No Arabic abstract
We determine the model-independent component of the couplings of axions to electroweak gauge bosons, induced by the minimal coupling to QCD inherent to solving the strong CP problem. The case of the invisible QCD axion is developed first, and the impact on $W$ and $Z$ axion couplings is discussed. The analysis is extended next to the generic framework of heavy true axions and low axion scales, corresponding to scenarios with enlarged confining sector. The mass dependence of the coupling of heavy axions to photons, $W$ and $Z$ bosons is determined. Furthermore, we perform a two-coupling-at-a-time phenomenological study where the gluonic coupling together with individual gauge boson couplings are considered. In this way, the regions excluded by experimental data for the axion-$WW$, axion-$ZZ$ and axion-$Zgamma$ couplings are determined and analyzed together with the usual photonic ones. The phenomenological results apply as well to ALPs which have anomalous couplings to both QCD and the electroweak bosons.
A common lore has arisen that beyond the Standard Model (BSM) particles, which can be searched for at current and proposed experiments, should have flavorless or mostly third-generation interactions with Standard Model quarks. This theoretical bias severely limits the exploration of BSM phenomenology, and is especially constraining for extended Higgs sectors. Such limitations can be avoided in the context of Spontaneous Flavor Violation (SFV), a robust and UV complete framework that allows for significant couplings to any up or down-type quark, while suppressing flavor-changing neutral currents via flavor alignment. In this work we study the theory and phenomenology of extended SFV Higgs sectors with large couplings to any quark generation. We perform a comprehensive analysis of flavor and collider constraints of extended SFV Higgs sectors, and demonstrate that new Higgs bosons with large couplings to the light quarks may be found at the electroweak scale. In particular, we find that new Higgses as light as 100 GeV with order $sim$ 0.1 couplings to first or second generation quarks, which are copiously produced at LHC via quark fusion, are allowed by current constraints. Furthermore, the additional SFV Higgses can mix with the SM Higgs, providing strong theory motivation for an experimental program looking for deviations in the light quark-Higgs couplings. Our work demonstrates the importance of exploring BSM physics coupled preferentially to light quarks, and the need to further develop dedicated experimental techniques for the LHC and future colliders.
Among many possibilities, solar axion has been proposed to explain the electronic recoil events excess observed by Xenon1T collaboration, although it has tension with astrophysical observations. The axion couplings, to photon $g_{agamma}$ and to electron $g_{ae}$ play important roles. These couplings are related to the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) charges $X_f$ for fermions. In most of the calculations, $g_{agamma}$ is obtained by normalizing to the ratio of electromagnetic anomaly factor $E = TrX_f Q^2_f N_c$ ($N_c$ is 3 and 1 for quarks and charged leptons respectively) and QCD anomaly factor $N = TrX_q T(q)$ ($T(q)$ is quarks $SU(3)_c$ index). The broken PQ symmetry generator is used in the calculation which does not seem to extract out the components of broken generator in the axion which are eaten by the $Z$ boson. However, using the physical components of axion or the ratio of anomaly factors should obtain the same results in the DFSZ for $g_{agamma}$. When going beyond the standard DFSZ models, such as variant DFSZ models, where more Higgs doublets and fermions have different PQ charges, one may wonder if the results are different. We show that the two methods obtain the same results as expected, but the axion couplings to quarks and leptons $g_{af}$ (here f indicates one of the fermions in the SM) are more conveniently calculated in the physical axion basis. The result depends on the values of the vacuum expectation values leading to a wider parameter space for $g_{af}$ in beyond the standard DFSZ axion. We also show explicitly how flavor conserving $g_{af}$ couplings can be maintained when there are more than one Higgs doublets couple to the up and down fermion sectors in variant DFSZ models at tree level, and how flavor violating couplings can arise.
The measurement of anomalous gauge boson self couplings is reviewed for a variety of present and planned accelerators. Sensitivities are compared for these accelerators using models based on the effective Lagrangian approach. The sensitivities described here are for measurement of generic parameters kappa_v, lambda_v, etc., defined in the text. Pre-LHC measurements will not probe these couplings to precision better than O(1/10). The LHC should be sensitive to better than O(1/100), while a future NLC should achieve sensitivity of O(1/1000) to O(1/10000) for center of mass energies ranging from 0.5 to 1.5 TeV.
Isolated lepton momenta, in particular their directions are the most precisely measured quantities in pp collisions at LHC. This offers opportunities for multitude of precision measurements. It is of practical importance to verify if precision measurements with lep- tons in the final state require all theoretical effects evaluated simultaneously or if QED bremsstrahlung in the final state can be separated without unwanted precision loss. Results for final state bremsstrahlung in the decays of narrow resonances are obtained from the Feynman rules of QED in an unambiguous way and can be controlled with a very high precision. Also for resonances of non-negligible width, if calculations are appropriately performed, such separation from the remaining electroweak effects can be expected. Our paper is devoted to validation that final state QED bremsstrahlung can indeed be separated from the rest of QCD and electroweak effects, in the production and decay of Z and W bosons, and to estimation of the resulting systematic error. The quantitative discussion is based on Monte Carlo programs PHOTOS and SANC, as well as on KKMC which is used for benchmark results. We show, that for a large classes of W and Z boson observables as used at LHC, theoretical error on photonic bremsstrahlung is 0.1 or 0.2%, depending on the program options used. An overall theoretical error on QED final state radiation, i.e. taking into account missing corrections due to pair emission and interference with initial state radiation is estimated respectively at 0.2% or 0.3% again depending on the program option used.
Many types of physics beyond the standard model include an extended electroweak gauge group. If these extensions are associated with flavor symmetry breaking, the gauge interactions will not be flavor-universal. In this note we update the bounds placed by electroweak data on the existence of flavor non-universal extensions to the standard model in the context of topcolor assisted technicolor (TC2), noncommuting extended technicolor (NCETC), and the ununified standard model (UUM). In the first two cases the extended gauge interactions couple to the third generation fermions differently than to the light fermions, while in the ununified standard model the gauge interactions couple differently to quarks and leptons. The extra SU(2) triplet of gauge bosons in NCETC and UUM models must be heavier than about 3 TeV, while the extra Z boson in TC2 models must be heavier than about 1 TeV.