No Arabic abstract
In previous work, we identified an anomalous number of events in the LHC jets+MET searches characterized by low jet multiplicity and low-to-moderate transverse energy variables. Here, we update this analysis with results from a new ATLAS search in the monojet channel which also shows a consistent excess. As before, we find that this monojet excess is well-described by the resonant production of a heavy colored state decaying to a quark and a massive invisible particle. In the combined ATLAS and CMS data, we now find a local (global) preference of 3.3$sigma$ (2.5$sigma$) for the new physics model over the Standard Model-only hypothesis. As the signal regions containing the excess are systematics-limited, we consider additional cuts to enhance the signal-to-background ratio. We show that binning finer in $H_T$ and requiring the jets to be more central can increase $S/B$ by a factor of ${sim} 1.5$.
We discuss the impact of the recent untagged analysis of ${B}^0rightarrow D^{*}lbar{ u}_l$ decays by the Belle Collaboration on the extraction of the CKM element $|V_{cb}|$ and provide updated SM predictions for the $bto ctau u$ observables $R(D^*)$, $P_tau$, and $F_L^{D^*}$. The value of $|V_{cb}|$ that we find is about $2sigma$ from the one from inclusive semileptonic $B$ decays, and is very sensitive to the slope of the form factor at zero recoil which should soon become available from lattice calculations.
The model independent bounds on new neutral vector resonances masses, couplings and widths presented at arxiv:1112.0316 are updated with an integrated luminosity of L=4.7 fb^-1 from ATLAS and L=4.6 fb^-1 from CMS. These exclusion limits correspond to the most stringent existing bounds on the production of new neutral spin-1 resonances that decay to electroweak gauge boson pairs and that are associated to the electroweak symmetry breaking sector in several extensions of the Standard Model.
The ATLAS collaboration has recently reported a 2.6 sigma excess in the search for a heavy resonance decaying into a pair of weak gauge bosons. Only fully hadronic final states are being looked for in the analysis. If the observed excess really originates from the gauge bosons decays, other decay modes of the gauge bosons would inevitably leave a trace on other exotic searches. In this paper, we propose the use of the Z boson decay into a pair of neutrinos to test the excess. This decay leads to a very large missing energy and can be probed with conventional dark matter searches at the LHC. We discuss the current constraints from the dark matter searches and the prospects. We find that optimizing these searches may give a very robust probe of the resonance, even with the currently available data of the 8 TeV LHC.
We propose a new possible explanation of the ATLAS di-boson excess: that it is due to heavy resonant slepton production, followed by decay into di-smuons. The smuon has a mass not too far from the W and Z masses, and so it is easily confused with W or Z bosons after its subsequent decay into di-jets, through a supersymmetry violating and R-parity violating interaction. Such a scenario is not currently excluded by other constraints and remains to be definitively tested in Run II of the LHC. Such light smuons can easily simultaneously explain the discrepancy between the measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and the Standard Model prediction.
Updated results on the search of Higgs bosons at the LHC with up to 17/fb of data have just been presented by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations. New constraints are provided by the LHCb and XENON experiments with the observation of the rare decay B_s -> mu+mu- and new limits on dark matter direct detection. In this paper, we update and extend the results on the implications of these data on the phenomenological Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (pMSSM) by using high statistics, flat scans of its 19 parameters. The new LHC data on bb and tau tau decays of the lightest Higgs state and the new CMS limits from the tau tau searches for the heavier Higgs states set stronger constraints on the pMSSM parameter space.