arXiv subjects

Stefania Gori

Publications and source records attributed to Stefania Gori.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

KOTO vs. NA62 Dark Scalar Searches

The two kaon factories, KOTO and NA62, are at the cutting edge of the intensity frontier, with an unprecedented numbers of long lived and charged Kaons, ~ 10^{13}, being measured and analyzed. These experiments have currently a unique opportunity to search for dark sectors. In this paper, we demonstrate that searches done at KOTO and NA62 are complementary, both probing uncharted territories. We consider two qualitatively different physics cases. In the first, we analyze models of axion-like-particles (ALP) which couple to gluons or electroweak gauge bosons. In the second, we introduce a model based on an approximate strange flavor symmetry that leads to a strong violation of the Grossman-Nir bound. For the first scenario, we design a new search strategy for the KOTO experiment, K_L -> pi^0 a -> 4 gamma . Its expected sensitivity on the branching ratio is at the level of 10^{-9}. This demonstrates the great potential of KOTO as a discovery machine. In addition, we revisit other bounds on ALPs from Kaon factories, highlighting the main sources of theoretical uncertainty, and collider experiments, and show new projections. For the second scenario, we show that the model may be compatible with the preliminary analysis of the KOTO-data that shows a hint for New Physics.

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arXiv2020

Implications for Electric Dipole Moments of a Leptoquark Scenario for the $B$-Physics Anomalies

Vector leptoquarks can address the lepton flavor universality anomalies in decays associated with the $b \to c \ell ν$ and $b \to s \ell \ell$ transitions, as observed in recent years. Generically, these leptoquarks yield new sources of CP violation. In this paper, we explore constraints and discovery potential for electric dipole moments (EDMs) in leptonic and hadronic systems. We provide the most generic expressions for dipole moments induced by vector leptoquarks at one loop. We find that $O(1)$ CP-violating phases in tau and muon couplings can lead to corresponding EDMs within reach of next-generation EDM experiments, and that existing bounds on the electron EDM already put stringent constraints on CP-violating electron couplings.

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arXiv2020

Light Dark Matter from Entropy Dilution

We show that a thermal relic which decouples from the standard model (SM) plasma while relativistic can be a viable dark matter (DM) candidate, if the decoupling is followed by a period of entropy dilution that heats up the SM, but not the dark sector. Such diluted hot relics can be as light as a keV, while accounting for the entirety of the DM, and not conflicting with cosmological and astrophysical measurements. The requisite dilution can be achieved via decays of a heavy state that dominates the energy budget of the universe in the early matter dominated era. The heavy state decays into the SM particles, heats up the SM plasma, and dilutes the hidden sector. The interaction required to equilibrate the two sectors in the early universe places a bound on the maximum possible dilution as a function of the decoupling temperature. As an example of diluted hot relic DM we consider a light Dirac fermion with a heavy dark photon mediator. We present constraints on the model from terrestrial experiments (current and future), astrophysics, and cosmology.

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arXiv2020

Neutrino Tridents at DUNE

The DUNE near detector will collect an unprecedented large number of neutrino interactions, allowing the precise measurement of rare processes such as neutrino trident production, i.e. the generation of a lepton-antilepton pair through the scattering of a neutrino off a heavy nucleus. The event rate of this process is a powerful probe to a well-motivated parameter space of new physics beyond the Standard Model. In this paper, we perform a detailed sensitivity study of the DUNE near detector to neutrino tridents. We provide state-of-the-art predictions for the Standard Model cross sections and corresponding event rates at the near detector for the nu_mu -> nu_mu mu^+ mu^-, nu_mu -> nu_mu e^+e^- and nu_mu -> nu_e e^+ mu^- trident interactions (and the corresponding anti-neutrino modes), discussing their uncertainties. We analyze all relevant backgrounds, utilize a Geant4-based simulation of the DUNE-near detector liquid argon TPC (the official DUNE simulation at the time of writing this paper), and identify a set of selection cuts that would allow the DUNE near detector to measure the nu_mu -> nu_mu mu^+ mu^- cross section with a ~25% accuracy after running in neutrino and anti-neutrino modes for ~3 years each. This would lead to the most precise measurement of the trident process, surpassing the previous measurement by the CCFR collaboration. We show that this measurement would be highly sensitive to new physics, and, in particular, we find that the parameter space of models with gauged L_mu - L_tau that can explain the (g-2)_mu anomaly could be covered almost entirely. As a byproduct, a new Monte Carlo tool to generate neutrino trident events is made publicly available.

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arXiv2019

Heavy Higgs as a Portal to the Supersymmetric Electroweak Sector

The electroweak sector of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) - neutralinos, charginos and sleptons - remains relatively weakly constrained at the LHC due in part to the small production cross sections of these particles. In this paper, we study the prospects of searching for decays of heavy Higgs bosons into these superpartners at the high luminosity LHC. In addition to the kinematic handles offered by the presence of a resonant particle in the production chain, heavy Higgs decays can be the dominant production modes of these superpartners, making it possible to extend coverage to otherwise inaccessible regions of the supersymmetry and heavy Higgs parameter space. We illustrate our ideas with detailed collider analyses of two specific topologies: We propose search strategies for heavy Higgs decay to a pair of neutralinos, which can probe heavy Higgs bosons up to 1 TeV in the intermediate tan $β(\sim 2-8)$ region, where standard heavy Higgs searches have no reach. Similarly, we show that targeted searches for heavy Higgs decays into staus can probe stau masses up to several hundred GeV. We also provide a general overview of additional decay channels that might be accessible at the high luminosity LHC. This motivates a broader program for LHC heavy Higgs searches.

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arXiv2018

Wobbly Dark Matter Signals at Cherenkov Telescopes from Long Lived Mediator Decays

Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) searches for dark matter often perform observations in "wobble mode", i.e. collecting data from the signal region and from a corresponding background control region at the same time, enabling efficient simultaneous determination and subtraction of background. This observation strategy is possibly compromised in scenarios where dark matter annihilates to long-lived mediators that can traverse astrophysical distances before decaying to produce the gamma rays observed by the IACTs. In this paper, we show that this challenge comes with several interesting features and opportunities: in addition to signal contamination in the background control region, the gamma-ray spectrum changes with the observing direction angle and typically exhibits a hard excess at high energies. This affects signal reconstruction via subtraction of the background control region measurements in non-trivial ways. Such features represent a significant departure from the canonical picture, and offer novel handles to identify a dark matter signal and to extract underlying dark matter parameters.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

LHC Dark Matter Working Group: Next-generation spin-0 dark matter models

Dark matter (DM) simplified models are by now commonly used by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations to interpret searches for missing transverse energy ($E_T^\mathrm{miss}$). The coherent use of these models sharpened the LHC DM search program, especially in the presentation of its results and their comparison to DM direct-detection (DD) and indirect-detection (ID) experiments. However, the community has been aware of the limitations of the DM simplified models, in particular the lack of theoretical consistency of some of them and their restricted phenomenology leading to the relevance of only a small subset of $E_T^\mathrm{miss}$ signatures. This document from the LHC Dark Matter Working Group identifies an example of a next-generation DM model, called $\textrm{2HDM+a}$, that provides the simplest theoretically consistent extension of the DM pseudoscalar simplified model. A comprehensive study of the phenomenology of the $\textrm{2HDM+a}$ model is presented, including a discussion of the rich and intricate pattern of mono-$X$ signatures and the relevance of other DM as well as non-DM experiments. Based on our discussions, a set of recommended scans are proposed to explore the parameter space of the $\textrm{2HDM+a}$ model through LHC searches. The exclusion limits obtained from the proposed scans can be consistently compared to the constraints on the $\textrm{2HDM+a}$ model that derive from DD, ID and the DM relic density.

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arXiv2018

Three Lectures of Flavor and CP violation within and Beyond the Standard Model

These notes are based on the lectures I gave at the 2015 European School of High-Energy Physics (ESHEP2015). I discuss 1) flavor physics within the Standard Model, 2) effective field theories and Minimal Flavor Violation, 3) flavor physics in theories beyond the Standard Model and "high energy" flavor transitions of the top quark and of the Higgs boson. As a bi-product, I present the most updated constraints from the measurements of B_s -> mu^+mu^-, as well as I discuss the most recent development in the LHC searches for top flavor changing couplings.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Cosmology and Accelerator Tests of Strongly Interacting Dark Matter

A natural possibility for dark matter is that it is composed of the stable pions of a QCD-like hidden sector. Existing literature largely assumes that pion self-interactions alone control the early universe cosmology. We point out that processes involving vector mesons typically dominate the physics of dark matter freeze-out and significantly widen the viable mass range for these models. The vector mesons also give rise to striking signals at accelerators. For example, in most of the cosmologically favored parameter space, the vector mesons are naturally long-lived and produce Standard Model particles in their decays. Electron and proton beam fixed-target experiments such as HPS, SeaQuest, and LDMX can exploit these signals to explore much of the viable parameter space. We also comment on dark matter decay inherent in a large class of previously considered models and explain how to ensure dark matter stability.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Dark Sectors at the Fermilab SeaQuest Experiment

We analyze the unique capability of the existing SeaQuest experiment at Fermilab to discover well-motivated dark sector physics by measuring displaced electron, photon, and hadron decay signals behind a compact shield. A planned installation of a refurbished electromagnetic calorimeter could provide powerful new sensitivity to GeV-scale vectors, dark Higgs bosons, scalars, axions, and inelastic and strongly interacting dark matter models. This sensitivity is both comparable and complementary to NA62, SHiP, and FASER. SeaQuest's ability to collect data now and over the next few years provides an especially exciting opportunity.

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arXiv2018

Heavy Higgs Searches: Flavour Matters

We point out that the stringent lower bounds on the masses of additional electrically neutral and charged Higgs bosons crucially depend on the flavour structure of their Yukawa interactions. We show that these bounds can easily be evaded by the introduction of flavour-changing neutral currents in the Higgs sector. As an illustration, we study the phenomenology of a two Higgs doublet model with a Yukawa texture singling out the third family of quarks and leptons. We combine constraints from low-energy flavour physics measurements, LHC measurements of the 125 GeV Higgs boson rates, and LHC searches for new heavy Higgs bosons. We propose novel LHC searches that could be performed in the coming years to unravel the existence of these new Higgs bosons.

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arXiv2017

Looking for the WIMP Next Door

We comprehensively study experimental constraints and prospects for a class of minimal hidden sector dark matter (DM) models, highlighting how the cosmological history of these models informs the experimental signals. We study simple "secluded" models, where the DM freezes out into unstable dark mediator states, and consider the minimal cosmic history of this dark sector, where coupling of the dark mediator to the SM was sufficient to keep the two sectors in thermal equilibrium at early times. In the well-motivated case where the dark mediators couple to the Standard Model (SM) via renormalizable interactions, the requirement of thermal equilibrium provides a minimal, UV-insensitive, and predictive cosmology for hidden sector dark matter. We call DM that freezes out of a dark radiation bath in thermal equilibrium with the SM a WIMP next door, and demonstrate that the parameter space for such WIMPs next door is sharply defined, bounded, and in large part potentially accessible. This parameter space, and the corresponding signals, depend on the leading interaction between the SM and the dark mediator; we establish it for both Higgs and vector portal interactions. In particular, there is a cosmological lower bound on the portal coupling strength necessary to thermalize the two sectors in the early universe. We determine this thermalization floor as a function of equilibration temperature for the first time. We demonstrate that direct detection experiments are currently probing this cosmological lower bound in some regions of parameter space, while indirect detection signals and terrestrial searches for the mediator cut further into the viable parameter space. We present regions of interest for both direct detection and dark mediator searches, including motivated parameter space for the direct detection of sub-GeV DM.

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arXiv2017

Collider Signatures of Flavorful Higgs Bosons

Motivated by our limited knowledge of the Higgs couplings to first two generation fermions, we analyze the collider phenomenology of a class of two Higgs doublet models (2HDMs) with a non-standard Yukawa sector. One Higgs doublet is mainly responsible for the masses of the weak gauge bosons and the third generation fermions, while the second Higgs doublet provides mass for the lighter fermion generations. The characteristic collider signatures of this setup differ significantly from well-studied 2HDMs with natural flavor conservation, flavor alignment, or minimal flavor violation. New production mechanisms for the heavy scalar, pseudoscalar, and charged Higgs involving second generation quarks can become dominant. The most interesting decay modes include H/A -> cc, tc, μμ, τμ and H+ -> cb, cs, μν. Searches for low mass di-muon resonances are currently among the best probes of the heavy Higgs bosons in this setup.

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arXiv2017

The Flavor-locked Flavorful Two Higgs Doublet Model

We propose a new framework to generate the Standard Model (SM) quark flavor hierarchies in the context of two Higgs doublet models (2HDM). The `flavorful' 2HDM couples the SM-like Higgs doublet exclusively to the third quark generation, while the first two generations couple exclusively to an additional source of electroweak symmetry breaking, potentially generating striking collider signatures. We synthesize the flavorful 2HDM with the `flavor-locking' mechanism, that dynamically generates large quark mass hierarchies through a flavor-blind portal to distinct flavon and hierarchon sectors: Dynamical alignment of the flavons allows a unique hierarchon to control the respective quark masses. We further develop the theoretical construction of this mechanism, and show that in the context of a flavorful 2HDM-type setup, it can automatically achieve realistic flavor structures: The CKM matrix is automatically hierarchical with $|V_{cb}|$ and $|V_{ub}|$ generically of the observed size. Exotic contributions to meson oscillation observables may also be generated, that may accommodate current data mildly better than the SM itself.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Light Resonances and the Low-$q^2$ Bin of $R_{K^*}$

LHCb has reported hints of lepton-flavor universality violation in the rare decays $B \to K^{(*)} \ell^+\ell^-$, both in high- and low-$q^2$ bins. Although the high-$q^2$ hint may be explained by new short-ranged interactions, the low-$q^2$ one cannot. We thus explore the possibility that the latter is explained by a new light resonance. We find that LHCb's central value of $R_{K^*}$ in the low-$q^2$ bin is achievable in a restricted parameter space of new-physics scenarios in which the new, light resonance decays preferentially to electrons and has a mass within approximately $10$ MeV of the di-muon threshold. Interestingly, such an explanation can have a kinematic origin and does not require a source of lepton-flavor universality violation. A model-independent prediction is a narrow peak in the differential $B \to K^* e^+e^-$ rate close to the di-muon threshold. If such a peak is observed, other observables, such as the differential $B \to K e^+e^-$ rate and $R_K$, may be employed to distinguish between models. However, if a low-mass resonance is not observed and the low-$q^2$ anomaly increases in significance, then the case for an experimental origin of the lepton-flavor universality violating anomalies would be strengthened. To further explore this, we also point out that, in analogy to $J/ψ$ decays, $e^+e^-$ and $μ^+μ^-$ decays of $ϕ$ mesons can be used as a cross check of lepton-flavor universality by LHCb with $5$ fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity.

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arXiv2017

Exotic Decays of the 125 GeV Higgs Boson

We perform an extensive survey of non-standard Higgs decays that are consistent with the 125 GeV Higgs-like resonance. Our aim is to motivate a large set of new experimental analyses on the existing and forthcoming data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The explicit search for exotic Higgs decays presents a largely untapped discovery opportunity for the LHC collaborations, as such decays may be easily missed by other searches. We emphasize that the Higgs is uniquely sensitive to the potential existence of new weakly coupled particles and provide a unified discussion of a large class of both simplified and complete models that give rise to characteristic patterns of exotic Higgs decays. We assess the status of exotic Higgs decays after LHC Run 1. In many cases we are able to set new nontrivial constraints by reinterpreting existing experimental analyses. We point out that improvements are possible with dedicated analyses and perform some preliminary collider studies. We prioritize the analyses according to their theoretical motivation and their experimental feasibility. This document is accompanied by a website that will be continuously updated with further information: http://exotichiggs.physics.sunysb.edu.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

High scale flavor alignment in two-Higgs doublet models and its phenomenology

The most general two-Higgs doublet model (2HDM) includes potentially large sources of flavor changing neutral currents (FCNCs) that must be suppressed in order to achieve a phenomenologically viable model. The flavor alignment ansatz postulates that all Yukawa coupling matrices are diagonal when expressed in the basis of mass-eigenstate fermion fields, in which case tree-level Higgs mediated FCNCs are eliminated. In this work, we explore models with the flavor alignment condition imposed at a very high energy scale, which results in the generation of Higgs-mediated FCNCs via renormalization group running from the high energy scale to the electroweak scale. Using the current experimental bounds on flavor changing observables, constraints are derived on the aligned 2HDM parameter space. In the favored parameter region, we analyze the implications for Higgs boson phenomenology.

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arXiv2017

Recommendations of the LHC Dark Matter Working Group: Comparing LHC searches for heavy mediators of dark matter production in visible and invisible decay channels

Weakly-coupled TeV-scale particles may mediate the interactions between normal matter and dark matter. If so, the LHC would produce dark matter through these mediators, leading to the familiar "mono-X" search signatures, but the mediators would also produce signals without missing momentum via the same vertices involved in their production. This document from the LHC Dark Matter Working Group suggests how to compare searches for these two types of signals in case of vector and axial-vector mediators, based on a workshop that took place on September 19/20, 2016 and subsequent discussions. These suggestions include how to extend the spin-1 mediated simplified models already in widespread use to include lepton couplings. This document also provides analytic calculations of the relic density in the simplified models and reports an issue that arose when ATLAS and CMS first began to use preliminary numerical calculations of the dark matter relic density in these models.

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