arXiv subjects

Shelley Liang

Publications and source records attributed to Shelley Liang.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2018

Exotic Lepton Searches via Bound State Production at the LHC

Heavy long-lived multi-charged leptons (MCLs) are predicted by various new physics models. These hypothetical MCLs can form bound states, due to their high electric charges and long life times. In this work, we propose a novel strategy of searching for MCLs through their bound state productions and decays. By utilizing LHC-8 TeV data in searching for resonances in the diphoton channel, we exclude the masses of isospin singlet heavy leptons with electric charge $|q|\geq 6$ (in units of electron charge) lower than $\sim$1.2 TeV, which are much stronger than the corresponding 8 TeV LHC bounds from analysing the high ionisation and the long time-of-flight of MCLs. By utilising the current 13 TeV LHC diphoton channel measurements the bound can further exclude MCL masses up to $\sim$1.6 TeV for $|q|\geq 6$. Also, we demonstrate that the conventional LHC limits from searching for MCLs produced via Drell-Yan processes can be enhanced by including the contribution of photon fusion processes.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Low temperature electroweak phase transition in the Standard Model with hidden scale invariance

We discuss a cosmological phase transition within the Standard Model which incorporates spontaneously broken scale invariance as a low-energy theory. In addition to the Standard Model fields, the minimal model involves a light dilaton, which acquires a large vacuum expectation value (VEV) through the mechanism of dimensional transmutation. Under the assumption of the cancellation of the vacuum energy, the dilaton develops a very small mass at 2-loop order. As a result, a flat direction is present in the classical dilaton-Higgs potential at zero temperature while the quantum potential admits two (almost) degenerate local minima with unbroken and broken eletroweak symmetry. We found that the cosmological electroweak phase transition in this model can only be triggered by a QCD chiral symmetry breaking phase transition at low temperatures, $T\lesssim 132$ MeV. Furthermore, unlike the standard case, the universe settles into the chiral symmetry breaking vacuum via a first-order phase transition which gives rise to a stochastic gravitational background with a peak frequency $\sim 10^{-8}$ Hz as well as triggers the production of approximately solar mass primordial black holes. The observation of these signatures of cosmological phase transitions together with the detection of a light dilaton would provide a strong hint of the fundamental role of scale invariance in particle physics.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Scale Invariant Top Condensate

We propose a scale invariant model of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking via top condensation within the minimal top condensate see-saw model. The classical scale invariance is realized nonlinearly by introducing conformal compensator scalar field, the dilaton, which plays crucial role in successful predictions for the Higgs boson. The dilaton mass and its mixing with the composite Higgs boson appears only at 2-loop level, both being proportional to the hierarchy between the electroweak and compositeness scales, $\propto v/Λ$. The mass scales in our model are generated via the mechanism of dimensional transmutation and the hierarchy $v/Λ\ll 1$ is radiatively stable, thus resolving the fine-tuning problem of the standard top condensate models.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Standard Model with hidden scale invariance and light dilaton

We consider the minimal Standard Model as an effective low-energy description of an unspecified fundamental theory with spontaneously broken conformal symmetry. The effective theory exhibits classical scale invariance which manifest itself through the dilaton field. The mass of the dilaton is generated via the quantum scale anomaly at two-loop level and is proportional to the techically stable hierarchy between the electroweak scale and a high energy scale given by a dilaton vacuum expectation value. We find that a generic prediction of this class of models is the existence of a very light dilaton with mass between $\sim 0.01$ $μ$eV to $\sim 100$ MeV, depending on the hierarchy of scales. Searches for such a light scalar particle may reveal a fundamental role of conformal invariance in nature.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2016

Heavy Leptonium as the Origin of the 750 GeV Diphoton Excess

We propose a hypothetical heavy leptonium, the scalar bound state of an exotic lepton-antilepton pair, as a candidate for the recent 750 GeV resonance in the early LHC Run 2 data. Such a para-leptonium is dominantly produced via photon-photon fusion at the LHC and decays into a photon pair with a significant branching fraction. In addition, our model predicts a companion spin-1 ortho-leptonium bound state, which can decay to $W^+W^-$, $f\bar{f}$ and three photons. Under the LHC and the electroweak precision observables bounds, we find that the observed excess of 750 GeV diphoton events can be explained within $2σ$ accuracy for $Y_{L} \approx 4.8 - 7.2$ for the minimal case in our scenario. The observation of the ortho-leptonium in the dilepton channel will be the smoking gun for our scenario.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2016

Natural Inflation with Hidden Scale Invariance

We propose a new class of natural inflation models based on a hidden scale invariance. In a very generic Wilsonian effective field theory with an arbitrary number of scalar fields, which exhibits scale invariance via the dilaton, the potential necessarily contains a flat direction in the classical limit. This flat direction is lifted by small quantum corrections and inflation is realised without need for an unnatural fine-tuning. In the conformal limit, the effective potential becomes linear in the inflaton field, yielding to specific predictions for the spectral index and the tensor-to-scalar ratio, being respectively: $n_s-1\approx -0.025\left(\frac{N_{\star}}{60}\right)^{-1}$ and $r\approx 0.0667\left(\frac{N_{\star}}{60}\right)^{-1}$, where $N_{\star}\approx 30-65$ is a number of efolds during observable inflation. This predictions are in reasonable agreement with cosmological measurements. Further improvement of the accuracy of these measurements may turn out to be critical in falsifying our scenario.

gr-qc↗