Boosted four-top production at the LHC: A window to Randall-Sundrum or extended color symmetry

Abstract

Scenarios seeking to address the issue of electroweak symmetry breaking often have heavy colored gauge bosons coupling preferentially to the top quark. Considering the bulk Randall-Sundrum as a typical example, we consider the prospects of the first Kaluza-Klein mode (G(1)) of the gluon being produced at the LHC in association with a tt¯ pair. The enhanced coupling not only dictates that the dominant decay mode would be to a tt¯ pair, but also to a very large G(1) width, necessitating the use of a renormalized G(1) propagator. This, along with the presence of large backgrounds (specially tt¯jj), renders a conventional cut-based analysis ineffective, yielding only marginal significances of only around 2σ. The use of machine learning (ML) techniques alleviates this problem to a great extent. In particular, the use of artificial neural networks helps us identify the most discriminating observables, thereby allowing a significance in excess of 4σ for G(1) masses of ∼4 TeV. Published by the American Physical Society 2024