Daniel Stolarski

A facility to search for hidden particles at the CERN SPS: the SHiP physics case.

This paper describes the physics case for a new fixed target facility at CERN SPS. The SHiP (search for hidden particles) experiment is intended to hunt for new physics in the largely unexplored domain of very weakly interacting particles with masses below the Fermi scale, inaccessible to the LHC experiments, and to study tau neutrino physics. The same proton beam setup can be used later to look for decays of tau-leptons with lepton flavour number non-conservation, [Formula: see text] and to search for weakly-interacting sub-GeV dark matter candidates. We discuss the evidence for physics beyond the standard model and describe interactions between new particles and four different portals-scalars, vectors, fermions or axion-like particles. We discuss motivations for different models, manifesting themselves via these interactions, and how they can be probed with the SHiP experiment and present several case studies. The prospects to search for relatively light SUSY and composite particles at SHiP are also discussed. We demonstrate that the SHiP experiment has a unique potential to discover new physics and can directly probe a number of solutions of beyond the standard model puzzles, such as neutrino masses, baryon asymmetry of the Universe, dark matter, and inflation.

Directly Measuring the Tensor Structure of the Scalar Coupling to Gauge Bosons

Kinematic distributions in the decays of the newly discovered resonance to four leptons can provide a direct measurement of the tensor structure of the particles couplings to gauge bosons. Even if the particle is shown to be a parity even scalar, measuring this tensor structure is a necessary step in determining if this particle is responsible for giving mass to the Z. We consider a Standard Model like coupling as well as coupling via a dimension five operator to either ZZ or Z\gamma. We show that using full kinematic information from each event allows discrimination between renormalizable and higher dimensional coupling to ZZ at the 95% confidence level with O(50) signal events, and coupling to Z\gamma can be distinguished with as few as 20 signal events. This shows that these measurements can be useful even with this years LHC data.

Probing a virtual diphoton excess

Interpreting the excesses around 750 GeV in the diphoton spectra to be the signal of a new heavy scalar φ decaying to photons, we point out the possibility of looking for correlated signals with virtual photons. In particular, we emphasize that the effective operator that generates the φ → γγ decay will also generate decays of φ → 2lγ (2l ≡ 2e;2μ) and φ → 4l (4l ≡ 2e2μ;4e;4μ) independently of the φ couplings to Zγ and ZZ. Depending on the relative sizes of these effective couplings, we show that the virtual diphoton component can make up a sizable, and sometimes dominant, contribution to the total φ → 2lγ and φ → 4l partial widths. We also discuss modifications to current experimental cuts in order to maximize the sensitivity to these virtual photon effects. Finally, we briefly comment on prospects for channels involving other Standard Model fermions as well as more exotic decay possibilities of the putative resonance.

New Measurements with Stopped Particles at the LHC

Metastable particles are common in many models of new physics at the TeV scale. If charged or colored, a reasonable fraction of all such particles produced at the LHC will stop in the detectors and give observable out of time decays. We demonstrate that significant information may be learned from such decays about the properties (e.g. charge or spin) of this particle and of any other particles to which it decays, for example a dark matter candidate. We discuss strategies for measuring the type of decay (two- vs three-body), the types of particles produced, and the angular distribution of the produced particles using the LHC detectors. We demonstrate that with O(10-100) observed decay events, not only can the properties of the new particles be measured but indeed even the Lorentz structure of the decay operator can be distinguished in the case of three-body decays. These measurements can not only reveal the correct model of new physics at the TeV scale, but also give information on physics giving rise to the decay at energy scales far above those the LHC can probe directly.

Putting a Stop to di-Higgs Modifications

A bstractPair production of Higgs bosons at hadron colliders is an enticing channel to search for new physics. New colored particles that couple strongly to the Higgs, such as those most often called upon to address the hierarchy problem, provide well motivated examples in which large enhancements of the di-Higgs rate are possible, at least in principle. However, in such scenarios the di-Higgs production rate is tightly correlated with the single Higgs production rate and, since the latter is observed to be SM-like, one generally expects that only modest enhancements in di-Higgs production are allowed by the LHC Run 1 data. We examine the contribution of top squarks (stops) in a simplified supersymmetry model to di-Higgs production and find that this general expectation is indeed borne out. In particular, the allowed deviations are typically small, but there are tuned regions of parameter space where expectations based on EFT arguments break down in which O100%

Interactions of a Stabilized Radion and Duality

\mathcal{O}\left(100\%\right)

Reach in All Hadronic Stop Decays: A Snowmass White Paper

enhancements to the di-Higgs production rate are possible and are simultaneously consistent with the observed single Higgs production rates. These effects are potentially observable with the high luminosity run of the LHC or at a future hadron collider.

Golden Probe of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking

Radiative flavor models where the hierarchies of Standard Model (SM) fermion masses and mixings are explained via loop corrections are elegant ways to solve the SM flavor puzzle. Here we build such a model in the context of Mini-Split Supersymmetry (SUSY) where both flavor and SUSY breaking occur at a scale of 1000 TeV. This model is consistent with the observed Higgs mass, unification, and WIMP dark matter. The high scale allows large flavor mixing among the sfermions, which provides part of the mechanism for radiative flavor generation. In the deep UV, all flavors are treated democratically, but at the SUSY breaking scale, the third, second, and first generation Yukawa couplings are generated at tree level, one loop, and two loops, respectively. Save for one, all the dimensionless parameters in the theory are O(1), with the exception being a modest and technically natural tuning that explains both the smallness of the bottom Yukawa coupling and the largeness of the Cabibbo angle.