No Arabic abstract
We analyze the phenomenology of the top-pion and top-Higgs states in models with strong top dynamics, and translate the present LHC searches for the Standard Model Higgs into bounds on these scalar states. We explore the possibility that the new state at a mass of approximately 125 GeV observed at the LHC is consistent with a neutral pseudoscalar top-pion state. We demonstrate that a neutral pseudoscalar top-pion can generate the diphoton signal at the observed rate. However, the region of model parameter space where this is the case does not correspond to classic topcolor-assisted technicolor scenarios with degenerate charged and neutral top-pions and a top-Higgs mass of order twice the top mass; rather, additional isospin violation would need to be present and the top dynamics would be more akin to that in top seesaw models. Moreover, the interpretation of the new state as a top-pion can be sustained only if the ZZ (four-lepton) and WW (two-lepton plus missing energy) signatures initially observed at the 3? level decline in significance as additional data is accrued.
Recently there has been much interest in the use of single-jet mass and jet substructure to identify boosted particles decaying hadronically at the LHC. We develop these ideas to address the challenging case of a neutralino decaying to three quarks in models with baryonic violation of R-parity. These decays have previously been found to be swamped by QCD backgrounds. We demonstrate for the first time that such a decay might be observed directly at the LHC with high significance, by exploiting characteristics of the scales at which its composite jet breaks up into subjets.
A very light scalar top (stop) superpartner is motivated by naturalness and electroweak baryogenesis. When the mass of the stop is less than the sum of the masses of the top quark and the lightest neutralino superpartner, as well as the of the masses of the lightest chargino and the bottom quark, the dominant decay channels of the stop will be three-body, four-body, or flavour violating. In this work, we investigate the direct and indirect constraints on a light stop, we compute the relative decay branching fractions to these channels, and we study the sensitivity of existing LHC searches to each of them.
This report describes the studies performed for the Snowmass Top algorithms and detectors High Energy Frontier Study Group.
In this note, we advocate a new method for identifying gluino pair production events at the LHC. The method is motivated by and works for theories with heavy squarks and Wino-like LSPs (with nearly degenerate LSP and chargino). Such theories are well motivated and their gluinos typically have a O(50%) branching ratio to charged Winos. Observing the track of a long lived charged Wino produced from gluino decay could give a clear identification of a gluino event. Charged Wino NLSPs produced in colliders can be long-lived enough to leave a reconstructable high pT charged track before decaying into a soft pion (or a soft lepton) and the LSP, a signature with low SM background. By supplementing the canonical gluino search strategy with a search for these stiff chargino tracks, our results suggest it will be possible to find gluinos with significantly less luminosity. In addition, we describe a procedure for obtaining a kinematic measurement of the gluino mass using the three momenta of the reconstructed chargino tracks. With measurements of the gluino mass and cross section, it will be possible to determine the gluino spin, and confirm that the excess events are indeed due to a spin 1/2 superpartner. It may also be possible to use these stiff Wino tracks to obtain an approximate measurement of the chargino mass, and therefore the LSP (dark matter) mass.
LHC is expected to be a top quark factory. If the fundamental Planck scale is near a TeV, then we also expect the top quarks to be produced from black holes via Hawking radiation. In this paper we calculate the cross sections for top quark production from black holes at the LHC and compare it with the direct top quark cross section via parton fusion processes at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). We find that the top quark production from black holes can be larger or smaller than the pQCD predictions at NNLO depending upon the Planck mass and black hole mass. Hence the observation of very high rates for massive particle production (top quarks, higgs or supersymmetry) at the LHC may be an useful signature for black hole production.