arXiv subjects

Roberto Franceschini

Publications and source records attributed to Roberto Franceschini.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

A simple, yet subtle "invariance" of two-body decay kinematics

We study the two-body decay of a mother particle into a massless daughter. We further assume that the mother particle is unpolarized and has a generic boost distribution in the laboratory frame. In this case, we show analytically that the laboratory frame energy distribution of the massless decay product has a peak, whose location is identical to the (fixed) energy of that particle in the rest frame of the corresponding mother particle. Given its simplicity and "invariance" under variations of the boost distribution of the mother particle, our finding should be useful for the determination of masses of mother particles. In particular, we anticipate that such a procedure will then not require a full reconstruction of this two-body decay chain (or for that matter, information about the rest of the event). With this eventual goal in mind, we make a proposal for extracting the peak position by fitting the data to a well-motivated analytic function describing the shape of such energy distribution. This fitting function is then tested on the theoretical prediction for top quark pair production and its decay and it is found to be quite successful in this regard. As a proof of principle of the usefulness of our observation, we apply it for measuring the mass of the top quark at the LHC, using simulated data and including experimental effects.

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arXiv2015

Spot the stop with a b-tag

The LHC searches for light compressed stop squarks have resulted in considerable bounds in the case where the stop decays to a neutralino and a charm quark. However, in the case where the stop decays to a neutralino, a bottom quark and two fermions via an off-shell W-boson, there is currently a significant unconstrained region in the stop-neutralino mass plane, still allowing for stop masses in the range 90-140 GeV. In this paper we propose a new monojet-like search for light stops, optimized for the four-body decay mode, in which at least one $b$-tagged jet is required. We show that, already by using the existing 8 TeV LHC data set, such a search would cover the entire unconstrained region. Moreover, in the process of validating our tools against an ATLAS monojet search, we show that the existing limit can be extended to exclude also stop masses below 100 GeV.

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arXiv2015

Light stop squarks and b-tagging

A significant part of the parameter space for light stop squarks still remains unconstrained by collider searches. For both R-Parity Conserving (RPC) and R-Parity Violating (RPV) scenarios there are regions in which the stop mass is around or below the top quark mass that are particularly challenging experimentally. Here we review the status of light stop searches, both in RPC and RPV scenarios. We also propose strategies, generally based on exploiting b-tagging, to cover the unconstrained regions.

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arXiv2014

Using Energy Peaks to Measure New Particle Masses

We discussed in arXiv:1209.0772 that the laboratory frame distribution of the energy of a massless particle from a two-body decay at a hadron collider has a peak whose location is identical to the value of this daughter's (fixed) energy in the rest frame of the corresponding mother particle. For that result to hold we assumed that the mother is unpolarized and has a generic boost distribution in the laboratory frame. In this work we discuss how this observation can be applied for determination of masses of new particles, without requiring a full reconstruction of their decay chains or information about the rest of the event. We focus on a two-step cascade decay of a massive particle that has one invisible particle in the final state: C -> Bb -> Aab, where C, B and A are new particles of which A is invisible and a, b are visible particles. Combining the measurements of the peaks of energy distributions of a and b with that of the edge in their invariant mass distribution, we demonstrate that it is in principle possible to determine separately all three masses of the new particles, in particular, without using any measurement of missing transverse momentum. Furthermore, we show how the use of the peaks in an inclusive energy distribution is generically less affected by combinatorial issues as compared to other mass measurement strategies. For some simplified, yet interesting, scenarios we find that these combinatorial issues are absent altogether. As an example of this general strategy, we study SUSY models where gluino decays to an invisible lightest neutralino via an on-shell bottom squark. Taking into account the dominant backgrounds, we show how the mass of the bottom squark, the gluino and (for some class of spectra) that of the neutralino can be determined using this technique.

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arXiv2014

RPV stops bump off the background

We study the 8 TeV LHC reach on pair produced heavy flavored di-jet resonances. Motivated by theories of R-parity violation in supersymmetry we concentrate on a final state with two b-jets and two light jets. We exploit b-tagging to reject the background and discuss its importance at the trigger level to probe light stops. We present kinematical selections that can be used to isolate the signal as a bump in the mass distribution of the candidate resonances. We find that stops with R-parity violating couplings giving rise to fully hadronic final states can be observed in the current run of the LHC. Remarkably, the LHC can probe stop masses well within the range predicted by naturalness.

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arXiv2013

Resonance at 125 GeV: Higgs or Dilaton/Radion?

We consider the possibility that the new particle that has been observed at 125 GeV is not the Standard Model (SM) Higgs, but instead the dilaton associated with an approximate conformal symmetry that has been spontaneously broken. We focus on dilatons that arise from theories of technicolor, or from theories of the Higgs as a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB), that involve strong conformal dynamics in the ultraviolet. In the pNGB case, we are considering a framework where the Higgs particle is significantly heavier than the dilaton and has therefore not yet been observed. In each of the technicolor and pNGB scenarios, we study both the case when the SM fermions and gauge bosons are elementary, and the case when they are composites of the strongly interacting sector. Our analysis incorporates conformal symmetry violating effects, which are necessarily present since the dilaton is not massless, and is directly applicable to a broad class of models that stabilize the weak scale and involve strong conformal dynamics. Since the AdS/CFT correspondence relates the radion in Randall-Sundrum (RS) models to the dilaton, our results also apply to RS models with the SM fields localized on the infrared brane, or in the bulk. We identify the parameters that can be used to distinguish the dilatons associated with the several different classes of theories being considered from each other, and from the SM Higgs. We perform a fit to all the available data from several experiments and highlight the key observations to extract these parameters. We find that at present, both the technicolor and pNGB dilaton scenarios provide a good fit to the data, comparable to the SM Higgs. We indicate the future observations that will help to corroborate or falsify each scenario.

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arXiv2013

Natural Islands for a 125 GeV Higgs in the scale-invariant NMSSM

We study whether a 125 GeV standard model-like Higgs boson can be accommodated within the scale-invariant NMSSM in a way that is natural in all respects, i.e., not only is the stop mass and hence its loop contribution to Higgs mass of natural size, but we do not allow significant tuning of NMSSM parameters as well. We pursue as much as possible an analytic approach which gives clear insights on various ways to accommodate such a Higgs mass, while conducting complementary numerical analyses. We consider both scenarios with singlet-like state being heavier and lighter than SM-like Higgs. With A-terms being small, we find for the NMSSM to be perturbative up to GUT scale, it is not possible to get 125 GeV Higgs mass, which is true even if we tune parameters of NMSSM. If we allow some of the couplings to become non-perturbative below the GUT scale, then the non-tuned option implies that the singlet self-coupling, kappa, is larger than the singlet-Higgs coupling, lambda, which itself is order 1. This leads to a Landau pole for these couplings close to the weak scale, in particular below ~10^4 TeV. In both the perturbative and non-perturbative NMSSM, allowing large A_lambda, A_kappa gives "more room" to accommodate a 125 GeV Higgs, but a tuning of these A-terms may be needed. In our analysis we also conduct a careful study of the constraints on the parameter space from requiring global stability of the desired vacuum fitting a 125 GeV Higgs, which is complementary to existing literature. In particular, as the singlet-Higgs coupling lambda increases, vacuum stability becomes more serious of an issue.

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arXiv2012

Using Energy Peaks to Count Dark Matter Particles in Decays

We study the determination of the symmetry that stabilizes a dark matter (DM) candidate produced at colliders. Our question is motivated per se, and by several alternative symmetries that appear in models that provide a DM particle. To this end, we devise a strategy to determine whether a heavy mother particle decays into one visible massless particle and one or two DM particles. The counting of DM particles in these decays is relevant to distinguish the minimal choice of Z_2, from a Z_3, stabilization symmetry, under which the heavy particle and the DM are charged and the visible particle is not. Our method is novel in that it chiefly uses the peak of the energy spectrum of the visible particle and only secondarily uses the M_T2 endpoint of events in which the heavy mother particles are pair-produced. We present new theoretical results concerning the energy distribution of the decay products of a three-body decay, which are crucial for our method. To demonstrate the feasibility of our method in investigating the stabilization symmetry, we apply it in distinguishing the decay of a bottom quark partner into a b quark and one or two DM particles. The method can be applied generally to distinguish two- and three-body decays, irrespective of DM.

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arXiv2012

Bounds on TeV Seesaw Models from LHC Higgs Data

We derive bounds on the Dirac Yukawa couplings of the neutrinos in seesaw models using the recent Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data on Higgs decays for the case where the Standard Model singlet heavy leptons needed for the seesaw mechanism have masses in the 100 GeV range. Such scenarios with large Yukawa couplings are natural in Inverse Seesaw models since the small neutrino mass owes its origin to a small Majorana mass of a new set of singlet fermions. Large Yukawas with sub-TeV mass right-handed neutrinos are also possible for certain textures in Type-I seesaw models, so that the above bounds also apply to them. We find that the current Higgs data from the LHC can put bounds on both electron- and muon-type Yukawa couplings of order 10^{-2}.

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arXiv2012

Probing the Scattering of Equivalent Electroweak Bosons

We analyze the kinematic conditions under which the scattering of equivalent massive spin-1 vector bosons factorizes out of the complete process. In practice, we derive the conditions for the validity of the effective W approximation, proposed long ago but never established on a firm basis. We also present a parametric estimate of the corrections to the approximation and explicitly check its validity in two examples.

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arXiv2011

Solving the mu problem with a heavy Higgs boson

We discuss the generation of the mu-term in a class of supersymmetric models characterized by a low energy effective superpotential containing a term lambda S H_1 H_2 with a large coupling lambda~2. These models generically predict a lightest Higgs boson well above the LEP limit of 114 GeV and have been shown to be compatible with the unification of gauge couplings. Here we discuss a specific example where the superpotential has no dimensionful parameters and we point out the relation between the generated mu-term and the mass of the lightest Higgs boson. We discuss the fine-tuning of the model and we find that the generation of a phenomenologically viable mu-term fits very well with a heavy lightest Higgs boson and a low degree of fine-tuning. We discuss experimental constraints from collider direct searches, precision data, thermal relic dark matter abundance, and WIMP searches finding that the most natural region of the parameter space is still allowed by current experiments. We analyse bounds on the masses of the superpartners coming from Naturalness arguments and discuss the main signatures of the model for the LHC and future WIMP searches.

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arXiv2011

LHC bounds on large extra dimensions

We derive new dominant bounds on the coefficient of the effective operator generated by tree-level graviton exchange in large extra dimensions from pp \rightarrow jj data at LHC: M_T > 2.1TeV (ATLAS after 3.1/pb of integrated luminosity), M_T > 3.4 TeV (CMS after 36/pb), MT > 3.2 TeV (ATLAS after 36/pb). We clarify the role of on-shell graviton exchange and compare the full graviton amplitude to ATLAS data, setting bounds on the fundamental quantum-gravity scale.

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arXiv2011

Simplified Models for LHC New Physics Searches

This document proposes a collection of simplified models relevant to the design of new-physics searches at the LHC and the characterization of their results. Both ATLAS and CMS have already presented some results in terms of simplified models, and we encourage them to continue and expand this effort, which supplements both signature-based results and benchmark model interpretations. A simplified model is defined by an effective Lagrangian describing the interactions of a small number of new particles. Simplified models can equally well be described by a small number of masses and cross-sections. These parameters are directly related to collider physics observables, making simplified models a particularly effective framework for evaluating searches and a useful starting point for characterizing positive signals of new physics. This document serves as an official summary of the results from the "Topologies for Early LHC Searches" workshop, held at SLAC in September of 2010, the purpose of which was to develop a set of representative models that can be used to cover all relevant phase space in experimental searches. Particular emphasis is placed on searches relevant for the first ~50-500 pb-1 of data and those motivated by supersymmetric models. This note largely summarizes material posted at http://lhcnewphysics.org/, which includes simplified model definitions, Monte Carlo material, and supporting contacts within the theory community. We also comment on future developments that may be useful as more data is gathered and analyzed by the experiments.

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arXiv2011

Lopsided Gauge Mediation

It has been recently pointed out that the unavoidable tuning among supersymmetric parameters required to raise the Higgs boson mass beyond its experimental limit opens up new avenues for dealing with the so called $μ$-$B_μ$ problem of gauge mediation. In fact, it allows for accommodating, with no further parameter tuning, large values of $B_μ$ and of the other Higgs-sector soft masses, as predicted in models where both $μ$ and $B_μ$ are generated at one-loop order. This class of models, called Lopsided Gauge Mediation, offers an interesting alternative to conventional gauge mediation and is characterized by a strikingly different phenomenology, with light higgsinos, very large Higgs pseudoscalar mass, and moderately light sleptons. We discuss general parametric relations involving the fine-tuning of the model and various observables such as the chargino mass and the value of $\tanβ$. We build an explicit model and we study the constraints coming from LEP and Tevatron. We show that in spite of new interactions between the Higgs and the messenger superfields, the theory can remain perturbative up to very large scales, thus retaining gauge coupling unification.

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arXiv2010

Minimal Matter at the Large Hadron Collider

We classify all possible new U(1) x SU(2) x SU(3) multiplets that can couple to pairs of SM particles. Assuming that production of such new particles is dominated by their gauge interactions we study their signals at LHC, finding the following five main classes: i) lepto-quark 2l 2q signals; ii) di-lepton 4l signals; iii) di-quarks 4j signals, iv) heavy-lepton 2l 2V signals and v) heavy quarks 2j 2V signals, where V denotes heavy SM vectors (with W being associated to exotic fermions). In each case we outilne the most promising final states, the SM backgrounds and propose the needed searches.

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arXiv2008

Minimal Dark Matter predictions for galactic positrons, anti-protons, photons

We present the energy spectra of the fluxes of positrons, anti-protons and photons generated by Dark Matter annihilations in our galaxy, as univocally predicted by the model of Minimal Dark Matter. Due to multi-TeV masses and to the Sommerfeld enhancement of the annihilation cross section, distinctive signals are generated above the background, even with a modest astrophysical boost factor, in the range of energies soon to be explored by cosmic ray experiments.

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arXiv2008

Type-III see-saw at LHC

Neutrino masses can be generated by fermion triplets with TeV-scale mass, that would manifest at LHC as production of two leptons together with two heavy SM vectors or higgs, giving rise to final states such as 2 leptons + 4 jets (that can violate lepton number and/or lepton flavor) or 1 lepton +4 jets +missing transverse energy. We devise cuts to suppress the SM backgrounds to these signatures. Furthermore, for most of the mass range suggested by neutrino data, triplet decays are detectably displaced from the production point, allowing to infer the neutrino mass parameters. We compare with LHC signals of type-I and type-II see-saw.

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arXiv2007

Supersymmetry without a light Higgs boson at the LHC

We analyze the LHC phenomenology of lambdaSUSY - a version of NMSSM with a largish SH1H2 coupling. The scalar spectrum of the model contains a 200-300 GeV Higgs boson h with Standard-Model like properties, and heavy CP-even and CP-odd Higgs bosons H and A with masses in 500-800 GeV range. We study the discovery potential of H and A in the decay chains H->hh->4V->2l6j and A->Zh->Z2V->2l4j. The dominant backgrounds are the diffuse Z6j and Z4j productions, which can be suppressed by demanding reconstruction of V's and h's in intermediate states. The excess of signal events allows for a discovery of both H and A with over 5sigma significance for 100 inverse fb of integrated luminosity.

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