Abstract: This paper presents a search for massive charged long-lived particles produced in pp collisions at root s = 13 TeV at the LHC using the ATLAS experiment. The data set used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb(-1). Many extensions of the Standard Model predict the existence of massive charged long-lived particles, such as R-hadrons. These massive particles are expected to be produced with a velocity significantly below the speed of light, and therefore to have a specific ionization higher than any Standard Model particle of unit charge at high momenta. The Pixel subsystem of the ATLAS detector is used to measure the ionization energy loss of reconstructed charged particles and to search for such highly ionizing particles. The search presented here has much greater sensitivity than a similar search performed using the ATLAS detector in the root s = 8 TeV data set, thanks to the increase in expected signal cross section due to the higher center-of-mass energy of collisions, to an upgraded detector with a new silicon layer close to the interaction point, and to analysis improvements. No significant deviation from Standard Model background expectations is observed, and lifetime-dependent upper limits on R-hadron production cross sections and masses are set. Gluino R-hadrons with lifetimes above 0.4 ns and decaying to q (q) over bar plus a 100 GeV neutralino are excluded at the 95% confidence level, with lower mass limit ranging between 740 and 1590 GeV. In the case of stable R-hadrons the lower mass limit at the 95% confidence level is 1570 GeV.

Abstract: Recent studies have shown that the well-established Lambda(c) (2595) resonance contains a large meson-baryon component, which can vary depending on the specific formalism. In this work, we examine such a picture by utilizing the compositeness condition and the large number of colors (N-c) expansion. We examine three different models fulfilling two body unitarily in coupled-channels, and adopting renormalization schemes where the mass of the Lambda(c)(2595) resonance is well described, but not necessarily its width, since we do not consider three body channels and work at the isospin symmetric limit. Both approximations might have an effect larger on the width than on the mass. In this context, our studies show that the compositeness of the Lambda(c)(2595) depends on the number of considered coupled channels, and on the particular regularization scheme adopted in the unitary approaches and, therefore, is model dependent. In addition, we perform an exploratory study of the Lambda(c)(2595) in the large N-c expansion, within a scheme involving only the pi Sigma(c) and K Xi(c)', channels, whose dynamics is mostly fixed by chiral symmetry. In this context and formulating the leading-order interaction as a function of N-c, we show that for moderate N-c > 3 values, the mass and width of the Lambda(c)(2595) deviate from those of a genuine qqq baryon, implying the relevance of meson-baryon components in its wave function. Furthermore, we study the properties of the Lambda(c)(2595), in the strict N-c -> infinity limit, using an extension of the chiral Weinberg-Tomozawa interaction to an arbitrary number of flavors and colors. This latter study hints at the possible existence of a (perhaps) subdominant qqq component in the Lambda(c)(2595) resonance wave function, which would become dominant when the number of colors gets sufficiently large.

Abstract: We study lepton violating Higgs (HLFV) decays, first from the effective field theory (EFT) point of view, and then analysing the different high-energy realizations of the operators of the EFT, highlighting the most promising models. We argue why two Higgs doublet models can have a BR(h -> tau mu) similar to 0:01, and why this rate is suppressed in all other realizations including vector-like leptons. We further discuss HLFV in the context of neutrino mass models: in most cases it is generated at one loop giving always BR (h -> tau mu) < 10(-4) and typically much less, which is beyond experimental reach. However, both the Zee model and extended left-right symmetric models contain extra SU(2) doublets coupled to leptons and could in principle account for the observed excess, with interesting connections between HLFV and neutrino parameters.