Resolving the Degeneracy in Single Higgs Production with Higgs Pair Production

The Higgs boson production can be affected by several anomalous couplings, e.g. $c_t$ and $c_g$ anomalous couplings. Precise measurement of $gg\to h$ production yields two degenerate parameter spaces of $c_t$ and $c_g$; one parameter space exhibits the SM limit while the other does not. Such a degeneracy could be resolved by Higgs boson pair production. In this work we adapt the strategy suggested by the ATLAS collaboration to explore the potential of distinguishing the degeneracy at the 14 TeV LHC. If the $c_t$ anomalous coupling is induced only by the operator $H^\dag H \bar Q_L \tilde{H} t_R$, then the non-SM-like band could be excluded with an integrated luminosity of $\sim 235~{\rm fb}^{-1}$. Making use of the fact that the Higgs boson pair is mainly produced through an $s$-wave scattering, we propose an analytical function to describe the fraction of signal events surviving a series of experimental cuts for a given invariant mass of Higgs boson pair. The function is model independent and can be applied to estimate the discovery potential of various NP models

J/ψJ/\psi production and suppression in high energy proton-nucleus collisions

We apply a Color Glass Condensate+Non-Relativistic QCD (CGC+NRQCD) framework to compute $J/\psi$ production in deuteron-nucleus collisions at RHIC and proton-nucleus collisions at the LHC. Our results match smoothly at high $p_\perp$ to a next-to-leading order perturbative QCD + NRQCD computation. Excellent agreement is obtained for $p_\perp$ spectra at RHIC and LHC for central and forward rapidities, as well as for the normalized ratio $R_{pA}$ of these results to spectra in proton-proton collisions. In particular, we observe that the $R_{pA}$ data is strongly bounded by our computations of the same for each of the individual NRQCD channels; this result provides strong evidence that our description is robust against uncertainties in initial conditions and hadronization mechanisms.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Simple non-Abelian extensions of the standard model gauge group and the diboson excesses at the LHC

The ATLAS collaboration reported excesses at around 2 TeV in the di-boson production decaying into hadronic final states. We consider the possibility of explaining the excesses with extra gauge bosons in two simple non-Abelian extensions of the Standard Model. One is the so-called $G(221)$ models with a symmetry structure of $SU(2)_1\otimes SU(2)_2\otimes U(1)_X$ and the other is the $G(331)$ models with an extended symmetry of $SU(3)_C\otimes SU(3)_L\otimes U(1)_X$. The $W'$ and $Z'$ bosons emerge after the electroweak symmetry is spontaneously broken. Two patterns of symmetry breaking in the $G(221)$ models are considered in this work: one is $SU(2)_L\otimes SU(2)_2 \otimes U(1)_X \to SU(2)_L\otimes U(1)_Y$, the other is $SU(2)_1\otimes SU(2)_2 \otimes U(1)_Y \to SU(2)_L\otimes U(1)_Y$. The symmetry breaking of the $G(331)$ model is $SU(3)_L\otimes U(1)_X \to SU(2)_L \otimes U(1)_Y$. We perform a global analysis of $W^\prime$ and $Z^\prime$ phenomenology in ten new physics models, including all the channels of $W^\prime/Z^\prime$ decay. Our study shows that the leptonic mode and the dijet mode of $W^\prime/Z^\prime$ decays impose a very stringent bound on the parameter space in several new physics models. Such tight bounds provide a useful guide for building new physics models to address on the diboson anomalies. We also note that the Left-Right and Lepton-Phobic models can explain the $3.4\sigma$ $WZ$ excess if the $2.6\sigma$ deviation in the $W^+W^-$ pair around 2~TeV were confirmed to be a fluctuation of the SM backgrounds.Comment: Publish version; title changed as suggested by journal Edito

Fragmentation functions of polarized heavy quarkonium

Study of the polarized heavy quarkonium production in recently proposed QCD factorization formalism requires knowledge of a large number of input fragmentation functions (FFs) from a single parton or a heavy quark-antiquark pair to a polarized heavy quarkonium. In this paper, we calculate these FFs at the input scale in terms of nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) factorization. We derive all relevant polarized NRQCD long-distance matrix elements based symmetries and propose a self-consistent scheme to define them in arbitrary $d$ dimensions. We then calculate polarized input FFs contributed from all $S$-wave and $P$-wave NRQCD intermediate states. With our calculation of the polarized input FFs, and the partonic hard part available in literatures, the QCD factorization formalism is ready to be applied to polarized heavy quarkonium production.Comment: 30 pages, 1 figur