We explore the parameter choices in the five-dimensional Randall-Sundrum model with the inclusion of Higgs-radion mixing that can describe current LHC hints for one or more Higgs boson signals.
Light radions constitute one of the few surviving possibilities for observable new particle states at the sub-TeV level which arise in models with extra spacetime dimensions. It is already known that the 125 GeV state discovered at CERN is unlikely to be a pure radion state, since its decays resemble those of the Standard Model Higgs boson too closely. However, due to experimental errors in the measured decay widths, the possibility still remains that it could be a mixture of the radion with one (or more) Higgs states. We use the existing LHC data at 8 and 13 TeV to make a thorough investigation of this possibility. Not surprisingly, it turns out that this model is already constrained quite effectively by direct LHC searches for an additional scalar heavier than 125 GeV. We then make a detailed study of the so-called conformal point, where this heavy state practically decouples from (most of) the Standard Model fields. Some projections for the future are also included.
We present a global interpretation of Higgs, diboson, and top quark production and decay measurements from the LHC in the framework of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) at dimension six. We constrain simultaneously 36 independent directions in its parameter space, and compare the outcome of the global analysis with that from individual and two-parameter fits. Our results are obtained by means of state-of-the-art theoretical calculations for the SM and the EFT cross-sections, and account for both linear and quadratic corrections in the $1/Lambda^2$ expansion. We demonstrate how the inclusion of NLO QCD and $mathcal{O}left( Lambda^{-4}right)$ effects is instrumental to accurately map the posterior distributions associated to the fitted Wilson coefficients. We assess the interplay and complementarity between the top quark, Higgs, and diboson measurements, deploy a variety of statistical estimators to quantify the impact of each dataset in the parameter space, and carry out fits in BSM-inspired scenarios such as the top-philic model. Our results represent a stepping stone in the ongoing program of model-independent searches at the LHC from precision measurements, and pave the way towards yet more global SMEFT interpretations extended to other high-$p_T$ processes as well as to low-energy observables.
The recent observation of a modest excess in diphoton final states at the LHC, by both the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations, has sparked off the expected race among theorists to find the right explanation for this proto-resonance, assuming that the signal will survive and not prove to be yet another statistical fluctuation. We carry out a general analysis of this `signal in the case of a scalar which couples only to pairs of gluons (for production) and photons (for diphoton decay modes), and establish that an explanation of the observed resonance, taken together with the null results of new physics searches in all the other channels, requires a scalar with rather exotic behaviour. We then demonstrate that a fairly simple-minded extension of the minimal Randall-Sundrum model can yield a radion candidate which might reproduce this exotic behaviour.
We systematically study the modifications in the couplings of the Higgs boson, when identified as a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson of a strong sector, in the light of LHC Run 1 and Run 2 data. For the minimal coset SO(5)/SO(4) of the strong sector, we focus on scenarios where the standard model left- and right-handed fermions (specifically, the top and bottom quarks) are either in 5 or in the symmetric 14 representation of SO(5). Going beyond the minimal 5L-5R representation, to what we call here the extended models, we observe that it is possible to construct more than one invariant in the Yukawa sector. In such models, the Yukawa couplings of the 125 GeV Higgs boson undergo nontrivial modifications. The pattern of such modifications can be encoded in a generic phenomenological Lagrangian which applies to a wide class of such models. We show that the presence of more than one Yukawa invariant allows the gauge and Yukawa coupling modifiers to be decorrelated in the extended models, and this decorrelation leads to a relaxation of the bound on the compositeness scale (f > 640 GeV at 95% CL, as compared to f > 1 TeV for the minimal 5L-5R representation model). We also study the Yukawa coupling modifications in the context of the next-to-minimal strong sector coset SO(6)/SO(5) for fermion-embedding up to representations of dimension 20. While quantifying our observations, we have performed a detailed chi-square fit using the ATLAS and CMS combined Run 1 and available Run 2 data.
The radion scalar field might be the lightest new particle predicted by extra-dimensional extensions of the Standard Model. It could thus lead to the first signatures of new physics at the LHC collider. We perform a complete study of the radion production in association with the Z gauge boson in the custodially protected warped model with a brane-localised Higgs boson addressing the gauge hierarchy problem. Radion-Higgs mixing effects are present. Such a radion production receives possibly resonant contributions from the Kaluza-Klein excitations of the Z boson as well as the extra neutral gauge boson (Z). All the exchange and mixing effects induced by those heavy bosons are taken into account in the radion coupling and rate calculations. The investigation of the considered radion production at LHC allows to be sensitive to some parts of the parameter space but only the ILC program at high luminosity would cover most of the theoretically allowed parameter space via the studied reaction. Complementary tests of the same theoretical parameters can be realised through the high accuracy measurements of the Higgs couplings at ILC. The generic sensitivity limits on the rates discussed for the LHC and ILC potential reach can be applied to the searches for other (light) exotic scalar bosons.