Future Hadron Colliders Research Articles

Potential Remedies for the High Synchrotron-Radiation-Induced Heat Load for Future Highest-Energy-Proton Circular Colliders.

We propose a new method for handling the high synchrotron radiation (SR) induced heat load of future circular hadron colliders (like FCC-hh). FCC-hh are dominated by the production of SR, which causes a significant heat load on the accelerator walls. Removal of such a heat load in the cold part of the machine, as done in the Large Hadron Collider, will require more than 100MW of electrical power and a major cooling system. We studied a totally different approach, identifying an accelerator beam screen whose illuminated surface is able to forward reflect most of the photons impinging onto it. Such a reflecting beam screen will transport a significant part of this heat load outside the cold dipoles. Then, in room temperature sections, it could be more efficiently dissipated. Here we will analyze the proposed solution and address its full compatibility with all other aspects an accelerator beam screen must fulfill to keep under control beam instabilities as caused by electron cloud formation, impedance, dynamic vacuum issues, etc. If experimentally fully validated, a highly reflecting beam screen surface will provide a viable and solid solution to be eligible as a baseline design in FCC-hh projects to come, rendering them more cost effective and sustainable.

Long-lived sleptons at the LHC and a 100 TeV proton collider

We study the prospects for long-lived charged particle (LLCP) searches at current and future LHC runs and at a 100 TeV pp collider, using Drell-Yan slepton pair production as an example. Because momentum measurements become more challenging for very energetic particles, we carefully treat the expected momentum resolution. At the same time, a novel feature of 100 TeV collisions is the significant energy loss of energetic muons in detectors. We use this to help discriminate between muons and LLCPs. We find that the 14 TeV LHC with an integrated luminosity of 3 ab$^{-1}$ can probe LLCP slepton masses up to 1.2 TeV, and a 100 TeV pp collider with 3 ab$^{-1}$ can probe LLCP slepton masses up to 4 TeV, using time-of-flight measurements. These searches will have striking implications for dark matter, with the LHC definitively testing the possibility of slepton-neutralino co-annihilating WIMP dark matter, and with the LHC and future hadron colliders having a strong potential for discovering LLCPs in models with superWIMP dark matter.

Search for heavy right-handed neutrinos at the LHC and beyond in the same-sign same-flavor leptons final state

In this study we explore the LHC's Run II potential to the discovery of heavy Majorana neutrinos, with luminosities between $30$ and $3000$ fb$^{-1}$ in the $l^{\pm}l^{\pm}j~j$ final state. Given that there exist many models for neutrino mass generation, even within the Type I seesaw framework, we use a simplified model approach and study two simple extensions to the Standard Model, one with a single heavy Majorana neutrino, singlet under the Standard Model gauge group, and a limiting case of the left-right symmetric model. We then extend the analysis to a future hadron collider running at $100$ TeV center of mass energies. This extrapolation in energy allows us to study the relative importance of the resonant production versus gauge boson fusion processes in the study of Majorana neutrinos at hadron colliders. We analyze and propose different search strategies designed to maximize the discovery potential in either the resonant production or the gauge boson fusion modes.

Optimizing integrated luminosity of future hadron colliders

The integrated luminosity, a key figure of merit for any particle-physics collider, is closely linked to the peak luminosity and to the beam lifetime. The instantaneous peak luminosity of a collider is constrained by a number of boundary conditions, such as the available beam current, the maximum beam-beam tune shift with acceptable beam stability and reasonable luminosity lifetime (i.e., the empirical ``beam-beam limit''), or the event pileup in the physics detectors. The beam lifetime at high-luminosity hadron colliders is largely determined by particle burn off in the collisions. In future highest-energy circular colliders synchrotron radiation provides a natural damping mechanism, which can be exploited for maximizing the integrated luminosity. In this article, we derive analytical expressions describing the optimized integrated luminosity, the corresponding optimum store length, and the time evolution of relevant beam parameters, without or with radiation damping, while respecting a fixed maximum value for the total beam-beam tune shift or for the event pileup in the detector. Our results are illustrated by examples for the proton-proton luminosity of the existing Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at its design parameters, of the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC), and of the Future Circular Collider (FCC-hh).

Spectroscopy of scalar mediators to dark matter at the LHC and at 100 TeV

We investigate simplified models of dark matter with scalar mediators at hadron colliders using the final state topology with 2 jets and missing energy. These models can arise in a wide variety of BSM scenarios including the possibility of the mediator mixing with the Higgs. Our aim is first to determine the projected reach of the LHC and the future circular hadron collider for excluding such models. Secondly, we use the kinematic distributions to extract information on mediator masses. At the 13 TeV LHC we can probe mediator masses up to 750 GeV, and at a 100 TeV collider the reach is increased to 2.5 TeV mediators. We also explain how individual models with different values of mediator masses can be differentiated from each other.

Tracking new physics at the LHC and beyond

Heavy resonances are an integral part of many extensions of the Standard Model. The discovery of such heavy resonances are a primary goal at the LHC and future hadron colliders. When a particle with TeV-scale mass decays into electroweak-scale objects, these objects are highly boosted and their decay products are then strongly collimated, possibly to an extent that they cannot be resolved in the calorimeters of the detectors any more. We develop taggers for electroweak-scale resonances by combining the good energy resolution of the hadronic calorimeter with the superior spatial resolution of the tracking detector. Using track-based techniques we reconstruct heavy $W'$ and $Z'$ bosons and constrain the branching ratio of the rare Higgs boson decay $H \to Z A \to l^+l^-$ jets. The taggers show a good momentum-independent performance up to very large boosts. Using the proposed techniques will allow experiments at the LHC and a future hadron collider to significantly extend its reach in searches for heavy resonances.

Putting a stop to di-Higgs modifications

Pair production of Higgs bosons at hadron colliders is an enticing channel to search for new physics. New colored particles that couple strongly to the Higgs, such as those most often called upon to address the hierarchy problem, provide well motivated examples in which large enhancements of the di-Higgs rate are possible, at least in principle. However, in such scenarios the di-Higgs production rate is tightly correlated with the single Higgs production rate and, since the latter is observed to be SM-like, one generally expects that only modest enhancements in di-Higgs production are allowed by the LHC Run 1 data. We examine the contribution of top squarks (stops) in a simplified supersymmetry model to di-Higgs production and find that this general expectation is indeed borne out. In particular, the allowed deviations are typically small, but there are tuned regions of parameter space where expectations based on EFT arguments break down in which order 100% enhancements to the di-Higgs production rate are possible and are simultaneously consistent with the observed single Higgs production rates. These effects are potentially observable with the high luminosity run of the LHC or at a future hadron collider.

Search for doubly charged Higgs bosons through vector boson fusion at the LHC and beyond

Production and decays of doubly charged Higgs bosons at the LHC and future hadron colliders triggered by a vector boson fusion mechanism are discussed in the context of the minimal left-right symmetric model. Our analysis is based on the Higgs boson mass spectrum compatible with available constraints which include flavor changing neutral current (FCNC) effects and vacuum stability of the scalar potential. Though the parity breaking scale ${v}_{R}$ is large ($\ensuremath{\sim}$ few TeV) and scalar masses which contribute to FCNC effects are even larger, a consistent Higgs boson mass spectrum still allows us to keep doubly charged scalar masses below 1 TeV which is an interesting situation for LHC and future circular collider (FCC). We have shown that the allowed Higgs boson mass spectrum constrains the splittings (${M}_{{H}_{1}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}}\ensuremath{-}{M}_{{H}_{1}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}}$), closing the possibility of ${H}_{1}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{W}_{1}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{H}_{1}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$ decays. Assuming that doubly charged Higgs bosons decay predominantly into a pair of same-sign charged leptons through the process $pp\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{H}_{1/2}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{H}_{1/2}^{\ensuremath{\mp}\ensuremath{\mp}}jj\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ensuremath{\mp}}{\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ensuremath{\mp}}jj$, we find that for the LHC operating at $\sqrt{s}=14\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$ with an integrated luminosity at the level of $3000\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ (HL-LHC), there is practically no chance to detect such particles at the reasonable significance level through this channel. However, at 33 TeV HE-LHC and (or) 100 TeV FCC-hh, a wide region opens up for exploring the doubly charged Higgs boson mass spectrum. In FCC-hh, the doubly charged Higgs bosons mass up to 1 TeV can be easily probed.

Future tests of Higgs compositeness: direct vs indirect

We estimate the reach of the 14 TeV LHC and future hadronic and leptonic colliders in the parameter space of the minimal composite Higgs model, outlining the complementarity of direct resonance searches and indirect information from the measurements of the Higgs boson couplings. The reach on electroweak charged spin-one resonances, taken here as representative direct signatures, is obtained from the current 8 TeV LHC limits by an extrapolation procedure which we outline and validate. The impact of electroweak precision tests, and their possible improvement at future colliders, is also quantified.

New resonance scale and fingerprint identification in minimal composite Higgs models

Composite Higgs models are intriguing scenarios in which the Higgs particle is identified as a pseudo-Nambu--Goldstone boson associated with spontaneous breaking of some global symmetry above the electroweak scale. They would predict new resonances at high-energy scales, some of which can appear at multi-TeV scales. In such a case, analogies with the pion physics in QCD, where a sizable phase shift is predicted in pion-pion scattering processes, might help us to evaluate scales of the resonances. In this paper, we discuss two complementary approaches to investigate the compositeness scale in minimal composite Higgs models. First, we discuss the bound on vector boson scattering from perturbative unitarity, and we evaluate the phase shift of the scattering amplitude, assuming that the same fitting function as one in the case of the pion physics can be applied. We then obtain the relation between possible phase shifts and promising new resonance scales. We also investigate the possibility to measure the phase shift at LHC and the future hadron colliders. Second, we classify deviations in Higgs coupling constants from the standard model predictions in various kinds of the minimal composite Higgs models. We then discuss a possibility to discriminate a specific minimal composite Higgs model from the other models with extended Higgs sectors by utilizing deviation patterns in the Higgs boson couplings by future precision measurements.

Tracking down hyper-boosted top quarks

The identification of hadronically decaying heavy states, such as vector bosons, the Higgs, or the top quark, produced with large transverse boosts has been and will continue to be a central focus of the jet physics program at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). At a future hadron collider working at an order-of-magnitude larger energy than the LHC, these heavy states would be easily produced with transverse boosts of several TeV. At these energies, their decay products will be separated by angular scales comparable to individual calorimeter cells, making the current jet substructure identification techniques for hadronic decay modes not directly employable. In addition, at the high energy and luminosity projected at a future hadron collider, there will be numerous sources for contamination including initial- and final-state radiation, underlying event, or pile-up which must be mitigated. We propose a simple strategy to tag such “hyper-boosted” objects that defines jets with radii that scale inversely proportional to their transverse boost and combines the standard calorimetric information with charged track-based observables. By means of a fast detector simulation, we apply it to top quark identification and demonstrate that our method efficiently discriminates hadronically decaying top quarks from light QCD jets up to transverse boosts of 20 TeV. Our results open the way to tagging heavy objects with energies in the multi-TeV range at present and future hadron colliders.

Rare exclusive hadronic W decays in a [Formula: see text] environment.

The large cross section for tbar{t} production at the large hadron collider (LHC) and at any future hadron collider provides a high-statistics and relatively clean environment for a study of W boson properties: after tagging on a leptonic decay of one of the Ws and the two b jets, an additional W still remains in the event. We study the prospect of making the first exclusive hadronic decay of a fundamental boson of the standard model, using the decay modes Wrightarrow pi gamma and W rightarrow pi pi pi , and other related decays. By using strong isolation criteria, which we impose by searching for jets with a single particle constituent, we show that the three-particle hadronic W decays have potential to be measured at the LHC. The possibility of measuring an involved spectrum of decay products could considerably expand our knowledge of how the W decays, and experimental techniques acquired in making these measurements would be useful for application to future measurements of exclusive hadronic Higgs boson decays.

Searches for dark matter signals in simplified models at future hadron colliders

We study the prospect of dark matter (DM) searches in the monojet channel at future $pp$ colliders with center-of-mass energies of 33, 50, and 100~TeV. We consider a class of simplified models in which a vector boson connecting DM particles to quarks is introduced. Comparing with studies in the effective field theory, the present framework gives more reasonable production rates and kinematics of the DM signatures. We estimate the sensitivities of future colliders with an integrated luminosity of 3 $ab^{-1}$ to the DM-induced monojet signature and show the parameter space that can be explored. The constraints from direct and indirect DM detection experiments are compared with the future collider sensitivities. We find that the future collider detection will be much more sensitive than the indirect detection for the vector interaction, and have better sensitivities than those of the direct detection by several orders of magnitude for the axial vector interaction.

Hunting electroweakinos at future hadron colliders and direct detection experiments

We analyse the mass reach for electroweakinos at future hadron colliders and their interplay with direct detection experiments. Motivated by the LHC data, we focus on split supersymmetry models with different electroweakino spectra. We find for example that a 100 TeV collider may explore Winos up to ~ 7 TeV in low scale gauge mediation models or thermal Wino dark matter around 3 TeV in models of anomaly mediation with long-lived Winos. We show moreover how collider searches and direct detection experiments have the potential to cover large part of the parameter space even in scenarios where the lightest neutralino does not contribute to the whole dark matter relic density.

Heavy color-octet particles at the LHC

Many new-physics models, especially those with a color-triplet top-quark partner, contain a heavy color-octet state. The “naturalness” argument for a light Higgs boson requires that the color-octet state be not much heavier than a TeV, and thus it can be pair-produced with large cross sections at high-energy hadron colliders. It may decay preferentially to a top quark plus a top partner, which subsequently decays to a top quark plus a color-singlet state. This singlet can serve as a WIMP dark-matter candidate. Such decay chains lead to a spectacular signal of four top quarks plus missing energy. We pursue a general categorization of the color-octet states and their decay products according to their spin and gauge quantum numbers. We review the current bounds on the new states at the LHC and study the expected discovery reach at the 8-TeV and 14-TeV runs. We also present the production rates at a future 100-TeV hadron collider, where the cross sections will be many orders of magnitude greater than at the 14-TeV LHC. Furthermore, we explore the extent to which one can determine the color octet’s mass, spin, and chiral couplings. Finally, we propose a test to determine whether the fermionic color octet is a Majorana particle.

Mass reach scaling for future hadron colliders

The primary goal of any future hadron collider is to discover new physics (NP) associated with a high mass scale, $M$, beyond the range of the LHC. In order to maintain the same {\it relative} mass reach for NP, $M/{\sqrt s}$, as $\sqrt s$ increases, Richter recently reminded us that the required integrated luminosity obtainable at future hadron colliders (FHC) must grow rapidly, $\sim s$, in the limit of naive scaling. This would imply, eg, a $\sim 50$-fold increase in the required integrated luminosity when going from the 14 TeV LHC to a FHC with $\sqrt s=100$ TeV, an increase that would prove quite challenging on many different fronts. In this paper we point out, due to the scaling violations associated with the evolution of the parton density functions (PDFs) and the running of the strong coupling, $\alpha_s$, that the actual luminosity necessary in order to maintain any fixed value of the relative mass reach is somewhat greater than this scaling result indicates. However, the actual values of the required luminosity scaling are found to be dependent upon the detailed nature of the NP being considered. Here we elucidate this point explicitly by employing several specific benchmark examples of possible NP scenarios and briefly discuss the (relatively weak) search impact in each case if these luminosity goals are not met.

Top-quark initiated processes at high-energy hadron colliders

In hadronic collisions at high energies, the top-quark may be treated as a parton inside a hadron. Top-quark initiated processes become increasingly important since the top-quark luminosity can reach a few percent of the bottom-quark luminosity. In the production of a heavy particle $H$ with mass $m_H > m_t$, treating the top-quark as a parton allows us to resum large logarithms $\log(m_{H}^{2}/m_{t}^{2}$) arising from collinear splitting in the initial state. We quantify the effect of collinear resummation at the 14-TeV LHC and a future 100-TeV hadron collider, focusing on the top-quark open-flavor process $gg\to t\bar t H$ in comparison with $t\bar t \to H$ and $tg\rightarrow tH$ at the leading order (LO) in QCD. We employ top-quark parton distribution functions with appropriate collinear subtraction and power counting. We find that (1) Collinear resummation enhances the inclusive production of a heavy particle with $m_H\approx$ 5 TeV (0.5 TeV) by more than a factor of two compared to the open-flavor process at a 100-TeV (14-TeV) collider; (2) Top-quark mass effects are important for scales $m_H$ near the top-quark threshold, where the cross section is largest. We advocate a modification of the ACOT factorization scheme, dubbed m-ACOT, to consistently treat heavy-quark masses in hadronic collisions; (3) The scale uncertainty of the total cross section in m-ACOT is of about 20 percent at the LO. While a higher-order calculation is indispensable for a precise prediction, the LO cross section is well described by the process $t\bar t\to H$ using an effective factorization scale significantly lower than $m_H$. We illustrate our results by the example of a heavy spin-0 particle. Our main results also apply to the production of particles with spin-1 and 2.

TeV/m nano-accelerator: Investigation on feasibility of CNT-channeling acceleration at Fermilab

The development of high gradient acceleration and tight phase-space control of high power beams is a key element for future lepton and hadron colliders since the increasing demands for higher energy and luminosity significantly raise costs of modern HEP facilities. Atomic channels in crystals are known to consist of 10–100V/Å potential barriers capable of guiding and collimating a high energy beam providing continuously focused acceleration with exceptionally high gradients (TeV/m). However, channels in natural crystals are only angstrom-size and physically vulnerable to high energy interactions, which has prevented crystals from being applied to high power accelerators. Carbon-based nano-crystals such as carbon-nanotubes (CNTs) and graphenes have a large degree of dimensional flexibility and thermo-mechanical strength, which could be suitable for channeling acceleration of MW beams. Nano-channels of the synthetic crystals can accept a few orders of magnitude larger phase-space volume of channeled particles with much higher thermal tolerance than natural crystals. This paper presents the current status of CNT-channeling acceleration research at the Advanced Superconducting Test Accelerator (ASTA) in Fermilab.

Exclusive window onto Higgs Yukawa couplings.

We show that both flavor-conserving and flavor-violating Yukawa couplings of the Higgs boson to first- and second-generation quarks can be probed by measuring rare decays of the form h→MV, where M denotes a vector meson and V indicates either γ, W or Z. We calculate the branching ratios for these processes in both the standard model and its possible extensions. We discuss the experimental prospects for their observation. The possibility of accessing these Higgs couplings appears to be unique to the high-luminosity LHC and future hadron colliders, providing further motivation for those machines.

Probing triple-W production and anomalous WWWW coupling at the CERN LHC and future O 100 $$ \mathcal{O}(100) $$ TeV proton-proton collider

Triple gauge boson production at the LHC can be used to test the robustness of the Standard Model and provide useful information for VBF di-boson scattering measurement. Especially, any derivations from SM prediction will indicate possible new physics. In this paper we present a detailed Monte Carlo study on measuring WWW production in pure leptonic and semileptonic decays, and probing anomalous quartic gauge WWWW couplings at the CERN LHC and future hadron collider, with parton shower and detector simulation effects taken into account. Apart from cut-based method, multivariate boosted decision tree method has been exploited for possible improvement. For the leptonic decay channel, our results show that at the sqrt{s}=8(14)[100] TeV pp collider with integrated luminosity of 20(100)[3000] fb-1, one can reach a significance of 0.4(1.2)[10]sigma to observe the SM WWW production. For the semileptonic decay channel, one can have 0.5(2)[14]sigma to observe the SM WWW production. We also give constraints on relevant Dim-8 anomalous WWWW coupling parameters.