Effects of Top-quark Compositeness on Higgs Boson Production at the LHC

Motivated by the possibility that the right-handed top-quark (t_R) is composite, we discuss the effects of dimension-six operators on the Higgs boson production at the LHC. When t_R is the only composite particle among the Standard Model (SM) particles, the (V+A)\otimes (V+A) type four-top-quark contact interaction is expected to have the largest coefficient among the dimension-six operators, according to the Naive Dimensional Analysis (NDA). We find that, to lowest order in QCD and other SM interactions, the cross section of the SM Higgs boson production via gluon fusion does not receive corrections from one insertion of the new contact interaction vertex. We also discuss the effects of other dimension-six operators whose coefficients are expected to be the second and the third largest from NDA. We find that the operator which consists of two t_R's and two SM Higgs boson doublets can recognizably change the Higgs boson production cross section from the SM prediction if the cut-off scale is \sim 1TeV.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. v2: explanations improved in Section 3, other minor changes. Version published in JHE

Higher Order Power Corrections in Inclusive B Decays

We discuss order 1/m_b^4 and 1/m_b^5 corrections in inclusive semileptonic decay of a $B$ meson. We identify relevant hadronic matrix elements of dimension seven and eight and estimate them using the ground-state saturation approximation. Within this approach the effects on the integrated rate and on kinematic moments are estimated. The overall relative shift in V_{cb} turns out about +0.4% as applied to the existing fits. Similar estimates are presented for B -> X_s+\gamma decays.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figure

Orbifold equivalence for finite density QCD and effective field theory

In the large N_c limit, some apparently different gauge theories turn out to be equivalent due to large N_c orbifold equivalence. We use effective field theory techniques to explore orbifold equivalence, focusing on the specific case of a recently discovered relation between an SO(2N_c) gauge theory and QCD. The equivalence to QCD has been argued to hold at finite baryon chemical potential, \mu_B, so long as one deforms the SO(2N_c) theory by certain "double-trace" terms. The deformed SO(2N_c) theory can be studied without a sign problem in the chiral limit, in contrast to SU(N_c) QCD at finite \mu_B. The purpose of the double-trace deformation in the SO(2N_c) theory is to prevent baryon number symmetry from breaking spontaneously at finite density, which is necessary for the equivalence to large N_c QCD to be valid. The effective field theory analysis presented here clarifies the physical significance of double-trace deformations, and strongly supports the proposed equivalence between the deformed SO(2N_c) theory and large N_c QCD at finite density.Comment: 39 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables. v2: Minor typo fixes and clarification

Semileptonic width ratios among beauty hadrons

We present predictions based on the heavy quark expansion in QCD. We find SU(3) breaking in B mesons suppressed in the framework of the HQE. B_s is expected to have the semileptonic width about 1% lower and Lambda_b about 3% higher when compared to Gamma_{sl}(B_d). The largest partial-rate preasymptotic effect is Pauli interference in the b-->u ell nu channel in Lambda_b, about +10%. We point out that the Omega_b semileptonic width is expected not to exceed that of B_d and may turn out to be the smallest among stable b hadrons despite the large mass. The underlying differences with phase-space models are briefly addressed through the heavy mass expansion.Comment: 19 page

Search for beautiful tetraquarks in the <i>ϒ</i>(1<i>S</i>)μ⁺μ⁻ invariant-mass spectrum

International audienceThe ϒ(1S)μ$^{+}$μ$^{−}$ invariant-mass distribution is investigated for a possible exotic meson state composed of two b quarks and two $\overline{b}$ quarks, ${X}_{b\overline{b}b\overline{b}}$ . The analysis is based on a data sample of pp collisions recorded with the LHCb detector at centre-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s}=7$ , 8 and 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 6.3 fb$^{−1}$. No significant excess is found, and upper limits are set on the product of the production cross-section and the branching fraction as functions of the mass of the ${X}_{b\overline{b}b\overline{b}}$ state. The limits are set in the fiducial volume where all muons have pseudorapidity in the range [2.0, 5.0], and the ${X}_{b\overline{b}b\overline{b}}$ state has rapidity in the range [2.0, 4.5] and transverse momentum less than 15 GeV/c

Above-threshold poles in model-independent form factor parametrizations

The model-independent parametrization for exclusive hadronic form factors commonly used for semileptonic decays is generalized to allow for the inclusion of above-threshold resonant poles of known mass and width. We discuss the interpretation of such poles, particularly with respect to the analytic structure of the relevant two-point Green's function in which they reside. Their presence has a remarkably small effect on the parametrization, as we show explicitly for the case of D→πe+νe