No Arabic abstract
In scenarios that stabilize the electroweak scale, the top quark is typically accompanied by partner particles. In this work, we demonstrate how extended stabilizing symmetries can yield scalar or fermionic top partners that transform as ordinary color triplets but carry exotic electric charges. We refer to these scenarios as hypertwisted since they involve modifications to hypercharge in the top sector. As proofs of principle, we construct two hypertwisted scenarios: a supersymmetric construction with spin-0 top partners, and a composite Higgs construction with spin-1/2 top partners. In both cases, the top partners are still phenomenologically compatible with the mass range motivated by weak-scale naturalness. The phenomenology of hypertwisted scenarios is diverse, since the lifetimes and decay modes of the top partners are model dependent. The novel coupling structure opens up search channels that do not typically arise in top-partner scenarios, such as pair production of top-plus-jet resonances. Furthermore, hypertwisted top partners are typically sufficiently long lived to form top-partnerium bound states that decay predominantly via annihilation, motivating searches for rare narrow resonances with diboson decay modes.
We consider the phenomenology at the Large Hadron Collider of new heavy vector-like quarks which couple mainly to the third generation quarks via Yukawa interactions, with special emphasis on non-standard doublet representations which are less constrained from present data. We also discuss in detail the flavour limits at tree level and loop level and implications of a generalised CKM mixing matrix to these cases.
Vector-like quarks (VLQs) that are partners of the heavy top and bottom quarks are predicted in many extensions of the Standard Model (SM). We explore the possibility that these states could explain not only the longstanding anomaly in the forward-backward asymmetry in $b$-quark production at LEP, $A_{rm FB}^b $, but also the more recent $sim 2sigma$ deviation of the cross section for the associated Higgs production with top quark pairs at the LHC, $sigma(ppto tbar t H)$. Introducing three illustrative models for VLQs with different representations under the SM gauge group, we show that the two anomalies can be resolved while satisfying all other theoretical and experimental constraints. In this case, the three different models predict VLQ states in the $1-2$ TeV mass range that can be soon probed at the LHC. In a second step, we discuss the sensitivity on the VLQ masses and couplings that could be obtained by means of a percent level accuracy in the measurement of ratios of partial Higgs decay widths, in particular $Gamma(H ! to! gammagamma)/Gamma(H ! to! ZZ^*)$ and $Gamma(H ! to ! bbar b)/Gamma(H ! to ! WW^*)$. We show that top and bottom VL partners with masses up to $sim 5$ TeV and exotic VLQs with masses in the $10$ TeV range can be probed at the high-luminosity LHC.
We examine the LHC phenomenology of quantum black holes in models of TeV gravity. By quantum black holes we mean black holes of the smallest masses and entropies, far from the semiclassical regime. These black holes are formed and decay over short distances, and typically carry SU(3) color charges inherited from their parton progenitors. Based on a few minimal assumptions, such as gauge invariance, we identify interesting signatures for quantum black hole decay such as 2 jets, jet + hard photon, jet + missing energy and jet + charged lepton, which should be readily visible above background. The detailed phenomenology depends heavily on whether one requires a Lorentz invariant, low-energy effective field theory description of black hole processes.
We study the implications of a large degree of compositeness for the light generation quarks in composite pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone-boson Higgs models. We focus in particular on viable scenarios where the right-handed up-type quarks have a sizable mixing with the strong dynamics. For concreteness we assume the latter to be characterized by an SO(5)/SO(4) symmetry with fermionic resonances in the SO(4) singlet and fourplet representations. Singlet partners dominantly decay to a Higgs boson and jets. As no dedicated searches are currently looking for these final states, singlet partners can still be rather light. Conversely, some fourplet partners dominantly decay to an electroweak gauge boson and a jet, a signature which has been analyzed at the LHC. To constrain the parameter space of this scenario we have reinterpreted various LHC analyses. In the limit of first two generation degeneracy, as in minimal flavor violation or U(2)-symmetric flavor models, fourplet partners need to be relatively heavy, with masses above 1.8 TeV, or the level of compositeness needs to be rather small. The situation is rather different in models that deviate from the first two generation degeneracy paradigm, as the charm parton distribution functions are suppressed relative to the up quark ones. The right-handed charm quark can be composite and its partners being as light as 600 GeV, while the right-handed up quark needs either to be mostly elementary or to have its partners as heavy as 2 TeV. Models with fully composite singlet fermions are also analyzed, leading to similar conclusions. Finally, we consider the case where both the fourplet and the singlet states are present. In this case the bounds could be significantly weaken due to a combination of smaller production rates and the opening of new channels including cascade processes.
The Higgs boson is produced at the LHC through gluon fusion at roughly the Standard Model rate. New colored fermions, which can contribute to $ggrightarrow h$, must have vector-like interactions in order not to be in conflict with the experimentally measured rate. We examine the size of the corrections to single and double Higgs production from heavy vector-like fermions in $SU(2)_L$ singlets and doublets and search for regions of parameter space where double Higgs production is enhanced relative to the Standard Model prediction. We compare production rates and distributions for double Higgs production from gluon fusion using an exact calculation, the low energy theorem (LET), where the top quark and the heavy vector-like fermions are taken to be infinitely massive, and an effective theory (EFT) where top mass effects are included exactly and the effects of the heavy fermions are included to ${cal O}(1/M^2_X)$. Unlike the LET, the EFT gives an extremely accurate description of the kinematic distributions for double Higgs production.