SEARCHING FOR HIGGS BOSONS AND NEW PHYSICS AT HADRON COLLIDERS

Abstract

The objectives of research activities in particle theory are predicting the production cross section and decay branching fractions of Higgs bosons and new particles at hadron colliders, developing techniques and computer software to discover these particles and to measure their properties, and searching for new phenomena and new interactions at the Fermilab Tevatron and the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The results of our project could lead to the discovery of Higgs bosons, new particles, and signatures for new physics, or we will be able to set meaningful limits on important parameters in particle physics. We investigated the the prospects for the discovery at the CERN Large Hadron Collider of Higgs bosons and supersymmetric particles. Promising results are found for the CP-odd pseudoscalar ($A^0$) and the heavier CP-even scalar ($H^0$) Higgs bosons with masses up to 800 GeV. Furthermore, we study properties of the lightest neutralino ($\chi^0$) and calculate its cosmological relic density in a supersymmetric $U(1)'$ model as well as the muon anomalous magnetic moment $a_\mu = (g_\mu - 2)/2$ in a supersymmetric $U(1)'$ model. We found that there are regions of the parameter space that can explain the experimental deviation of $a_\mu$ from the Standard Model calculation and yield an acceptable cold dark matter relic density without conflict with collider experimental constraints. % Recently, we presented a complete next-to-leading order (NLO) calculation for the total cross section of inclusive Higgs pair production via bottom-quark fusion ($b\bar{b} \to hh$) at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the Standard Model and the minimal supersymmetric model. We plan to predict the Higgs pair production rate and to study the trilinear coupling among the Higgs bosons. % In addition, we have made significant contributions in B physics, single top production, charged Higgs search at the Fermilab as well as in grid computing for both D0 and ATLAS.