289 research outputs found
Dark Matter from Minimal Flavor Violation
We consider theories of flavored dark matter, in which the dark matter
particle is part of a multiplet transforming nontrivially under the flavor
group of the Standard Model in a manner consistent with the principle of
Minimal Flavor Violation (MFV). MFV automatically leads to the stability of the
lightest state for a large number of flavor multiplets. If neutral, this
particle is an excellent dark matter candidate. Furthermore, MFV implies
specific patterns of mass splittings among the flavors of dark matter and
governs the structure of the couplings between dark matter and ordinary
particles, leading to a rich and predictive cosmology and phenomenology. We
present an illustrative phenomenological study of an effective theory of a
flavor SU(3)_Q triplet, gauge singlet scalar.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures; v2: references added, minor changes to collider
analysis, conclusions unchange
Electroweak corrections to Higgs-strahlung off W/Z bosons at the Tevatron and the LHC with HAWK
The associate production of Higgs bosons with W or Z bosons, known as
Higgs-strahlung, is an important search channel for Higgs bosons at the hadron
colliders Tevatron and LHC for low Higgs-boson masses. We refine a previous
calculation of next-to-leading-order electroweak corrections (and recalculate
the QCD corrections) upon including the leptonic decay of the W/Z bosons,
thereby keeping the fully differential information of the 2-lepton + Higgs
final state. The gauge invariance of the W/Z-resonance treatment is ensured by
the use of the complex-mass scheme. The electroweak corrections, which are at
the level of -(5-10)% for total cross sections, further increase in size with
increasing transverse momenta p_T in differential cross sections. For instance,
for p_T,H >~ 200GeV, which is the interesting range at the LHC, the electroweak
corrections to WH production reach about -14% for M_H = 120GeV. The described
corrections are implemented in the HAWK Monte Carlo program, which was
initially designed for the vector-boson-fusion channel, and are discussed for
various distributions in the production channels pp / p \bar p -> H + l nu_l /
l^-l^+ / nu_l \bar nu_l + X.Comment: 22 p
Vector boson pair production at the LHC
We present phenomenological results for vector boson pair production at the
LHC, obtained using the parton-level next-to-leading order program MCFM. We
include the implementation of a new process in the code, pp -> \gamma\gamma,
and important updates to existing processes. We incorporate fragmentation
contributions in order to allow for the experimental isolation of photons in
\gamma\gamma, W\gamma, and Z\gamma production and also account for gluon-gluon
initial state contributions for all relevant processes. We present results for
a variety of phenomenological scenarios, at the current operating energy of
\sqrt{s} = 7 TeV and for the ultimate machine goal, \sqrt{s} = 14 TeV. We
investigate the impact of our predictions on several important distributions
that enter into searches for new physics at the LHC.Comment: 35 pages, 14 figure
Diboson-Jets and the Search for Resonant Zh Production
New particles at the TeV-scale may have sizeable decay rates into boosted
Higgs bosons or other heavy scalars. Here, we investigate the possibility of
identifying such processes when the Higgs/scalar subsequently decays into a
pair of W bosons, constituting a highly distinctive "diboson-jet." These can
appear as a simple dilepton (plus MET) configuration, as a two-prong jet with
an embedded lepton, or as a four-prong jet. We study jet substructure methods
to discriminate these objects from their dominant backgrounds. We then
demonstrate the use of these techniques in the search for a heavy spin-one Z'
boson, such as may arise from strong dynamics or an extended gauge sector,
utilizing the decay chain Z' -> Zh -> Z(WW^(*)). We find that modes with
multiple boosted hadronic Zs and Ws tend to offer the best prospects for the
highest accessible masses. For 100/fb luminosity at the 14 TeV LHC, Z' decays
into a standard 125 GeV Higgs can be observed with 5-sigma significance for
masses of 1.5-2.5 TeV for a range of models. For a 200 GeV Higgs (requiring
nonstandard couplings, such as fermiophobic), the reach may improve to up to
2.5-3.0 TeV.Comment: 23 pages plus appendices, 9 figure
Multiple Parton Interactions in Z+jets production at the LHC. A comparison of factorized and non--factorized double parton distribution functions
We examine the contribution of Multiple Parton Interactions to Z+n-jets
production at the LHC, n=2,3,4, where the Z boson is assumed to decay
leptonically. We compare the results obtained with the correlated GS09 double
parton distribution function with those obtained with two instances of fully
factorized single parton distribution functions: MSTW2008LO and CTEQ6LO. It
appears quite feasible to measure the MPI contribution to Z+2/3/4 jets already
in the first phase of the LHC with a total luminosity of one inverse femtobarn
at 7 TeV. If as expected the trigger threshold for single photons is around 80
GeV, Z+2-jets production may well turn out to be more easily observable than
the gamma+3-jets channel. The MPI cross section is dominated by relatively soft
events with two jets balancing in transverse momentum.Comment: 15 pages, 3 plot
The mass area of jets
We introduce a new characteristic of jets called mass area. It is defined so
as to measure the susceptibility of the jet's mass to contamination from soft
background. The mass area is a close relative of the recently introduced
catchment area of jets. We define it also in two variants: passive and active.
As a preparatory step, we generalise the results for passive and active areas
of two-particle jets to the case where the two constituent particles have
arbitrary transverse momenta. As a main part of our study, we use the mass area
to analyse a range of modern jet algorithms acting on simple one and
two-particle systems. We find a whole variety of behaviours of passive and
active mass areas depending on the algorithm, relative hardness of particles or
their separation. We also study mass areas of jets from Monte Carlo simulations
as well as give an example of how the concept of mass area can be used to
correct jets for contamination from pileup. Our results show that the
information provided by the mass area can be very useful in a range of
jet-based analyses.Comment: 36 pages, 12 figures; v2: improved quality of two plots, added entry
in acknowledgments, nicer form of formulae in appendix A; v3: added section
with MC study and pileup correction, version accepted by JHE
Stealth Supersymmetry
We present a broad class of supersymmetric models that preserve R-parity but
lack missing energy signatures. These models have new light particles with
weak-scale supersymmetric masses that feel SUSY breaking only through couplings
to the MSSM. This small SUSY breaking leads to nearly degenerate fermion/boson
pairs, with small mass splittings and hence small phase space for decays
carrying away invisible energy. The simplest scenario has low-scale SUSY
breaking, with missing energy only from soft gravitinos. This scenario is
natural, lacks artificial tunings to produce a squeezed spectrum, and is
consistent with gauge coupling unification. The resulting collider signals will
be jet-rich events containing false resonances that could resemble signatures
of R-parity violation. We discuss several concrete examples of the general
idea, and emphasize gamma + jet + jet resonances, displaced vertices, and very
large numbers of b-jets as three possible discovery modes.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
Giant QCD K-factors beyond NLO
Hadronic observables in Z+jet events can be subject to large NLO corrections
at TeV scales, with K-factors that even reach values of order 50 in some cases.
We develop a method, LoopSim, by which approximate NNLO predictions can be
obtained for such observables, supplementing NLO Z+jet and NLO Z+2-jet results
with a unitarity-based approximation for missing higher loop terms. We first
test the method against known NNLO results for Drell-Yan lepton pt spectra. We
then show our approximate NNLO results for the Z+jet observables. Finally we
examine whether the LoopSim method can provide useful information even in cases
without giant K-factors, with results for observables in dijet events that can
be compared to early LHC data.Comment: 38 pages, 13 figures; v2 includes additional reference
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