Minimal Flavor Violation in the up-type quark sector leads to particularly interesting phenomenology due to the interplay of flavor physics in the charm sector and collider physics from flavor changing processes in the top sector. We study the most g
eneral operators that can affect top quark properties and $D$ meson decays in this scenario, concentrating on two CP violating operators for detailed studies. The consequences of these effective operators on charm and top flavor changing processes are generically small, but can be enhanced if there exists a light flavor mediator that is a Standard Model gauge singlet scalar and transforms under the flavor symmetry group. This flavor mediator can satisfy the current experimental bounds with a mass as low as tens of GeV and explain observed $D$-meson direct CP violation. Additionally, the model predicts a non-trivial branching fraction for a top quark decay that would mimic a dijet resonance.
A heavy Standard Model Higgs boson is not only disfavored by electroweak precision observables but is also excluded by direct searches at the 7 TeV LHC for a wide range of masses. Here, we examine scenarios where a heavy Higgs boson can be made consi
stent with both the indirect constraints and the direct null searches by adding only one new particle beyond the Standard Model. This new particle should be a weak multiplet in order to have additional contributions to the oblique parameters. If it is a color singlet, we find that a heavy Higgs with an intermediate mass of 200 - 300 GeV can decay into the new states, suppressing the branching ratios for the standard model modes, and thus hiding a heavy Higgs at the LHC. If the new particle is also charged under QCD, the Higgs production cross section from gluon fusion can be reduced significantly due to the new colored particle one-loop contribution. Current collider constraints on the new particles allow for viable parameter space to exist in order to hide a heavy Higgs boson. We categorize the general signatures of these new particles, identify favored regions of their parameter space and point out that discovering or excluding them at the LHC can provide important indirect information for a heavy Higgs. Finally, for a very heavy Higgs boson, beyond the search limit at the 7 TeV LHC, we discuss three additional scenarios where models would be consistent with electroweak precision tests: including an additional vector-like fermion mixing with the top quark, adding another U(1) gauge boson and modifying triple-gauge boson couplings.
At the LHC, top quark pairs are dominantly produced from gluons, making it difficult to measure the top quark forward-backward asymmetry. To improve the asymmetry measurement, we study variables that can distinguish between top quarks produced from q
uarks and those from gluons: the invariant mass of the top pair, the rapidity of the top-antitop system in the lab frame, the rapidity of the top quark in the top-antitop rest frame, the top quark polarization and the top-antitop spin correlation. We combine all the variables in a likelihood discriminant method to separate quark-initiated events from gluon-initiated events. We apply our method on models including G-primes and W-primes motivated by the recent observation of a large top quark forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron. We have found that the significance of the asymmetry measurement can be improved by 10% to 30%. At the same time, the central values of the asymmetry increase by 40% to 100%. We have also analytically derived the best spin quantization axes for studying top quark polarization as well as spin-correlation for the new physics models.
We propose a scenario in which the Planck scale is dynamically linked to the electroweak scale induced by top condensation. The standard model field content, without the Higgs, is promoted to a 5D warped background. There is also an additional 5D fer
mion with the quantum numbers of the right-handed top. Localization of the zero-modes leads, at low energies, to a Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model that also stabilizes the radion field dynamically thus explaining the hierarchy between the Planck scale and v_EW = 174 GeV. The top mass arises dynamically from the electroweak breaking condensate. The other standard model fermion masses arise naturally from higher-dimension operators, and the fermion mass hierarchies and flavor structure can be explained from the localization of the zero-modes in the extra dimension. If any other contributions to the radion potential except those directly related with electroweak symmetry breaking are engineered to be suppressed, the KK scale is predicted to be about two orders of magnitude above the electroweak scale rendering the model easily consistent with electroweak precision data. The model predicts a heavy (composite) Higgs with a mass of about 500 GeV and standard-model-like properties, and a vector-like quark with non-negligible mixing with the top quark and mass in the 1.6 - 2.9 TeV range. Both can be within the reach of the LHC. It also predicts a radion with a mass of a few GeV that is very weakly coupled to standard model matter.
We propose a dark matter model with standard model singlet extension of the universal extra dimension model (sUED) to explain the recent observations of ATIC, PPB-BETS, PAMELA and DAMA. Other than the standard model fields propagating in the bulk of
a 5-dimensional space, one fermion field and one scalar field are introduced and both are standard model singlets. The zero mode of the new fermion is identified as the right-handed neutrino, while its first KK mode is the lightest KK-odd particle and the dark matter candidate. The cosmic ray spectra from ATIC and PPB-BETS determine the dark matter particle mass and hence the fifth dimension compactification scale to be 1.0-1.6 TeV. The zero mode of the singlet scalar field with a mass below 1 GeV provides an attractive force between dark matter particles, which allows a Sommerfeld enhancement to boost the annihilation cross section in the Galactic halo to explain the PAMELA data. The DAMA annual modulation results are explained by coupling the same scalar field to the electron via a higher-dimensional operator. We analyze the model parameter space that can satisfy the dark matter relic abundance and accommodate all the dark matter detection experiments. We also consider constraints from the diffuse extragalactic gamma-ray background, which can be satisfied if the dark matter particle and the first KK-mode of the scalar field have highly degenerate masses.
We perform a model-independent study for top-antitop and top-top resonances in the dilepton channel at the Large Hadtron Collider. In this channel, we can solve the kinematic system to obtain the momenta of all particles including the two neutrinos,
and hence the resonance mass and spin. For discovering top-antitop resonances, the dilepton channel is competitive to the semileptonic channel because of the good resolution of lepton momentum measurement and small standard model backgrounds. Moreover, the charges of the two leptons can be identified, which makes the dilepton channel advantageous for discovering top-top resonances and for distinguishing resonance spins. We discuss and provide resolutions for difficulties associated with heavy resonances and highly boosted top quarks.
We construct a little Higgs model with the most minimal extension of the standard model gauge group by an extra U(1) gauge symmetry. For specific charge assignments of scalars, an approximate U(3) global symmetry appears in the cutoff-squared scalar
mass terms generated from gauge bosons at one-loop level. Hence, the Higgs boson, identified as a pseudo-Goldstone boson of the broken global symmetry, has its mass radiatively protected up to scales of 5-10 TeV. In this model, a Z2 symmetry, ensuring the two U(1) gauge groups to be identical, also makes the extra massive neutral gauge boson stable and a viable dark matter candidate with a promising prospect of direct detection.
We construct a calculable model of electroweak symmetry breaking in which the Higgs doublet emerges from the meta-stable SUSY breaking sector as a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson. The Higgs boson mass is further protected by the little Higgs mechanism,
and naturally suppressed by a two-loop factor from the SUSY breaking scale of 10 TeV. Gaugino and sfermion masses arise from standard gauge mediation, but the Higgsino obtains a tree-level mass at the SUSY breaking scale. At 1 TeV, aside from new gauge bosons and fermions similar to other little Higgs models and their superpartners, our model predicts additional electroweak triplets and doublets from the SUSY breaking sector.
