Light Stop Decays: Implications for LHC Searches

We investigate the flavour-changing neutral current decay of the lightest stop into a charm quark and the lightest neutralino and its four-body decay into the lightest neutralino, a down-type quark and a fermion pair. These are the relevant stop search channels in the low-mass region. The SUSY-QCD corrections to the two-body decay have been calculated for the first time and turn out to be sizeable. In the four-body decay both the contributions from diagrams with flavour-changing neutral current (FCNC) couplings and the mass effects of final state bottom quarks and $\tau$ leptons have been taken into account, which are not available in the literature so far. The resulting branching ratios are investigated in detail. We find that in either of the decay channels the branching ratios can deviate significantly from one in large parts of the allowed parameter range. Taking this into account, the experimental exclusion limits on the stop, which are based on the assumption of branching ratios equal to one, are considerably weakened. This should be taken into account in future searches for light stops at the next run of the LHC, where the probed low stop mass region will be extended

Probing the CP nature of the Higgs bosons by top-pair production at photon linear colliders

We study effects of heavy Higgs bosons on the top-pair production process at photon linear colliders. The interference patterns between the resonant Higgs-production amplitudes and the continuum QED amplitudes are examined. The patterns tell us not only the CP nature of the Higgs bosons but also the phase of the $\gamma\gamma$--Higgs vertex which gives new information about the Higgs couplings to new charged particles. We point out that it is necessary to use circularly polarized photon beams to produce efficiently heavy Higgs bosons whose masses exceed the electron beam energy, and show that the above interference patterns of the production amplitudes can be studied by observing top decay angular distributions. Analytic expressions for the helicity amplitudes for the sequential process $\gamma\gamma \to t \bar{t} \to (bW^+) (\bar{b}W^-) \to (b f_1 \bar{f}_2) (\bar{b} f_3 \bar{f}_4)$ are presented in terms of the generic $\gamma\gamma \to t \bar{t}$ production amplitudes.Comment: 34 pages, LATEX file with 6 PS figures, comments adde

Ultimate parameters of the photon collider at the ILC

At linear colliders, the e+e- luminosity is limited by beam-collision effects, which determine the required emittances of beams in damping rings (DRs). While in gamma-gamma collisions at the photon collider, these effects are absent, and so smaller emittances are desirable. In present damping rings designs, nominal DR parameters correspond to those required for e+e- collisions. In this note, I would like to stress once again that as soon as we plan the photon-collider mode of ILC operation, the damping-ring emittances are dictated by the photon-collider requirements--namely, they should be as small as possible. This can be achieved by adding more wigglers to the DRs; the incremental cost is easily justified by a considerable potential improvement of the gamma-gamma luminosity. No expert analysis exists as of yet, but it seems realistic to obtain a factor five increase of the gamma-gamma luminosity compared to the ``nominal'' DR design.Comment: Talk at LCWS06, Bangalore, India, March 2006, to be published in Indian Journal of Physics, 5 pp, Latex, 1 .eps figur

Higgs boson pair production process e+e−→ZHHe^+e^-\to ZHH in the littlest Higgs model at the ILC

The physics prospect at future linear $e^{+}e^{-}$ colliders for the study of the Higgs triple self-coupling via the process of $e^{+}e^{-}\to ZHH$ is investigated. In this paper, we calculate the contribution of the new particles predicted by the littlest Higgs model to the cross sections of this process in the future high energy $e^{+}e^{-}$ collider($ILC$). The results show that, in the favorable parameter spaces preferred by the electroweak precision, the deviation of the total cross sections from its $SM$ value varies from a few percent to tens percent, which may be detected at the future $ILC$ experiments with $\sqrt{s}$=500GeV.Comment: 13 pages,4 figure

Testing supersymmetry at the LHC through gluon-fusion production of a slepton pair

Renormalizable quartic couplings among new particles are typical of supersymmetric models. Their detection could provide a test for supersymmetry, discriminating it from other extensions of the Standard Model. Quartic couplings among squarks and sleptons, together with the SU(3) gauge couplings for squarks, allow a new realization of the gluon-fusion mechanism for pair-production of sleptons at the one-loop level. The corresponding production cross section, however, is at most of ${\cal O}(1)$fb for slepton and squark masses of ${\cal O}(100)$GeV. We then extend our investigation to the gluon-fusion production of sleptons through the exchange of Higgs bosons. The cross section is even smaller, of ${\cal O}(0.1)$fb, if the exchanged Higgs boson is considerably below the slepton-pair threshold, but it is enhanced when it is resonant. It can reach ${\cal O}(10)$fb for the production of sleptons of same-chirality, exceeding these values for $\widetilde{\tau}$'s of opposite-chirality, even when chirality-mixing terms in the squark sector are vanishing. The cross section can be further enhanced if these mixing terms are nonnegligible, providing a potentially interesting probe of the Higgs sector, in particular of parameters such as $A$, $\mu$, and $\tan\beta$.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure

On the NLO QCD corrections to the production of the heaviest neutral Higgs scalar in the MSSM

We present a calculation of the two-loop top-stop-gluino contributions to Higgs production via gluon fusion in the MSSM. By means of an asymptotic expansion in the heavy particle masses, we obtain explicit and compact analytic formulae that are valid when the Higgs and the top quark are lighter than stops and gluino, without assuming a specific hierarchy between the Higgs mass and the top mass. Being applicable to the heaviest Higgs scalar in a significant region of the MSSM parameter space, our results complement earlier ones obtained with a Taylor expansion in the Higgs mass, and can be easily implemented in computer codes to provide an efficient and accurate determination of the Higgs production cross section.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

Toward High Precision Higgs-Boson Measurements at the International Linear e+e- Collider

This report reviews the properties of Higgs bosons in the Standard Model (SM) and its various extensions. We give an extensive overview about the potential of the ILC operated at centre-of-mass energies up to 1 TeV (including the gamma gamma option) for the determination of the Higgs boson properties. This comprises the measurement of the Higgs boson mass, its couplings to SM fermions and gauge bosons, and the determination of the spin and the CP quantum numbers of the Higgs. The extensions of the SM that are analyzed in more detail are heavy SM-like Higgs bosons, heavy Higgs bosons in the framework of Supersymmetry (SUSY) and further exotic scenarios. We review recent theoretical developments in the field of Higgs boson physics. The important question what the ILC can contribute to Higgs boson physics after the LHC, the LHC/ILC interplay and synergy is discussed. The impact of Higgs boson physics on cosmology in several SUSY frameworks is analyzed. The impact of the accelerator and dector performance on the precision of measurements are discussed in detail. We propose a strategy to optimize future analyses. Open questions arising for the various topics are listed, further topics of study and corresponding roadmaps are suggested.Comment: 128 pages, lots of figures. One subsection added and other minor modification

Study of CP Property of the Higgs at a Photon Collider using γγ→ttˉ→lX\gamma\gamma\to t\bar t\to l X

We study possible effects of CP violation in the Higgs sector on $t\bar t$ production at a $\gamma\gamma$-collider. These studies are performed in a model-independent way in terms of six form-factors $\{\Re(S_{\gamma}), \Im(S_{\gamma}), \Re(P_{\gamma}), \Im(P_{\gamma}), S_t, P_t\}$ which parametrize the CP mixing in the Higgs sector, and a strategy for their determination is developed. We observe that the angular distribution of the decay lepton from $t/\bar t$ produced in this process is independent of any CP violation in the $tbW$ vertex and hence best suited for studying CP mixing in the Higgs sector. Analytical expressions are obtained for the angular distribution of leptons in the c.m. frame of the two colliding photons for a general polarization state of the incoming photons. We construct combined asymmetries in the initial state lepton (photon) polarization and the final state lepton charge. They involve CP even ($x$'s) and odd ($y$'s) combinations of the mixing parameters. We study limits up to which the values of $x$ and $y$, with only two of them allowed to vary at a time, can be probed by measurements of these asymmetries, using circularly polarized photons. We use the numerical values of the asymmetries predicted by various models to discriminate among them. We show that this method can be sensitive to the loop-induced CP violation in the Higgs sector in the MSSM.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures added one referenc

Long-lived stops in MSSM scenarios with a neutralino LSP

This work investigates the possibility of a long-lived stop squark in supersymmetric models with the neutralino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). We study the implications of meta-stable stops on the sparticle mass spectra and the dark matter density. We find that in order to obtain a sufficiently long stop lifetime so as to be observable as a stable R-hadron at an LHC experiment, we need to fine tune the mass degeneracy between the stop and the LSP considerably. This increases the stop-neutralino coanihilation cross section, leaving the neutralino relic density lower than what is expected from the WMAP results for stop masses ~1.5 TeV/c^2. However, if such scenarios are realised in nature we demonstrate that the long-lived stops will be produced at the LHC and that stop-based R-hadrons with masses up to 1 TeV/c^2 can be detected after one year of running at design luminosity