Foraging Behaviour of the Particle Phenomenologist
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Foraging Behaviour of the Particle Phenomenologist A Broad Exploration of Physics Beyond the Standard Model A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Wee Hao Ng December 2018 c 2018 Wee Hao Ng ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Foraging Behaviour of the Particle Phenomenologist A Broad Exploration of Physics Beyond the Standard Model Wee Hao Ng, Ph.D. Cornell University 2018 Despite its numerous successes, the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics is known to be incomplete. In this thesis, we explore a variety of topics regarding physics beyond the SM (BSM). In the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), the leptons and Higgs have separate superpartners; however, it is possible to construct a model where the Higgs is the superpartner of one generation of left-handed leptons. In Chapter 2, we explore various implications of this Higgs-as-slepton model, in par- ticular on electroweak precision and neutrino experiments. In Chapter 3, we use the model to explain various excesses reported in leptoquark and W 0 searches by the CMS experiment in 2014. These excesses were observed in electron but not muon channels, hence suggesting the violation of lepton universality, a hallmark of the model. In Chapter 4, we propose a supersymmetric left-right symmetric (SUSY LRS) model that can explain various excesses reported in W 0 searches by the CMS and ATLAS experiments around 2014–2015, but at the same time generate a large tree-level Higgs mass, hence resolving the usual issue of the Higgs mass being too small in the MSSM. In the most basic SUSY LRS model, a large Higgs mass also requires a large tan β (the ratio of the two Higgs vacuum expectation values in the model), whereas the excesses seem to favour a smaller value. We resolve this tension by introducing heavy down-type vector-like quarks that mix with the light quarks; a large tan β can now still remain consistent with the excesses. Lepton flavour models based on A4 symmetry are popular because they pre- dict a tri-bimaximal mixing pattern for the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (PMNS) matrix, often regarded to be in good agreement with experimental mea- surements. However, recent results from the Daya Bay and RENO experiments have shown that the θ13 angle of the matrix is rather large, contrary to the pre- dicted mixing pattern. We investigate in Chapter 5 whether a model based on the SO(3) A4 symmetry-breaking pattern can accommodate these recent results. ! The enlargement to SO(3) is intended to motivate the A4 from a UV completion standpoint. We find that contrary to typical A4 models, the SO(3) A4 model ! does generally predict a large θ13 due to mixing in the charged-lepton sector. In Chapter 6, we present a new mechanism for freeze-out dark matter which we call co-annihilation. This differs from most freeze-out mechanisms in that depletion is driven not by Boltzmann suppression, but by out-of-equilibrium decay that eventually “switches off”. Such a model is hard to probe using direct detection and collider production experiments, but should present enhanced indirect detection signatures. Hydrogen-antihydrogen (H-H)¯ oscillations are forbidden in the SM and hence represent signs of new physics. In the interstellar medium (ISM), any H atom that oscillates into H¯ may subsequently undergo annihilation with other atoms, producing γ-rays that can be detected in astronomical surveys. While a bound on these oscillations was originally derived by Feinberg et al., we re-evaluate the bound in Chapter 7 using a more comprehensive theoretical framework, a multiphase description of the ISM, as well as recent γ-ray data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope. Biographical Sketch Wee Hao Ng grew up in Singapore, and read physics at Oxford University in the early 2000s. After a short stint in military service, he spent a few year working in an applied physics laboratory, before coming over to Cornell in the early 2010s. He enjoys spending long hours out in nature by himself, except for the company of wildlife, and cares deeply about conservation issues. Since this thesis will eventually become public domain, due to concerns over privacy and identity theft, he would rather avoid overly-specific details in this biographical sketch. Actually he did write a more detailed version, but subsequently found it too self-aggrandising to his liking. iii To my family. iv Acknowledgements Acknowledgements are hard to write, since there will always be someone whom I sincerely want to thank but had happened to slip my mind at the moment of writing. First and foremost, I owe much to my advisor, Prof. Yuval Grossman. His unflappable sense of humour, as well as continued support despite being aware of my decision to cross over to conservation, made what would otherwise have been a difficult journey much lighter. Along with Yuval, I would like to thank LEPP theory and experiment faculty Prof. Jim Alexander, Csaba Csaki, Lawrence Gib- bons, Thomas Hartman, Liam McAllister, Maxim Perelstein and Peter Wittich, as well as LEPP theory postdocs Marco Farina, Eric Kuflik and Paul McGuirk, from whom I learnt much about particle physics and quantum field theory. Extra shout out to Csaba and Maxim for providing the bedrock of my knowledge, and to Jim for always being there as a listening ear. Among my fellow LEPP theory graduate students, a special mention to my number one collaborator Jeff Dror. Our partnership, in which you would throw out wild ideas to which I would then play Devil’s advocate, had borne surprising fruit, and would probably have continued to do so had I not made the cross-over decision. I am also grateful to Nima Afkhami-Jeddi, Thomas Bachlechner, Mathieu Cliche, Jack Collins, Mehmet Demirtas, Gowri Kurup, Salvator Lombardo, Cody Long, Mario Martone, Mitrajyoti Ghosh, Nicholas Rey-Le Lorier, Mike Saelim, Mike Savastio, John Stout, Amirhossein Tajdini, Ofri Telem and Yu-dai Tsai for being great colleagues whom I can have engaging discussions with. On the teaching side, I am extremely grateful for the fact that my interactions as a TA with the professors have been consistently positive. Besides Yuval, Jim and Peter, I also like to acknowledge LEPP faculty Prof. Ivan Bazarov and Andre v LeClair, LASSP faculty Prof. Kin Fai Mak and Eric Mueller, and Math department faculty Prof. Alex Townsend. For administrative support, I can always count on Kacey Acquilano, Debra Hatfield and Katerina Malysheva to make sure that I don’t mess things up. Also, it would be remiss of me not to mention the cheerfulness and leadership the ad- ministrative director Craig Wiggers has brought to the department. Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank my friends here at Cornell: Robin Bjorkquist, Jennifer Chu, Azar Eyvazov, Jun Wei Lam, Jordan Moxon and Shao Min Tan, as well as my family and friends back home in Singapore, for your unwavering emotional support. Life would have been very different without you. vi Table of Contents Biographical Sketch . iii Dedication . iv Acknowledgements . .v Table of Contents . vii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Why high-energy physics? . .1 1.2 Chapter synopsis . .5 1.2.1 The Higgs as the slepton (Chapters 2 and 3) . .5 1.2.2 Supersymmetric left-right symmetric models and the 2 TeV diboson excess (Chapter 4) . 11 1.2.3 θ13 in A4 lepton models (Chapter 5) . 14 1.2.4 Co-decaying dark matter (Chapter 6) . 17 1.2.5 Hydrogen-antihydrogen oscillations in the interstellar medium (Chapter 7) . 21 2 Probing a slepton Higgs on all frontiers 26 2.1 Introduction . 26 2.2 The basics of Higgs-as-slepton models . 30 2.3 Limits on gaugino-electron doublet mixing . 34 2.4 Discovery potential at an e+e− collider . 36 2.4.1 e+e− W +W − ......................... 37 2.4.2 e+e− ! ZZ ........................... 39 2.4.3 e+e− ! hZ ........................... 39 ! 2.5 UPMNS and the need for a TeV-scale cutoff . 40 2.5.1 L = 1; 0; 1 ........................... 42 2.5.2 L =6 − 1 .............................. 46 2.5.3 L = 0 .............................. 48 2.5.4 L = 1 ............................. 49 2.5.5 2HDM− Higgs-as-slepton model . 50 2.6 Neutrino masses, proton decay and the gravitino mass . 52 2.6.1 Bounds from neutrino masses . 53 2.6.2 Upper bounds from proton decay . 54 2.7 Conclusions . 58 2.A Feynman rules . 60 2.A.1 Mixing matrices . 60 2.A.2 Couplings for Yukawa interactions . 62 2.A.3 Couplings for gauge interactions . 63 2.B Two Higgs Doublet Model . 66 vii 3 Sneutrino Higgs models explain lepton non-universality in CMS excesses 68 3.1 Introduction . 68 3.2 Model with Higgs as a slepton . 72 3.2.1 Overview . 72 3.2.2 Chargino and neutralino mass matrices and mixing . 75 3.2.3 First-generation left-handed squark decays . 76 3.3 Simulation and Results . 78 3.4 Discussion and Conclusions . 82 4 A 2 TeV WR, Supersymmetry, and the Higgs Mass 84 4.1 Introduction . 84 4.2 The Model . 88 4.2.1 Non-Decoupling D-terms . 90 4.2.2 Exotic Quarks . 92 4.3 Results and Discussion . 94 4.3.1 Implications for the Z0 and stops . 100 4.4 Flavour constraints . 103 4.4.1 Tree-level Z0 FCNCs . 104 4.5 Conclusions . 106 4.A W 0 and Z0 couplings and partial widths . 110 4.B Non-Decoupling D-terms and Fine Tuning . 112 4.C Flavour constraints: Additional details .