Speaker
Ms
Saptaparna Bhattacharya
(Brown University)
Description
We explore LHC signatures of vectorlike quarks, which are hypothetical fermions whose left- and right-handed components have the same electroweak quantum numbers. We consider interactions of such a quark, top-prime, with the top quark via a Yukawa coupling and with a bottom quark through a $W$ boson. We look at Higgs production through the decay of the top-prime in a top-prime pair production channel through QCD at the LHC with $\sqrt{s} = $ 7 TeV. Such a process depends only on the top-prime mass. In this channel, we consider semi-leptonic $W$-boson decays. This choice is dictated by the reduction of QCD background and a higher cross section than the corresponding much cleaner di-leptonic channel. We suggest a background discrimination strategy involving $b$-tagging and a lepton in the final state. The possibility of the top-prime decaying into a light (120 GeV/$c^2$) and a relatively heavier Higgs (150 GeV/$c^2$) will be explored. The mixing angle between the top and the top-prime, which is a parameter of the model, has been chosen judiciously so that the analysis remains as model independent as possible.
Primary authors
Prof.
Bogdan Dobrescu
(Theoretical Physics Department, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)
Prof.
Meenakshi Narain
(Brown University)
Ms
Saptaparna Bhattacharya
(Brown University)
