Odd Tracks at Hadron Colliders

New physics that exhibits irregular tracks such as kinks, intermittent hits or decay in flight may easily be missed at hadron colliders. We demonstrate this by studying viable models of light, O(10 GeV), colored particles that decay predominantly inside the tracker. Such particles can be produced at staggering rates, and yet may not be identified or even triggered on at the LHC, unless specifically searched for. In addition, the models we study provide an explanation for the original measurement of the anomalous charged track distribution by CDF. The presence of irregular tracks in these models reconcile that measurement with the subsequent reanalysis and the null results of ATLAS and CMS. Our study clearly illustrates the need for a comprehensive study of irregular tracks at the LHC.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur

Electroweak Symmetry Breaking with a compact extra dimension

[Excerpt from the preface]: During my Ph.D. course, under the supervision of Riccardo Barbieri, I started working on Theoretical High Energy Physics. In particular I focused on the problem of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking and in this context I investigated the bene ts of introducing a compact extra dimension. In a series of papers, together with Riccardo Barbieri, Guido Marandella, Lawrence Hall, Yasunori Nomura, Takemichi Okui and Steven Oliver I built supersymmetric models in 5D and studied their phenomenology in detail [1, 2, 3, 4]. In this models Supersymmetry is broken by boundary conditions in the fth dimension and the ElectroWeak Symmetry Breaking is triggered by Supersymmetry breaking via the top/stop radiative corrections. The phenomenology of these models is signi cantly di erent than the one of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model scenarios extensively studied in the literature. These papers constitute the subject of this Thesis and their results will be presented in the following Chapters

Flavorful Supersymmetry

Weak scale supersymmetry provides elegant solutions to many of the problems of the standard model, but it also generically gives rise to excessive flavor and CP violation. We show that if the mechanism that suppresses the Yukawa couplings also suppresses flavor changing interactions in the supersymmetry breaking parameters, essentially all the low energy flavor and CP constraints can be satisfied. The standard assumption of flavor universality in the supersymmetry breaking sector is not necessary. We study signatures of this framework at the LHC. The mass splitting among different generations of squarks and sleptons can be much larger than in conventional scenarios, and even the mass ordering can be changed. We find that there is a plausible scenario in which the NLSP is a long-lived right-handed selectron or smuon decaying into the LSP gravitino. This leads to the spectacular signature of monochromatic electrons or muons in a stopper detector, providing strong evidence for the framework.Comment: 20 pages; typos corrected, comments added, to appear in PR

Monojet versus rest of the world I: t-channel Models

Monojet searches using Effective Field Theory (EFT) operators are usually interpreted as a robust and model independent constraint on direct detection (DD) scattering cross-sections. At the same time, a mediator particle must be present to produce the dark matter (DM) at the LHC. This mediator particle may be produced on shell, so that direct searches for the mediating particle can constrain the effective operator being applied to monojet constraints. In this first paper, we do a case study on t-channel models in monojet searches, where the (Standard Model singlet) DM is pair produced via a t-channel mediating particle, whose supersymmetric analogue is the squark. We compare monojet constraints to direct constraints on single or pair production of the mediator from multi-jets plus missing energy searches and we identify the regions where the latter dominate over the former. We show that computing bounds using supersymmetric simplified models and in the narrow width approximation, as done in previous work in the literature, misses important quantitative effects. We perform a full event simulation and statistical analysis, and we compute the effects of both on- and off-shell production of the mediating particle, showing that for both the monojet and multi-jets plus missing energy searches, previously derived bounds provided more conservative bounds than what can be extracted by including all relevant processes in the simulation. Monojets and searches for supersymmetry (SUSY) provide comparable bounds on a wide range of the parameter space, with SUSY searches usually providing stronger bounds, except in the regions where the DM particle and the mediator are very mass degenerate. The EFT approximation rarely is able to reproduce the actual limits. In a second paper to follow, we consider the case of s-channel mediators.Comment: 22 pages + appendices, 10 figure

Fastlim: a fast LHC limit calculator

Fastlim is a tool to calculate conservative limits on extensions of the Standard Model from direct LHC searches without performing any Monte Carlo event generation. The program reconstructs the visible cross sections from pre-calculated efficiency tables and cross section tables for simplified event topologies. As a proof of concept of the approach, we have implemented searches relevant for supersymmetric models with R-parity conservation. Fastlim takes the spectrum and coupling information of a given model point and provides, for each signal region of the implemented analyses, the visible cross sections normalised to the corresponding upper limit, reported by the experiments, as well as the exclusion $p$-value. To demonstrate the utility of the program we study the sensitivity of the recent ATLAS missing energy searches to the parameter space of natural SUSY models. The program structure allows the straight-forward inclusion of external efficiency tables and can be generalised to R-parity violating scenarios and non-SUSY models. This paper serves as a self-contained user guide, and indicates the conventions and approximations used.Comment: 39 pages, 43 figure

Sensitivity of a small matter-wave interferometer to gravitational waves

We study the possibility of using matter wave interferometry techniques to build a gravitational wave detector. We derive the response function and find that it contains a term proportional to the derivative of the gravitational wave, a point which has been disputed recently. We then study in detail the sensitivity that can be reached by such a detector and find that, if it is operated near resonance, it can reach potentially interesting values in the high frequency regime. The correlation between two or more of such devices can further improve the sensitivity for a stochastic signal.Comment: Revtex4, 19 pages, 3 figures. Several changes in the calculation of the response function. Accepted by PR

Implications of the dimuon CP asymmetry in B_{d,s} decays

The D0 Collaboration reported a 3.2sigma deviation from the standard model prediction in the like-sign dimuon asymmetry. Assuming that new physics contributes only to B_{d,s} mixing, we show that the data can be analyzed without using the theoretical calculation of \Delta\Gamma_s, allowing for robust interpretations. We find that this framework gives a good fit to all measurements, including the recent CDF S_{\psi\phi} result. The data allow universal new physics with similar contributions relative to the SM in the B_d and B_s systems, but favors a larger deviation in B_s than in B_d mixing. The general minimal flavor violation framework with flavor diagonal CP violating phases can account for the former and remarkably even for the latter case. This observation makes it simpler to speculate about which extensions with general flavor structure may also fit the data.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; final version accepted in PR

Rays of light from the LHC

We consider models for the di-photon resonance observed at ATLAS (with 3.6 fb^{-1}) and CMS (with 2.6 fb^{-1}). We find there is no conflict between the signal reported at 13 TeV, and the constraints from both experiments at 8 TeV with 20.3 fb^{-1}. We make a simple argument for why adding only one new resonance to the standard model (SM) is not sufficient to explain the observation. We explore four viable options: (i): resonance production and decay through loops of messenger fermions or scalars; (ii): a resonant messenger which decays to the di-photon resonance + X; (iii): an edge configuration where A -> B gamma -> C gamma gamma, and (iv): Hidden Valley-like models where the resonance decays to a pair of very light (sub-GeV) states, each of which in turn decays to a pair of collimated photons that cannot be distinguished from a single photon. Since in each case multiple new states have been introduced, a wealth of signatures is expected to ensue at Run-2 of LHC.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures. Typos corrected, appendix A updated and references adde

Constraining the dipole moments of the top quark

We investigate the direct and indirect bounds on dipole operators involving the top quark. A careful analysis shows that the experimental upper limit on the neutron electric dipole moment strongly constrains the chromo-electric dipole of the top. We improve previous bounds by two orders of magnitude. This has significant implications for new physics models and it also means that CP violation in top pair production mediated by dipole operators will not be accessible at the LHC. The CP conserving chromo-magnetic dipole moments are constrained by recent measurements of the t\bar t spectrum by the ATLAS collaboration. We also update the indirect constraints on electric and magnetic dipole moments from radiative b -> s transitions, finding that they can be considerably larger than their colored counterparts.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; extended and updated discussion of constraints on top EDM and MDM from rare B decays; typos correcte