Chul Kim, Jeong Han Kim, Seung J. Lee, Jure Zupan
We study soft and collinear gluon emission in squark decays to quark--neutralino pair, at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) accuracy in the end-point region, using Soft Collinear Effective Theory (SCET), and at next-to-leading (NLO) fixed order in the rest of the phase space. As a phenomenological case study we discuss the impact of radiative corrections on the simultaneous measurements of squark and neutralino masses at a linear $e^{+}e^{-}$ collider based on $\sqrt{s} = 3$ TeV Compact Linear Collider (CLIC). Since the majority of mass measurement techniques are based on edges in kinematic distributions, and these change appreciably when there is additional QCD radiation in the final state, the knowledge of higher-order QCD effects is required for precise mass determinations.
Sudhakantha Girmohanta, Seung J. Lee, Yuichiro Nakai, Motoo Suzuki
5D warped extra dimension models with multiple 3-branes can naturally realize multiple hierarchical mass scales which are ubiquitous in physics beyond the Standard Model. We discuss cosmological consequences of such multi-brane models with stabilized radions. It is confirmed that for temperatures below the scale of the IR brane at the end of the extra dimension, we recover the ordinary expansion of the Universe, with the Hubble expansion rate determined by sum of the physical energy densities on all 3-branes where they are localized. In addition, we explore the cosmology for temperatures above the scales of the intermediate and IR branes where the Universe is described by a spacetime with the 3-branes replaced by an event horizon. As the temperature of the Universe cools down, phase transitions are expected to take place, and the intermediate and IR branes come out from behind the event horizon. The Goldberger-Wise mechanism for radion stabilization has a well-known problem of having a supercooled phase transition, which typically does not get completed in time. This problem is even more severe when an intermediate brane is introduced, whose scale is well above TeV, as the corresponding Hubble rate is much larger. We circumvent the problem by employing an alternative mechanism for radion stabilization with dark Yang-Mills fields, which prevents a long supercooling epoch, but still allows the strong first order phase transitions. As a result, the phase transitions in our multi-brane Universe predict a stochastic gravitational wave background with a unique multi-peak signature, which is within the sensitivity reach of future space-based gravitational wave observers. We also show that there are $N-1$ radions for an $N$ 3-brane set-up, unlike a recent claim that there exists only one radion.
Ameen Ismail, Seung J. Lee, Bingrong Yu
We propose a new mechanism to produce axion dark matter from inflationary fluctuations. Quantum fluctuations during inflation are strengthened by a coupling of the axion kinetic term to the inflaton, which we parametrize as an effective curvature $κ$ in the axion equation of motion. A nonvanishing curvature breaks the scale invariance of the axion power spectrum, driving a quantum phase transition with $κ$ as the order parameter. The axion power spectrum is proportional to the inverse comoving horizon to the power of $κ$. For positive $κ$ the spectrum gets a red tilt, leading to an exponential enhancement of the axion abundance as the comoving horizon shrinks during inflation. This enhancement allows sufficient axion production to comprise the entire dark matter relic abundance despite the ultralight mass. Our mechanism predicts a significantly different parameter space from the usual misalignment mechanism. It allows for axion-like particle dark matter with a much lower decay constant and thus a larger coupling to Standard Model particles. Much of the parameter space can be probed by future experiments including haloscopes, nuclear clocks, CASPEr, and CMB-S4. We can also generate heavier QCD axion dark matter than the misalignment mechanism.
Richard J. Hill, Thomas Becher, Seung J. Lee, Matthias Neubert
The hard-scattering contributions to heavy-to-light form factors at large recoil are studied systematically in soft-collinear effective theory (SCET). Large logarithms arising from multiple energy scales are resummed by matching QCD onto SCET in two stages via an intermediate effective theory. Anomalous dimensions in the intermediate theory are computed, and their form is shown to be constrained by conformal symmetry. Renormalization-group evolution equations are solved to give a complete leading-order analysis of the hard-scattering contributions, in which all single and double logarithms are resummed. In two cases, spin-symmetry relations for the soft-overlap contributions to form factors are shown not to be broken at any order in perturbation theory by hard-scattering corrections. One-loop matching calculations in the two effective theories are performed in sample cases, for which the relative importance of renormalization-group evolution and matching corrections is investigated. The asymptotic behavior of Sudakov logarithms appearing in the coefficient functions of the soft-overlap and hard-scattering contributions to form factors is analyzed.
Yochay Eshel, Seung J. Lee, Gilad Perez, Yotam Soreq
We study radion phenomenology in the context of flavor shining in warped extra dimension models. In this unique setup, originally proposed by Rattazzi and Zaffaroni, solutions to the gauge hierarchy problem and the new physics flavor problem are unified. A special role is played by the vacuum energy on the branes, that naturally allows for flavon stabilization and parametrically raises the radion mass. We note that the radion mass squared is suppressed only by the log of the weak-Planck hierarchy, and it is in the favored range of the standard model Higgs. We emphasize that the radion to di-photon, to tau tau and to WW^* can be promising discovery channels at the LHC, with a rate above that of the standard model Higgs. We find that the radion is unlikely to account for the excess in W plus dijet events as recently reported by the CDF collaboration.
Leandro G. Almeida, Seung J. Lee, Gilad Perez, George Sterman, Ilmo Sung
We introduce a new class of infrared safe jet observables, which we refer to as template overlaps, designed to filter targeted highly boosted particle decays from QCD jets and other background. Template overlaps are functional measures that quantify how well the energy flow of a physical jet matches the flow of a boosted partonic decay. Any region of the partonic phase space for the boosted decays defines a template. We will refer to the maximum functional overlap found this way as the template overlap. To illustrate the method, we test lowest-order templates designed to distinguish highly-boosted top and Higgs decays from backgrounds produced by event generators. For the functional overlap, we find good results with a simple construction based on a Gaussian in energy differences within angular regions surrounding the template partons. Although different event generators give different averages for our template overlaps, we find in each case excellent rejection power, especially when combined with cuts based on jet shapes. The template overlaps are capable of systematic improvement by including higher order corrections in the template phase space.
Leandro G. Almeida, Mihailo Backovic, Mathieu Cliche, Seung J. Lee, Maxim Perelstein
Many searches for physics beyond the Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) rely on top tagging algorithms, which discriminate between boosted hadronic top quarks and the much more common jets initiated by light quarks and gluons. We note that the hadronic calorimeter (HCAL) effectively takes a "digital image" of each jet, with pixel intensities given by energy deposits in individual HCAL cells. Viewed in this way, top tagging becomes a canonical pattern recognition problem. With this motivation, we present a novel top tagging algorithm based on an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), one of the most popular approaches to pattern recognition. The ANN is trained on a large sample of boosted tops and light quark/gluon jets, and is then applied to independent test samples. The ANN tagger demonstrated excellent performance in a Monte Carlo study: for example, for jets with p_T in the 1100-1200 GeV range, 60% top-tag efficiency can be achieved with a 4% mis-tag rate. We discuss the physical features of the jets identified by the ANN tagger as the most important for classification, as well as correlations between the ANN tagger and some of the familiar top-tagging observables and algorithms.
Leandro G. Almeida, Ozan Erdoğan, José Juknevich, Seung J. Lee, Gilad Perez, George Sterman
We explore the ability of three-particle templates to distinguish color neutral objects from QCD background. This method is particularly useful to identify the standard model Higgs, as well as other massive neutral particles. Simple cut-based analysis in the overlap distributions of the signal and background is shown to provide a significant rejection power. By combining with other discriminating variables, such as planar flow, and several variables that depend on the partonic template, three-particle templates are used to characterize the influence of gluon emission and color flow in collider events. The performance of the method is discussed for the case of a highly boosted Higgs in association with a leptonically-decaying W boson.
Mihailo Backović, Thomas Flacke, Jeong Han Kim, Seung J. Lee
We propose a new search strategy for quark partners which decay into a boosted Higgs and a light quark. As an example, we consider phenomenologically viable right handed up-type quark partners of mass $\sim 1$ TeV in composite pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone-boson Higgs models within the context of flavorful naturalness. Our results show that $S/B > 1$ and signal significance of $\sim 7σ$ is achievable at $\sqrt{s} = 14$ TeV LHC with 35 $fb^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity, sufficient to claim discovery of a new particle. A combination of a multi-dimensional boosted Higgs tagging technique, kinematics of pair produced heavy objects and $b$-tagging serves to efficiently diminish the large QCD backgrounds while maintaining adequate levels of signal efficiency. We present the analysis in the context of effective field theory, such that our results can be applied to any future search for pair produced vector-like quarks with decay modes to Higgs and a light jet.
Benjamin Fuks, Jeong Han Kim, Seung J. Lee
We present a phenomenological study of triple-Higgs production in which we estimate the prospects for measuring the form of the Higgs potential at future circular collider projects. We analyze proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 100 TeV and focus on two different signatures in which the final state is made of four b-jets and either a pair of photons or a pair of tau leptons. We study the resulting sensitivity on the Higgs cubic and quartic self-interactions and investigate how it depends on the b-tagging, tau-tagging and photon resolution performances of detectors that could be designed for these future machines. We then discuss possible luminosity goals for future 100 TeV collider projects that would allow for a measurement of the Higgs potential and its possible departures from the Standard Model expectation.
Brando Bellazzini, Csaba Csáki, Jay Hubisz, Seung J. Lee, Javi Serra, John Terning
The appearance of the light Higgs boson at the LHC is difficult to explain, particularly in light of naturalness arguments in quantum field theory. However light scalars can appear in condensed matter systems when parameters (like the amount of doping) are tuned to a critical point. At zero temperature these quantum critical points are directly analogous to the finely tuned standard model. In this paper we explore a class of models with a Higgs near a quantum critical point that exhibits non-mean-field behavior. We discuss the parametrization of the effects of a Higgs emerging from such a critical point in terms of form factors, and present two simple realistic scenarios based on either generalized free fields or a 5D dual in AdS space. For both of these models we consider the processes $gg\to ZZ$ and $gg\to hh$, which can be used to gain information about the Higgs scaling dimension and IR transition scale from the experimental data.
Csaba Csáki, Sungwoo Hong, Gowri Kurup, Seung J. Lee, Maxim Perelstein, Wei Xue
We examine the possibility that dark matter (DM) consists of a gapped continuum, rather than ordinary particles. A Weakly-Interacting Continuum (WIC) model, coupled to the Standard Model via a Z-portal, provides an explicit realization of this idea. The thermal DM relic density in this model is naturally consistent with observations, providing a continuum counterpart of the "WIMP miracle". Direct detection cross sections are strongly suppressed compared to ordinary Z-portal WIMP, thanks to a unique effect of the continuum kinematics. Continuum DM states decay throughout the history of the universe, and observations of cosmic microwave background place constraints on potential late decays. Production of WICs at colliders can provide a striking cascade-decay signature. We show that a simple Z-portal WIC model provides a fully viable DM candidate consistent with all current experimental constraints.
Steven Ferrante, Seung J. Lee, Maxim Perelstein
In this paper we study a near-continuum dark matter model, in which dark sector consists of a tower of closely spaced states with weak-scale masses. We construct a five-dimensional model which naturally realizes this spectrum. The dark matter is described by a bulk field, which interacts with the brane-localized Standard Model sector via a Z portal. We then study collider signatures of this model. Near-continuum dark matter states produced in a collider undergo cascade decays, resulting in events with high multiplicity of jets and leptons, large missing energy, and displaced vertices. A custom-built Monte Carlo tool described in this paper allows for detailed simulation of the signal events. We present results of such simulations for the case of electron-positron collisions.
Giacomo Cacciapaglia, Haiying Cai, Aldo Deandrea, Thomas Flacke, Seung J. Lee, Alberto Parolini
We present a phenomenological theory of scalar particles that transform as a sextet and an octet of QCD interactions. These particles may arise as light bound states of a fundamental dynamics giving rise to a composite Higgs boson and partial compositeness for the top. As a concrete example, we discuss an explicit UV completion based on the SU(4)/Sp(4) coset, where QCD colour is carried by additional fundamental fermions charged under the confining gauge group. Top partners, as well as potentially even lighter coloured scalars, arise as bound states of the coloured fermions. We study production and detection at LHC Run I and II of the octet and sextet, setting lower limits on masses and couplings to Standard Model particles using existing 8 TeV analyses. We finally explore prospects for the ongoing 13 TeV Run II: we focus on final states with two same sign leptons, that have the potential to discriminate the sextet.
Manki Kim, Seung J. Lee, Alberto Parolini
We study under which conditions a scalar particle is a viable WIMP Dark Matter candidate with Higgs and dilaton interactions. The theory is a composite Higgs model with top partial compositeness where both the Higgs and the Dark Matter candidate arise as pseudo Goldstone boson of the coset SO(6)/SO(5) from a new physics sector. We highlight the role of the dilaton in direct and indirect searches. We find that a Dark Matter particle with a mass around 200-400 GeV and a relatively light dilaton are a fair prediction of the model.
Mihailo Backović, Thomas Flacke, Bithika Jain, Seung J. Lee
LHC searches for BSM resonances in $l^+ l^-, \, jj, \, t\bar{t}, γγ$ and $VV$ final states have so far not resulted in discovery of new physics. Current results set lower limits on mass scales of new physics resonances well into the $\mathcal{O}(1)$ TeV range, assuming that the new resonance decays dominantly to a pair of Standard Model particles. While the SM pair searches are a vital probe of possible new physics, it is important to re-examine the scope of new physics scenarios probed with such final states. Scenarios where new resonances decay dominantly to final states other than SM pairs, even though well theoretically motivated, lie beyond the scope of SM pair searches. In this paper we argue that LHC searches for (vector) resonances beyond two particle final states would be useful complementary probes of new physics scenarios. As an example, we consider a class of composite Higgs models, and identify specific model parameter points where the color singlet, electrically neutral vector resonance $ρ_0$ decays dominantly not to a pair of SM particles, but to a fermionic top partner $T_{f1}$ and a top quark, with $T_{f1} \rightarrow tZ$. We show that dominant decays of $ρ_0 \rightarrow T_{f1} t$ in the context of Composite Higgs models are possible even when the decay channel to a pair of $T_{f1}$ is kinematically open. Our analysis deals with scenarios where both $m_ρ$ and $m_{T_{f1}}$ are of $\mathcal{O}(1)$ TeV, leading to highly boosted $t\bar{t}Z$ final state topologies. We show that the particular composite Higgs scenario we consider is discoverable at the LHC13 with as little as 30 fb$^{-1}$, while being allowed by other existing experimental constraints.
Jay Hubisz, Seung J. Lee, Gil Paz
We analyze flavor constraints in the littlest Higgs model with T-parity. In particular, we focus on neutral meson mixing in the K, B, and D systems due to one loop contributions from T-parity odd fermions and gauge bosons. We calculate the short distance contributions to mixing for a general choice of T-odd fermion Yukawa couplings. We find that for a generic choice of textures, a TeV scale GIM suppression is necessary to avoid large contributions. If order one mixing angles are allowed in the extended flavor structure, the mass spectrum is severely constrained, and must be degenerate at the 1-5% level. However, there are still regions of parameter space where only a loose degeneracy is necessary to avoid constraints. We also consider the B(s) system, and identify a scenario in which the mixing can be significantly enhanced beyond the standard model prediction while still satisfying bounds on the other mixing observables. We present both analytical and numerical results as functions of the T-odd fermion mass eigenvalues.
Jonathan L. Feng, Felix Kling, Mary Hall Reno, Juan Rojo, Dennis Soldin, Luis A. Anchordoqui, Jamie Boyd, Ahmed Ismail, Lucian Harland-Lang, Kevin J. Kelly, Vishvas Pandey, Sebastian Trojanowski, Yu-Dai Tsai, Jean-Marco Alameddine, Takeshi Araki, Akitaka Ariga, Tomoko Ariga, Kento Asai, Alessandro Bacchetta, Kincso Balazs, Alan J. Barr, Michele Battistin, Jianming Bian, Caterina Bertone, Weidong Bai, Pouya Bakhti, A. Baha Balantekin, Basabendu Barman, Brian Batell, Martin Bauer, Brian Bauer, Mathias Becker, Asher Berlin, Enrico Bertuzzo, Atri Bhattacharya, Marco Bonvini, Stewart T. Boogert, Alexey Boyarsky, Joseph Bramante, Vedran Brdar, Adrian Carmona, David W. Casper, Francesco Giovanni Celiberto, Francesco Cerutti, Grigorios Chachamis, Garv Chauhan, Matthew Citron, Emanuele Copello, Jean-Pierre Corso, Luc Darmé, Raffaele Tito D'Agnolo, Neda Darvishi, Arindam Das, Giovanni De Lellis, Albert De Roeck, Jordy de Vries, Hans P. Dembinski, Sergey Demidov, Patrick deNiverville, Peter B. Denton, Frank F. Deppisch, P. S. Bhupal Dev, Antonia Di Crescenzo, Keith R. Dienes, Milind V. Diwan, Herbi K. Dreiner, Yong Du, Bhaskar Dutta, Pit Duwentäster, Lucie Elie, Sebastian A. R. Ellis, Rikard Enberg, Yasaman Farzan, Max Fieg, Ana Luisa Foguel, Patrick Foldenauer, Saeid Foroughi-Abari, Jean-François Fortin, Alexander Friedland, Elina Fuchs, Michael Fucilla, Kai Gallmeister, Alfonso Garcia, Carlos A. García Canal, Maria Vittoria Garzelli, Rhorry Gauld, Sumit Ghosh, Anish Ghoshal, Stephen Gibson, Francesco Giuli, Victor P. Gonçalves, Dmitry Gorbunov, Srubabati Goswami, Silvia Grau, Julian Y. Günther, Marco Guzzi, Andrew Haas, Timo Hakulinen, Steven P. Harris, Julia Harz, Juan Carlos Helo Herrera, Christopher S. Hill, Martin Hirsch, Timothy J. Hobbs, Stefan Höche, Andrzej Hryczuk, Fei Huang, Tomohiro Inada, Angelo Infantino, Ameen Ismail, Richard Jacobsson, Sudip Jana, Yu Seon Jeong, Tomas Ježo, Yongsoo Jho, Krzysztof Jodłowski, Dmitry Kalashnikov, Timo J. Kärkkäinen, Cynthia Keppel, Jongkuk Kim, Michael Klasen, Spencer R. Klein, Pyungwon Ko, Dominik Köhler, Masahiro Komatsu, Karol Kovařík, Suchita Kulkarni, Jason Kumar, Karan Kumar, Jui-Lin Kuo, Frank Krauss, Aleksander Kusina, Maxim Laletin, Chiara Le Roux, Seung J. Lee, Hye-Sung Lee, Helena Lefebvre, Jinmian Li, Shuailong Li, Yichen Li, Wei Liu, Zhen Liu, Mickael Lonjon, Kun-Feng Lyu, Rafal Maciula, Roshan Mammen Abraham, Mohammad R. Masouminia, Josh McFayden, Oleksii Mikulenko, Mohammed M. A. Mohammed, Kirtimaan A. Mohan, Jorge G. Morfín, Ulrich Mosel, Martin Mosny, Khoirul F. Muzakka, Pavel Nadolsky, Toshiyuki Nakano, Saurabh Nangia, Angel Navascues Cornago, Laurence J. Nevay, Pierre Ninin, Emanuele R. Nocera, Takaaki Nomura, Rui Nunes, Nobuchika Okada, Fred Olness, John Osborne, Hidetoshi Otono, Maksym Ovchynnikov, Alessandro Papa, Junle Pei, Guillermo Peon, Gilad Perez, Luke Pickering, Simon Plätzer, Ryan Plestid, Tanmay Kumar Poddar, Mudit Rai, Meshkat Rajaee, Digesh Raut, Peter Reimitz, Filippo Resnati, Wolfgang Rhode, Peter Richardson, Adam Ritz, Hiroki Rokujo, Leszek Roszkowski, Tim Ruhe, Richard Ruiz, Marta Sabate-Gilarte, Alexander Sandrock, Ina Sarcevic, Subir Sarkar, Osamu Sato, Christiane Scherb, Ingo Schienbein, Holger Schulz, Pedro Schwaller, Sergio J. Sciutto, Dipan Sengupta, Lesya Shchutska, Takashi Shimomura, Federico Silvetti, Kuver Sinha, Torbjörn Sjöstrand, Jan T. Sobczyk, Huayang Song, Jorge F. Soriano, Yotam Soreq, Anna Stasto, David Stuart, Shufang Su, Wei Su, Antoni Szczurek, Zahra Tabrizi, Yosuke Takubo, Marco Taoso, Brooks Thomas, Pierre Thonet, Douglas Tuckler, Agustin Sabio Vera, Heinz Vincke, K. N. Vishnudath, Zeren Simon Wang, Martin W. Winkler, Wenjie Wu, Keping Xie, Xun-Jie Xu, Tevong You, Ji-Young Yu, Jiang-Hao Yu, Korinna Zapp, Yongchao Zhang, Yue Zhang, Guanghui Zhou, Renata Zukanovich Funchal
Michael Benzke, Seung J. Lee, Matthias Neubert, Gil Paz
Using methods from soft-collinear and heavy-quark effective theory, a systematic factorization analysis is performed for the $\bar B\to X_sγ$ photon spectrum in the endpoint region $m_b-2E_γ={\cal O}(Λ_{\rm QCD})$. It is proposed that, to all orders in $1/m_b$, the spectrum obeys a novel factorization formula, which besides terms with the structure $H\,J\otimes S$ familiar from inclusive $\bar B\to X_u l\,\barν$ decay distributions contains "resolved photon" contributions of the form $H\,J\otimes S\otimes\bar J$ and $H\,J\otimes S\otimes\bar J\otimes\bar J$. Here $S$ and $\bar J$ are new soft and jet functions, whose form is derived. These contributions arise whenever the photon couples to light partons instead of coupling directly to the effective weak interaction. The new contributions appear first at order $1/m_b$ and are related to operators other than $Q_{7γ}$ in the effective weak Hamiltonian. They give rise to non-vanishing $1/m_b$ corrections to the total decay rate, which cannot be described using a local operator product expansion. A systematic analysis of these effects is performed at tree level in hard and hard-collinear interactions. The resulting uncertainty on the decay rate defined with a cut $E_γ>1.6$ GeV is estimated to be approximately $\pm 5%$. It could be reduced by an improved measurement of the isospin asymmetry $Δ_{0-}$ to the level of $\pm 4%$. We see no possibility to reduce this uncertainty further using reliable theoretical methods.
Cédric Delaunay, Seung J. Lee, Roee Ozeri, Gilad Perez, Wolfram Ratzinger, Bingrong Yu
Clocks based on nuclear isomer transitions promise exceptional stability and precision. The low transition energy of the thorium-229 isomer makes it an ideal candidate, as it has been excited by a vacuum-ultraviolet laser and is highly sensitive to subtle interactions. This enables the development of powerful tools for probing new forces, which we call {\it quintessometers}. In this work, we demonstrate the potential of nuclear clocks, particularly solid-state variants, to surpass existing limits on scalar field couplings, exceeding the sensitivity of current fifth-force searches at submicron distances and significantly improving equivalence-principle tests at kilometer scales and beyond. Additionally, we highlight the capability of transportable nuclear clocks to detect scalar interactions at distances beyond $10\,$km, complementing space-based missions.