m_{\tilde{q}}, m_{\tilde g} > m_{\tilde{W}} > m_h + μ$ with $m_{\tilde{B}} \simeq μ$. In these cascades, the Higgs bosons are boosted, with $p_T > 200$ GeV a large fraction of the time. Since Higgs bosons appear in cascades originating from squarks and/or gluinos, the cross section for events with at least one Higgs boson can be the same order as squark/gluino production. Given 10 fb$^{-1}$ of 14 TeV LHC data, with $m_{\tilde{q}} \lsim 1$ TeV, and one of the above superpartner mass hierarchies, our estimate of $S/\sqrt{B}$ of the Higgs signal is sufficiently high that the $b\bar{b}$ mode can become the discovery mode of the lightest Higgs boson of the MSSM.

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arXiv2010

CP violation in B_s mixing from heavy Higgs exchange

The anomalous dimuon charge asymmetry reported by the D0 Collaboration may be due to the tree-level exchange of some spin-0 particles that mediate CP violation in B_s-\bar{B}_s meson mixing. We show that for a range of couplings and masses, the heavy neutral states in a two Higgs doublet model can generate a large charge asymmetry. This range is natural in "uplifted supersymmetry", and may enhance the B^- -> tau nu and B_s -> mu^+ mu^- decay rates. However, we point out that on general grounds the reported central value of the charge asymmetry requires new physics not only in B_s-\bar{B}_s mixing but also in ΔB = 1 transitions or in B_d-\bar{B}_d mixing.

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arXiv2009

Discovering the Higgs Boson in New Physics Events using Jet Substructure

We present a novel method to discover the Higgs boson in new physics event samples at the LHC. Our technique applies to broad classes of models where the Higgs has a significant branching fraction to b-bbar. We exploit the recently developed techniques for discovering a boosted Higgs using jet substructure. Our requirements of new physics are quite general: there must be features in the new physics event sample that allow a clean separation from standard model background, and there should be Higgs bosons produced in association with the new physics. We demonstrate that this method superbly finds and identifies the lightest Higgs boson in the minimal supersymmetric standard model. We focus on two case studies with a gravitino LSP, however, generalizations to other LSPs and to other models of new physics are also briefly discussed. In some circumstances, discovery of the lightest Higgs is possible well before conventional search strategies uncover convincing evidence.

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arXiv2009

An Effective Lagrangian for Low-Scale Technicolor

We present an effective Lagrangian for low-scale technicolor. It describes the interactions at energies near the mass of the lowest-lying bound states of the lightest technifermion doublet -- the spin-one $ρ_T,ω_T, a_T, f_T$ and the corresponding technipions $π_T$. This Lagrangian is intended to put on firmer ground the technicolor straw-man phenomenology used for collider searches of low-scale technicolor. The technivectors are described using the hidden local symmetry (HLS) formalism of Bando et al. The Lagrangian is based on $SU(2)\otimes U(1)\otimes U(2)_L \otimes U(2)_R$, where $SU(2)\otimes U(1)$ is the electroweak gauge group and $U(2)_L \otimes U(2)_R$ is the HLS gauge group. Special attention is paid to the higher-derivative standard HLS and Wess-Zumino-Witten interactions needed to describe radiative and other decays of the $a_T$ and $ρ_T/ω_T$, respectively.

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arXiv2009

Mass-Matching in Higgsless

Modern extra-dimensional Higgsless scenarios rely on a mass-matching between fermionic and bosonic KK resonances to evade constraints from precision electroweak measurements. After analyzing all of the Tevatron and LEP bounds on these so-called Cured Higgsless scenarios, we study their LHC signatures and explore how to identify the mass-matching mechanism, the key to their viability. We find singly and pair produced fermionic resonances show up as clean signals with 2 or 4 leptons and 2 hard jets, while neutral and charged bosonic resonances are visible in the dilepton and leptonic WZ channels, respectively. A measurement of the resonance masses from these channels shows the matching necessary to achieve $S\simeq 0$. Moreover, a large single production of KK-fermion resonances is a clear indication of compositeness of SM quarks. Discovery reach is below 10 fb$^{-1}$ of luminosity for resonances in the 700 GeV range.

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arXiv2009

Squark Flavor Violation at the LHC

We consider the prospects for measuring squark flavor violation through the signal of single top production at the LHC. We study this signal in the context of R-symmetric supersymmetry, which allows for large flavor violation in the squark sector, however the results can also be generalized to the MSSM. The single top signal arises from squark pair production in which one squark decays to a top and gaugino, whereas the other squark decays to a non-top quark and gaugino. We study three decay patterns: (I) squark decay into a quark and neutralino LSP; (II) squark decay into a quark and neutralino NLSP, with subsequent decay of the NLSP to a photon and gravitino; (III) squark decay into a quark and chargino NLSP, with subsequent decay of the NLSP to a H^\pm/W^\pm and gravitino. Case II is the most promising, when the NLSP decay is prompt, since every event contains two hard photons that can be used to tag the events, reducing the background to a negligible level. Case I is promising if the neutralino LSP is bino-like. We carefully consider large SM backgrounds and identify a series of cuts to isolate the signal. Case III can occur in the MRSSM with Higgsino-like lightest gauginos. Due to the large Higgs coupling, squarks preferentially decay to top quarks, substantially reducing the potential flavor violating signal. Nevertheless, the flavor violating signal might still be identifiable if the chargino NLSP is long-lived.

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arXiv2008

Technicolor Signals at the LHC

In this lecture I give an introduction to technicolor and extended technicolor theories. I discuss the issues models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking struggle with and propose how non QCD-like dynamics, such as a `walking' or nearly-conformal technicolor coupling, can invalidate many conventional arguments against technicolor. I provide a short discussion of AdS/CFT-inspired extra-dimensional (Higgsless) models and their similarities and differences with older 4D technicolor models. To conclude, a summary of some possible LHC signatures is given.

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arXiv2008

Supersymmetry with a Chargino NLSP and Gravitino LSP

We demonstrate that the lightest chargino can be lighter than the lightest neutralino in supersymmetric models with Dirac gaugino masses as well as within a curious parameter region of the MSSM. Given also a light gravitino, such as from low scale supersymmetry breaking, this mass hierarchy leads to an unusual signal where every superpartner cascades down to a chargino that decays into an on-shell W and a gravitino, possibly with a macroscopic chargino track. We clearly identify the region of parameters where this signal can occur. We find it is generic in the context of the R-symmetric supersymmetric standard model, whereas it essentially only occurs in the MSSM when sign(M1) is not equal to sign(M2) = sign(μ) and tan(beta) is small. We briefly comment on the search strategies for this signal at the LHC.

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arXiv2008

Describing viable technicolor scenarios

We construct an effective lagrangian for new strong interactions at the LHC, including as a first step the two lightest triplets of spin-1 resonances. Our parametrization is general enough to allow for previously unstudied spectrum and couplings. Among available frameworks to describe the spin-1 sector, we rely on an extra-dimensional description. Our approach limits the number of parameters, yet is versatile enough to describe the phenomenology of a wide range of new scenarios of strong electroweak symmetry breaking.

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arXiv2007

Higgs Cascade Decays to $γγ+ \jet \jet$ at the LHC

Extra light electroweak singlets can dramatically alter Higgs decays by introducing additional decay modes, $h\to aa$. In scenarios where cascade decays $h\to aa\to 4X, X\ne b,\bar b$ dominate, the Higgs will escape conventional searches and may be as light as $82 \gev$. In this paper we investigate the discovery potential of the mode $h\to aa\to 2γ2g$ through direct ($pp\to h$) and associated ($pp \to W^{\pm}h$) Higgs production at the LHC. Our search covers all kinematically allowed singlet masses for $\sim 80 \gev \le m_h < 160 \gev$ and assumes an integrated luminosity $\CL = 300 {\rm fb}^{-1}$. We find associated production, despite a smaller production cross section, to be the better mode. A branching ratio $BR(h\to 2γ2g) \cong 0.04$ is sufficient for discovery in the bulk of our search window. Given the same luminosity and branching ratio 0.04, direct detection fails to discover a Higgs anywhere in our search window. Discovery in the limited region $m_h > 120 \gev, m_a \sim 25 \gev$ is possible with direct production when the branching ratio is $\simge 0.06$.

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