Higher Dimensional Effective Operators Research Articles

Probing the interactions of axion-like particles with electroweak bosons and the Higgs boson in the high energy regime at LHC

We study the interactions of axion-like particles (ALPs) with the Standard Model particles, aiming to probe their phenomenology via non-resonant searches at the LHC. These interactions are mediated by higher dimensional effective operators within two possible frameworks of linearly and non-linearly realised electroweak symmetry breaking. We consider the ALPs to be light enough to be produced on-shell and exploit their derivative couplings with the SM Higgs boson and the gauge bosons. We will use the high momentum transfer processes, namely hZ, Zγ, WW and WWγ production from pp collisions. We derive upper limits on the gauge-invariant interactions of ALPs with the electroweak bosons and/or Higgs boson that contribute to these processes, from the re-interpretation of the latest Run 2 available LHC data. The constraints we obtain are strong for ALP masses below 100 GeV. These allowed effective interactions in the ALP parameter space yield better significance at HL-LHC and thus, offer promising avenues for subsequent studies. Furthermore, we augment our cut-based analysis with gradient-boosted decision trees, which improve the statistical significance distinctly across these interaction channels. We briefly compare the results with the complementary probe of these couplings via direct production of ALPs in association with the Higgs boson or a vector boson.

Axion-like particle (ALP) portal freeze-in dark matter confronting ALP search experiments

The relic density of Dark Matter (DM) in the freeze-in scenario is highly dependent on the evolution history of the universe and changes significantly in a non-standard (NS) cosmological framework prior to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). In this scenario, an additional species dominates the energy budget of the universe at early times (before BBN), resulting in a larger cosmological expansion rate at a given temperature compared to the standard radiation-dominated (RD) universe. To investigate the production of DM in the freeze-in scenario, we consider both standard RD and NS cosmological picture before BBN and perform a comparative analysis. We extend the Standard Model (SM) particle content with a SM singlet DM particle χ and an axion-like particle (ALP) a. The interactions between ALP, SM particles, and DM are generated by higher dimensional effective operators. This setup allows the production of DM χ from SM bath through the mediation of ALP, via ALP-portal processes. These interactions involve non-renormalizable operators, leading to ultraviolet (UV) freeze-in, which depends on the reheating temperature (TRH) of the early universe. In the NS cosmological scenario, the faster expansion rate suppresses the DM production processes, allowing for enhanced effective couplings between the visible and dark sectors to satisfy the observed DM abundance compared to RD scenario. This improved coupling increases the detection prospects for freeze-in DM via the ALP-portal, which is otherwise challenging to detect in RD universe due to small couplings involved. Using an effective field theory set-up, we show that various ALP searches such as in FASER, DUNE, and SHiP, etc. will be able to probe significant parameter space depending on the different model parameters.

Dark states with electromagnetic form factors at electron colliders

Electromagnetically neutral dark sector particles may feebly interact with photons through higher dimensional effective operators, such as mass-dimension 5 magnetic and electric dipole moment, and a mass-dimension 6 anapole moment and charge radius operators. In this work, we use hypercharge gauge field form factors to treat dark states, which will induce not only electromagnetic form factors but also the corresponding $Z$ boson operators. Taking a Dirac fermion $\chi$ as an example, we investigate the probes of searching for such dark states at current and future $e^+e^-$ collider experiments including BESIII, STCF, Belle II and CEPC via monophoton searches. Comparing to current experiments, we find that electron colliders including BESIII, STCF, Belle II, which operate with the center-of-mass at several GeV, have leading sensitivity on the corresponding electromagnetic form factors for the mass-dimension 5 operators with dark states lighter than several GeV, while they can not provide competitive upper limits for the mass-dimension 6 operators. Future CEPC operated with the center-of-mass on and beyond the mass of $Z$-boson with competitive luminosity can probe the unexplored parameter space for dark states with mass-dimension 5 (6) operators in the mass region of $m\lesssim 100 $ GeV (10 MeV $\lesssim m\lesssim 100 $ GeV).

Anomalous couplings in associated VH production with Higgs boson decay to massive b quarks at NNLO in QCD

We combine the NNLO QCD description of Higgs boson production in association with an electroweak vector boson $V = W~{\rm or}~Z$ with a similarly-precise description of Higgs boson decays into a pair of massive $b$ quarks and with the anomalous couplings that modify interactions of the Higgs and electroweak vector bosons. The resulting numerical code provides the most advanced theoretical tool to investigate such anomalous couplings in the associated Higgs boson production process. We study the impact of anomalous couplings on fiducial cross sections and differential distributions and argue that, with increased QCD precision, smaller anomalous couplings become accessible in kinematic regions where the effects of higher-dimensional operators in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory remain small and the EFT expansion is under control.

Quantum Gravity Effects on Oscillation Parameters in a Four Flavor Framework

We consider the effects of Planck scale operators on four flavour neutrino mixings. Quantum gravity (Planck scale effects) leads to an effective SU(2)L × U(1) invariant dimension-5 Lagrangian involving, neutrino and Higgs fields. On symmetry breaking, this operator gives rise to correction to the neutrino masses and mixing.We investigate the effect of higher dimensional operators coming from Planck scale Physics on neutrino oscillation parameters in a four flavor framework. We find that most of the parameters are not altered by this effect but we get the interesting result that for certain values of the Majoranna phases, the 𝜃23 (the atmospheric neutrino mixing angle) goes significantly above 45 degrees. Hence these values of the Majoranna phases are disallowed by data.

Search for decaying heavy dark matter in an effective interaction framework: a comparison of γ-ray and radio observations

We investigate and compare the possibilities of observing decaying dark matter (DM) in γ-ray and radio telescopes. The special emphasis of the study is on a scalar heavy DM particle with mass in the trans-TeV range. DM decays, consistent with existing limits on the lifetime, are assumed to be driven by higher dimensional effective operators. We consider both two-body decays of a scalar dark particle and a dark sector having three-body decays, producing two standard model particles. It is found that the Fermi-LAT data on isotropic γ-ray background provides the best constraints so far, although the CTA telescope may be more effective for decays where one or two photons are directly produced. In all cases, deeper probes of the effective operators are possible in the upcoming SKA radio telescope with a few hundred hours of observation, using the radio synchrotron flux coming from energetic electrons produced in the decay cascades within dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Finally, we estimate how the SKA can constrain the parameter space spanned by the galactic magnetic field and the diffusion coefficient, if observations consistent with γ-ray data actually take place.

Dark sector-photon interactions in proton-beam experiments

We consider electromagnetically neutral dark states that couple to the photon through higher dimensional effective operators, such as electric and magnetic dipole moment, anapole moment and charge radius operators. We investigate the possibility of probing the existence of such dark states, taking a Dirac fermion $\chi$ as an example, at several representative proton-beam experiments. As no positive signal has been reported, we obtain upper limits (or projected sensitivities) on the corresponding electromagnetic form factors for dark states lighter than several GeV. We demonstrate that while the current limits from proton-beam experiments are at most comparable with those from high-energy electron colliders, future experiments, such as DUNE and SHiP, will be able to improve the sensitivities to electric and magnetic dipole moment interactions, owing to their high intensity.

Probing dark-axionlike particle portals at future e+e− colliders

We study portal interactions connecting visible and dark sectors, and involving local interactions of a photon, a dark photon and a axion-like particle (ALP) at future $e^+e^-$ colliders. These interactions, mediated by higher-dimensional effective operators, may arise at one-loop by kinetic mixing between dark and ordinary photons, or, for massless dark photons, by direct short-distance contributions. We explore these portal interactions for a heavy ALP with masses between about 10 GeV and 230 GeV by investigating the sensitivity of the production $e^+e^- \to \gamma \gamma \bar{\gamma}$ to the effective couplings, where the dark photon $\bar\gamma$ gives rise to missing momentum in the final state. We will show how an appropriate choice of missing-energy and missing-mass cuts can optimize the signal to standard-model background ratio. Exclusion regions for the effective photon-dark-photon-ALP couplings versus the ALP mass are worked out for a few representative values of the collision energy and integrated luminosity, as presently envisaged by future $e^+e^-$ projects.

Stellar probes of dark sector-photon interactions

Electromagnetically neutral dark sector particles may directly couple to the photon through higher dimensional effective operators. Considering electric and magnetic dipole moment, anapole moment, and charge radius interactions, we derive constraints from stellar energy loss in the Sun, horizontal branch and red giant stars, as well as from cooling of the proto-neutron star of SN1987A. We provide the exact formula for in-medium photon-mediated pair production to leading order in the dark coupling, and compute the energy loss rates explicitly for the most important processes, including a careful discussion on resonances and potential double counting between the processes. Stringent limits for dark states with masses below $3\,$keV ($40\,$MeV) arise from red giant stars (SN1987A), implying an effective lower mass-scale of approximately $10^9\,$GeV ($10^7\,$GeV) for mass-dimension five, and $100\,$GeV ($2.5\,$TeV) for mass-dimension six operators as long as dark states stream freely; for the proto-neutron star, the trapping of dark states is also evaluated. Together with direct limits previously derived by us in Chu et al. (2018), this provides the first comprehensive overview of the viability of effective electromagnetic dark-state interactions below the GeV mass-scale.

Light-quarks Yukawa couplings and new physics in exclusive high- pT Higgs boson+jet and Higgs boson + b -jet events

We suggest that the exclusive Higgs + light (or b)-jet production at the LHC, $pp \to h+j(j_b)$, is a rather sensitive probe of the light-quarks Yukawa couplings and of other forms of new physics (NP) in the Higgs-gluon $hgg$ and quark-gluon $qqg$ interactions. We study the Higgs $p_T$-distribution in $pp \to h+j(j_b) \to \gamma \gamma + j(j_b)$, i.e., in $h+j(j_b)$ production followed by the Higgs decay $h \to \gamma \gamma$, employing the ($p_T$-dependent) signal strength formalism to probe various types of NP which are relevant to these processes and which we parameterize either as scaled Standard Model (SM) couplings (the kappa-framework) and/or through new higher dimensional effective operators (the SMEFT framework). We find that the exclusive $h+j(j_b)$ production at the 13 TeV LHC is sensitive to various NP scenarios, with typical scales ranging from a few TeV to ${\cal O}(10)$ TeV, depending on the flavor, chirality and Lorentz structure of the underlying physics.

Towards consistent Electroweak Precision Data constraints in the SMEFT

We discuss the impact of many previously neglected effects of higher dimensional operators when fitting to Electroweak Precision data (EWPD) in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). We calculate the general case of $2 \rightarrow 2$ fermion scattering in the SMEFT to order $\mathcal{O}(\bar{v}_T^2/\Lambda^2)$ valid on and off the $Z$ pole, in the massless fermion limit. We demonstrate that previously neglected corrections scale as $\Gamma_Z M_Z/\bar{v}_T^2$ in the partial widths extracted from measured cross sections at LEPI, compared to the leading effect of dimension six operators in anomalous $Z$ couplings. Further, constraints on leading effects of anomalous $Z$ couplings are also modified by neglected perturbative corrections and dimension eight operators. We perform a minimal EWPD fit to illustrate the size of the error these corrections induce, when bounding leading effects. These considerations relax bounds compared to a naive leading order analysis, and show that constraints that rise above the percent level are subject to substantial theoretical uncertanties. We also argue that renormalization group running global constraints expressed through $\chi^2$ functions to a common scale, and then minimizing and performing a global fit of all data allows more consistent constraints to be obtained in the SMEFT.

Natural vacuum alignment from group theory: the minimal case

Discrete flavour symmetries have been proven successful in explaining the leptonic flavour structure. To account for the observed mixing pattern, the flavour symmetry has to be broken to different subgroups in the charged and neutral lepton sector. However, cross-couplings via non-trivial contractions in the scalar potential force the group to break to the same subgroup. We present a solution to this problem by extending the flavour group in such a way that it preserves the flavour structure, but leads to an 'accidental' symmetry in the flavon potential. We have searched for symmetry groups up to order 1000, which forbid all dangerous cross-couplings and extend one of the interesting groups A4, T7, S4, T' or \Delta(27). We have found a number of candidate groups and present a model based on one of the smallest extension of A4, namely Q8 \rtimes A4. We show that the most general non-supersymmetric potential allows for the correct vacuum alignment. We investigate the effects of higher dimensional operators on the vacuum configuration and mixing angles, and give a see-saw-like UV completion. Finally, we discuss the supersymmetrization of the model. Additionally, we release the Mathematica package "Discrete" providing various useful tools for model building such as easily calculating invariants of discrete groups and flavon potentials.

VACUUM STABILITY IN SPLIT SUSY AND LITTLE HIGGS MODELS

We study the stability of the effective Higgs potential in the split supersymmetry and Little Higgs models. In particular, we study the effects of higher dimensional operators in the effective potential on the Higgs mass predictions. We find that the size and sign of the higher dimensional operators can significantly change the Higgs mass required to maintain vacuum stability in Split SUSY models. In the Little Higgs models the effects of higher dimensional operators can be large because of a relatively lower cutoff scale. Working with a specific model we find that a contribution from the higher dimensional operator with coefficient of O(1) can destabilize the vacuum.

Muon anomalous magnetic moment, lepton flavor violation, and flavor changing neutral current processes in supersymmetric grand unified theory with right-handed neutrinos

Motivated by the large mixing angle solutions for the atmospheric and solar neutrino anomalies, flavor changing neutral current processes and lepton flavor violating processes as well as the muon anomalous magnetic moment are analyzed in the framework of SU(5) supersymmetric grand unified theory (SUSY GUT) with right-handed neutrinos. In order to explain realistic mass relations for quarks and leptons, we take into account the effects of higher dimensional operators above the GUT scale. It is shown that the supersymmetric contributions to the $\mathrm{CP}$ violation parameter in ${K}^{0}\ensuremath{-}{K}^{0}$ mixing, ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{K},$ the $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{\ensuremath{\mu}}e\ensuremath{\gamma}$ branching ratio, and the muon anomalous magnetic moment become large in a wide range of parameter space. We also investigate the correlations among these quantities. Within the current experimental bound of $B(\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{\ensuremath{\mu}}e\ensuremath{\gamma}),$ large SUSY contributions are possible either in the muon anomalous magnetic moment or in ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{K}.$ In the former case, the favorable value of the recent muon anomalous magnetic moment measurement at the BNL E821 experiment can be accommodated. In the latter case, the allowed region of the Kobayashi-Maskawa phase can be different from the prediction within the standard model (SM) and therefore measurements of the $\mathrm{CP}$ asymmetry of the $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{B}J/\ensuremath{\psi}{K}_{S}$ mode and $\ensuremath{\Delta}{m}_{{B}_{s}}$ could discriminate this case from the SM. We also show that the $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\gamma}$ branching ratio can be close to the current experimental upper bound and the mixing induced $\mathrm{CP}$ asymmetry of the radiative B decay can be enhanced in the case where the neutrino parameters correspond to the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein small mixing angle solution.

The effect of higher-dimensional operators in $K \to \pi\pi$ decays

We reexamine the weak ΔS = 1 sector by including higher-dimensional four-quark operators in the lowenergy effective Lagrangian ℒeffΔS=1. The introduction of a physical cut-off Λ ∼- 1 GeV as an effective mass scale in QCD allows for a systematic expansion in powers of p/Λ where p denotes some external quark momentum. Within this framework analytical expressions for the higher-dimensional operators are obtainable. By means of the chiral quark model we evaluate K → ππ matrix elements of LeffΔS=1 and identify the corrections to the isospin decay channels g(1/2) and g(3/2). While little affecting ΔI = 1/2 transitions the effect is substantial in the ΔI = 3/2 case where it amounts to a 40% enhancement numerically.

The pion-nucleon coupling constant in QCD sum rules

The pion-nucleon coupling constant $g_{\pi N}$ is studied on the basis of the QCD sum rules. Both the Borel sum rules and the finite energy sum rules for $g_{\pi N}$ are used to examine the effects of higher dimensional operators (up to dim. 7) and $\alpha_s$ corrections in the operator product expansion. Agreement with the experimental number is reached only when $S_{\pi}/S_N$ is greater than one, where $S_{\pi}$ ($S_N$) is the continuum threshold for the $g_{\pi N}$ (nucleon) sum rule.

Top quark mass in top quark condensation model

The top quark mass m t in the top quark condensation model is calculated with the ladder Schwinger-Dyson equation including the gluon exchange. Instead of the Pagels-Stokar approximation, for fixing the value of the coupling constant the Goldstone boson decay constant is calculated with the solution of the covariant Bethe-Salpeter equation corresponding to the Goldstone boson. By introducing an interaction of the form ( g′ Λ 2 ) Ψ ̄ L iλ a t R t R λ aΨ L i in the model an m t value lower than 200 GeV can be obtained. The effect of higher dimensional operators is investigated.

STABILITY OF THE TOP QUARK MASS IN SUPERSYMMETRIC TOP CONDENSATE MODELS

The top quark mass prediction in supersymmetric top condensate models is found to be insensitive to the inclusion of the effects of higher dimensional operators. For associated coefficients of characteristically moderate strength, the supersymmetric renormalization group trajectories are strongly focused to the infrared quasi-fixed point of the top Yukawa coupling constant.