Supersoft Supersymmetry is Super-Safe

We show that supersymmetric models with a large Dirac gluino mass can evade much of the jets plus missing energy searches at LHC. Dirac gaugino masses arise from "supersoft" operators that lead to finite one-loop suppressed contributions to the scalar masses. A little hierarchy between the Dirac gluino mass 5 - 10 times heavier than the squark masses is automatic and technically natural, in stark contrast to supersymmetric models with Majorana gaugino masses. At the LHC, colored sparticle production is suppressed not only by the absence of gluino pair (or associated) production, but also because several of the largest squark pair production channels are suppressed or absent. We recast the null results from the present jets plus missing energy searches at LHC for supersymmetry onto a supersoft supersymmetric simplified model (SSSM). Assuming a massless LSP, we find the strongest bounds are: 748 GeV from a 2j + MET search at ATLAS (4.7 fb^{-1}), and 684 GeV from a combined jets plus missing energy search using $\alpha_T$ at CMS (1.1 fb^{-1}). In the absence of a future observation, we estimate the bounds on the squark masses to improve only modestly with increased luminosity. We also briefly consider the further weakening in the bounds as the LSP mass is increased.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Phenomenology of Mirror Fermions in the Littlest Higgs Model with T-Parity

Little Higgs models are an interesting alternative to explain electroweak symmetry breaking without fine-tuning. Supplemented with a discrete symmetry (T-parity) constraints from electroweak precision data are naturally evaded and also a viable dark matter candidate is obtained. T-parity implies the existence of new (mirror) fermions in addition to the heavy gauge bosons of the little Higgs models. In this paper we consider the effects of the mirror fermions on the phenomenology of the littlest Higgs model with T-parity at the LHC. We study the most promising production channels and decay chains for the new particles. We find that the mirror fermions have a large impact on the magnitude of signal rates and on the new physics signatures. Realistic background estimates are given.Comment: 13 p

Enhancement of the Higgs pair production at LHC; the MSSM and extra dimension effects

The neutral Higgs pair production at the LHC is studied in the MSSM, the large extra dimensional (ADD) model and the Randall-Sundrum (RS) model, where the total cross section can be significantly enhanced compared to that in the SM. The $p_{_T}$, invariant mass and rapidity distributions of each model have been shown to be distinctive: The ADD model raises the $p_T$ and invariant mass distributions at high scales of $p_T$ and invariant mass; in the RS model resonant peaks appear after the SM contribution dies away; the SM and the MSSM distributions drop rapidly at those high scales; in the ADD and the RS models the rapidity distributions congregate more around the center. It is concluded that various distributions of the Higgs pair production at the LHC with restrictive kinematic cuts would provide one of the most robust signals for the extra dimensional effects.Comment: Revised version, 26 pages including 11 figures, ReVTe

Structure of Fat Jets at the Tevatron and Beyond

Boosted resonances is a highly probable and enthusiastic scenario in any process probing the electroweak scale. Such objects when decaying into jets can easily blend with the cornucopia of jets from hard relative light QCD states. We review jet observables and algorithms that can contribute to the identification of highly boosted heavy jets and the possible searches that can make use of such substructure information. We also review previous studies by CDF on boosted jets and its measurements on specific jet shapes.Comment: invited review for a special "Top and flavour physics in the LHC era" issue of The European Physical Journal C, we invite comments regarding contents of the review; v2 added references and institutional preprint number

Hitting sbottom in natural SUSY

We compare the experimental prospects of direct stop and sbottom pair production searches at the LHC. Such searches for stops are of great interest as they directly probe for states that are motivated by the SUSY solution to the hierarchy problem of the Higgs mass parameter - leading to a "Natural" SUSY spectrum. Noting that sbottom searches are less experimentally challenging and scale up in reach directly with the improvement on b-tagging algorithms, we discuss the interplay of small TeV scale custodial symmetry violation with sbottom direct pair production searches as a path to obtaining strong sub-TeV constraints on stops in a natural SUSY scenario. We argue that if a weak scale natural SUSY spectrum does not exist within the reach of LHC, then hopes for such a spectrum for large regions of parameter space should sbottom out. Conversely, the same arguments make clear that a discovery of such a spectrum is likely to proceed in a sbottom up manner.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures,v2 refs added, JHEP versio

Revealing the electroweak properties of a new scalar resonance

One or more new heavy resonances may be discovered in experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. In order to determine if such a resonance is the long-awaited Higgs boson, it is essential to pin down its spin, CP, and electroweak quantum numbers. Here we describe how to determine what role a newly-discovered neutral CP-even scalar plays in electroweak symmetry breaking, by measuring its relative decay rates into pairs of electroweak vector bosons: WW, ZZ, \gamma\gamma, and Z\gamma. With the data-driven assumption that electroweak symmetry breaking respects a remnant custodial symmetry, we perform a general analysis with operators up to dimension five. Remarkably, only three pure cases and one nontrivial mixed case need to be disambiguated, which can always be done if all four decay modes to electroweak vector bosons can be observed or constrained. We exhibit interesting special cases of Higgs look-alikes with nonstandard decay patterns, including a very suppressed branching to WW or very enhanced branchings to \gamma\gamma and Z\gamma. Even if two vector boson branching fractions conform to Standard Model expectations for a Higgs doublet, measurements of the other two decay modes could unmask a Higgs imposter.Comment: 23 pages, two figures; v2: minor revision and version to appear in JHE

Low-scale supersymmetry breaking: effective description, electroweak breaking and phenomenology

We consider supersymmetric scenarios in which the scale of SUSY breaking is low, sqrt{F}=O(TeV). Instead of studying specific models of this type, e.g. those with extra dimensions and low fundamental scale, we follow a model-independent approach based on a general effective Lagrangian, in which the MSSM supermultiplets are effectively coupled to a singlet associated to SUSY breaking. Our goal is to analyse the interplay bewteen SUSY breaking and electroweak breaking, generalizing earlier results. The conventional MSSM picture can be substantially modified, mainly because the Higgs potential contains additional effective quartic terms and resembles that of two-Higgs-doublet models, with an additional singlet. Novel opportunities to achieve electroweak breaking arise, and the electroweak scale may be obtained in a less fine-tuned way. Also the Higgs spectrum can be strikingly changed, and the lightest state can be much heavier than in usual supersymmetric scenarios. Other effects appear in the chargino and neutralino sectors, which contain the goldstino. Finally, we discuss the role of electroweak breaking in processes in which two goldstinos could be emitted, such as fermion-antifermion annihilation and the invisible decay of a Z boson or of neutral Higgs bosons.Comment: LaTeX, 47 pages, 5 figures; typos corrected, to appear in Nucl. Phys.

Parton Distributions Working Group

The main focus of this working group was to investigate the different issues associated with the development of quantitative tools to estimate parton distribution functions uncertainties. In the conclusion, we introduce a "Manifesto" that describes an optimal method for reporting data.Comment: Report of the Parton Distributions Working Group of the 'QCD and Weak Boson Physics workshop in preparation for Run II at the Fermilab Tevatron'. Co-Conveners: L. de Barbaro, S.A. Keller, S. Kuhlmann, H. Schellman, and W.-K. Tun

Pair production of neutral Higgs bosons at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

We study the hadroproduction of two neutral Higgs bosons in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model, which provides a handle on the trilinear Higgs couplings. We include the contributions from quark-antiquark annihilation at the tree level and those from gluon-gluon fusion, which proceeds via quark and squark loops. We list compact results for the tree-level partonic cross sections and the squark loop amplitudes, and we confirm previous results for the quark loop amplitudes. We quantitatively analyze the hadronic cross sections at the CERN Large Hadron Collider assuming a favorable supergravity-inspired scenario.Comment: 22 pages (Latex), 16 figures (Postscript). Discussion of theoretical uncertainties and background processes added. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.