Dark Matter at Colliders: a Model-Independent Approach

Assuming that cosmological dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles, we use the recent precise measurement of cosmological parameters to predict the guaranteed rates of production of such particles in association with photons at electron-positron colliders. Our approach is based on general physical principles such as detailed balancing and soft/collinear factorization. It leads to predictions that are valid across a broad range of models containing WIMPs, including supersymmetry, universal extra dimensions, and many others. We also discuss the discovery prospects for the predicted experimental signatures.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Playing Tag with ANN: Boosted Top Identification with Pattern Recognition

Many searches for physics beyond the Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) rely on top tagging algorithms, which discriminate between boosted hadronic top quarks and the much more common jets initiated by light quarks and gluons. We note that the hadronic calorimeter (HCAL) effectively takes a "digital image" of each jet, with pixel intensities given by energy deposits in individual HCAL cells. Viewed in this way, top tagging becomes a canonical pattern recognition problem. With this motivation, we present a novel top tagging algorithm based on an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), one of the most popular approaches to pattern recognition. The ANN is trained on a large sample of boosted tops and light quark/gluon jets, and is then applied to independent test samples. The ANN tagger demonstrated excellent performance in a Monte Carlo study: for example, for jets with p_T in the 1100-1200 GeV range, 60% top-tag efficiency can be achieved with a 4% mis-tag rate. We discuss the physical features of the jets identified by the ANN tagger as the most important for classification, as well as correlations between the ANN tagger and some of the familiar top-tagging observables and algorithms.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure

A Weakly Coupled Ultraviolet Completion of the Littlest Higgs with T-parity

We construct a weakly coupled, renormalizable ultraviolet completion of the Littlest Higgs model with T-parity (LHT), based on an SU(5)xSU(2)xU(1) gauge theory with a discrete Z_2 symmetry. Our model reproduces the complete structure of the LHT below the 10 TeV scale, including the collective symmetry breaking mechanism which solves the little hierarchy problem. The model is manifestly free of anomalies, including both gauge/gravitational anomalies and anomalies involving T-parity. At the TeV scale, the model contains additional states not present in the LHT. We estimate the impact of these states on precision electroweak observables, and show that the model is realistic. We also discuss how our model can be embedded into a supersymmetric theory or a five-dimensional setup with a warped extra dimension, stabilyzing the hierarchy between the 10 TeV and the Planck scale.Comment: v1: 30 pages, 4 figures v2: minor clarifications added and typos correcte

Little Higgs Models and Precision Electroweak Data

We study the low energy limit of Little Higgs models. The method consists in eliminating the heavy fields using their classical equations of motion in the infinite mass limit. After the elimination of the heavy degrees of freedom we can directly read off deviations from the precision electroweak data. We also examine the effects on the low energy precision experiments.Comment: Misprint in eps3 for the custodial model corrected and additional discussion of the triplet higg

Single production of charged gauge bosons from little Higgs models in association with top quark at the LHCLHC

In the context of the little Higgs models, we discuss single production of the new charged gauge bosons in association with top quark at the $CERN$ Large Hadron Collider$(LHC)$. We find that the new charged gauge bosons $W_{H}^{-}$ and $X^{-}$, which are predicted by the littlest Higgs model and the SU(3) simple model, respectively, can be abundantly produced at the $LHC$. However, since the main backgrounds coming from the processes $pp\to t\bar{t}+X$ and $pp\to tW^{-}+X$ are very large, the values of the ratios $N_{W}$ and $N_{X}$ are very small in most of the parameter space. It is only possible to detect the signal of the gauge boson $W_{H}^{-}$ via the process $pp\to gb+X\to tW_{H}^{-}+X$ at the $LHC$ in a small region of the parameter space.Comment: 14pages, 4 figures. To be published in Europhysics Letter

Perturbative Relations between Gravity and Gauge Theory

We review the relations that have been found between multi-loop scattering amplitudes in gauge theory and gravity, and their implications for ultraviolet divergences in supergravity.Comment: LaTex with package axodraw.sty. 10 pages. Presented by L.D. at Strings 99. Cosmetic changes onl

Dijet signals of the Little Higgs model with T-parity

The Littest Higgs model with T-parity (LHT), apart from offering a viable solution to the naturalness problem of the Standard Model, also predicts a set of new fermions as well as a candidate for dark matter. We explore the possibility of discovering the heavy T-odd quark Q_H at the LHC in a final state comprising two hard jets with a large missing transverse momentum. Also discussed is the role of heavy flavor tagging.Comment: Changes in text. Some references adde

It is a Graviton! or maybe not

The discovery of Kaluza-Klein (KK) gravitons is a smoking gun of extra dimensions. Other scenarios, however, could give rise to spin-two resonances of a new strongly-coupled sector and act as impostors. In this paper we prove that a spin-two resonance does not couple to the Standard Model through dimension-four operators. We then show that the massive graviton and its impostor both couple to the Standard Model through the same dimension-five operators. Therefore the spin determination is identical. Nevertheless, we also show that one can use the ratio of branching ratios to photons and to jets for distinguishing between KK gravitons and their impostors. The capacity to distinguish between KK gravitons and impostors is a manifestation of the breakdown of the duality between AdS and strongly-coupled theories.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. References added, typos correcte

Collective Quartics from Simple Groups

This article classifies Little Higgs models that have collective quartic couplings. There are two classes of collective quartics: Special Cosets and Special Quartics. After taking into account dangerous singlets, the smallest Special Coset models are SU(5)/SO(5) and SU(6)/Sp(6). The smallest Special Quartic model is SU(5)/SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) and has not previously been considered as a candidate Little Higgs model.Comment: 22 pages, 2 figure

Probing EWSB Naturalness in Unified SUSY Models with Dark Matter

We have studied Electroweak Symmetry Breaking (EWSB) fine-tuning in the context of two unified Supersymmetry scenarios: the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Model (CMSSM) and models with Non-Universal Higgs Masses (NUHM), in light of current and upcoming direct detection dark matter experiments. We consider both those models that satisfy a one-sided bound on the relic density of neutralinos, $\Omega_{\chi} h^2 < 0.12$, and also the subset that satisfy the two-sided bound in which the relic density is within the 2 sigma best fit of WMAP7 + BAO + H0 data. We find that current direct detection searches for dark matter probe the least fine-tuned regions of parameter-space, or equivalently those of lowest Higgs mass parameter $\mu$, and will tend to probe progressively more and more fine-tuned models, though the trend is more pronounced in the CMSSM than in the NUHM. Additionally, we examine several subsets of model points, categorized by common mass hierarchies; M_{\chi_0} \sim M_{\chi^\pm}, M_{\chi_0} \sim M_{\stau}, M_{\chi_0} \sim M_{\stop_1}, the light and heavy Higgs poles, and any additional models classified as "other"; the relevance of these mass hierarchies is their connection to the preferred neutralino annihilation channel that determines the relic abundance. For each of these subsets of models we investigated the degree of fine-tuning and discoverability in current and next generation direct detection experiments.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures. v2: references added. v3: matches published versio