Light Composite Higgs from Higher Representations versus Electroweak Precision Measurements -- Predictions for LHC

We investigate theories in which the technifermions in higher dimensional representations of the technicolor gauge group dynamically break the electroweak symmetry of the standard model. For the two-index symmetric representation of the gauge group the lowest number of techniflavors needed to render the underlying gauge theory quasi conformal is two. We confront the models with the recent electroweak precision measurements and demonstrate that the two technicolor theory is a valid candidate for a dynamical breaking of the electroweak symmetry. The electroweak precision measurements provide useful constraints on the relative mass splitting of the new leptons needed to cure the Witten anomaly. In the case of a fourth family of leptons with ordinary lepton hypercharge the new heavy neutrino can be a natural candidate of cold dark matter. We also propose theories in which the critical number of flavors needed to enter the conformal window is higher than the one with fermions in the two-index symmetric representation, but lower than in the walking technicolor theories with fermions only in the fundamental representation of the gauge group. Due to the near conformal/chiral phase transition, we show that the composite Higgs is very light compared to the intrinsic scale of the technicolor theory. For the two technicolor theory we predict the composite Higgs mass not to exceed 150 GeV.Comment: RevTex, 53 pages, 7 figures and two table

Minimal Super Technicolor

We introduce novel extensions of the Standard Model featuring a supersymmetric technicolor sector. First we consider N=4 Super Yang-Mills which breaks to N=1 via the electroweak (EW) interactions and coupling to the MSSM. This is a well defined, economical and calculable extension of the SM involving the smallest number of fields. It constitutes an explicit example of a natural supersymmetric conformal extension of the Standard Model featuring a well defined connection to string theory. It allows to interpolate, depending on how we break the underlying supersymmetry, between unparticle physics and Minimal Walking Technicolor. As a second alternative we consider other N =1 extensions of the Minimal Walking Technicolor model. The new models allow all the standard model matter fields to acquire a mass.Comment: Improved version demonstrating that this extension is phenomenologically viable. No Landau pole exists in the theory to two loops level. This is the first theory showing that supersymmetry can solve the flavor problem when coupled to low energy technicolo

Confinement and Chiral Symmetry

We illustrate why color deconfines when chiral symmetry is restored in gauge theories with quarks in the fundamental representation, and while these transitions do not need to coincide when quarks are in the adjoint representation, entanglement between them is still present.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, proceedings of Quark Matter 200

Induced Universal Properties and Deconfinement

We propose a general strategy to determine universal properties induced by a nearby phase transition on a non-order parameter field. A general renormalizable Lagrangian is used, which contains the order parameter and a non-order parameter field, and respects all the symmetries present. We investigate the case in which the order parameter field depends only on space coordinates and the case in which this field is also time dependent. We find that the spatial correlators of the non-order parameter field, in both cases, are infrared dominated and can be used to determine properties of the phase transition. We predict a universal behavior for the screening mass of a generic singlet field, and show how to extract relevant information from such a quantity. We also demonstrate that the pole mass of the non-order parameter field is not infrared sensitive. Our results can be applied to any continuous phase transition. As an example we consider the deconfining transition in pure Yang-Mills theory, and show that our findings are supported by lattice data. Our analysis suggests that monitoring the spatial correlators of different hadron species, more specifically the derivatives of these, provides an efficient and sufficient way to experimentally uncover the deconfining phase transition and its features.Comment: Added computational details and improved the text. The results are unchange

Tetracritical behavior in strongly interacting theories

We suggest a tetracritical fixed point to naturally occur in strongly interacting theories. As a fundamental example we analyze the temperature--quark chemical potential phase diagram of QCD with fermions in the adjoint representation of the gauge group (i.e. adjoint QCD). Here we show that such a non trivial multicritical point exists and is due to the interplay between the spontaneous breaking of a global U(1) symmetry and the center group symmetry associated to confinement. Our results demonstrate that taking confinement into account is essential for understanding the critical behavior as well as the full structure of the phase diagram of adjoint QCD. This is in contrast to ordinary QCD where the center group symmetry associated to confinement is explicitly broken when the quarks are part of the theory.Comment: RevTex, 5 figures. Final version to appear in PR

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in gauge theories via Bose-Einstein condensation

We propose a mechanism naturally leading to the spontaneous symmetry breaking in a gauge theory. The Higgs field is assumed to have global and gauged internal symmetries. We associate a non zero chemical potential to one of the globally conserved charges commuting with all of the gauge transformations. This induces a negative mass squared for the Higgs field triggering the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the global and local symmetries. The mechanism is general and we test the idea for the electroweak theory in which the Higgs sector is extended to possess an extra global Abelian symmetry. To this symmetry we associate a non zero chemical potential. The Bose-Einstein condensation of the Higgs leads, at tree level, to modified dispersion relations for the Higgs field while the dispersion relations of the gauge bosons and fermions remain undisturbed. The latter are modified through higher order corrections. We have computed some corrections to the vacuum polarizations of the gauge bosons and fermions. To quantify the corrections to the gauge boson vacuum polarizations with respect to the Standard Model we considered the effects on the T parameter. We finally derive the one loop modified fermion dispersion relations.Comment: RevTeX 4, 13 pages. Added references and corrected typo

Unnatural Origin of Fermion Masses for Technicolor

We explore the scenario in which the breaking of the electroweak symmetry is due to the simultaneous presence and interplay of a dynamical sector and an unnatural elementary Higgs. We introduce a low energy effective Lagrangian and constrain the various couplings via direct search limits and electroweak and flavor precision tests. We find that the model we study is a viable model of dynamical breaking of the electroweak symmetry.Comment: 20 pages, 7 eps figure

Determining the conformal window: SU(2) gauge theory with N_f = 4, 6 and 10 fermion flavours

We study the evolution of the coupling in SU(2) gauge field theory with $N_f=4$, 6 and 10 fundamental fermion flavours on the lattice. These values are chosen close to the expected edges of the conformal window, where the theory possesses an infrared fixed point. We use improved Wilson-clover action, and measure the coupling in the Schr\"odinger functional scheme. At four flavours we observe that the couping grows towards the infrared, implying QCD-like behaviour, whereas at ten flavours the results are compatible with a Banks-Zaks type infrared fixed point. The six flavour case remains inconclusive: the evolution of the coupling is seen to become slower at the infrared, but the accuracy of the results falls short from fully resolving the fate of the coupling. We also measure the mass anomalous dimension for the $N_f=6$ case.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures. Proof readin

Invisible Higgs and Dark Matter

We investigate the possibility that a massive weakly interacting fermion simultaneously provides for a dominant component of the dark matter relic density and an invisible decay width of the Higgs boson at the LHC. As a concrete model realizing such dynamics we consider the minimal walking technicolor, although our results apply more generally. Taking into account the constraints from the electroweak precision measurements and current direct searches for dark matter particles, we find that such scenario is heavily constrained, and large portions of the parameter space are excluded.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0912.229

Bose-Einstein Condensation, Dark Matter and Acoustic Peaks

Scalar mediated interactions among baryons extend well above the Compton wavelength, when they are embedded in a Bose-Einstein condensate composed of the mediating particles. Indeed, this non-trivial environment results in an infinite-ranged interaction. We show that if the Dark Matter of the Universe is composed of such a condensate, the imprints of an interaction between baryonic and Dark Matter could be manifest as anomalies in the peak structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures; changes reflect published versio