271 research outputs found
Heavy Higgs signal-background interference in gg → VV in the Standard Model plus real singlet
For the Standard Model extended with a real scalar singlet field, the
modification of the heavy Higgs signal due to interference with the continuum
background and the off-shell light Higgs contribution is studied for gg --> ZZ,
WW --> 4 lepton processes at the Large Hadron Collider. Interference effects
can range from O(10%) to O(1) effects for integrated cross sections. Despite a
strong cancellation between the heavy Higgs-continuum and the heavy Higgs-light
Higgs interference, the full interference is clearly non-negligible and
modifies the heavy Higgs line shape. A |M_VV - M_h2| < Gamma_h2 cut mitigates
interference effects to O(10%) or less. A public program that allows to
simulate the full interference is presented.Comment: 22 pages, 15 figures, 9 tables; added results and references,
improved discussion, corrected v2 results (heavy top approximation was
inadvertently active, results deviate by less than 5%), conclusions
unchanged, updated gg2VV code, version to appear in EPJ
Inadequacy of zero-width approximation for a light Higgs boson signal
In the Higgs search at the LHC, a light Higgs boson (115 GeV <~ M_H <~ 130
GeV) is not excluded by experimental data. In this mass range, the width of the
Standard Model Higgs boson is more than four orders of magnitude smaller than
its mass. The zero-width approximation is hence expected to be an excellent
approximation. We show that this is not always the case. The inclusion of
off-shell contributions is essential to obtain an accurate Higgs signal
normalisation at the 1% precision level. For gg (-> H) -> VV, V= W,Z, O(10%)
corrections occur due to an enhanced Higgs signal in the region M_VV > 2 M_V,
where also sizable Higgs-continuum interference occurs. We discuss how
experimental selection cuts can be used to exclude this region in search
channels where the Higgs invariant mass cannot be reconstructed. We note that
the H -> VV decay modes in weak boson fusion are similarly affected.Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures, 6 tables; added references, expanded
introduction, version to appear in JHE
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
Interference effects for H → W W → ℓνqq¯′ and H → ZZ → ℓℓ¯qq¯ searches in gluon fusion at the LHC
Signal-background interference effects are studied for H → W W and H → ZZ searches in gluon fusion at the LHC. More specifically, the interference in the channels with semileptonic weak boson pair decay is analysed for light and heavy Higgs masses with minimal and realistic experimental selection cuts. In the semileptonic decay modes, the interference is affected by tree-level background contributions enhanced by 1/e2 relative to the gluon-fusion continuum background in the fully leptonic decay modes. We find that for both light and heavy Higgs masses the interference with the loop-induced weak-boson pair background dominates over the interference with the tree-level weak-boson plus jets background for a range of selection cuts. We therefore conclude that higher-order background contributions can induce leading interference effects. With appropriate background suppression cuts the interference can be reduced to the 10% level for heavy Higgs masses, and to the per mille level for the light SM Higgs. © 2015, The Author(s)
Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to Higgs boson production in association with a photon via weak-boson fusion at the LHC
Higgs boson production in association with a hard central photon and two
forward tagging jets is expected to provide valuable information on Higgs boson
couplings in a range where it is difficult to disentangle weak-boson fusion
processes from large QCD backgrounds. We present next-to-leading order QCD
corrections to Higgs production in association with a photon via weak-boson
fusion at a hadron collider in the form of a flexible parton-level Monte Carlo
program. The QCD corrections to integrated cross sections are found to be small
for experimentally relevant selection cuts, while the shape of kinematic
distributions can be distorted by up to 20% in some regions of phase space.
Residual scale uncertainties at next-to-leading order are at the few-percent
level.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl
BSM W W production with a jet veto
We consider the impact on W W production of the unique dimension-six operator coupling gluons to the Higgs field. In order to study this process, we have to appropriately model the effect of a veto on additional jets. This requires the resummation of large logarithms of the ratio of the maximum jet transverse momentum and the invariant mass of the W boson pair. We have performed such resummation at the appropriate accuracy for the Standard Model (SM) background and for a signal beyond the SM (BSM), and devised a simple method to interface jet-veto resummations with fixed-order event generators. This resulted in the fast numerical code MCFM-RE, the Resummation Edition of the fixed-order code MCFM. We compared our resummed predictions with parton-shower event generators and assessed the size of effects, such as limited detector acceptances, hadronisation and the underlying event, that were not included in our resummation. We have then used the code to compare the sensitivity of W W and Z Z production at the HL-LHC to the considered higher-dimension operator. We have found that W W can provide complementary sensitivity with respect to Z Z, provided one is able to control theory uncertainties at the percent-level. Our method is general and can be applied to the production of any colour singlet, both within and beyond the SM
NLO QCD corrections to tW' and tZ' production in forward-backward asymmetry models
We consider Z' and W' models recently proposed to explain the top
forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron. We present the next-to-leading
order QCD corrections to associated production of such vector bosons together
with top quarks at the Large Hadron Collider, for centre-of-mass energies of 7
and 8 TeV. The corrections are significant, modifying the total production
cross-section by 30-50%. We consider the effects of the corrections on the top
and vector-boson kinematics. The results are directly applicable to current
experimental searches, for both the ATLAS and CMS collaborations.Comment: 62 pages, 13 figures, 36 tables. v3 Updated to correspond to Journal
version and incorporate supplementary materia
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