Anomalous dimensions of potential top-partners

We discuss anomalous dimensions of top-partner candidates in theories of Partial Compositeness. First, we revisit, confirm and extend the computation by DeGrand and Shamir of anomalous dimensions of fermionic trilinears. We present general results applicable to all matter representations and to composite operators of any allowed spin. We then ask the question of whether it is reasonable to expect some models to have composite operators of sufficiently large anomalous dimension to serve as top-partners. While this question can be answered conclusively only by lattice gauge theory, within perturbation theory we find that such values could well occur for some specific models. In the Appendix we collect a number of practical group theory results for fourth-order invariants of general interest in gauge theories with many irreducible representations of fermions.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures, 6 tables V2: Added Table 3,4,5, equation (9) and various comments in reply to questions and suggestions raised by the two Referees of SciPost. Two references also added. V3: Typo in footnote 6 corrected. Final version in SciPos

Probing Near-Conformal Technicolor through Weak Boson Scattering

The recently observed boson at 125 GeV could be a light composite scalar from near-conformal technicolor dynamics: a technicolor Higgs. If this is the case, unitarization of longitudinal weak boson scattering amplitudes, which is due to exchanges of the Higgs and spin-one vector technimesons, is expected to occur in a strong regime, with saturation of the unitarity bounds. This implies that $pp \to V V jj$ processes, where $V$ is either a $W$ or a $Z$ boson, are enhanced, relative to the standard model. We show that this allows probing near-conformal technicolor for couplings and masses of the spin-one resonances which are not directly accessible for direct Drell-Yan production.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Constraining scalar resonances with top-quark pair production at the LHC

Constraints on models which predict resonant top-quark pair production at the LHC are provided via a reinterpretation of the Standard Model (SM) particle level measurement of the top-anti-top invariant mass distribution, $m(t\bar{t})$. We make use of state-of-the-art Monte Carlo event simulation to perform a direct comparison with measurements of $m(t\bar{t})$ in the semi-leptonic channels, considering both the boosted and the resolved regime of the hadronic top decays. A simplified model to describe various scalar resonances decaying into top-quarks is considered, including CP-even and CP-odd, color-singlet and color-octet states, and the excluded regions in the respective parameter spaces are provided.Comment: 34 pages, 17 figure

Scalar production and decay to top quarks including interference effects at NLO in QCD in an EFT approach

Scalar and pseudo-scalar resonances decaying to top quarks are common predictions in several scenarios beyond the standard model (SM) and are extensively searched for by LHC experiments. Challenges on the experimental side require optimising the strategy based on accurate predictions. Firstly, QCD corrections are known to be large both for the SM QCD background and for the pure signal scalar production. Secondly, leading order and approximate next-to-leading order (NLO) calculations indicate that the interference between signal and background is large and drastically changes the lineshape of the signal, from a simple peak to a peak-dip structure. Therefore, a robust prediction of this interference at NLO accuracy in QCD is necessary to ensure that higher-order corrections do not alter the lineshapes. We compute the exact NLO corrections, assuming a point-like coupling between the scalar and the gluons and consistently embedding the calculation in an effective field theory within an automated framework, and present results for a representative set of beyond the SM benchmarks. The results can be further matched to parton shower simulation, providing more realistic predictions. We find that NLO corrections are important and lead to a significant reduction of the uncertainties. We also discuss how our computation can be used to improve the predictions for physics scenarios where the gluon-scalar loop is resolved and the effective approach is less applicable.Comment: 32 pages, 17 figures; accepted versio