A Search for Exotic Higgs Decays

A Search for Exotic Higgs Decays
Author: Jackson Burzynski
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2023-05-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3031304667

The absence of new physics at the TeV scale observed thus far at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) motivates an increasing focus on searches for weakly-coupled new particles and exotic signatures. In particular, particles with macroscopic mean proper lifetimes, known as long-lived particles (LLPs), are of significant interest due to their ability to elude the majority of searches which rely on the assumption that Beyond Standard Model particles decay close to the primary interaction point. Many models which aim to solve various issues with the Standard Model (SM) introduce new particles with lifetimes that are either unconstrained, or even shown to prefer the macroscopic regime. These theories often point to the Higgs boson as a possible portal to new physics, with exotic Higgs decays being the primary phenomenological consequence and means of discovery. It is well motivated both from theory and experimental constraints to consider the scenario in which the particles produced in these exotic decays have macroscopic proper lifetimes and give rise to unique detector signatures. This work describes a search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson to two long-lived, neutral, spin-0 particles which subsequently decay to pairs of b quarks, giving the striking signature of displaced hadronic jets in the ATLAS inner detector. Several other ATLAS searches have probed this decay topology previously, excluding branching ratios of the Higgs boson to LLPs of more than 10% for proper lifetimes greater than 100mm. These searches relied on dedicated triggers designed to select events with LLPs decaying in the ATLAS calorimeter or muon spectrometer. The lack of an equivalent trigger for LLP decays in the ATLAS inner detector has been a limiting factor in probing LLP lifetimes less than 100mm. To circumvent the difficulty of triggering on LLP decays, the search presented in this thesis exploits the ZH associated production mode, relying on leptonic trigger signatures to select interesting events. This is the first search for Higgs boson decays into LLPs to exploit this analysis methodology and additionally makes use of several novel methods for both background rejection and background estimation. No excess over Standard Model predictions is observed, and upper limits are set on the branching ratio of the Higgs boson to LLPs . Depending on the mass of the LLP, branching ratios greater than 10% are excluded for lifetimes as small as 4mm and as large as 100mm, probing an important gap in the ATLAS exotic Higgs decay programme. In comparison to the previous searches for Higgs decays to LLPs, these are among the most stringent limits placed on this scenario, and for LLPs with masses below 40 GeV these results represent the strongest existing constraints on the branching ratio of the Higgs boson to LLPs in this lifetime regime.

A Search for Displaced Leptons in the ATLAS Detector

A Search for Displaced Leptons in the ATLAS Detector
Author: Lesya Horyn
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2022-02-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030916723

This thesis presents a search for long-lived particles decaying into displaced electrons and/or muons with large impact parameters. This signature provides unique sensitivity to the production of theoretical lepton-partners, sleptons. These particles are a feature of supersymmetric theories, which seek to address unanswered questions in nature. The signature searched for in this thesis is difficult to identify, and in fact, this is the first time it has been probed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It covers a long-standing gap in coverage of possible new physics signatures. This thesis describes the special reconstruction and identification algorithms used to select leptons with large impact parameters and the details of the background estimation. The results are consistent with background, so limits on slepton masses and lifetimes in this model are calculated at 95% CL, drastically improving on the previous best limits from the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP).

Search for Exotic Decays of a Higgs Boson Into Undetectable Particles and One Or More Photons

Search for Exotic Decays of a Higgs Boson Into Undetectable Particles and One Or More Photons
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

A search is presented for exotic decays of a Higgs boson into undetectable particles and one or two isolated photons in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of up to 19.4 inverse femtobarns collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. Higgs bosons produced in gluon-gluon fusion and in association with a Z boson are investigated, using models in which the Higgs boson decays into a gravitino and a neutralino or a pair of neutralinos, followed by the decay of the neutralino to a gravitino and a photon. The selected events are consistent with the background-only hypothesis, and limits are placed on the product of cross sections and branching fractions. Assuming a standard model Higgs boson production cross section, a 95% confidence level upper limit is set on the branching fraction of a 125 GeV Higgs boson decaying into undetectable particles and one or two isolated photons as a function of the neutralino mass. For this class of models and neutralino masses from 1 to 120 GeV an upper limit in the range of 7 to 13% is obtained. Further results are given as a function of the neutralino lifetime, and also for a range of Higgs boson masses.

Search for Out-of-time Decays of Stopped Particles at the ATLAS Detector

Search for Out-of-time Decays of Stopped Particles at the ATLAS Detector
Author: Josh Cogan
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2014
Genre:
ISBN:

On July 4th 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments announced the discovery of a new particle, later declared to be one of possibly many Higgs bosons. The Higgs mechanism has been so successful explaining several striking features of fundamental particle physics it was the topic of the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics. However, this mechanism provides a few problems of it's own. Most importantly, both the mass of the new Higgs boson and the cosmological constant must be extremely fine-tuned to produce a universe remotely similar to the one we observe today. Supersymmetry, a hypothetical extension to the current theory, addresses many problems in theoretical and experimental physics including the fine-tuned Higgs mass. In this work, a variant, called Split-Supersymmetry, is investigated; it avoids some problems in standard Supersymmetry while explicitly leaving the Higgs mass fine-tuned. A experimentally unique feature of Split-Supersymmetry is the production of R-hadrons--composite, massive, long-lived, particles. Indeed such long-lived states are predicted in several scenarios of physics beyond the Standard Model, and this search is sensitive to them as well. This dissertation describes the ATLAS searches using 2010, 2011 and 2012 data for gluino and squark R-hadrons which have come to rest within the ATLAS detector, particularly the calorimeter, and decay at some later time to jets or "ttbar" and a neutralino. Candidate decay events are triggered in the empty bunch crossings in order to remove collision backgrounds. Selections based on jet shape and muon-system activity are applied to discriminate events from backgrounds, the largest of which are cosmic and beam-halo muons. In the absence of a excess, limits are placed on the new particle mass as a function of its lifetime, for various neutralino masses and decay types.