Pushing the SUSY Higgs mass towards 125 GeV with a color adjoint

We show that inclusion of a TeV scale chiral superfield transforming in the adjoint representation of the color SU(3) to the MSSM particle content modifies the renormalization group running of some parameters in such a way that a 125 GeV mass of the light Higgs boson is accommodated more comfortably than in cMSSM / mSUGRA. Put differently, the introduction of a color adjoint TeV scale superfield helps resurrecting lighter choices for the stop and gluino which are otherwise disfavored in cMSSM / mSUGRA.Comment: v2: 6 pages, 4 figures, estimate of fine-tuning and some more clarifying remarks added, published in PR

The Higgsino-Singlino World at the Large Hadron Collider

We consider light higgsinos and singlinos in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider. We assume that the singlino is the lightest supersymmetric particle and that the higgsino is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle with the remaining supersymmetric particles in the multi-TeV range. This scenario, which is motivated by the flavor and CP issues, provides a phenomenologically viable dark matter candidate and improved electroweak fit consistent with the measured Higgs mass. Here, the higgsinos decay into on (off)-shell gauge boson and the singlino. We consider the leptonic decay modes and the resulting signature is three isolated leptons and missing transverse energy which is known as the trilepton signal. We simulate the signal and the Standard Model backgrounds and present the exclusion region in the higgsino-singlino mass plane at the Large Hadron Collider at $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV for an integrated luminosity of 300 fb$^{-1}$.Comment: 12 pages, overall changes, conclusion unchanged, matches published versio

UV descriptions of composite Higgs models without elementary scalars

We consider four-dimensional UV descriptions of composite Higgs models without elementary scalars, in which four-fermion interactions are introduced to an underlying gauge theory like in the gauged NJL model. When the anomalous dimension of the fermion bilinear is large, these interactions drive the spontaneous global symmetry breaking in the model, with the Higgs identified as a Nambu-Goldstone boson. The UV descriptions support composite top partner operators, also with large anomalous dimensions, thereby providing an explicit realisation of the idea of partial compositeness. In particular, the composite SO(6)/SO(5) model can be described by an Sp gauge theory with four flavours of fermion, together with a vector-like pair of fermions transforming in the antisymmetric representation and charged under SU(3) colour. These fermions confine to produce both the Higgs and top partner bound states. Our methods can also be applied to different coset groups, suggesting that four-fermion operators can describe the underlying UV dynamics of other composite Higgs models.Comment: 28 pages. V2: references added, version accepted for publicatio

Clockworked VEVs and Neutrino Mass

In this paper we present an augmented version of the Abelian scalar clockwork model to generate geometrically suppressed vacuum expectation values (vev) of the pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons, that we call the clockworked vevs. We briefly comment on generalization of the setup and possible 5D UV realizations. We demonstrate how tiny neutrino mass can be generated by clockworking a weak scale vev.Comment: 13 pages, 2 captioned figures, 1 table, further clarifications added in text, references updated, matches version published in JHE