Extra Higgs bosons in ttbar production at the LHC

The top quark has a large Yukawa coupling with the Higgs boson. In the usual extensions of the standard model the Higgs sector includes extra scalars, which also tend to couple strongly with the top quark. Unlike the Higgs, these fields have a natural mass above 2m_t, so they could introduce anomalies in ttbar production at the LHC. We study their effect on the ttbar invariant mass distribution at sqrt{s}=7 TeV. We focus on the bosons (H,A) of the minimal SUSY model and on the scalar field (r) associated to the new scale f in Little Higgs (LH) models. We show that in all cases the interference with the standard amplitude dominates over the narrow-width contribution. As a consequence, the mass difference between H and A or the contribution of an extra T-quark loop in LH models become important effects in order to determine if these fields are observable there. We find that a 1 fb^{-1} luminosity could probe the region tan beta \le 3 of SUSY and v/(sqrt{2}f) \ge 0.3 in LH models.Comment: 18 pages, version to appear in PR

A minimal Little Higgs model

We discuss a Little Higgs scenario that introduces below the TeV scale just the two minimal ingredients of these models, a vectorlike T quark and a singlet component (implying anomalous couplings) in the Higgs field, together with a pseudoscalar singlet \eta. In the model, which is a variation of Schmaltz's simplest Little Higgs model, all the extra vector bosons are much heavier than the T quark. In the Yukawa sector the global symmetry is approximate, implying a single large coupling per flavour, whereas in the scalar sector it is only broken at the loop level. We obtain the one-loop effective potential and show that it provides acceptable masses for the Higgs h and for the singlet \eta with no need for an extra \mu term. We find that m_\eta can be larger than m_h/2, which would forbid the (otherwise dominant) decay mode h -> \eta\eta.Comment: 16 pages. References added, fine tuning analysis included. Version to appear in PR

The Higgs Boson and New Physics at the TeV Scale

In this Thesis two different parts can be distinguished. In the first one, after a review of the SM Higgs sector, I describe some scenarios for new physics such as Little Higgs and Supersymmetry and discuss our contributions in each of them. In the second part I focus on one of the most interesting experimental hints of new physics, the forward-backward asymmetry in top-pair production measured at the Tevatron, analyzing in detail its possible implications at the LHC.Comment: Ph.D. Thesis, Universidad de Granada, March 2012, 129 page

Gluon excitations in t tbar production at hadron colliders

We argue that a relatively light massive gluon with mass <= 1 TeV, small purely axial couplings to light quarks and sizable vector and axial couplings to the top quark can reproduce the large forward-backward asymmetry observed at the Tevatron without conflicting with the t tbar and the dijet invariant mass distributions measured at the Tevatron and the LHC. We show that realistic Higgsless models with warped extra dimensions naturally fulfil all the necessary ingredients to realize this scenario. While current data is unable to discover or exclude these heavy gluons with masses 850 GeV, they should be observed at the (7 TeV) LHC with a luminosity of the order of 300 pb^{-1}.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

The depletion in Bose Einstein condensates using Quantum Field Theory in curved space

Using methods developed in Quantum Field Theory in curved space we can estimate the effects of the inhomogeneities and of a non vanishing velocity on the depletion of a Bose Einstein condensate within the hydrodynamical approximation.Comment: 4 pages, no figure. Discussion extended and references adde

Hawking radiation of massive modes and undulations

We compute the analogue Hawking radiation for modes which posses a small wave vector perpendicular to the horizon. For low frequencies, the resulting mass term induces a total reflection. This generates an extra mode mixing that occurs in the supersonic region, which cancels out the infrared divergence of the near horizon spectrum. As a result, the amplitude of the undulation (0-frequency wave with macroscopic amplitude) emitted in white hole flows now saturates at the linear level, unlike what was recently found in the massless case. In addition, we point out that the mass introduces a new type of undulation which is produced in black hole flows, and which is well described in the hydrodynamical regime.Comment: 37 pages, 8 figures, published versio

Heavy-light decay topologies as a new strategy to discover a heavy gluon

We study the collider phenomenology of the lightest Kaluza-Klein excitation of the gluon, G*, in theories with a warped extra dimension. We do so by means of a two-site effective lagrangian which includes only the lowest-lying spin-1 and spin-1/2 resonances. We point out the importance of the decays of G* to one SM plus one heavy fermion, that were overlooked in the previous literature. It turns out that, when kinematically allowed, such heavy-light decays are powerful channels for discovering the G*. In particular, we present a parton-level Montecarlo analysis of the final state Wtb that follows from the decay of G* to one SM top or bottom quark plus its heavy partner. We find that at \sqrt{s} = 7 TeV and with 10 fb^{-1} of integrated luminosity, the LHC can discover a KK gluon with mass in the range M_{G*} = (1.8 - 2.2) TeV if its coupling to a pair of light quarks is g_{G*qqbar} = (0.2-0.5) g_3. The same process is also competitive for the discovery of the top and bottom partners as well. We find, for example, that the LHC at \sqrt{s} = 7 TeV can discover a 1 TeV KK bottom quark with an integrated luminosity of (5.3 - 0.61) fb^{-1} for g_{G*qqbar} = (0.2-0.5) g_3.Comment: 36 pages, 13 figures. v2: a few typos corrected, comments added, version published in JHE

Numerical observation of Hawking radiation from acoustic black holes in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates

We report numerical evidence of Hawking emission of Bogoliubov phonons from a sonic horizon in a flowing one-dimensional atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. The presence of Hawking radiation is revealed from peculiar long-range patterns in the density-density correlation function of the gas. Quantitative agreement between our fully microscopic calculations and the prediction of analog models is obtained in the hydrodynamic limit. New features are predicted and the robustness of the Hawking signal against a finite temperature discussed.Comment: Version 2 with enlarged text and several new figure

Asymptotic Safety, Emergence and Minimal Length

There seems to be a common prejudice that asymptotic safety is either incompatible with, or at best unrelated to, the other topics in the title. This is not the case. In fact, we show that 1) the existence of a fixed point with suitable properties is a promising way of deriving emergent properties of gravity, and 2) there is a sense in which asymptotic safety implies a minimal length. In so doing we also discuss possible signatures of asymptotic safety in scattering experiments.Comment: LaTEX, 20 pages, 2 figures; v.2: minor changes, reflecting published versio