Mads T. Frandsen

Boosted objects: a probe of beyond the standard model physics

We present the report of the hadronic working group of the BOOST2010 workshop held at the University of Oxford in June 2010. The first part contains a review of the potential of hadronic decays of highly boosted particles as an aid for discovery at the LHC and a discussion of the status of tools developed to meet the challenge of reconstructing and isolating these topologies. In the second part, we present new results comparing the performance of jet grooming techniques and top tagging algorithms on a common set of benchmark channels. We also study the sensitivity of jet substructure observables to the uncertainties in Monte Carlo predictions.

Minimal walking technicolor : Setup for collider physics

Different theoretical and phenomenological aspects of the minimal and nonminimal walking technicolor theories have recently been studied. The goal here is to make the models ready for collider phenomenology. We do this by constructing the low energy effective theory containing scalars, pseudoscalars, vector mesons, and other fields predicted by the minimal walking theory. We construct their self-interactions and interactions with standard model fields. Using the Weinberg sum rules, opportunely modified to take into account the walking behavior of the underlying gauge theory, we find interesting relations for the spin-one spectrum. We derive the electroweak parameters using the newly constructed effective theory and compare the results with the underlying gauge theory. Our analysis is sufficiently general such that the resulting model can be used to represent a generic walking technicolor theory not at odds with precision data.

Resolving astrophysical uncertainties in dark matter direct detection

We study the impact of the assumed velocity distribution of galactic dark matter particles on the interpretation of results from nuclear recoil detectors. By converting experimental data to variables that make the astrophysical unknowns explicit, different experiments can be compared without implicit assumptions concerning the dark matter halo. We extend this framework to include the annual modulation signal, as well as multiple target elements. Recent results from DAMA, CoGeNT and CRESST-II can be brought into agreement if the velocity distribution is very anisotropic and thus allows a large modulation fraction. However constraints from CDMS and XENON cannot be evaded by appealing to such astrophysical uncertainties alone.

Technicolor Walks at the LHC

We analyze the potential of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to observe signatures of phenomenologically viable walking technicolor models. We study and compare the Drell-Yan and vector boson fusion mechanisms for the production of composite heavy vectors. We find that the heavy vectors are most easily produced and detected via the Drell-Yan processes. The composite Higgs phenomenology is also studied. If technicolor walks at the LHC, its footprints will be visible and our analysis will help in uncovering them.

Colliding clusters and dark matter self-interactions

When a dark matter halo moves through a background of dark matter particles, self-interactions can lead to both deceleration and evaporation of the halo and thus shift its centroid relative to the collisionless stars and galaxies. We study the magnitude and time evolution of this shift for two classes of dark matter self-interactions, viz. frequent self-interactions with small momentum transfer (e.g. due to long-range interactions) and rare self-interactions with large momentum transfer (e.g. contact interactions), and find important differences between the two cases. We find that neither effect can be strong enough to completely separate the dark matter halo from the galaxies, if we impose conservative bounds on the self-interaction cross-section. The majority of both populations remain bound to the same gravitational potential and the peaks of their distributions are therefore always coincident. Consequently any apparent separation is mainly due to particles which are leaving the gravitational potential, so will be largest shortly after the collision but not observable in evolved systems. Nevertheless the fraction of collisions with large momentum transfer is an important characteristic of self-interactions, which can potentially be extracted from observational data and provide an important clue as to the nature of dark matter.

Direct detection of dark matter in models with a light Z

We discuss the direct detection signatures of dark matter interacting with nuclei via a new neutral gauge boson Z′, focussing on the case where both the dark matter and the Z′ have mass of a few GeV. Isospin violation (i.e. different couplings to protons and neutrons) arises naturally in this scenario. In particular it is possible to reconcile the preferred parameter regions inferred from the observed DAMA and CoGeNT modulations with the bounds from XENON100, which requires fn/fp ≃ − 0.7. Moreover, the Z′ mediator can also yield a large spin-dependent cross-section which could contribute to the DAMA signal, while the spin-independent cross-section is adequate to explain the CoGeNT signal.

125 GeV Higgs boson from a not so light technicolor scalar

Assuming that the observed Higgs-like resonance at the Large Hadron Collider is a technicolor isosinglet scalar (the technicolor Higgs), we argue that the standard model top-induced radiative corrections reduce its mass toward the desired experimental value. We discuss conditions for the spectrum of technicolor theories to feature a technicolor Higgs with the phenomenologically required dynamical mass. We consider different representations under the technicolor gauge group and employ scaling laws in terms of the dimension of the representation. We also summarize the potential effects of walking dynamics on the mass of the technicolor Higgs.

Technicolor dark matter

Dark matter candidates are natural in technicolor theories. We introduce a general framework allowing to predict signals of technicolor dark matter at colliders and set constraints from Earth-based experiments such as CDMS and XENON. We show that the associate production of the composite Higgs can lead to relevant signals at the Large Hadron Collider.

The unbearable lightness of being: CDMS versus XENON

The CDMS-II collaboration has reported 3 events in a Si detector, which are consistent with being nuclear recoils due to scattering of Galactic dark matter particles with a mass of 8:6 GeV and a cross-section on neutrons of 2 10 41 cm 2 . While a previ- ous result from the XENON10 experiment has supposedly ruled out such particles as dark matter, we nd by reanalysing the XENON10 data that this is not the case. Some tension remains however with the upper limit placed by the XENON100 experiment, independently of astrophysical uncertainties concerning the Galactic dark matter distribution. We explore possible ways of ameliorating this tension by altering the properties of dark matter interac- tions. Nevertheless, even with standard couplings, light dark matter is consistent with both CDMS and XENON10/100.

On the DAMA and CoGeNT Modulations

DAMA observes an annual modulation in their event rate, as might be expected from dark matter scatterings, while CoGeNT has reported evidence for a similar modulation. The simplest interpretation of these findings in terms of dark matter-nucleus scatterings is excluded by other direct detection experiments. We consider the robustness of these exclusions with respect to assumptions regarding the scattering and find that isospin-violating inelastic dark matter helps alleviate this tension and allows marginal compatibility between experiments. Isospin-violation can significantly weaken the XENON constraints, while inelasticity enhances the annual modulation fraction of the signal, bringing the CoGeNT and CDMS results into better agreement.