No Arabic abstract
A study of general properties of the narrow-width approximation (NWA) with polarization/spin decorrelation is presented. We prove for total rates of arbitrary resonant decay or scattering processes with an on-shell intermediate state decaying via a cubic or quartic vertex that decorrelation effects vanish and the NWA is of order Gamma. Its accuracy is then determined numerically for all resonant 3-body decays involving scalars, spin-1/2 fermions or vector bosons. We specialize the general results to MSSM benchmark scenarios. Significant off-shell corrections can occur - similar in size to QCD corrections. We qualify the configurations in which a combined consideration is advisable. For this purpose, we also investigate process-independent methods to improve the NWA.
A modified narrow-width approximation that allows for O(Gamma/M)-accurate predictions for resonant particle decay with similar intermediate masses is proposed and applied to MSSM processes to demonstrate its importance for searches for particle physics beyond the Standard Model.
A general study of pentaquarks built with four quarks in a L=1 state and an antiquark in S-wave shows that several of such states are forbidden by a selection rule, which holds in the limit of flavour symmetry, to decay into a baryon and a meson final state. We identify the most promising bar{10} multiplet for the classification of the Theta^+ and Xi^{--} particles recently discovered with the prediction of a narrow width for both of them.
We study the leptoquark model of Buchmuller, Ruckl and Wyler, focusing on a particular type of scalar ($R_2$) and vector ($U_1$) leptoquark. The primary aim is to perform the calculations for leptoquark production and decay at next-to-leading order (NLO) to establish the importance of the NLO contributions and, in particular, to determine how effective the narrow-width-approximation (NWA) is at NLO. For both the scalar and vector leptoquarks it is found that the NLO contributions are large, with the larger corrections occurring for the case vector leptoquarks. For the scalar leptoquark it is found that the NWA provides a good approximation for determining the resonant peak, however the NWA is not as effective for the vector leptoquark. For both the scalar and vector leptoquarks there are large contributions away from the resonant peak, which are missing from the NWA results, and these make a significant difference to the total cross-section.
The zero-width approximation (ZWA) restricts the intermediate unstable particle state to the mass shell and, when combined with the decorrelation approximation, fully factorizes the production and decay of unstable particles. The ZWA uncertainty is expected to be of O(Gamma/M), where M and Gamma are the mass and width of the unstable particle. We review the ZWA and demonstrate that errors can be much larger than expected if a significant modification of the Breit-Wigner lineshape occurs. A thorough examination of the recently discovered candidate Standard Model Higgs boson is in progress. For M_H ~ 125 GeV, one has Gamma_H/M_H < 10^(-4), which suggests an excellent accuracy of the ZWA. We show that this is not always the case. The inclusion of off-shell contributions is essential to obtain an accurate Higgs signal normalization at the 1% precision level. For gg -> H -> VV, V = W,Z, O(5-10%) corrections occur due to an enhanced Higgs signal in the region M_VV > 2 M_V, where also sizable Higgs-continuum interference occurs. We discuss how experimental selection cuts can be used to suppress this region in search channels where the Higgs mass cannot be reconstructed. We note that H -> VV decay modes in non-gluon-fusion channels are similarly affected.
In the Higgs search at the LHC, a light Higgs boson (115 GeV <~ M_H <~ 130 GeV) is not excluded by experimental data. In this mass range, the width of the Standard Model Higgs boson is more than four orders of magnitude smaller than its mass. The zero-width approximation is hence expected to be an excellent approximation. We show that this is not always the case. The inclusion of off-shell contributions is essential to obtain an accurate Higgs signal normalisation at the 1% precision level. For gg (-> H) -> VV, V= W,Z, O(10%) corrections occur due to an enhanced Higgs signal in the region M_VV > 2 M_V, where also sizable Higgs-continuum interference occurs. We discuss how experimental selection cuts can be used to exclude this region in search channels where the Higgs invariant mass cannot be reconstructed. We note that the H -> VV decay modes in weak boson fusion are similarly affected.