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Alcaide, J., Banerjee, S., Chala, M., & Titov, A. (2019). Probes of the Standard Model effective field theory extended with a right-handed neutrino. J. High Energy Phys., 08(8), 031–18pp.
Abstract: If neutrinos are Dirac particles and, as suggested by the so far null LHC results, any new physics lies at energies well above the electroweak scale, the Standard Model effective field theory has to be extended with operators involving the right-handed neutrinos. In this paper, we study this effective field theory and set constraints on the different dimension-six interactions. To that aim, we use LHC searches for associated production of light (and tau) leptons with missing energy, monojet searches, as well as pion and tau decays. Our bounds are generally above the TeV for order one couplings. One particular exception is given by operators involving top quarks. These provide new signals in top decays not yet studied at colliders. Thus, we also design an LHC analysis to explore these signatures in the tt production. Our results are also valid if the right-handed neutrinos are Majorana and long-lived.
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Alcaide, J., Chala, M., & Santamaria, A. (2018). LHC signals of radiatively-induced neutrino masses and implications for the Zee-Babu model. Phys. Lett. B, 779, 107–116.
Abstract: Contrary to the see-saw models, extended Higgs sectors leading to radiatively-induced neutrino masses do require the extra particles to be at the TeV scale. However, these new states have often exotic decays, to which experimental LHC searches performed so far, focused on scalars decaying into pairs of same-sign leptons, are not sensitive. In this paper we show that their experimental signatures can start to be tested with current LHC data if dedicated multi-region analyses correlating different observables are used. We also provide high-accuracy estimations of the complicated Standard Model backgrounds involved. For the case of the Zee-Babu model, we show that regions not yet constrained by neutrino data and low-energy experiments can be already probed, while most of the parameter space could be excluded at the 95% C.L. in a high-luminosity phase of the LHC.
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Ballesteros, G., Carmona, A., & Chala, M. (2017). Exceptional composite dark matter. Eur. Phys. J. C, 77(7), 468–18pp.
Abstract: We study the darkmatter phenomenology of non-minimal composite Higgs models with SO(7) broken to the exceptional group G(2). In addition to the Higgs, three pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons arise, one of which is electrically neutral. A parity symmetry is enough to ensure this resonance is stable. In fact, if the breaking of the Goldstone symmetry is driven by the fermion sector, this Z(2) symmetry is automatically unbroken in the electroweak phase. In this case, the relic density, as well as the expected indirect, direct and collider signals are then uniquely determined by the value of the compositeness scale, f. Current experimental bounds allow one to account for a large fraction of the dark matter of the Universe if the dark matter particle is part of an electroweak triplet. The totality of the relic abundance can be accommodated if instead this particle is a composite singlet. In both cases, the scale f and the dark matter mass are of the order of a few TeV.
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Chala, M. (2017). Direct bounds on heavy toplike quarks with standard and exotic decays. Phys. Rev. D, 96(1), 015028–14pp.
Abstract: Heavy vectorlike quarks with electric charge Q = 2/3 (also called heavy tops) appear naturally in many extensions of the Standard Model. Although these typically predict the existence of further particles below the TeV scale, direct searches for heavy tops have been performed assuming that they decay only into SM particles. The aim of this paper is to overcome this situation. We consider the most constraining experimental LHC searches for vectorlike quarks, including analyses of the 36 fb(-1) of data collected in the latest run at 13 TeV of center of mass energy, as well as searches sensitive to heavy tops decaying into a new scalar, S. Combining all these, we derive bounds for arbitrary values of the heavy top branching ratios. A simple code that automatizes this process is also provided. At the physics level, we demonstrate that bounds on heavy tops are not inevitably weaker in the presence of new light scalars. We find that heavy tops with masses below similar to 900 GeV are excluded by direct searches, independently of whether they decay into Zt, Ht, Wb or St (with S giving either missing energy of bottom quarks) or into any combination of them.
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Chala, M., Delgado, A., Nardini, G., & Quiros, M. (2017). A light sneutrino rescues the light stop. J. High Energy Phys., 04(4), 097–22pp.
Abstract: Stop searches in supersymmetric frameworks with R-parity conservation usually assume the lightest neutralino to be the lightest supersymmetric particle. In this paper we consider an alternative scenario in which the left-handed tau sneutrino is lighter than neutralinos and stable at collider scales, but possibly unstable at cosmological scales. Moreover the (mostly right-handed) stop (t) over tilde is lighter than all electroweakinos, and heavier than the scalars of the third generation lepton doublet, whose charged component, (T) over tilde, is heavier than the neutral one, (v) over tilde. The remaining supersymmetric particles are decoupled from the stop phenomenology. In most of the parameter space, the relevant stop decays are only into t (T) over tildeT, t (v) over tildev and b (v) over tildeT via off-shell electroweakinos. We constrain the branching ratios of these decays by recasting the most sensitive stop searches. Due to the “double invisible” kinematics of the (t) over tilde -> t (v) over tildev process, and the low efficiency in tagging the t (T) over tildeT decay products, light stops are generically allowed. In the minimal supersymmetric standard model with similar to 100 GeV sneutrinos, stops with masses as small as similar to 350 GeV turn out to be allowed at 95% CL.
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