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Gilad Perez

Publications and source records attributed to Gilad Perez.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources
arXiv2009

Brief Introduction to Flavor Physics

We consider the standard model (SM) quark flavor sector. We study its structure in a spurionic, symmetry oriented approach. The SM picture of flavor and CP violation is now experimentally verified, hence strong bounds on beyond the SM flavor structure follow. We show how to parametrically derive such bounds, in a model independent manner, via minimal flavor violation power counting. This min-review summarizes lectures given at the ISSCSMB '08 international school. It aims to give basic tools to understand how flavor and CP violation occur in the SM and its extensions. It should be particularly useful for non-expert students who have mastered other aspects of the SM dynamics.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Lessons from Recent Measurements of D-\bar D Mixing

An impressive progress in measurements of the D-\bar D mixing parameters has been made in recent years. We explore the implications of these measurements to models of new physics, especially in view of recent upper bounds on the amount of CP violation. We update the constraints on non-renormalizable four-quark operators. We show that the experiments are close to probing minimally flavor violating models with large tan beta. The data challenge models with a scale of order TeV where the flavor violation in the down sector is suppressed by alignment and, in particular, certain classes of supersymmetric models and of warped extra dimension models.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Flavor Alignment via Shining in RS

We present a class of warped extra dimensional models whose flavor violating interactions are much suppressed compared to the usual anarchic case due to flavor alignment. Such suppression can be achieved in models where part of the global flavor symmetry is gauged in the bulk and broken in a controlled manner. We show that the bulk masses can be aligned with the down type Yukawa couplings by an appropriate choice of bulk flavon field representations and TeV brane dynamics. This alignment could reduce the flavor violating effects to levels which allow for a Kaluza-Klein scale as low as 2-3 TeV, making the model observable at the LHC. However, the up-type Yukawa couplings on the IR brane, which are bounded from below by recent bounds on CP violation in the D system, induce flavor misalignment radiatively. Off-diagonal down-type Yukawa couplings and kinetic mixings for the down quarks are both consequences of this effect. These radiative Yukawa corrections can be reduced by raising the flavon VEV on the IR brane (at the price of some moderate tuning), or by extending the Higgs sector. The flavor changing effects from the radiatively induced Yukawa mixing terms are at around the current upper experimental bounds. We also show the generic bounds on UV-brane induced flavor violating effects, and comment on possible additional flavor violations from bulk flavor gauge bosons and the bulk Yukawa scalars.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Spin Determination via Third Generation Cascade Decays

Once new particles are discovered at the LHC and their masses are measured, it will be of crucial importance to determine their spin, in order to identify the underlying new physics model. We investigate the method first suggested by Barr and later extended by others to distinguish between Supersymmetry and alternative models, e.g. Universal Extra Dimensions, in a certain cascade decay. This method uses invariant mass distributions of the outgoing Standard Model particles to measure the spin of intermediate particles, by exploiting the quark/anti-quark asymmetry of the LHC as a pp collider, which is limited for first generation quarks. In this work, we suggest instead to measure the charge of the outgoing quark, in case it is a third generation quark. The resulting asymmetry for a bottom quark is similar to the previous method, while it is independent of hadronic uncertainties. Furthermore, for a top quark, the asymmetry allows better distinction between the models, as demonstrated by a quantitative analysis of model discrimination. We also show that the top's decay products can be used instead of the top itself, when the reconstruction of the top momentum is difficult to accomplish, and still provide information about the spin.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Combining Direct & Indirect Kaon CP Violation to Constrain the Warped KK Scale

The Randall-Sundrum (RS) framework has a built in protection against flavour violation, but still generically suffers from little CP problems. The most stringent bound on flavour violation is due to epsilon_K, which is inversely proportional to the fundamental Yukawa scale. Hence the RS epsilon_K problem can be ameliorated by effectively increasing the Yukawa scale with a bulk Higgs, as was recently observed in arXiv:0810.1016. We point out that incorporating the constraint from epsilon'/ε_K, which is proportional to the Yukawa scale, raises the lower bound on the KK scale compared to previous analyses. The bound is conservatively estimated to be 5.5 TeV, choosing the most favorable Higgs profile, and 7.5 TeV in the two-site limit. Relaxing this bound might require some form of RS flavour alignment. As a by-product of our analysis, we also provide the leading order flavour structure of the theory with a bulk Higgs.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Testing New Indirect CP Violation

If new CP violating physics contributes to neutral meson mixing, but its contribution to CP violation in decay amplitudes is negligible, then there is a model independent relation between four (generally independent) observables related to the mixing: The mass splitting (x), the width splitting (y), the CP violation in mixing (1-|q/p|), and the CP violation in the interference of decays with and without mixing (ϕ). For the four neutral meson systems, this relation can be written in a simple approximate form: y tanϕ~ x(|q/p|-1). This relation is already tested (successfully) in the neutral K system. It provides predictions for the B_s and D systems. The success or failure of these relations will probe the physics that is responsible for the CP violation.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

General Minimal Flavor Violation

A model independent study of the minimal flavor violation (MFV) framework is presented, where the only sources of flavor breaking at low energy are the up and down Yukawa matrices. Two limits are identified for the Yukawa coupling expansion: linear MFV, where it is truncated at the leading terms, and nonlinear MFV, where such a truncation is not possible due to large third generation Yukawa couplings. These are then resummed to all orders using non-linear sigma-model techniques familiar from models of collective breaking. Generically, flavor diagonal CP violating (CPV) sources in the UV can induce O(1) CPV in processes involving third generation quarks. Due to a residual U(2) symmetry, the extra CPV in B_d-\bar B_d mixing is bounded by CPV in B_s-\bar B_s mixing. If operators with right-handed light quarks are subdominant, the extra CPV is equal in the two systems, and is negligible in processes involving only the first two generations. We find large enhancements in the up type sector, both in CPV in D-\bar D mixing and in top flavor violation.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Natural Neutrino Masses and Mixings from Warped Geometry

We demonstrate that flavor symmetries in warped geometry can provide a natural explanation for large mixing angles and economically explain the distinction between the quark and lepton flavor sectors. We show how to naturally generate Majorana neutrino masses assuming a gauged a U(1)_{B-L} symmetry broken in the UV that generates see-saw masses of the right size. This model requires lepton minimal flavor violation (LMFV) in which only Yukawa matrices (present on the IR brane) break the flavor symmetries. The symmetry-breaking is transmitted to charged lepton bulk mass parameters as well to generate the hierarchy of charged lepton masses. With LMFV, a GIM-like mechanism prevents dangerous flavor-changing processes for charged leptons and permits flavor-changing processes only in the presence of the neutrino Yukawa interaction and are therefore suppressed when the overall scale for the neutrino Yukawa matrix is slightly smaller than one in units of the curvature. In this case the theory can be consistent with a cutoff of 10 TeV and 3 TeV Kaluza-Klein masses.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Probing Dark Matter Dynamics via Earthborn Neutrinos at IceCube

Recent results from PAMELA and ATIC hint that O(TeV) dark matter (DM) is annihilating, in our galactic neighborhood, predominantly to leptons. The annihilation rate is much larger now than during freeze-out, one possible explanation of this is a low-velocity enhancement of the annihilation cross section. In a model independent fashion, we show that in this case the rate of neutrino emission from the Earth, due to DM annihilation, may be greatly enhanced while the rate from the Sun is unaltered. There is potential for IceCube to see these earthborn neutrinos while the same parameter space will be soon covered by direct detection experiments. Combining these near-future data will allow extraction of valuable information about the DM sector dynamics.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

Phenomenology of SUSY with scalar sequestering

The defining feature of scalar sequestering is that the MSSM squark and slepton masses as well as all entries of the scalar Higgs mass matrix vanish at some high scale. This ultraviolet boundary condition - scalar masses vanish while gaugino and Higgsino masses are unsuppressed - is independent of the supersymmetry breaking mediation mechanism. It is the result of renormalization group scaling from approximately conformal strong dynamics in the hidden sector. We review the mechanism of scalar sequestering and prove that the same dynamics which suppresses scalar soft masses and the B_mu term also drives the Higgs soft masses to -|mu|^2. Thus the supersymmetric contribution to the Higgs mass matrix from the mu-term is exactly canceled by the soft masses. Scalar sequestering has two tell-tale predictions for the superpartner spectrum in addition to the usual gaugino mediation predictions: Higgsinos are much heavier (mu > TeV) than scalar Higgses (m_A ~ few hundred GeV), and third generation scalar masses are enhanced because of new positive contributions from Higgs loops.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

Top Jets at the LHC

We study the reconstruction of high p_T hadronically-decaying top quarks at the LHC. The main challenge in identifying energetic top quarks is that the decay products become increasingly collimated. This reduces the efficacy of conventional methods that exploit the topology of the top decay chain. We focus on the cases where the decay products of the top quark are reconstructed as a single jet, a "top-jet". The most basic "top-tag" method based on jet mass measurement is considered in detail. To analyze the top-tagging method, theoretical and experimental aspects of the QCD jet background are examined. Based on QCD factorization, we derive a simple analytic approximation for the shape of the QCD jet mass spectrum. We observe a good agreement with the Monte Carlo simulation. We consider high-p_T t\bar{t} production in the Standard Model as an example, and show that our theoretical QCD jet mass distributions can efficiently characterize the background via sideband analyses. We show that with 25 fb^{-1} of data, our approach allows us to resolve top-jets with p_T $\ge$ 1 TeV from the QCD background, and about 1.5 TeV top-jets with 100 fb^{-1}, without relying on b-tagging. To further improve the significance we consider jet shapes (analyzed in 0807.0234 [hep-ph]), which resolve the substructure of energy flow inside cone jets. A method of measuring top quark polarization by using the b-quark p_T is also presented. The main advantages of our approach are: (i) the mass distributions are driven by first principle calculations, instead of relying solely on Monte Carlo simulation; (ii) for high p_T jets (p_T $\ge$1 TeV), IR-safe jet shape variables are robust against detector resolution effects. Our analysis is applicable to other boosted massive particles such as the electroweak gauge bosons and the Higgs.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

Deciphering top flavor violation at the LHC with B factories

The LHC will have unprecedented sensitivity to flavor-changing neutral current (FCNC) top quark decays, whose observation would be a clear sign of physics beyond the standard model. Although many details of top flavor violation are model dependent, the standard model gauge symmetries relate top FCNCs to other processes, which are strongly constrained by existing data. We study these constraints in a model independent way, using a low energy effective theory from which the new physics is integrated out. We consider the most important operators which contribute to top FCNCs and analyze the current constraints on them. We find that the data rule out top FCNCs at a level observable at the LHC due to most of the operators comprising left-handed first or second generation quark fields, while there remains a substantial window for top decays mediated by operators with right-handed charm or up quarks. If FCNC top decays are observed at the LHC, such an analysis may help decipher the underlying physics.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

Substructure of high-p_T Jets at the LHC

We study high-pt jets from QCD and from highly-boosted massive particles such as tops, W, Z and Higgs, and argue that infrared-safe observables can help reduce QCD backgrounds. Jets from QCD are characterized by different patterns of energy flow compared to the products of highly-boosted heavy particle decays, and we employ a variety of jet shapes, observables restricted to energy flow within a jet, to explore this difference. Results from Monte Carlo generators and arguments based on perturbation theory support the discriminating power of the shapes we refer to as planar flow and angularities. We emphasize that for massive jets, these and other observables can be analyzed perturbatively.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

The Little Randall-Sundrum Model at the Large Hadron Collider

We present a predictive warped model of flavor that is cut off at an ultraviolet scale O(10^3) TeV. This "Little Randall-Sundrum (LRS)" model is a volume-truncation, by a factor $y \approx 6$, of the RS scenario and is holographically dual to dynamics with number of colors larger by $y$. The LRS couplings between Kaluza-Klein states and the Standard Model fields, including the proton constituents, are explicitly calculable without ad hoc assumptions. Assuming separate gauge and flavor dynamics, a number of unwanted contributions to precision electroweak, $Z b\bar b$ and flavor observables are suppressed in the LRS framework, compared with the corresponding RS case. An important consequence of the LRS truncation, independent of precise details, is a significant enhancement of the clean (golden) di-lepton LHC signals, by O(y^3), due to a larger "$ρ$-photon" mixing and a smaller inter-composite coupling.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2007

Flavor from Minimal Flavor Violation & a Viable Randall-Sundrum Model

We present a variant of the warped extra dimension, Randall-Sundrum (RS), framework which is based on five dimensional (5D) minimal flavor violation (MFV), in which the only sources of flavor breaking are two 5D anarchic Yukawa matrices. The Yukawa matrices also control the bulk masses, which are responsible for the resulting flavor structure and mass hierarchy in the low energy theory. An interesting result of this set-up is that at low energies the theory flows to next to MFV model where flavor violation is dominantly coming from the third generation. Low energy flavor violation is further suppressed by a single parameter that dials the amount of violation in the up or down sector. There is therefore a sharp limit in which there is no flavor violation in the down type quark sector which, remarkably, is favored when we fit for the flavor parameters. This mechanism is used to eliminate the current RS flavor and CP problem even with a Kaluza-Klein scale as low as 2 TeV! Our construction also suggests that economic supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric, strong dynamic-based, flavor models may be built based on the same concepts.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2007

Predicting the Cosmological Constant from the Causal Entropic Principle

We compute the expected value of the cosmological constant in our universe from the Causal Entropic Principle. Since observers must obey the laws of thermodynamics and causality, the principle asserts that physical parameters are most likely to be found in the range of values for which the total entropy production within a causally connected region is maximized. Despite the absence of more explicit anthropic criteria, the resulting probability distribution turns out to be in excellent agreement with observation. In particular, we find that dust heated by stars dominates the entropy production, demonstrating the remarkable power of this thermodynamic selection criterion. The alternative approach - weighting by the number of "observers per baryon" - is less well-defined, requires problematic assumptions about the nature of observers, and yet prefers values larger than present experimental bounds.

hep-th↗
arXiv2007

LHC Signals for Warped Electroweak Neutral Gauge Bosons

We study signals at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for Kaluza-Klein (KK) excitations of the electroweak gauge bosons in the framework with the Standard Model (SM) gauge and fermion fields propagating in a warped extra dimension. Such a framework addresses both the Planck-weak and flavor hierarchy problems of the SM. Unlike the often studied Z' cases, in this framework, there are three neutral gauge bosons due to the underlying SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R x U(1)_X gauge group in the bulk. Furthermore, couplings of these KK states to light quarks and leptons are suppressed, whereas those to top and bottom quarks are enhanced compared to the SM gauge couplings. Therefore, the production of light quark and lepton states is suppressed relative to other beyond the SM constructions, and the fermionic decays of these states are dominated by the top and bottom quarks, which are, though, overwhelmed by KK gluons dominantly decaying into them. However, as we emphasize in this paper, decays of these states to longitudinal W, Z and Higgs are also enhanced similarly to the case of top and bottom quarks. We show that the W, Z and Higgs final states can give significant sensitivity at the LHC to 2 (3) TeV KK scale with an integrated luminosity of 100 invfb (1 invab). Since current theoretical framework(s) favor KK masses greater than about 3 TeV, luminosity upgrade of LHC is likely to be crucial in observing these states.

hep-ph↗