arXiv subjects

Christopher B. Verhaaren

Publications and source records attributed to Christopher B. Verhaaren.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Spurious Poles in the Scattering of Electric and Magnetic Charges

Theories with both electric and magnetic charges ("mutually non-local" theories) have several major obstacles to calculating scattering amplitudes. Even when the interaction arises through the kinetic mixing of two, otherwise independent, U(1)'s, so that all low-energy interactions are perturbative, difficulties remain: using a self-dual, local formalism leads to spurious poles at any finite order in perturbation theory. Correct calculations must show how the spurious poles cancel in observable scattering amplitudes. Consistency requires that one type of charge is confined as a result of one of the U(1)'s being broken. Here we show how the constraints of confinement and parity conservation on observable processes manages to cancel the spurious poles in scattering and pair production amplitudes, paving the way for systematic studies of the experimental signatures of "dark" electric-magnetic processes. Along the way we demonstrate some novel effects in electric-magnetic interactions, including that the amplitude for single photon production of magnetic particles by electric particles vanishes.

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arXiv2020

Dynamical Evidence For a Fifth Force Explanation of the ATOMKI Nuclear Anomalies

Recent anomalies in $^8$Be and $^4$He nuclear decays can be explained by postulating a fifth force mediated by a new boson $X$. The distributions of both transitions are consistent with the same $X$ mass, 17 MeV, providing kinematic evidence for a single new particle explanation. In this work, we examine whether the new results also provide dynamical evidence for a new particle explanation, that is, whether the observed decay rates of both anomalies can be described by a single hypothesis for the $X$ boson's interactions. We consider the observed $^8$Be and $^4$He excited nuclei, as well as a $^{12}$C excited nucleus; together these span the possible $J^P$ quantum numbers up to spin 1. For each transition, we determine whether scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, or axial vector $X$ particles can mediate the decay, and we construct the leading operators in a nuclear physics effective field theory that describes them. Assuming parity conservation, the scalar case is excluded and the pseudoscalar case is highly disfavored. Remarkably, however, the protophobic vector gauge boson, first proposed to explain only the $^8$Be anomaly, also explains the $^4$He anomaly within experimental uncertainties. We predict signal rates for other closely related nuclear measurements, which, if confirmed, will provide overwhelming evidence that a fifth force has been discovered.

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arXiv2020

Breaking Mirror Twin Color

We investigate simple extensions of the Mirror Twin Higgs model in which the twin color gauge symmetry and the discrete $Z_2$ mirror symmetry are spontaneously broken. This is accomplished in a minimal way by introducing a single new colored triplet, sextet, or octet scalar field and its twin along with a suitable scalar potential. This spontaneous $Z_2$ breaking allows for a phenomenologically viable alignment of the electroweak vacuum, and leads to dramatic differences between the visible and mirror sectors with regard to the residual gauge symmetries at low energies, color confinement scales, and particle spectra. In particular, several of our models feature a remnant $SU(2)$ or $SO(3)$ twin color gauge symmetry with a very low confinement scale in comparison to $Λ_{\rm QCD}$. Furthermore, couplings between the colored scalar and matter provide a new dynamical source of twin fermion masses, and due to the mirror symmetry, these lead to a variety of correlated visible sector effects that can be probed through precision measurements and collider searches.

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arXiv2020

A Minimal Model for Neutral Naturalness and pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone Dark Matter

We outline a scenario where both the Higgs and a complex scalar dark matter candidate arise as the pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons of breaking a global $SO(7)$ symmetry to $SO(6)$. The novelty of our construction is that the symmetry partners of the Standard Model top-quark are charged under a hidden color group and not the usual $SU(3)_c$. Consequently, the scale of spontaneous symmetry breaking and the masses of the top partners can be significantly lower than those with colored top partners. Taking these scales to be lower at once makes the model more natural and also reduces the induced non-derivative coupling between the Higgs and the dark matter. Indeed, natural realizations of this construction describe simple thermal WIMP dark matter which is stable under a global $U(1)_D$ symmetry. We show how the Large Hadron Collider along with current and next generation dark matter experiments will explore the most natural manifestations of this framework.

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arXiv2019

Detecting Dark Matter with Aharonov-Bohm

While the evidence for dark matter continues to grow, the nature of the dark matter remains a mystery. A dark $U(1)_D$ gauge theory can have a small kinetic mixing with the visible photon which provides a portal to the dark sector. Magnetic monopoles of the dark $U(1)_D$ can obtain small magnetic couplings to our photon through this kinetic mixing. This coupling is only manifest below the mass of the dark photon; at these scales the monopoles are bound together by tubes of dark magnetic flux. These flux tubes can produce phase shifts in Aharonov-Bohm type experiments. We outline how this scenario might be realized, examine the existing constraints, and quantify the experimental sensitivity required to detect magnetic dipole dark matter in this novel way.

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arXiv2019

Breaking Mirror Twin Hypercharge

The Twin Higgs scenario stabilizes the Higgs mass through an approximate global symmetry and has remained natural in the face of increasingly stringent LHC bounds on colored top partners. Two basic structural questions in this framework concern the nature of the twin hypercharge gauge symmetry and the origin of the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry breaking needed to achieve the correct vacuum alignment. Both questions are addressed in a simple extension of the Mirror Twin Higgs model with an exact $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry and a scalar field that spontaneously breaks both twin hypercharge and $\mathbb{Z}_2$. Due to the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry and an approximate $U(2)$ symmetry in the potential, a new hypercharge scalar appears in the visible sector and, like the Higgs, is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson with a weak-scale mass. Couplings between the hypercharge scalar and matter provide a new dynamical source of twin sector fermion masses. Depending on the nature and size of these couplings, a variety of experimental signatures may arise, including quark and lepton flavor violation, neutrino masses and mixings as well as direct collider probes of the hypercharged scalar. These signals are correlated with the twin matter spectrum, which can differ dramatically from the visible one, including dynamical realizations of fraternal-like scenarios.

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arXiv2019

Light Hidden Mesons through the Z Portal

Confining hidden sectors are an attractive possibility for physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). They are especially motivated by neutral naturalness theories, which reconcile the lightness of the Higgs with the strong constraints on colored top partners. We study hidden QCD with one light quark flavor, coupled to the SM via effective operators suppressed by the mass $M$ of new electroweak-charged particles. This effective field theory is inspired by a new tripled top model of supersymmetric neutral naturalness. The hidden sector is accessed primarily via the $Z$ and Higgs portals, which also mediate the decays of the hidden mesons back to SM particles. We find that exotic $Z$ decays at the LHC and future $Z$ factories provide the strongest sensitivity to this scenario, and we outline a wide array of searches. For a larger hidden confinement scale $Λ\sim O(10)\;\mathrm{GeV}$, the exotic $Z$ decays dominantly produce final states with two hidden mesons. ATLAS and CMS can probe their prompt decays up to $M\sim 3\;\mathrm{TeV}$ at the high luminosity phase, while a TeraZ factory would extend the reach up to $M\sim 20\;\mathrm{TeV}$ through a combination of searches for prompt and displaced signals. For smaller $Λ\sim O(1)\;\mathrm{GeV}$, the $Z$ decays to the hidden sector produce jets of hidden mesons, which are long-lived. LHCb will be a powerful probe of these emerging jets. Furthermore, the light hidden vector meson could be detected by proposed dark photon searches.

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arXiv2019

Radiation reaction, over-reaction, and under-reaction

The subject of radiation reaction in classical electromagnetism remains controversial over 120 years after the pioneering work of Lorentz. We give a simple but rigorous treatment of the subject at the textbook level that explains the apparent paradoxes that are much discussed in the literature on the subject. We first derive the equation of motion of a charged particle from conservation of energy and momentum, which includes the self-force term. We then show that this theory is unstable if charged particles are pointlike: the energy is unbounded from below, and charged particles self-accelerate (`over-react') due to their negative `bare' mass. This theory clearly does not describe our world, but we show that these instabilities are absent if the particle has a finite size larger than its classical radius. For such finite-size charged particles, the effects of radiation reaction can be computed in a systematic expansion in the size of the particle. The leading term in this expansion is the reduced-order Abraham-Lorentz equation of motion, which has no stability problems. We also discuss the apparent paradox that a particle with constant acceleration radiates, but does not suffer radiation reaction (`under-reaction'). Along the way, we introduce the ideas of renormalization and effective theories, which are important in many areas of modern theoretical physics. We hope that this will be a useful addition to the literature that will remove some of the air of mystery and paradox surrounding the subject.

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arXiv2019

Collider Signals of the Mirror Twin Higgs through the Hypercharge Portal

We consider the collider signals arising from kinetic mixing between the hypercharge gauge boson of the Standard Model and its twin counterpart in the Mirror Twin Higgs model, in the framework in which the twin photon is massive. Through the mixing, the Standard Model fermions acquire charges under the mirror photon and the mirror Z boson. We determine the current experimental bounds on this scenario, and show that the mixing can be large enough to discover both the twin photon and the twin Z at the LHC, or at a future 100 TeV hadron collider, with dilepton resonances being a particularly conspicuous signal. We show that, in simple models, measuring the masses of both the mirror photon and mirror Z, along with the corresponding event rates in the dilepton channel, overdetermines the system, and can be used to test these theories.

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arXiv2019

Composite Twin Dark Matter

We consider Fraternal Twin Higgs models where the twin bottom quark, $b'$, is much heavier than the twin confinement scale. In this limit aspects of quark bound states, like the mass and binding energy, can be accurately calculated. We show that in this regime, dark matter can be primarily made of twin baryons containing $b' b' b'$ or, when twin hypercharge is gauged, twin atoms, composed of a baryon bound to a twin $τ'$ lepton. We find that there are significant regions of parameter space which are allowed by current constraints but within the realm of detection in the near future. The case with twin atoms can alleviate the tension between dark matter properties inferred from dwarf galaxies and clusters.

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arXiv2019

Resolving the Weinberg Paradox with Topology

Long ago Weinberg showed, from first principles, that the amplitude for a single photon exchange between an electric current and a magnetic current violates Lorentz invariance. The obvious conclusion at the time was that monopoles were not allowed in quantum field theory. Since the discovery of topological monopoles there has thus been a paradox. On the one hand, topological monopoles are constructed in Lorentz invariant quantum field theories, while on the other hand, the low-energy effective theory for such monopoles will reproduce Weinberg's result. We examine a toy model where both electric and magnetic charges are perturbatively coupled and show how soft-photon resummation for hard scattering exponentiates the Lorentz violating pieces to a phase that is the covariant form of the Aharonov-Bohm phase due to the Dirac string. The modulus of the scattering amplitudes (and hence observables) are Lorentz invariant, and when Dirac charge quantization is imposed the amplitude itself is also Lorentz invariant. For closed paths there is a topological component of the phase that relates to aspects of 4D topological quantum field theory.

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arXiv2019

Discovering the Twin Higgs Boson with Displaced Decays

The Twin Higgs mechanism keeps the scalar sector of the Standard Model (SM) natural while remaining consistent with the non-observation of new colored particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In this construction the heavy twin Higgs boson provides a portal between the SM particles and the twin sector, but is quite challenging to discover at colliders. In the Fraternal Twin Higgs setup, where light twin quarks are absent, we study a novel discovery channel for the heavy twin Higgs boson by considering its decay to a pair of light Higgs bosons, one of which subsequently decays to glueball states in the twin sector, leading to displaced vertex signatures. We estimate the sensitivity of existing LHC searches in this channel, and assess the discovery potential of the high luminosity (HL) LHC. We show that the glueballs probed by these searches are outside the sensitivity of existing searches for exotic decays of the light Higgs boson. In addition, we demonstrate that the displaced signals we consider probe a region of heavy Higgs masses beyond the reach of prompt signals. We also comment on the possibility of probing the input parameters of the microscopic physics and providing a way to test the Twin Higgs mechanism with this channel.

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arXiv2018

Dark Monopoles and SL(2,Z) Duality

We explore kinetic mixing between two Abelian gauge theories that have both electric and magnetic charges. When one of the photons becomes massive, novel effects arise in the low-energy effective theory, including the failure of Dirac charge quantization as particles from one sector obtain parametrically small couplings to the photon of the other. We maintain a manifest SL(2,Z) duality throughout our analysis, which is the diagonal subgroup of the dualities of the two un-mixed gauge theories.

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arXiv2018

Singleton Portals to the Twin Sector

The mirror twin Higgs framework allows for a natural Higgs mass while being consistent with collider bounds on colored symmetry partners to standard model quarks. This mechanism relies crucially on a discrete symmetry which relates each standard model field to a mirror partner. These partners are charged under gauge groups identical to, but distinct from, those in the standard model. The minimal twin Higgs scenario provides only one low-energy connection between the visible and twin sectors, the light Higgs boson. We present a new class of portals connecting the two sectors, using fields that have 'no twin' partner under the discrete symmetry. Scalar, fermion, and vector states may provide such 'singleton' portals, each with unique features and experimental signatures. The vector portal, in particular, provides a variety of renormalizable interactions relevant for the LHC. We provide concrete constructions of these portals and determine their phenomenology and opportunities to probe the twin sector at the LHC. We also sketch a scenario in which the structure of the twin sector itself can be tested.

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arXiv2018

Singlet Scalar Top Partners from Accidental Supersymmetry

We present a model wherein the Higgs mass is protected from the quadratic one-loop top quark corrections by scalar particles that are complete singlets under the Standard Model (SM) gauge group. While bearing some similarity to Folded Supersymmetry, the construction is purely four dimensional and enjoys more parametric freedom, allowing electroweak symmetry breaking to occur easily. The cancelation of the top loop quadratic divergence is ensured by a $Z_3$ symmetry that relates the SM top sector and two hidden top sectors, each charged under its own hidden color group. In addition to the singlet scalars, the hidden sectors contain electroweak-charged supermultiplets below the TeV scale, which provide the main access to this model at colliders. The phenomenology presents both differences and similarities with respect to other realizations of neutral naturalness. Generally, the glueballs of hidden color have longer decay lengths. The production of hidden sector particles results in quirk or squirk bound states, which later annihilate. We survey the possible signatures and corresponding experimental constraints.

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arXiv2018

Testing the Scalar Sector of the Twin Higgs Model at Colliders

We consider Mirror Twin Higgs models in which the breaking of the global symmetry is realized linearly. In this scenario, the radial mode in the Higgs potential is present in the spectrum, and constitutes a second portal between the twin and SM sectors. We show that a study of the properties of this particle at colliders, when combined with precision measurements of the light Higgs, can be used to overdetermine the form of the scalar potential, thereby confirming that it possesses an enhanced global symmetry as dictated by the Twin Higgs mechanism. We find that, although the reach of the LHC for this state is limited, future linear colliders will be able to explore a significant part of the preferred parameter space, allowing the possibility of directly testing the Twin Higgs framework.

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arXiv2017

A Quirky Probe of Neutral Naturalness

We consider the signals arising from top partner pair production at the LHC as a probe of theories of Neutral Naturalness. We focus on scenarios in which top partners carry electroweak charges, such as Folded SUSY or the Quirky Little Higgs. In this class of theories the top partners are pair produced as quirky bound states, since they are charged under a mirror color group whose lightest states are hidden glueballs. The quirks promptly de-excite and annihilate into glueballs, which decay back to SM fermions via Higgs mixing. This can give rise to spectacular signatures at the LHC, such displaced decays, or high-multiplicity prompt production of many hard $\bar b b$ or $τ^+ τ^-$ pairs. We show that signals arising from top partner pair production constitute the primary discovery channel for this class of theories in most regions of parameter space, and might provide the only experimental probe of scenarios with sub-cm glueball decay lengths. The measurement of top partner masses and couplings, which could be used to test the neutral naturalness mechanism directly, is also a tantalizing possibility.

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arXiv2016

Discovering Uncolored Naturalness in Exotic Higgs Decays

Solutions to the hierarchy problem usually require top partners. In standard SUSY or composite Higgs theories, the partners carry SM color and are becoming increasingly constrained by LHC searches. However, theories like Folded SUSY (FS), Twin Higgs (TH) and Quirky Little Higgs (QLH) introduce uncolored top partners, which can be SM singlets or carry electroweak charge. Their small production cross section left doubt as to whether the LHC can effectively probe such scenarios. Typically, these partners are charged under their own mirror color gauge group. In FS and QLH, the absence of light mirror matter allows glueballs to form at the bottom of the mirror spectrum. This is also the case in some TH realizations. The Higgs can decay to these mirror glueballs, with the glueballs decaying into SM particles with potentially observable lifetimes. We undertake the first detailed study of this glueball signature and quantitatively demonstrate the discovery potential of uncolored naturalness via exotic Higgs decays at the LHC and a potential future 100 TeV collider. Our findings indicate that mirror glueballs are the smoking gun signature of natural FS and QLH type theories, in analogy to tree-level Higgs coupling shifts for the TH. We show that glueball masses in the $\sim$ 10-60 GeV mass range are theoretically preferred. Careful treatment of lifetime, mirror-hadronization and nonperturbative uncertainties is required to perform meaningful collider studies. We outline several new search strategies for exotic Higgs decays of the form $h\to XX \to 4f$ at the LHC, with $X$ having lifetimes in the $10 μm$ to $km$ range. We find that FS stops can be probed with masses up to 600 (1100) GeV at the LHC with 300 (3000) /fb of data, and TH top partners could be accessible with masses up to 900 (1500) GeV. This makes exotic Higgs decays the prime discovery channel for uncolored naturalness at the LHC.

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