Electroweak contributions to squark--gluino production at the LHC

We calculated the electroweak contributions to the hadronic production of a squark in association with a gluino within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). Presented are complete next-to-leading order electroweak (NLO EW) corrections at O(alpha_s^2 alpha), which include real photon and real quark radiation processes. Also considered are photon induced tree level O(alpha_s alpha) contributions.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figure

Flavor Changing Effects in Family Nonuniversal Z' Models

Flavor-changing and CP-violating interactions of Z' to fermions are generally present in models with extra U(1) gauge symmetry that are string-inspired or related to broken gauged family symmetry. We study the consequences of such couplings in fermion electric dipole moments, muon g-2, and K and B meson mixings. From experimental limits or measured values, we constrain the off-diagonal Z' couplings to fermions. Some of these constraints are comparable or stronger than the existing constraints obtained from other observables.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

Hard Interactions of Quarks and Gluons: a Primer for LHC Physics

In this review article, we develop the perturbative framework for the calculation of hard scattering processes. We undertake to provide both a reasonably rigorous development of the formalism of hard scattering of quarks and gluons as well as an intuitive understanding of the physics behind the scattering. We emphasize the importance of logarithmic corrections as well as power counting of the strong coupling constant in order to understand the behavior of hard scattering processes. We include "rules of thumb" as well as "official recommendations", and where possible seek to dispel some myths. Experiences that have been gained at the Fermilab Tevatron are recounted and, where appropriate, extrapolated to the LHC.Comment: 118 pages, 107 figures; to be published in Reports on Progress in Physic

Detecting Higgs bosons in the bb decay channel using forward proton tagging at the LHC

A detailed study is presented of the search for Higgs bosons in the b-decay channel in the central exclusive production process at the LHC. We present results for proton tagging detectors at both 220m and 420m around ATLAS or CMS. We consider two benchmark scenarios; a Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson and the m_h^{max} scenario of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). Detector acceptance, smearing and event trigger strategies are considered. We find that the SM Higgs will be challenging to observe in the b-jet channel without improvements to the currently proposed experimental configuration, but a neutral scalar MSSM Higgs Boson could be observable in the b-jet channel with a significance of 3 sigma or greater within three years of data taking at all luminosities between 2 x 10^{33} cm^{-2} s^{-1} and 10^{34} cm^{-2} s^{-1}, and at 5 sigma or greater after three years in certain scenarios.Comment: 35 pages, 34 figure