Radiative corrections to the Triple Higgs Coupling in the Inert Higgs Doublet Model

We investigate the implication of the recent discovery of a Higgs-like particle in the first phase of the LHC Run 1 on the Inert Higgs Doublet Model (IHDM). The determination of the Higgs couplings to SM particles and its intrinsic properties will get improved during the new LHC Run 2 starting this year. The new LHC Run 2 would also shade some light on the triple Higgs coupling. Such measurement is very important in order to establish the details of the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism. Given the importance of the Higgs couplings both at the LHC and $e^+e^-$ Linear Collider machines, accurate theoretical predictions are required. We study the radiative corrections to the triple Higgs coupling $hhh$ and to $hZZ$, $hWW$ couplings in the context of the IHDM. By combining several theoretical and experimental constraints on parameter space, we show that extra particles might modify the triple Higgs coupling near threshold regions. Finally, we discuss the effect of these corrections on the double Higgs production signal at the $e^+e^-$ LC and show that they can be rather important.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figure

Boosting dark matter searches at muon colliders with Machine Learning: the mono-Higgs channel as a case study

The search for dark-matter (DM) candidates at high-energy colliders is one of the most promising avenues to understand the nature of this elusive component of the universe. Several searches at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have strongly constrained a wide range of simplified models. The combination of the bounds from the LHC with direct-detection experiments exclude the most minimal scalar singlet DM model. To address this, Lepton portal DM models are suitable candidates where DM is predominantly produced at lepton colliders since the DM candidate only interacts with the lepton sector through a mediator that carries a lepton number. In this work, we analyse the production of DM pairs in association with a Higgs boson decaying into two bottom quarks at future muon colliders in the framework of the minimal lepton portal DM model. It is found that the usual cut-based analysis methods fail to probe heavy DM masses for both the resolved (where the decay products of the Higgs boson can be resolved as two well-separated small-$R$ jets) and the merged (where the Higgs boson is clustered as one large-$R$ jet). We have then built a search strategy based on Boosted-Decision Trees (BDTs). We have optimised the hyperparameters of the BDT model to both have a high signal-to-background ratio and to avoid overtraining effects. We have found very important enhancements of the signal significance with respect to the cut-based analysis by factors of $8$--$50$ depending on the regime (resolved or merged) and the benchmark points. Using this BDT model on a one-dimensional parameter space scan we found that future muon colliders with $\sqrt{s}=3$ TeV and ${\cal L} = 1~{\rm ab}^{-1}$ can exclude DM masses up to $1$ TeV at the $95\%$ CL.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, and 11 table

Scalar leptoquarks at the LHC and flavour anomalies: a comparison of pair-production modes at NLO-QCD

We analyse scalar leptoquark pair production at the LHC with predictions including t-channel lepton exchange contributions up to next-to-leading order (NLO) in QCD. In particular, we calculate NLO-QCD predictions for off-diagonal production channels, i.e. channels that involve two different leptoquark eigenstates and are driven solely by diagrams involving Standard Model leptons in the t-channel at leading order, as opposed to diagonal channels where a pair of the same leptoquark eigenstate is produced. We find that reliable theoretical predictions for both channels require NLO accuracy. The relative importance of the off-diagonal modes depends strongly on the considered scenario. In a generic model involving R$_2$ and S$_3$ leptoquarks, at large values of the Yukawa couplings off-diagonal contributions initiated by valence quarks can be up to an order of magnitude higher than the diagonal production. However, we also find that in phenomenologically viable scenarios addressing the flavour anomalies off-diagonal production is generally negligible, with a few exceptions of 10%–30% of the total rate depending on the treatment of the charm density in the proton

Scalar leptoquarks at the LHC and flavour anomalies: a comparison of pair-production modes at NLO-QCD

We analyse scalar leptoquark pair production at the LHC with predictions including t-channel lepton exchange contributions up to next-to-leading order (NLO) in QCD. In particular, we calculate NLO-QCD predictions for off-diagonal production channels, i.e. channels that involve two different leptoquark eigenstates and are driven solely by diagrams involving Standard Model leptons in the t-channel at leading order, as opposed to diagonal channels where a pair of the same leptoquark eigenstate is produced. We find that reliable theoretical predictions for both channels require NLO accuracy. The relative importance of the off-diagonal modes depends strongly on the considered scenario. In a generic model involving R$_2$ and S$_3$ leptoquarks, at large values of the Yukawa couplings off-diagonal contributions initiated by valence quarks can be up to an order of magnitude higher than the diagonal production. However, we also find that in phenomenologically viable scenarios addressing the flavour anomalies off-diagonal production is generally negligible, with a few exceptions of 10%–30% of the total rate depending on the treatment of the charm density in the proton