The Higgs boson from an extended symmetry

The variety of ideas put forward in the context of a "composite" picture for the Higgs boson calls for a simple and effective description of the related phenomenology. Such a description is given here by means of a "minimal" model and is explicitly applied to the example of a Higgs-top sector from an SO(5) symmetry. We discuss the spectrum, the ElectroWeak Precision Tests, B-physics and naturalness. We show the difficulty to comply with the different constraints. The extended gauge sector relative to the standard SU(2)xU(1), if there is any, has little or no impact on these considerations. We also discuss the relation of the "minimal" model with its "little Higgs" or "holographic" extensions based on the same symmetry.Comment: 22 pp; v3: Small corrections, version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Higgs doublet as a Goldstone boson in perturbative extensions of the Standard Model

We investigate the idea of the Higgs doublet as a pseudo-Goldstone boson in perturbative extensions of the Standard Model, motivated by the desire to ameliorate its hierarchy problem without conflict with the electroweak precision data. Two realistic supersymmetric models with global SU(3) symmetry are proposed, one for large and another for small values of tan\beta. The two models demonstrate two different mechanisms for EWSB and the Higgs mass generation. Their experimental signatures are quite different. Our constructions show that a pseudo-Goldstone Higgs doublet in perturbative extensions is just as plausible as in non-perturbative ones.Comment: 16pp, typos corrected, phenomenological discussion expande

Fermion masses and proton decay in a minimal five-dimensional SO(10) model

We propose a minimal SO(10) model in 5 space-time dimensions. The single extra spatial dimension is compactified on the orbifold S^1/(Z_2 x Z_2') reducing the gauge group to that of Pati-Salam. The breaking down to the standard model group is obtained through an ordinary Higgs mechanism taking place at the Pati-Salam brane, giving rise to a proper gauge coupling unification. We achieve a correct description of fermion masses and mixing angles by describing first and second generations as bulk fields, and by embedding the third generation into four multiplets located at the Pati-Salam brane. The Yukawa sector is simple and compact and predicts a neutrino spectrum of normal hierarchy type. Concerning proton decay, dimension five operators are absent and the essentially unique localization of matter multiplets implies that the minimal couplings between the super-heavy gauge bosons and matter fields are vanishing. Non-minimal interactions are allowed but the resulting dimension six operators describing proton decay are too suppressed to produce observable effects, even in future, super-massive detectors.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figure

Composite GUTs: models and expectations at the LHC

We investigate grand unified theories (GUTs) in scenarios where electroweak (EW) symmetry breaking is triggered by a light composite Higgs, arising as a Nambu-Goldstone boson from a strongly interacting sector. The evolution of the standard model (SM) gauge couplings can be predicted at leading order, if the global symmetry of the composite sector is a simple group G that contains the SM gauge group. It was noticed that, if the right-handed top quark is also composite, precision gauge unification can be achieved. We build minimal consistent models for a composite sector with these properties, thus demonstrating how composite GUTs may represent an alternative to supersymmetric GUTs. Taking into account the new contributions to the EW precision parameters, we compute the Higgs effective potential and prove that it realizes consistently EW symmetry breaking with little fine-tuning. The G group structure and the requirement of proton stability determine the nature of the light composite states accompanying the Higgs and the top quark: a coloured triplet scalar and several vector-like fermions with exotic quantum numbers. We analyse the signatures of these composite partners at hadron colliders: distinctive final states contain multiple top and bottom quarks, either alone or accompanied by a heavy stable charged particle, or by missing transverse energy.Comment: 55 pages, 13 figures, final version to be published in JHE

Proton lifetime from SU(5) unification in extra dimensions

We provide detailed estimates of the proton lifetime in the context of simple supersymmetric SU(5) grand unified models with an extra compact spatial dimension, described by the orbifold S1/(Z2 × Z2') and by a large compactification scale Mc ≈ 1014÷1016 GeV. We focus on a class of models where the grand unified symmetry is broken by the compactification mechanism and where baryon violation proceeds mainly through gauge vector boson exchange so that the proton lifetime scales as Mc4. We carefully compute Mc from a next-to-leading analysis of gauge coupling unification and we find that Mc can only be predicted up to an overall factor 10±1. The simplest model, where the dominant decay mode is π0e+ and has no flavour suppression, is strongly constrained by existing data, but not totally ruled out. We also analyze models where some of the matter fields are localized in the extra space and proton decay is flavour suppressed. In models associated to anarchy in the neutrino sector the preferred decay channel is K+ and the lifetime can be within the reach of the next generation of experiments