In the absence of any new physics signals at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), anomalous results at low energy experiments have become the subject of increased attention. We focus on three such results from the LSND, MiniBooNE (MB), and ATOMKI experiments. A 17 MeV pseudoscalar mediator (a ′) can account for two (8Be and 4He) out of the three cases in which excess events have been seen in pair creation transitions in ATOMKI. We incorporate this mediator in a gauge invariant extension of the Standard Model (SM) with a second Higgs doublet and three singlet (seesaw) neutrinos (N  i , i = 1, 2, 3). N 1,2 participate in an interaction in MB and LSND which, with a ′ as mediator, leads to the production of e + e  −  pairs. The N  i  also lead to mass-squared differences for SM neutrinos in agreement with global oscillation data. We first show that such a model offers a natural joint solution to the MB and LSND excesses, providing excellent fits to their data. Next, using the values of the couplings to the quarks and electrons which are required to explain pair creation nuclear transition data for 8Be and 4He in ATOMKI, we show that these values still lead to fits for MB and LSND data. However, once ATOMKI is incorporated, we find that strong constraints from the decays K  +  → π  +  a ′ (a ′ → e  +  e −) and π  +  → e  +  ν  e  e + e − come into play. While our solution is in conformity with the bounds on the former decay, it remains in tension with 90% CL bounds on the latter. We also discuss other constraints from both collider and non-collider experiments and from electroweak precision data, stability and unitarity. We compute the contributions to the electron and muon g – 2 up to two loops for our model. We discuss tests of the model in upcoming experiments.

Egypt

Waleed Abdallah

India

Raj Gandhi

Tathagata Ghosh

Najimuddin Khan

Samiran Roy

United States

Subhojit Roy

A 17 MeV pseudoscalar and the LSND, MiniBooNE and ATOMKI anomalies

We investigate the possibility of multi-lepton (four and six) signatures, including an exotic signature of same-sign four-lepton (SS4L) as signals of pair production of a doubly charged Higgs in the minimal left-right symmetric model, extended with two doublet scalars. The right-handed neutrino masses are generated in this model through a dimension-5 lepton-number violating operator allowing the triplet scalar interactions with leptons to become negligibly small. This leads to interesting six-lepton and SS4L signatures that can be observed at the high-luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) with almost no background for doubly charged Higgs with mass below 500 GeV.

Rafiqul Rahaman

Santosh Rai

Search for a leptophobic doubly charged Higgs in same-sign four-lepton and six-lepton signatures in a left-right symmetric model

We consider machine learning techniques associated with the application of a boosted decision tree (BDT) to searches at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for pair-produced lepton partners which decay to leptons and invisible particles. This scenario can arise in the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), but can be realized in many other extensions of the Standard Model (SM). We focus on the case of intermediate mass splitting (<math><mo>∼</mo><mn>30</mn><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><mi>GeV</mi></math>) between the dark matter (DM) and the scalar. For these mass splittings, the LHC has made little improvement over LEP due to large electroweak backgrounds. We find that the use of machine learning techniques can push the LHC well past discovery sensitivity for a benchmark model with a lepton partner mass of <math><mo>∼</mo><mn>110</mn><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><mi>GeV</mi></math>, for an integrated luminosity of <math><mn>300</mn><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><msup><mi>fb</mi><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msup></math>, with a signal-to-background ratio of <math><mo>∼</mo><mn>0.3</mn></math>. The LHC could exclude models with a lepton partner mass as large as <math><mo>∼</mo><mn>160</mn><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><mi>GeV</mi></math> with the same luminosity. The use of machine learning techniques in searches for scalar lepton partners at the LHC could thus definitively probe the parameter space of the MSSM in which scalar muon mediated interactions between SM muons and Majorana singlet DM can both deplete the relic density through dark matter annihilation and satisfy the recently measured anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. We identify several machine learning techniques which can be useful in other LHC searches involving large and complex backgrounds.

Bhaskar Dutta

Alyssa Horne

Jason Kumar

Sean Palmer

Pearl Sandick

Marcus Snedeker

Italy

Patrick Stengel

Joel W. Walker

Machine learning techniques for intermediate mass gap lepton partner searches at the large hadron collider

We study the prospect of simultaneous explanation of tiny neutrino masses, dark matter (DM), and the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe in a Z 3-symmetric complex singlet scalar extended type-II seesaw model. The complex singlet scalar plays the role of DM. Analyzing the thermal history of the model, we identify the region of the parameter space that can generate a first-order electroweak phase transition (FOEWPT) in the early Universe, and the resulting stochastic gravitational waves (GW) can be detected at future space/ground-based GW experiments. First, we find that light triplet scalars do favor an FOEWPT. In our study, we choose the type-II seesaw part of the parameter space in such a way that light triplet scalars, especially the doubly charged ones, evade the strong bounds from their canonical searches at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). However, the relevant part of the parameter space, where FOEWPT can happen only due to strong SM doublet-triplet interactions, is in tension with the SM-like Higgs decay to a pair of photons, which has already excluded the bulk of this parameter space. On the other hand, the latest spin-independent DM direct detection constraints from XENON-1T and PANDA-4T eliminate a significant amount of parameter space relevant for the dark sector assisted FOEWPT scenarios, and it is only possible when the complex scalar DM is significantly underabundant. In short, we conclude from our analysis that the absence of new physics at the HL-LHC and/or various DM experiments in the near future will severely limit the prospects of detecting a stochastic GW at future GW experiments and will exclude the possibility of electroweak baryogenesis within this model.

Purusottam Ghosh

Interplay among gravitational waves, dark matter and collider signals in the singlet scalar extended type-II seesaw model

The future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, along with its primary capacity to elucidate the nuclear structure, will offer new opportunities to probe physics beyond the Standard Model coupled to the electroweak sector. Among the best motivated examples of such new physics are new heavy neutral leptons (HNLs), which are likely to play a key role in neutrino mass generation and lepton number violation. We study the capability of the EIC to search for HNLs, which can be produced in electron- proton collisions through charged current interactions as a consequence of their mixing with light neutrinos. We find that, with the EIC design energy and integrated luminosity, one is able to probe HNLs in the mass range of 1 – 100 GeV with mixing angles down to the order of 10 −4 − 10 −3 through the prompt decay signatures, and in the mass range of 1 10 GeV with |U  e |2 ~ 10 −6 – 10 −4 via the displaced decay signatures. We also consider the invisible mode where an HNL is undetected or decaying to dark sector particles. One could potentially probe heavy HNLs for mixing angles in the window 10 −3 – 10 −2, provided SM background systematics can be brought under control. These searches are complementary to other probes of HNLs, such as neutrino-less double-β decay, meson decay, fixed-target, and high-energy collider experiments.

Brian Batell

Tao Han

Keping Xie

Heavy neutral leptons at the Electron-Ion Collider

We study the non-standard interactions of neutrinos with light leptonic scalars (ϕ) in a global (B − L)-conserved ultraviolet (UV)-complete model. The model utilizes Type-II seesaw motivated neutrino interactions with an SU(2) L -triplet scalar, along with an additional singlet in the scalar sector. This UV-completion leads to an enriched spectrum and consequently new observable signatures. We examine the low-energy lepton flavor violation constraints, as well as the perturbativity and unitarity constraints on the model parameters. Then we lay out a search strategy for the unique signature of the model resulting from the leptonic scalars at the hadron colliders via the processes H  ±±  → W  ±  W  ±  ϕ and H  ±  → W  ±  ϕ for both small and large leptonic Yukawa coupling cases. We find that via these associated production processes at the HL-LHC, the prospects of doubly-charged scalar H  ±±  can reach up to 800 (500) GeV and 1.1 (0.8) TeV at the 2σ (5σ) significance for small and large Yukawa couplings, respectively. A future 100 TeV hadron collider will further increase the mass reaches up to 3.8 (2.6) TeV and 4 (2.7) TeV, at the 2σ (5σ) significance, respectively. We also demonstrate that the mass of ϕ can be determined at about 10% accuracy at the LHC for the large Yukawa coupling case even though it escapes as missing energy from the detectors.

P. Dev

Brazil

Han Qin

China

Yongchao Zhang

Leptonic scalars and collider signatures in a UV-complete model

Conditions for strong first-order phase transition and generation of observable gravitational wave (GW) signals are very restrictive to the profile of the Higgs potential. Working in the minimal extension of the SM with a new gauge singlet real scalar, we show that the production of signals relevant for future GW experiments, such as LISA, can favor depleted resonant and non-resonant di-Higgs rates at colliders for phenomenologically relevant regimes of scalar mixing angles and masses for the heavy scalar. We perform a comprehensive study on the emergence of these di-Higgs blind spot configurations in GWs and also show that di-boson channels, ZZ and WW, can restore the phenomenological complementarities between GW and collider experiments in these parameter space regimes.

Alexandre Alves

Dorival Gonçalves

Huai-Ke Guo

Kuver Sinha

Di-Higgs blind spots in gravitational wave signals

We consider a non-Abelian dark SU(2)D model where the dark sector couples to the Standard Model (SM) through a Higgs portal. We investigate two different scenarios of the dark sector scalars with Z 2 symmetry, with Higgs portal interactions that can introduce mixing between the SM Higgs boson and the SM singlet scalars in the dark sector. We utilize the existing collider results of the Higgs signal rate, direct heavy Higgs searches, and electroweak precision observables to constrain the model parameters. The SU(2)D partially breaks into U(1)D gauge group by the scalar sector. The resulting two stable massive dark gauge bosons and pseudo-Goldstone bosons can be viable cold dark matter candidates, while the massless gauge boson from the unbroken U(1)D subgroup is a dark radiation and can introduce long-range attractive dark matter (DM) self-interaction, which can alleviate the small-scale structure issues. We study in detail the pattern of strong first-order phase transition and gravitational wave (GW) production triggered by the dark sector symmetry breaking, and further evaluate the signal-to-noise ratio for several proposed space interferometer missions. We conclude that the rich physics in the dark sector may be observable with the current and future measurements at colliders, DM experiments, and GW interferometers.

Hongkai Liu

Electroweak phase transition with an SU(2) dark sector

We explore the collider prospects of neutrino non-standard interaction with a Standard Model (SM) gauge-singlet leptonic scalar ϕ carrying two units of lepton-number-charge. These leptonic scalars are forbidden from interacting with the SM fermions at the renormalizable level and, if one allows for higher-dimensional operators, couple predominantly to SM neutrinos. For masses at or below the electroweak scale, ϕ decays exclusively into neutrinos. Its characteristic production signature at hadron collider experiments like the LHC would be via the vector boson fusion process and leads to same-sign dileptons, two forward jets in opposite hemispheres, and missing transverse energy, i.e.,   <math> <mi>pp</mi> <mo>→</mo> <msubsup> <mi>ℓ</mi> <mi>α</mi> <mo>±</mo> </msubsup> <msubsup> <mi>ℓ</mi> <mi>β</mi> <mo>±</mo> </msubsup> <mi>jj</mi> <mo>+</mo> <msubsup> <mi>E</mi> <mi>T</mi> <mtext>miss</mtext> </msubsup> <mfenced> <mi>α</mi> <mrow> <mi>β</mi> <mo>=</mo> <mi>e</mi> </mrow> <mi>μ</mi> <mi>τ</mi> </mfenced> </math>  $$ pp\to {\mathrm{\ell}}_{\alpha}^{\pm }{\mathrm{\ell}}_{\beta}^{\pm } jj+{E}_T^{\mathrm{miss}}\left(\alpha, \beta =e,\mu, \tau \right) $$ . Exploiting the final states of electrons and muons, we estimate, for the first time, the sensitivity of the LHC to these lepton-number-charged scalars. We show that the LHC sensitivity is largely complementary to that of low-energy precision measurements of the decays of charged leptons, charged mesons, W, Z and the SM Higgs boson, as well as the neutrino beam experiments like MINOS, and searches for neutrino self-interactions at IceCube and in cosmological observations. For ϕ mass larger than roughly 10 GeV, our projected LHC sensitivity would surpass all existing bounds.

André Gouvêa

P.S. Dev

Leptonic scalars at the LHC

We present a complementarity study of gravitational waves and double Higgs production in the 4b channel, exploring the gauge singlet scalar extension of the SM. This new physics extension serves as a simplified benchmark model that realizes a strongly first-order electroweak phase transition necessary to generate the observed baryon asymmetry in the universe. In calculating the signal-to-noise ratio of the gravitational waves, we incorporate the effect of the recently discovered significant suppression of the gravitational wave signals from sound waves for strong phase transitions, make sure that supercooled phase transitions do complete and adopt a bubble wall velocity that is consistent with a successful electroweak baryogenesis by solving the velocity profiles of the plasma. The high-luminosity LHC sensitivity to the singlet scalar extension of the SM is estimated using a shape-based analysis of the invariant 4b mass distribution. We find that while the region of parameter space giving detectable gravitational waves is shrunk due to the new gravitational wave simulations, the qualitative complementary role of gravitational waves and collider searches remain unchanged.

Di-Higgs production in the 4b channel and gravitational wave complementarity