Charged Scalars Research Articles

Rare B and K decays in a scotogenic model

A scotogenic model can radiatively generate the observed neutrino mass, provide a dark matter candidate, and lead to rare lepton flavor-violating processes. We aim to extend the model to establish a potential connection to the quark flavor-related processes within the framework of scotogenesis, enhancing the unexpectedly large branching ratio (BR) of B+→K+νν¯ observed by the Belle II Collaboration. Meanwhile, the model can address tensions between some experimental measurements and standard model (SM) predictions in flavor physics, such as the muon g−2 excess and the higher BR of Bs→μ−μ+. In the model, we introduce the following dark particles: a neutral singlet Dirac-type lepton (N); two inert Higgs doublets (η1,2), with one carrying a lepton number; a charged singlet dark scalar (χ+); and a singlet vectorlike up-type dark quark (T). The first two entities are responsible for the radiative neutrino mass, and χ+ couples to right-handed quarks and leptons and can resolve the tensions existing in muon g−2 and Bs→μ−μ+. Furthermore, the BR of B+→K+νν¯ can be enhanced up to a factor of 2 compared to the SM prediction through the mediations of the dark T and the charged scalars. In addition, we also study the impacts on the K→πνν¯ decays. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Hunting for Bileptons at Hadron Colliders.

I review possible signals at hadron colliders of bileptons, namely doubly charged vectors or scalars with lepton number L=±2, as predicted by a 331 model, based on a SU(3)c×SU(3)L×U(1)X symmetry. In particular, I account for a version of the 331 model wherein the embedding of the hypercharge is obtained with the addition of three exotic quarks and vector bileptons. Furthermore, a sextet of SU(3)L, necessary to provide masses to leptons, yields an extra scalar sector, including a doubly charged Higgs, i.e., scalar bileptons. As bileptons are mostly produced in pairs at hadron colliders, their main signal is provided by two same-sign lepton pairs at high invariant mass. Nevertheless, they can also decay according to non-leptonic modes, such as a TeV-scale heavy quark, charged 4/3 or 5/3, plus a Standard Model quark. I explore both leptonic and non-leptonic decays and the sensitivity to the processes of the present and future hadron colliders.

Tachyonic effects on Kähler moduli stabilized inflaton potential in type-IIB/F theory

We investigate the effects of inclusion of charged tachyonic open-string scalars in the perturbative and the non-perturbative Kähler moduli stabilizations in a geometry of three intersecting magnetized D7-brane stacks in type-IIB/F theory and also study the overall influence of this process on the inflaton potential, in a hybrid inflation scenario. We find that a tachyon lowers the minimum of the inflaton potential and assists to end the inflation. For simplicity, we have included one tachyon at a time in the present work and observe that this procedure preserves the features of slow-roll plateau of the potential. An interesting observation here is that the tachyonic part of the potential can be fine-tuned to get an almost zero minimum of the potential, thereby conforming to the small experimental value of the cosmological constant.

Understanding small neutrino mass and its implication

We have derived previously the relations between the neutrino masses and mixing angles in a dispersive analysis on the mixing of neutral leptonic states. The only involved assumption is that the electroweak symmetry of the Standard Model (SM) is restored at a high energy scale in some new physics scenario, which diminishes the box diagrams responsible for the mixing. Here we include corrections to the analysis up to three loops, arising from exchanges of additional neutral and charged scalars in the electroweak symmetric phase. The solution to the dispersion relation for the μ−e+-μ+e− mixing generates a typical neutrino mass mν∼O(1)eV in the SM unambiguously. The solution also favors the normal ordering of the neutrino masses over the inverted one, and links the large electroweak symmetry restoration, i.e., new physics scale to the small neutrino mass.

Models of Radiative Linear Seesaw with Electrically Charged Mediators

Abstract We propose two versions of radiative linear seesaw models, where electrically charged scalars and vector-like leptons generate the Dirac neutrino mass submatrix at the one- and two-loop levels. In these models, the Standard Model charged lepton masses are generated from a one-loop-level radiative seesaw mechanism mediated by charged exotic vector-like leptons and electrically neutral scalars running in the loops. These models can successfully accommodate the current amount of dark matter and baryon asymmetries observed in the universe, as well as the muon anomalous magnetic moment.

NLO thermal corrections to dark matter annihilation cross sections: A novel approach

Dark matter relic density has been increasingly accurately measured by successive generations of experiments. The Boltzmann equation determines the yields using the dark matter annihilation cross section as one of the inputs; the accurate computation of the latter including thermal contributions thus assumes importance. We report here the next-to-leading-order (NLO) thermal corrections to the cross sections for (Majorana) dark matter annihilation of standard model fermions, χχ→ff¯, via charged scalars. We use a novel approach, utilizing the technique of Grammer and Yennie, extended to thermal field theories, where the cancellation of soft infrared divergences occurs naturally. We present the NLO thermal cross sections in full detail both for the relativistic case and in the nonrelativistic limit. Our independent calculation verifies earlier results where the leading contribution at order O(T2) was shown to be proportional to the square of the fermion mass in the nonrelativistic limit, just as at leading order. We find that the O(T4) contributions have the same dependence on the fermion mass as well. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Vacuum stability in the one-loop approximation of a 331 model

In this study, we analyze the vacuum stability of the economical 331 model at the one-loop level using the renormalization group equations and a single-scale renormalization method. By integrating these equations, we determine stability conditions up to the Planck scale, incorporating constraints from recent experimental data on new Higgs-like bosons, charged scalars, and charged and neutral gauge bosons. Our analysis uncovers intriguing relations between the mass of the heaviest scalar and the masses of exotic quarks, in order to ensure stability of the model up to the Planck scale. For the 331 energy scale used in this work, 18 TeV, we find an upper bound on the heaviest quark mass of the model, which is not so distant from future LHC runs, serving as bounds to be searched. Additionally, we explore relations between the scalar couplings coming stability and perturbativity conditions. These impose unprecedented constraints on the economical 331 model.

Probing Zee-Babu states at muon colliders

The Zee-Babu model is a minimal realization of radiative neutrino mass generation mechanism at the two-loop level. We study the phenomenology of this model at future multi-TeV muon colliders. After imposing all theoretical and low-energy experimental constraints on the model parameters, we find that the Zee-Babu states are expected not to reside below the TeV scale, making it challenging to probe them at the LHC. We first analyze the production rates for various channels, including multi singly charged and/or doubly charged scalars at muon colliders. For concreteness, we study several benchmark points that satisfy neutrino oscillation data and other constraints and find that most channels have large production rates. We then analyze the discovery reach of the model using two specific channels: the pair production of singly and doubly charged scalars. For the phenomenologically viable scenarios considered in this study, charged scalars with masses up to O(3–4) TeV can be probed for the center-of-mass energy of 10 TeV and total luminosity of 10 ab−1. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Long-lived doubly charged scalars in the left-right symmetric model: Catalyzed nuclear fusion and collider implications

We show that the doubly charged scalar from the SU(2)R-triplet Higgs field in the Left-Right Symmetric Model has its mass governed by a hidden symmetry so that its value can be much lower than the SU(2)R breaking scale. This makes it a long-lived particle while being consistent with all existing theoretical and experimental constraints. Such long-lived doubly charged scalars have the potential to trigger catalyzed fusion processes in light nuclei, which may have important applications for energy production. We show that it could also bear consequences on the excess of large ionization energy loss (dE/dx) recently observed in collider experiments.

Heavy Higgs boson searches at the LHC in light of a left-right symmetric model

We investigate a left-right symmetric model respecting SU(3)C⊗SU(2)L⊗U(1)L⊗SU(2)R⊗U(1)R local gauge symmetry. We study the interactions of the heavy neutral and charged scalars of this model along with their production at the hadron collider and their subsequent decays. We analyze the collider searches of two heavy scalars, one of them is charge neutral and another one is singly charged. In both the cases we consider their associated production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and finally concentrate only on the leptonic final states. We perform both cut-based and multivariate analysis using the boosted decision tree algorithm for 14 TeV as well as 27 TeV LHC run with 3000 fb−1 integrated luminosity. As expected, the multivariate analysis shows a better signal-background discrimination compared to the cut-based analysis. In this article, we show that a charged Higgs of mass 750 GeV and 1.2 TeV can be probed with 2.77σ (4.58σ) and 1.38σ (3.66σ) significance at 14 (27) TeV run of LHC. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Full one-loop radiative corrections to e+e−→H+H− in the inert doublet model

We compute the full one-loop radiative corrections for charged scalar pair production e+e−→H+H− in the inert doublet model. The on-shell renormalization scheme has been used. We take into account both the weak contributions as well as the soft and hard QED corrections. We compute both the real emission and the one-loop virtual corrections using the Feynman diagrammatic method. The resummed cross section is introduced to cure the Coulomb singularity which occurs in the QED corrections. We have analyzed the parameter space of the inert doublet model in three scenarios after taking into account theoretical constraints, the collider experimental bounds, and dark matter search bounds as well. It is found that the weak interaction dominates the radiative corrections, and its size is determined by the triple Higgs coupling λh0H+H−, which is further connected to the mass of the charged scalar. In the scenario where all the constraints are taken into account, we find that for s=250 GeV and s=500 GeV, the weak corrections are around −6%∼−5% and −10%∼−3%, respectively. While for s=1000 GeV, the weak corrections can reach −15%∼+25%. The new feature is that the weak corrections can be positive near the threshold when the charged scalar is heavier than 470 GeV. Six benchmark points for future collider searches have been proposed. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

$\mu-e$ conversion in a model of electroweak scale right-handed neutrino mass

We perform a detailed analysis of the \(\mu-e\) conversion within an extended version of the standard model (SM) with mirror symmetry and low energy of the electroweak scale of the type I seesaw neutrino mass generation. After a brief introduction to the model, we derive the \(\mu-e\) conversing ratio at one-loop approximation, in which the running inside are W gauge boson or singly charged scalars accompanying with neutrinos, and neutral scalars with new leptons. We focus, mainly, on predictions of observable possibilities and constraints set on relevant couplings from the \(\mu-e\) conversion in nuclei.

Uncovering doubly charged scalars with dominant three-body decays using machine learning

We propose a deep learning-based search strategy for pair production of doubly charged scalars undergoing three-body decays to W+tb¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {W}^{+}t\\overline{b} $$\\end{document} in the same-sign lepton plus multi-jet final state. This process is motivated by composite Higgs models with an underlying fermionic UV theory. We demonstrate that for such busy final states, jet image classification with convolutional neural networks outperforms standard fully connected networks acting on reconstructed kinematic variables. We derive the expected discovery reach and exclusion limit at the high-luminosity LHC.

Spindle black holes in AdS4 × SE7

We construct new classes of supersymmetric AdS2 × Σ solutions of 4d gauged supergravity in presence of charged hypermultiplet scalars, with Σ the complex weighted projective space known as a spindle. These solutions can be viewed as near-horizon geome- tries of asymptotically Anti de-Sitter (AdS4) black holes with magnetic fluxes that admit embedding in 11d on Sasaki-Einstein (SE7) manifolds, which renders them of holographic interest. We show that in each case the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy follows from the procedure of gluing two gravitational blocks, ultimately determined by SE7 data. This allows us to establish the general form of the gravitational blocks in gauged 4d mathcal{N} = 2 supergravity with charged scalars and massive vectors. Holographically, our results provide a large N answer for the spindle index with anti-twist and additional mesonic or baryonic fluxes of a number of mathcal{N} = 2 Chern-Simons-matter theories.

Neutral and doubly charged scalars at future lepton colliders

Neutral and doubly charged scalars at future lepton colliders

Discovery prospects of a light charged Higgs near the fermiophobic region of Type-I 2HDM

Determining if the SM-like Higgs is part of an extended Higgs sector is the most important question to be asked after discovery. A light charged Higgs boson with mass smaller than the sum of top and bottom quarks is naturally allowed in Type-I two Higgs doublet model and can be produced in association with neutral scalars for large parts of parameter space at the LHC. Such low mass charged scalars typically have dominant decays to the fermionic modes viz. τν and cs. However in the presence of light neutral scalar (φ), the charged Higgs boson has a substantial branching fraction into the bosonic decay modes H±→ W(*)φ. Identifying the heavier neutral Higgs (H) with the observed 125 GeV Higgs and working in the limit {M}_{H^{pm }}approx {M}_A , we examine charged Higgs production and decay in the bosonic mode pp → H±h → W(∗)hh. The presence of two light Higgses (h) is then the key to identifying charged Higgs production. The light Higgs branching ratio is largely dominated by the boverline{b} mode except when close to the fermiophobic limit. Here, the rates into boverline{b} and γγ can be comparable and we can use the gamma gamma boverline{b} signature. This signature is complementary to the hh → 4γ which has been previously discussed in literature. Using the lepton from the W boson, we demonstrate with a cut-and-count analysis that both the new light neutral Higgs as well as charged Higgs can be probed with reasonable significance at 13.6 TeV LHC with 300-3000 fb−1 of integrated luminosity.

Lepton flavor specific extended Higgs model

In extended Higgs models, a discrete symmetry is needed in the quark sector to avoid tree-level flavor-changing neutral currents. However, this is not necessary the case in the lepton sector. We consider a model in which one Higgs couples to quarks and three others couple to the electron, muon and tau, respectively. This four-doublet model is presented with the full scalar potential and the gauge and Yukawa couplings. The constraints from boundedness, perturbativity and oblique parameters are incorporated as well as constraints from meson-antimeson mixing, radiative B-decays and the diphoton Higgs decay rate. We also consider bounds from searches for heavy neutral and charged scalars at the LHC. Since the Standard Model Higgs couplings match predictions very well, we focus on the alignment limit of the model. It is shown that for a wide range of parameters, the lightest additional scalar, pseudoscalar and charged scalar can have substantial decays into electrons and muons (in contrast to the usual leptonic decays into taus). An interesting signature in the neutral sector would be the production, through vector boson fusion, of a pair of scalars, each of which decays into an electron or muon pair.

Photon splitting corrections to soft-photon resummation

In this paper we present an algorithm to add photon-splitting corrections to the Yennie-Frautschi-Suura-style soft-photon resummation available in the Sherpa MonteCarlo event generator. Photon-splitting corrections enter at NNLO in QED and, as these effects are not incorporated in the standard QED FSR resummations, their size is larger than the pure hard photon-emission corrections at the same order. We introduce different lepton dressing strategies which incorporate further leptons and hadrons in addition to the customary photons, and discuss their sensitivity to dressing parameters such as the cone size. Finally, we quantify the effects of photon splittings into charged fermions and scalars under different such dressing strategies on Z → e+e− decays and find effects of up to 1% for suitably inclusive dressing strategies independent of the dressing cone size, and up to 9% if only photons are used in the dressing procedure with large dressing cones.

Light lepton portal dark matter meets the LHC

We examine the sensitivity of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to light lepton portal dark matter with its mass below 10 GeV. The model features an extra doublet scalar field and singlet Dirac dark matter, which have Yukawa interactions with left-handed leptons. To correctly produce the dark matter abundance via the thermal freeze-out, a large mass splitting among the extra scalars is required, thus providing a light neutral scalar below mathcal{O}(10)textrm{GeV} and heavy neutral and charged scalars at the electroweak scale. In this paper, we focus on the electroweak pair-production of the extra scalars with subsequent model-specific scalar decays and evaluate the current constraints with the LHC Run 2 data and the discovery potential at the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). It turns out that a large part of the theoretically allowed parameter space can be tested at the HL-LHC by taking into account complementarity between slepton searches and mono-Z plus missing transverse energy search. We also discuss same-sign charged scalar production as a unique prediction of the model, and the implication of the collider searches in the thermal dark matter scenario.

Some new observations for the Georgi-Machacek scenario with triplet Higgs scalars

The Georgi-Machacek model, introducing a complex and a real scalar triplet as additional components of the electroweak symmetry breaking sector, enables substantial triplet contributions to the weak gauge boson masses, subject to the equality of the complex and the real triplet vacuum expectation values (vev) via a custodial SU(2) symmetry. We present an updated set of constraints on this scenario, from collider data (including those from 137/139~fb$^{-1}$ of luminosity at the Large Hadron Collider), available data on the 125-GeV scalar, indirect limits and also theoretical restrictions from vacuum stability and unitarity. It is found that some bounds get relaxed, and the phenomenological potential of the scenario is more diverse, if the doubly charged scalar in the spectrum can decay not only into two like-sign $W$'s but also into one or two singly charged scalars. Other interesting features are noticed in a general approach, such as substantial $\gamma\gamma$ and $Z\gamma$ branching ratios of the additional custodial singlet scalar, and appreciable strength of the trilinear interaction of a charged scalar, the $W$ and the $Z$. Finally,, we take into account the possibility of custodial SU(2) breaking, resulting in inequality of the real and the complex scalar vevs which too in principle may allow large triplet contribution to weak boson masses. Illustrative numerical results on the modified limits and predictions are presented, once more taking into account all the constraints mentioned above.