Light 't Hooft Top Partners

Vector-like quarks, usually dubbed top partners, are a common presence in composite Higgs models. Being composite objects, their mass is expected to be of the order of their inverse size, that is the condensation scale of the new strong interactions. Light top partners, while not being a generic prediction, are however often considered in phenomenological models. We suggest that their lightness may be due to the matching of global 't Hooft anomalies of the underlying theory. We check this mechanism in explicit models showing that, in one case, composite fermions with the quantum numbers of the top quark obtain a mass which is controlled by a soft breaking term and can be made parametrically small.Comment: 5 pages. v2 small presentation improvements, matches published versio

An Ultraviolet Chiral Theory of the Top for the Fundamental Composite (Goldstone) Higgs

We introduce a scalar-less anomaly free chiral gauge theory that serves as natural ultraviolet completion of models of fundamental composite (Goldstone) Higgs dynamics. The new theory is able to generate the top mass and furthermore features a built-in protection mechanism that naturally suppresses the bottom mass. At low energies the theory predicts new fractionally charged fermions, and a number of four-fermion operators that, besides being relevant for the generation of the top mass, also lead to an intriguing phenomenology for the new states predicted by the theory.Comment: 5 pages, minor modifications, matches published versio

Fundamental Composite 2HDM: SU(N) with 4 flavours

We present a new model of composite Higgs based on a gauged SU(N) group with 4 Dirac fermions in the fundamental representation. At low energy, the model has a global symmetry SU(4)$\times$SU(4) broken to the diagonal SU(4), containing 2 Higgs doublets in the coset. We study in detail the generation of the top mass via 4-fermion interactions, and the issue of the vacuum alignment. In particular, we prove that, without loss of generality, the vacuum can always be aligned with one doublet. Under certain conditions on the top pre-Yukawas, the second doublet, together with the additional triplets, is stable and can thus play the role of Dark Matter. This model can therefore be an example of composite inert-2HDM model.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figure

Is F-term hybrid inflation natural within minimal supersymmetric SO(10)?

We examine whether F-term supersymmetric hybrid inflation can be embedded within the minimal SO(10) model, in a natural way. We show that none of the singlets of the Standard Model symmetries in the minimal set of SO(10) representations can satisfy the conditions which are necessary for a scalar field to play the role of the inflaton. As a consequence, one has to introduce an extra scalar field, which however may spoil the naturalness of inflation within the context of SO(10). Nevertheless, if we add an extra scalar field, we are then able to construct a model that can accommodate flat directions while it preserves the stability of the inflationary valley.Comment: 16 page

A scalar hint from the diboson excess?

In view of the recent diboson resonant excesses reported by both ATLAS and CMS Collaborations, we suggest that a new weak singlet pseudo-scalar particle, $\eta_W$, may decay into two weak bosons while being produced in gluon fusion at the LHC. The couplings to the gauge bosons can arise from a Wess-Zumino-Witten anomaly term and thus we study an effective model based on the anomaly term as a well motivated phenomenological model. In models where the pseudo-scalar arises as a composite state, the coefficients of the anomalous couplings can be related to the fermion components of the underlying dynamics. We provide an example to test the feasibility of the idea.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables, two column. Typos in (5)-(9) are corrected and several discussions are clarified. References added. Matches published version in PR

Doubly Charged Lepton from an Exotic Doublet at the LHC

We studied the signatures at the LHC of the electroweak SU(2) lepton doublet which embeds a doubly charged lepton. The doubly charged lepton pair and single production rates, which are different from the triplet case, are studied and all the detectable decay modes are considered. We also applied the same kinematic cuts as in triplet case to reduce the background at LHC and the needed integrated luminosities to find the doubly charged leptons with different masses are analyzed. We also suggested a method to distinguish the exotic lepton doublet and triplet.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figure

Dark matter and localised fermions from spherical orbifolds?

We study a class of six-dimensional models based on positive curvature surfaces (spherical 2-orbifolds) as extra-spaces. Using the Newman-Penrose formalism, we discuss the particle spectrum in this class of models. The fermion spectrum problem, which has been addressed with flux compactifications in the past, can be avoided using localised fermions. In this framework, we find that there are four types of geometry compatible with the existence of a stable dark matter candidate and we study the simplest case in detail. Using the complementarity between collider resonance searches and relic density constraints, we show that this class of models is under tension, unless the model lies in a funnel region characterised by a resonant Higgs s-channel in the dark matter annihilation.Comment: 38 pages, 7 figure